Gilroy’s Black Atlantic diaspora: climate displacement and right-bearing beyond the nation

Abstract

Nationalism studies have only recently started to grapple with the Anthropocene as a foundational shift for the discipline. One of the effects of climate change is forced displacement of large populations, and if access to rights cannot be ensured outside the structures of territorial sovereignty, this migration could easily translate into widespread rightlessness. I argue that this necessitates a rethinking of how communities become right-bearing and how such right-bearing communities have existed outside the structures of the nation state. Specifically, I propose looking to Paul Gilroy’s account of the Black Atlantic diaspora as an example of a right-bearing community that successfully claimed “the right to have rights” through a concerted effort of vocalising experiences of displacement (Gilroy, 1993, 1994, 2000). Reading Gilroy through rights-scholarship in political theory I argue that the Black Atlantic can inform work on climate diasporas and their latent political potential as right-bearing communities.