Global Migration Patterns

Before generating worlds, we adopt a discipline from Dator: "Any useful idea about the future should appear ridiculous." (4) If all four of our 2050s sound reasonable and familiar, we've failed — we've just written four versions of now. We hold ourselves to producing at least one world that makes a policy professional wince.

We also name what we're not doing: predicting migration flows, ranking the worlds by likelihood, or treating displaced people as a abstract mass. Each world will be tested against a single question — what does belonging feel like for a specific person in it?

Try it yourself

Before generating future worlds, write your focal question so it isn't
trapped in today's institutions. Then adopt Dator's Second Law: commit
to producing at least one world that sounds ridiculous to an expert.
If none of your worlds make a professional wince, you've described
the present four times.

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Environmental / Displacement

• 83.4M people living in internal displacement at end of 2024; 45.8M new disaster displacements in 2024 (storms 25.2M, floods 19.1M) — nearly double the decade average. (1)
• World Bank Groundswell: 44–113M internal climate migrants by 2050 (lower-impact), up to 125–216M (higher-impact); early action could cut this by up to 80%. (2)
• IPCC: 1B+ people exposed to coastal climate hazards by 2050. (2)

Economic / Labour

• 66+ countries offer digital nomad visas (Portugal, Spain, Croatia, Mexico, UAE leading); income thresholds €2,000–3,700/month. (3)
• Several offer residency/citizenship paths (Romania: PR after 5 yrs, citizenship after 8). (3)
• Remote work has unbundled "where you earn" from "where you live" for a privileged slice of the global workforce.

Political / Legal

• "Climate refugee" has no standing in the 1951 Refugee Convention — a definitional gap with enormous consequences.
• Citizenship-by-investment ("golden visas") expanding and contracting (EU pressure to close some).
• Bilateral labour-mobility agreements (e.g., Pacific seasonal-worker schemes) growing.

Social / Cultural

• Diaspora identity increasingly digital-first — belonging maintained through networks, remittances, and media rather than physical return.
• Second/third-generation diaspora renegotiating relationship to "homeland."

Technological

• Digital identity systems (India's Aadhaar, EU's eIDAS wallet) make portable, verifiable identity technically feasible — a precondition for several futures.
• Remittance rails (mobile money, stablecoins) reshaping how diaspora support flows.

+++ (Values)

• A deep tension between the right to move (mobility justice) and the right to stay (the right not to be displaced) — both are claimed, and they're not the same demand.

Gap check. Heavy on the privileged-mobility and large-number-displacement poles; thinner on the vast middle — ordinary labour migration, family reunification, the lived texture of being undocumented.

Try it yourself

Scan migration futures across STEEP+++. Hold two poles in view: the
involuntary/displacement pole and the voluntary/privileged-mobility
pole. Note which signals serve "the right to move" and which serve
"the right to stay" — they're different demands.

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We generate one 2050 world per archetype. Each gets a name, a one-paragraph sketch, and a test: what does belonging feel like for one person in it?

Archetype 1 — CONTINUED GROWTH · "The Mobility Market"

The official future, extended. Migration is increasingly managed as a market. Wealthy and skilled people move freely (nomad visas mature into seamless global residency); displaced people are managed through expanded-but-conditional labour-mobility schemes and climate-adaptation financing that mostly keeps people in place. Borders persist but are permeable by price and skill. Diaspora identity is normal, digital, unremarkable. Belonging for: Priya, a Bangalore-based engineer with a portfolio of three residencies, feels post-national and free — until her mother in a flood-prone delta can't get the same papers.

Archetype 2 — COLLAPSE · "Fortress Fragments"

Climate shocks outpace governance. Displacement overwhelms the managed schemes; the 1951 Convention's silence on climate becomes a chasm. Wealthy regions harden into fortresses; movement becomes dangerous and informal; smuggling economies scale. Belonging contracts to the defensible local. The nomad-visa class becomes a resented, guarded enclave. Belonging for: Yusuf, displaced twice by 2050, belongs to a moving community of the displaced — papers are worthless; trust networks are everything.

Archetype 3 — DISCIPLINE · "The Allocation"

Society reorganises around an accepted planetary constraint: managed, equitable relocation as a shared survival project. A binding international framework allocates both receiving obligations and the right to relocate — a quota-and-entitlement regime. Movement is neither free nor blocked; it's administered against a carrying-capacity logic. Disciplined, fair-ish, and deeply bureaucratic. (This is the world we'll design into — it's the one that makes professionals wince and contains real hope.) Belonging for: Ana, relocated from a sinking Pacific community under a Managed Relocation Entitlement, belongs by right and roster — her belonging is administered, dignified, and strange.

