Environmental Sociology

Climate Futures Across the Life Course: Gender, Generations, and Social Reproduction

Climate Futures Across the Life Course: Gender, Generations, and Social Reproduction

Guest editors: Ivett Szalma (ELTE Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest, Hungary) and Marieke Heers (Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS), c/o University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland)

Climate change is increasingly understood not only as an environmental crisis but also as a profound social transformation that affects individuals and communities differently across the life course (Beck, 2015). Environmental risks, adaptive capacities, future expectations, and opportunities for participation are shaped by social positions and inequalities, including those related to age, gender, and access to knowledge and education. At the same time, climate change is transforming intergenerational relations, challenging established social norms (Dobson, 2007), and reshaping visions of sustainable futures.

Beyond material impacts, climate change is also increasingly reshaping emotional, moral, and political relationships to the future. Emerging research highlights the growing importance of climate emotions, including climate anxiety, eco-anxiety, eco-anger, and anticipatory concerns about environmental degradation, particularly among younger generations and women (Whitmarsh et al., 2022). At the same time, climate change raises questions of environmental citizenship, intergenerational justice, and collective responsibility, as individuals and communities negotiate who should bear the costs of mitigation and adaptation (Falck, 2023). These processes are deeply embedded in eco-social inequalities that influence exposure to environmental risks, access to resources, opportunities for climate adaptation, and participation in environmental decision-making. Understanding how climate futures are imagined, contested, and enacted therefore requires attention not only to institutions and policies but also to everyday practices of care, sustainability, and social reproduction across generations.

Climate change not only transforms ecosystems and economies but also challenges the social processes through which societies reproduce themselves across generations. Decisions about whether to have children (Szalma & Szczuka, 2025), how to care for older adults, how environmental knowledge is transmitted, who migrates and who remains (Beck, 2015), and how future livelihoods are imagined are increasingly shaped by the pervasive environmental uncertainty created by a changing climate. Climate change therefore raises fundamental questions about social reproduction, intergenerational relations, care, environmental citizenship (Dobson, 2007), and social futures. Environmental citizenship increasingly extends beyond public forms of environmental engagement to encompass private life-course decisions, including family formation, care, and reproductive choices, thereby highlighting the intimate links between climate change, social reproduction, and intergenerational relations. Bringing these concerns into dialogue allows environmental sociology to better understand how climate change is experienced, negotiated, and reproduced through everyday social practices and institutions that shape and perpetuate dynamics associated with gender, social reproduction through education, and the life-course.

This special issue aims to advance environmental sociological understandings of how climate change impacts intersect with life-course, gender, and social reproduction through education. While these themes have often been examined separately, their intersections remain underexplored. From a life-course perspective, environmental challenges and opportunities emerge differently during childhood, youth, adulthood, and later life, while also drawing attention to the cumulative effects of environmental inequalities over time. Simultaneously, gender remains a crucial dimension through which climate-related vulnerabilities, responsibilities, resources, and forms of agency are structured (Poortinga et al., 2019). Education and knowledge production, in turn, play a central role not only in shaping environmental awareness (Dobson, 2007), climate engagement, and capacities for social and ecological transformation, but also in transmitting and contesting gendered norms, understandings of environmental citizenship, and ideas of care and responsibility that shape life-course trajectories and processes of social reproduction.

This special issue seeks to explore how climate change intersects with social inequalities and gendered life trajectories across diverse social, cultural, and geographical contexts. It invites contributions examining intergenerational relations, environmental socialization, climate-related identities, educational processes, climate migration, mobility and immobility, care practices, environmental citizenship, climate emotions, adaptation, environmental justice, reproductive decision-making, sustainability transitions, and the social construction of climate futures. Particular attention is given to the ways in which age, gender, and educational opportunities interact in shaping experiences of environmental change and responses to climate uncertainty.

By foregrounding the intersections of gender, life-course stage, education, and social reproduction, this special issue contributes to ongoing debates on environmental justice, sustainability, and social transformation. It aims to demonstrate that understanding climate change requires greater attention to the social processes through which environmental challenges are experienced, interpreted, and negotiated throughout the life course. In doing so, it offers new perspectives on how societies imagine, reproduce, and build more equitable and sustainable futures.

Potential themes include, but are not limited to:

• Climate emotions, eco-anxiety, and future imaginaries

• Environmental citizenship and collective responsibility

• Intergenerational justice and climate futures

• Social reproduction, care, and sustainability

• Climate adaptation and environmental inequalities

• Climate migration, mobility, and immobility

• Gendered experiences of climate change and adaptation

• Education, environmental knowledge, and socialization

• Youth climate activism and environmental engagement

• Aging, later life, and environmental change

• Reproductive decision-making and climate concerns

• Eco-social inequalities and environmental justice

• Climate governance, participation, and social transformation

Proposed Schedule: 

Before December: 2026 - call for abstracts opens on Environmental Sociology website

Before end of February 2027: abstracts are submitted via email to special issue editors

March 2027: decisions made on abstracts, authors contacted

End of June 2027: deadline for submission of full papers

References

Beck, U. (2015). Emancipatory catastrophism: What does it mean to climate change and risk society?. Current sociology, 63(1), 75–88. https://doi.org/10.1177/001139211455995

Dobson, A. (2007), Environmental citizenship: towards sustainable development. Sust. Dev., 15: 276-285. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.344

Falck, R. (2023). How politicians and the population attribute responsibility for climate change mitigation: no indication of a ‘governance trap’ in Norway. Environmental Politics, 33, 699 - 726. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2023.2274721

Poortinga, W., Whitmarsh, L., Steg, L., Böhm, G., & Fisher, S. (2019). Climate change perceptions and their individual-level determinants: A cross-European analysis. Global Environmental Change, 55, 25–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.01.007

Szalma I, Júlia Szczuka B: Reproductive Choices and Climate Change in a Pronatalist Context. East European Politics and Societies 2025, 39(2):332-352. https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254241229728

Whitmarsh, L., Player, L., Jiongco, A., James, M., Williams, M., Marks, E., & Kennedy-Williams, P. (2022). Climate anxiety: What predicts it and how is it related to climate action?. Journal of Environmental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2022.101866