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The Ecology of Uprooting, Forced Migration and the More-Than-Human World

Two people are arranging small animal figures and leaves on a world map with a brown, patterned background. The scene feels creative and engaged. Illustration for The Ecology of Uprooting, Forced Migration and the More-Than-Human World.
Illustration by Vasundhara Srinivas

Lexi travels the streets of Hong Kong, dodging cars and bright lights in the night’s pleasant breeze. Hong Kong used to be colder, but Lexi moved here for the warmth. Lexias pardalis, or the Archduke butterfly, originally hails from India. As a second-generation immigrant to Hong Kong, she comes from a family that has been moving everywhere in search of warmth.


Hong Kong’s previously subtropical to temperate climate was never quite suitable for them, but the recent warming and shift towards a more tropical climate has made it desirable for Archdukes.  


This phenomenon is known as range shift or range expansion; it is defined by Lukas Eigentler, a mathematical biologist and assistant professor at the University of Warwick, as the spatial spread of a population into previously unoccupied regions. According to Conservation Corridor, it is a natural response that species have to changing climates. 


When Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) explains it with regards to the Maple Trees in New England, Canada, she says they will have to “migrate northward to find homes at the boreal fringe” because Maple trees grow best in cold, moist climates, which New England will soon no longer offer and such suitable regions are slowly running out.


Range expansion caused by anthropogenic climate change can be understood as a form of forced migration, comparable to instances of displacement in human societies.


Wingfield et al. state that range expansion is caused by climate change, human disturbance, and invasive species. Here, a note: the earth’s climates have been changing since the beginning of its history. Climate change has been defined by the UN as “long-term shifts in temperature and weather patterns”. 


Natural climate change is caused by “changes in the sun, emissions from volcanoes, variations in Earth’s orbit, and fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide [in the atmosphere],” among other things. 


Anthropogenic climate change, however, is climate change directly caused by human activity, characterised by the rapid increase in average global temperatures, and can be traced back to the mid-1800s—around the time of the first Industrial Revolution and the invention of mass production. 


Range expansion in the more-than-human world is a natural response to changing climates, and as climates have been changing on Earth for billions of years, range expansion too has been occurring for billions of years. Like the prehistoric and even pre-colonial migration of people, the migration of plants and animals is a natural adaptation strategy and an act of resilience. 


However, Professor of Biogeography and Spatial Ecology Bethany A. Bradley (2024) mentions that “current rates of climate change are orders of magnitude faster than those that species have experienced during their evolutionary history.” Species then have to adapt to changing climates much faster than what they are historically used to. Going back to Kimmerer’s example of Maple trees: “like the displaced farmers of Bangladesh fleeing rising sea levels, Maple trees will become climate refugees”.


The migration of people and the more-than-human world both happen because of a search for better conditions. People all over the world migrate due to extreme weather events, economic uncertainty, war and other threats to safety. In the case of more-than-human species, plants and animals move from where they historically have been to a new area in search of a suitable niche—the environments where they can survive, thrive, and ultimately reproduce optimally. 


In recent years, climate change has increased the instances of extreme weather events and altered abiotic factors such as soil pH, water availability, and temperatures both in singular ecosystems and on a planetary scale. Tomiolo and Ward state that “only a subset of responsive species will successfully track their climate niche,” and as previously mentioned by Bradley, climate change has necessitated faster range expansion across species.


This rapid and uncertain uprooting is also the reality of millions across the world, from Congo to Afghanistan to Ukraine and many other places; people have had to flee the sudden outbreak of war, sudden natural disasters or economic exclusion. What happens to the people who fail to track their niche? In other words, what happens to those for whom the uprooting is too fast?


Much like the forced migration of people, the range expansion of the more-than human world is often labelled as intrusive or invasive. Often immigrants, especially those who enter receiving countries as refugees, asylum seekers or undocumented people, are viewed as resource drains. Even the language of  “host countries” when referring to countries into which people migrate implies one of two things: that the migrant has a parasitic relationship with that country and its resources or that the migrant will always be a visitor to the country. 


According to Nann, Uduka, and Wisiorek in their 2024 article “Online Anti-Immigrant Discourse in Germany”, part of what fuels anti-immigrant sentiment in Germany is the idea that immigrants —especially refugees and asylum seekers— do not contribute to the economy. The misconception is that foreign nationals expect handouts and are not willing to work for anything. One user writes: “Yes, we are doing well in Germany, but nothing was given to us. Thanks to our ancestors, who have built up everything laboriously and worked. And our oh so needy newcomers sit down in the made nest and are still rewarded for it, while we continue to toil to keep the country running reasonably.”


Looking past the dangerously nationalistic and xenophobic overtones of this quote, let’s break this down:


To begin, this argument is factually incorrect. According to a 2022 micro census run by the German Federal Statistical Office, approximately 25% of the overall German workforce has an immigrant background. These are the same people who pay the taxes that keep the social security and pension funds afloat, contributing to approximately 14.6% and 20% of these systems respectively as of 2022 according to Welt and the Bundestag. Not only do people with a migrant background “work”, they contribute significantly to the economy and to social security schemes that would otherwise only function at 80-85% of their current capacity.