Archetype 4 — TRANSFORMATION · "Post-Territorial Belonging"

A fundamental shift: territorial citizenship is no longer the primary container of belonging. Verifiable digital identity, portable rights, and network-based community make people members of polities they don't physically inhabit. You might hold rights in a "cloud commonwealth" while living anywhere. Climate displacement is absorbed because belonging was never tied to a place to begin with. Sounds ridiculous — per Dator, that's the point. Belonging for: Kemal belongs to three non-territorial polities and lives in a leased coastal apartment; "where are you from" has become an unanswerable question, and that's fine.

Try it yourself

Generate one 2050 world per Dator archetype for your topic:
- Continued Growth — the official future, extended
- Collapse — the system breaks down
- Discipline — society reorganises around an accepted constraint
- Transformation — a fundamental shift; the container itself changes
Name each, sketch in 80 words, and test each with: "what does
<the core thing> feel like for one specific person here?"
Check: does at least one world make an expert wince?

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We enter Hexagon 2 and design into Archetype 3. The discipline of Speculative Policy: draft the text. We produce an excerpt from the instrument that would govern "The Allocation."

The artifact is constructed — not a real treaty, not a forecast.

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UNITED NATIONS

FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE MOBILITY AND PLANETARY RELOCATION

"The Suva Framework" · Adopted at the Conference of the Parties, Suva, Fiji · 2038 — Consolidated text with Annex II (Entitlements) —

PREAMBLE (extract)

The Parties,

Recognising that climate-driven loss of habitability is a collective consequence requiring a collective response, and that no person should be rendered stateless or rightless by the loss of their territory;

Affirming both the right to remain — to adaptation support enabling people to stay in place where viable — and the right to relocate with dignity where it is not;

Noting the inadequacy of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees to address climate-driven mobility;

Have agreed as follows:

PART II — THE MOBILITY ENTITLEMENT

Article 7 — Establishment of the Mobility Entitlement

1. Each person whose habitual residence is certified under Article 9 as facing imminent or actual loss of habitability shall hold a Mobility Entitlement — a transferable, heritable right to lawful relocation and reception.
2. The Entitlement is held by the person, not granted by a receiving state. Receiving obligations are allocated among Parties under Annex I.

Article 8 — Allocation of Receiving Obligations

1. Receiving obligations shall be allocated among Parties according to a formula reflecting historical emissions, economic capacity, population density, and existing diaspora ties.
2. A Party may discharge part of its receiving obligation through adaptation financing that demonstrably enables the right to remain, up to a ceiling of 40 per cent.

Article 11 — Dignity of relocation Relocation under this Convention shall preserve, to the greatest extent feasible: (a) community cohesion — the right of a relocating community to be received together, not dispersed; (b) cultural continuity — recognition of language, governance, and customary institutions in the receiving jurisdiction; (c) political voice — relocated communities shall retain a recognised representative body with standing under Article 19.

PART III — STANDING OF SUBMERGED AND UNINHABITABLE STATES

Article 14 — Continuity of statehood A State whose territory becomes wholly or partially uninhabitable shall not thereby cease to be a State. It retains legal personality, maritime entitlements as of the 2030 baseline, and a seat in the Assembly.

ANNEX II — SCHEDULE OF ENTITLEMENTS (extract)

Entitlement	Description	Held by
E-1 Reception	Right to lawful entry and residence in allocated receiving jurisdiction	Individual / community
E-2 Cohesion	Right to be received as a community unit where ≥ 60% elect to relocate together	Certified community body
E-3 Continuity	Recognition of customary governance & language rights for 3 generations	Community body
E-4 Return	Right to return should habitability be restored	Individual, heritable

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Ratified by 109 States as of 2040. The principal historical-emitter States have ratified with reservations to Article 8(1). Several major receiving-capacity States have not ratified.

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Why this artifact pulls weight. The arguments it forces:

• Article 7(2) — the Entitlement is held by the person, not granted by the state. This inverts the entire logic of asylum. The most radical, most contested clause.
• Article 8(2) — discharging obligation through adaptation financing. The "right to remain" escape hatch — is it dignity-preserving or a way for rich states to pay to keep people out?
• Article 11(a) — community cohesion. The right to be relocated together is something the current refugee system systematically fails to provide.
• Article 14 — continuity of statehood for submerged states. Sounds absurd; is being seriously discussed by Pacific states right now.
• The ratification footnote. The reservations to Article 8(1) tell you exactly where the political fault line runs.

Try it yourself

Draft a Speculative Policy artifact from your Discipline world. Use a
real institutional form (UN Framework Convention, etc).
- 6–10 articles + an annex/schedule that makes an abstract right concrete
- Include the single most logic-inverting clause
- Include an "escape hatch" clause that could be read as dignity OR
  evasion
- End with a ratification note whose *reservations* reveal the fault line

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Speculative Policy gives us the system. Now we generate a touchable object from inside it. The Thing from the Future fixes parameters and forces out an artifact:

• Arc: Discipline (a society managing a constraint)
• Terrain: Migration / belonging
• Object: A personal document
• Mood: Dignified, bureaucratic, a little melancholy

Forced output: Ana's Mobility Entitlement card and relocation roster letter — the personal-scale object that the Suva Framework produces in someone's hands. This is now an Object from the World: we describe it as a physical thing.

