Climate Unemployment

Abstract

This viewpoint conceptualizes “climate unemployment” as a critical lens for interrogating the uneven socio-political landscapes produced by climate change. Moving beyond technocratic narratives of job loss and green reskilling, the term designates a multi-layered regime of exclusion shaped by intersecting inequalities of class, gender, (im)mobility, and epistemic legitimacy. It draws attention to the invisibilized labour losses of those who cannot migrate, operate in informal economies, or engage in alternative, non-commodified modes of subsistence. Rather than framing climate-induced unemployment as a transitional problem, this viewpoint positions it as a site of structural dispossession. Through examples from Türkiye’s disaster-prone and climate-vulnerable regions, the concept is grounded in the lived experiences of marginality and resistance. In so doing, it calls for reframing employment within climate discourse—not merely as a site of economic intervention but as a terrain of structural justice.