That aside, the idea that people are only welcome into a country if they are skilled workers or in the position to pay taxes as opposed to just because they are human is dangerous, ableist, promotes colonial deservingness hierarchies, and connotes perpetual visitation on the part of the immigrant. 


This sentiment is not unique to Germany. Hassan Isilow reports that in South Africa, right wing xenophobic vigilante groups such as Operation Dudula aim solely to shut down migrant owned businesses and drive Asian and African immigrants out of the country. Dudula specifically operates in poor areas, exploiting the restlessness that comes with a 25% unemployment rate. 


Although limited, the research around range expansion is also prone to misconceptions. Bradley posits that when the genetic history of range expanding plants is too different from that of those in the receiving environment, the range expanding plants are more likely to become invasive. 


What Bradley’s paper does not mention is that while too much historical genetic difference is potentially dangerous for native species, too much genetic similarity carries challenges too. If a range expanding plant is too closely related to native species, the plants in the ecosystem stand to lose genetic diversity over time. According to Arnold, “hybridisation between native and introduced congeners can lead to genetic homogenisation, sometimes with deleterious (harmful) evolutionary consequences.”


It also doesn’t mention that scientifically, the word “invasion” is used to measure the harm done to the ecosystem by a travelling species, not its dominance therein. Species are only considered invasive when they cause harm to the environment or animal or plant health, not when they become abundant in the environment. In this way invasion is a scale of harm, not abundance or opportunism.


Range expanding species, much like human populations forced to leave their homes, move as an environmental response to vulnerability and a lack of alternatives, not as a way to inflict harm or leech off a country’s resources. In both cases uprooting is a survival mechanism, not an act of aggression.


Not all species are able to successfully expand their ranges though. As the world experiences global warming, plants and animals that have historically preferred colder climates such as the Austrian yellow-cress (Rorippa austriaca), polar bears, and other animal species found in the poles are facing habitat loss and extinction. Currently, at least 10,967 plant and animal species on the IUCN’s Red List are placed at higher risk of extinction by the effects of anthropogenic climate change.


Other species simply cannot expand due to a lack of the genetic traits necessary to do so, while others cannot find environments with suitable abiotic factors. Similarly, communities of low income, of colour, and others prone to being profiled by immigration policies, do not have the resources to relocate. According to Wingfield et al., “failure to adapt or shift home range may lead to population reductions or extinction”.


While the more-than-human world is figuring out how to survive in these rapidly changing climates, the people in Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Bangladesh among others, also grapple with the unequal impacts of climate change. 


Jane McAdam (2011) states that Kiribati has “virtually no capacity for internal migration due to the absence of high land”. This is particularly concerning, considering that also according to her, climate-driven migration is “almost always” internal. What happens if the people of Kiribati fail to shift their home range? What kind of emergency work is the international community doing to ensure a suitable environment for the people of Kiribati?


While the people in Fiji, Kiribati, Tuvalu and other small islands are running away from water that threatens to devour them, we must also turn our attention to other things that, like water, can suffocate us. 


Economic instability, housing insecurity, unaffordable healthcare, toxins in our clothes, the commodification of basic human rights such as food, water, and education, can all be compared to the literal rising sea levels coming for us. 


In her book, Undrowned, Alexis Pauline Gumbs declares “We are sick of these tired cycles of economic vulnerability, resource grabs, and waste and harm spiraling down. We are ready to breathe differently. And evolve.” In doing so, she compares economic vulnerability, waste harm, climate change, and other things that cause grief in our communities to rising sea levels much like the ones that threaten the people of Tuvalu and other small island developing states.


To see the things that suffocate us like water, means treating housing precarity, unemployment, and dirty air as emergencies, just as we do with rising sea levels. It also means to acknowledge what a privilege it is to not be threatened by actual water chasing us, while acknowledging that the same systems that stir the tides that threaten to drown us metaphorically—capitalism, corporate greed, and racism—are the ones causing the rising sea levels that threaten the people who are already the most vulnerable to climate change every day.


Understanding range expansion as forced migration allows us to see the displacement of both human communities and more-than-human species as connected, both shaped by the impacts of anthropogenic climate change and its underlying causes. As species and communities navigate uncertain futures, addressing the root causes of displacement—environmental degradation, economic instability, and systemic inequality—is imperative. 


So Lexias pardalis flies around, dodging cars and bright lights in Hong Kong because it is home and she can survive here… for now.



Edited by Adi Roy and Thenthamizh SS


Tatenda Dlali (she/her) is a student of Environmental Science and Associate Editor (Climate) at Political Pandora, where she leads the Climate Department. Her research focuses on conservation ecology, the intersections of gender, migration, and climate change, and decolonizing the climate justice movement.



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Keywords: Climate Change and Forced Migration, Range Expansion Species, Climate Refugees 2025, Anthropogenic Climate Change Effects, Impact of Global Warming on Biodiversity, Species Migration Due to Climate Change, More-than-Human Climate Migration, Tropicalization and Species Range Shift, Invasive Species Climate Change, Climate Change and Ecosystem Disruption, Environmental Displacement, Climate Refugee Crisis, Human Migration and Climate Change, Rising Sea Levels and Small Island States, Kiribati Climate Migration, Bangladesh Climate Displacement, Tuvalu Sinking Due to Climate Change, Climate Justice and Migration Policy, Lexias Pardalis Migration, Butterfly as Climate Refugee.

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