The object. A card the size of a passport, in Pacific-blue, embossed with the Suva Framework seal. On the front: Ana's photo, her name, her community's name (Nukulaelae Relocation Community), an Entitlement code (E-1/E-2/E-3), and the receiving jurisdiction (Aotearoa New Zealand — Waikato Reception Zone 4). On the back, a QR-equivalent and the line: "This Entitlement is held by the bearer and her descendants. It is not a visa. It cannot be revoked by the receiving State." Tucked inside: a paper roster letter listing the 340 community members assigned to the same reception zone, and the date of the first community assembly in the new location.

The object makes the policy intimate. The line "it is not a visa" does more emotional work than any preamble.

Try it yourself

From your policy world, generate one touchable personal object using
The Thing from the Future (Arc / Terrain / Object / Mood). Then
describe it as an Object from the World — material, size, colour, the
one line of text on it that carries the emotional weight. The object
should make the system personal.

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Bodystorming = acting out a scene to feel the design from the body, not the page. We script a 10-minute scene to be physically enacted by a small group.

Scene: "First Assembly." Waikato Reception Zone 4, 2050. The 340 members of the Nukulaelae Relocation Community gather for their first assembly in the new place. Roles to embody:

• Ana, holding her Entitlement card, looking for her cousin's name on the roster.
• A reception-zone officer, well-meaning, with a clipboard, who keeps using the word "settlement" — which the community finds wrong (they didn't settle; they relocated together).
• An elder who is trying to decide where, physically, the community's governance circle should meet — there is no marae here yet.
• A local Waikato resident, curious and wary, watching from the edge.

Prompts to enact, not discuss:

• Where does Ana stand when she can't find the name?
• What does the officer's body do when corrected on "settlement"?
• Where does the elder choose to stand to convene the circle — and who moves toward them?

Bodystorming surfaces what text can't: that cohesion (Article 11a) is not a clause, it's a question of where bodies stand and who calls a circle.

Try it yourself

Script a 10-minute scene from your world to be physically acted, not
discussed. Assign 3–4 roles, including one "well-meaning but slightly
wrong" institutional role. Write 3 prompts that are about *bodies and
movement* ("where does X stand when…"), not dialogue. Debrief on what
the body knew that the page didn't.

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We turn the bodystormed scene into a contained encounter to test on others.

• Participants: 8 — including, if possible and with care, people with lived migration/displacement experience (briefed, consented, with an out).
• Setup: Each receives a replica Entitlement card with their own (fictional) details and a roster letter. The room is set as a reception-zone hall.
• Run (50 min):
  1. 10 min — silent: read your card and letter. Find whether "your" name is on the roster (some aren't — deliberately).
  2. 15 min — the "officer" (facilitator) processes arrivals, using "settlement" language. Watch reactions.
  3. 15 min — open: what does this card give you that a visa doesn't? What does it take?
  4. 10 min — reveal & debrief: this is the Suva Framework, 2050, Discipline archetype.
• Looking for: Does "held by the bearer, cannot be revoked" land as dignity or as control? Do people whose names aren't on the roster experience the cohesion clause's shadow (the families split at the 60% threshold)? The discomfort is the finding.
• Harm note: This touches real trauma for many. Brief properly; make participation genuinely optional; have someone available to step out with.

Try it yourself

Turn your bodystormed scene into a 50-minute experience prototype.
- What replica artifact does each participant hold?
- What's the deliberately uncomfortable design choice (e.g. some names
  missing from the roster)?
- What two questions turn the encounter into data?
- What's the harm-aware brief for participants with lived experience?

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1. What did the cascade surface that the archetypes alone didn't? — That "cohesion" is the emotional core, and that the 60% community-relocation threshold (Annex E-2) silently splits families. The artifact found a cruelty the scenario hid.
2. Which archetype did you avoid designing into, and why? — Most people avoid Collapse. Designing an artifact from Fortress Fragments (a smuggler's price list, a fortress-enclave residency permit) would be illuminating and uncomfortable.
3. Where did the Discipline world flatter itself? — "Dignified and fair-ish" assumes the allocation formula (Article 8) is honoured. Power asymmetries would bend it.
4. What 2026 action does this surface? — For an advocate: the "continuity of statehood for submerged states" argument is live now (Pacific Islands Forum). For a designer: prototype belonging-artifacts with affected communities, not about them.
5. What does this refuse? — To predict migration numbers. To treat displaced people as a designable mass rather than as people who should be in the room.

Try it yourself

Reflect in <60 words each: what did the cascade surface that
archetypes alone didn't; which archetype did I avoid; where did my
chosen world flatter itself; what 2026 action follows; what does this
refuse to do?

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