Entangled mobilities and rural transformations in climate-vulnerable Chile

This paper explores how climate mobilities intersect with different mobility dynamics and broader socioeconomic transformations in rural Chile. Drawing on a multi-method study in central-southern Chile, an area marked by intensifying droughts and forest fires, we analyze the entangled effects of two seemingly opposing mobility dynamics: outward climate mobilities driven by environmental stress and livelihood disruptions, and inward amenity and return migrations motivated by rural lifestyle aspirations, health concerns, and rural tranquility. Through a place-based approach, we show how the convergence of these flows reshapes local demographics, economies and land use, intensifies pressures on scarce resources, and alters community cohesion and vulnerability to climate hazards. We argue that these ‘entangled mobilities’ illuminate how climate change interacts with broader socioeconomic and territorial transformations. Rather than separate and oppositional, climate and amenity mobilities emerge as mutually constitutive forces that both reflect and reproduce wider processes of rural de-agrarianization, land commodification, and the redefinition of what it means to inhabit rural Chile under climate change. The study highlights the value of place-based, historically informed approaches to understanding human mobilities in the context of climate change.