Adeem Suhail

ADEEM SUHAIL, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was approved funding in October 2024 to aid research on “Oceanic Nomadism: Autonomous, Indigenous Responses to Climate Disaster from the Makrani People of the Western Indian Ocean.” This project investigated Oceanic Nomadism among Baloch and Afro-Baloch (Makrani) communities in the Western Indian Ocean as a response to climate collapse. Through multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork across Pakistan and the Arab Gulf States, the research documented how Makrani migrants are reviving seafaring and kinship networks to sustain circular migration. These autonomous practices operate outside the framework of international aid or humanitarianism and rely on informal infrastructures, oral knowledge, and strategic engagement with militarized labor markets. Key findings include: 1) a redefinition of climate crisis as a present, not future, condition; 2) the centrality of militarized labor migration in the Gulf, complicating narratives of passive victimhood; 3) the continuity of historical forms of mobility in the face of ecological and geopolitical pressures; and 4) the ethical complexity of adaptation strategies that involve alignment with violent or repressive institutions. The project challenges liberal paradigms of climate displacement and foregrounds the Afro-Baloch as political agents within Indian Ocean worlds. It contributes to debates on sovereignty, bordering, racial capitalism, and climate politics.