Antrophology and Developmental Studies

How do states relate to undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers once they have been formally rejected? A growing amount of research has been devoted to the role of government and NGO workers in executing soft-deportation policy through ‘voluntary return’ programmes. Many of these studies convincingly argue that voluntary return most often is anything but voluntary. However, less effort has been spent answering the question of why, then, departure is still constructed as voluntary and how this construction is realised in practice. This paper explores the work of street-level bureaucrats in charge of expelling unauthorised immigrants from the Netherlands in case expulsion cannot stem from the law alone and deportation workers deploy extra-legal strategies to carry out exclusionary policy goals. In these cases, we show that, in addition to building trust relationships with migrants, government and NGO workers ostensibly emphasise their clients’ self-determination and agency. By examining the performative construction of ‘voluntariness’ in highly asymmetrical interview rituals, this article brings attention to an under-theorised condition of the conduct of conduct in the era of governmentality: if modern bureaucratic power, however punitive, must govern primarily by addressing the freedom of free agents, then it must ensure the interpretation of conduct as voluntary.

Risk perceptions influence individual and collective adaptive responses to climate hazards. Up to now, the majority of literature addressing climate change perception and adaptation has been location-specific. Such an approach is limited with respect to the construction of a generalized theory around why and how people perceive and act towards climate change risks. This chapter seeks to contribute to overcome this limitation by offering a cross-sectional study of climate change risks perceptions among smallholder farmers settled in three contrasting biomes in Brazil: the Amazon (rainforest); the Caatinga (semi-arid); and the Cerrado (savanna). By articulating regional, local and micro scales of comparison, common traits in the perception of climate variability are identified. It is not intended, at this stage, to validate particular theories of climate change, but rather to contribute to a better understanding of climate change as a trans-regional and socially embedded environmental phenomenon. This study shows that, in spite of existing perceptive barriers, smallholders settled in dramatically different contexts share perceptions about risks linked to the following phenomena: (i) changes in the timing of seasons, (ii) decrease in rainfall levels; (iii) temperature rises. Moreover, there are specific adaptation strategies to climate change, like the timing of seeding, which appear to be addressed independently by smallholders of the three biomes. Public policies intended to support adaptive measures and the increase of food security must take subjective risk perception into account within the cultural and environmental contexts of the actors involved.

Smallholder farming is among the most vulnerable sectors due to its great social and economic sensitivity. Despite future climate change, current climate variability is already an issue of concern that justifies adaptation efforts. In Brazil, the Semi-Arid Region is a climate hotspot, well known for both historic socioeconomic setbacks, and agriculture failures caused by dry spells and severe droughts. In 2010, the Brazilian government enacted the National Policy on Climate Change, which states as one of its key goals the identification of vulnerabilities and the adoption of adequate measures of adaptation to climate change. The improvement of vulnerability assessment tools is a response to the growing demand of decision makers for regular information and indicators with high spatial and temporal resolution. This article aims at undertaking a comparative assessment of smallholder farming’s vulnerability to droughts. An integrated assessment system has been developed and applied to seven municipalities located in the Brazilian Semi-Arid Region (within the State of Ceará). Results show regional vulnerability contrasts driven by institutional and socioeconomic factors, beyond climatic stressors.

Resumo: Este artigo tem por objetivos testar a aplicabilidade da teoria da sociedade de risco de
Ulrich Beck para a sociedade brasileira contemporânea e analisar a distribuição social da percepção
de risco associada às mudanças climáticas e ao aquecimento global. Para tanto, é feita
uma revisão de teorias de risco, além de uma discussão crítica de sua aplicação ao caso das mudanças
climáticas. Em seguida são apresentados resultados de pesquisa, verificando o efeito de
diferentes variáveis sociodemográficas na percepção de risco. Os dados advêm de pesquisa de
opinião pública em território nacional, com amostra estratificada por conglomerados. O principal
resultado alcançado diz respeito à homogeneidade da percepção de risco, por meio de diferentes
categorias sociais ou contextos geográficos. As únicas categorias que apresentaram influências
significativas na avaliação da percepção de risco foram renda familiar e escolaridade, ambas com
relação positiva.