Climate Protection for Migration Prevention: Comparison of Policy Discourses on Climate Change and Migration in Austria, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden

Abstract

Climate is no longer a niche policy issue, and research increasingly focusses on how integrative policies are adopted, including on nexus topics such as climate change and migration. Comparing Austria, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, this article analyses to what extent these countries’ approaches to climate change and migration constitute normative climate policy integration, whereby climate concerns serve as a normative ordering principle. It concludes that rather than integrating these policy areas, migration prevention underlies and motivates climate and migration policy discourse, impacting how entire policy communities understand and make policy on the links between climate change and migration.

Keywords:

• climate change
• migration
• comparative policy analysis
• climate policy integration
• Austria
• Germany
• Denmark
• Sweden

1. Introduction

As climate change becomes a more central policy area for policy actors the world over, the number of nexus topics, or “climate change and” issues gaining attention is multiplying: climate change and security, climate change and health, climate change and development, to name just a few. One of the most prominent climate change nexus topics is climate change and migration, which has been rising up international policy agendas since the mid-2000s and has now become a stable feature of climate policy internationally (Warner 2018; Nash 2019).

The most important policy forum at the international level has been the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which recognised the links in an agreed-upon text for the first time in 2010 (UNFCCC 2010, p. 14(f)) and has continued to be a forum for policy discussions since then (Nash 2018). Following the decision accompanying the Paris Agreement, which established a Task Force on Displacement under the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage (WIM) (UNFCCC 2016), the topic also has an institutional home within the UNFCCC. Since the adoption of the 2018 Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which includes substantial content on climate change as a potential driver of migration (Global Compact for Migration 2018; see also Warner 2018; Nash 2019), international migration policy has also become a more central focus for advocacy, although without the same level of institutionalisation.

This policy activity at the international level has not carried over into the European Union (EU), which has seen relatively little policy development. Despite analyses from around the time of the Paris Agreement identifying “increased attention given to this topic in European policy discourses, as well as allocation of resources by the European Union” (Blocher 2016, p. 38), policy developments at the EU level have remained restricted to “references scattered across a number of policy fields” (Legut 2022, p. 25). Indeed, EU policy on climate change and human mobilities has been described as characterised by “a lack of structured exchange and coordination among the EU institutions” (Hahn and Fessler 2023, p. 17). Nevertheless, the EU’s perspective on climate change and migration has been identified as markedly focussed on state security, especially compared to the human security perspective prevalent across the United Nations (UN) institutions (Butros et al. 2021). The central policy field via which the EU level has addressed climate change and human migration is international development cooperation (Blocher 2016), with humanitarian policy also playing a role (Hahn and Fessler 2023).

This incoherence among EU institutions is also present among Member States, which have no harmonised approach (Ammer et al. 2022). Initial policy analyses of the politics of individual European countries on climate change and migration hint at an interesting and diverse picture. Both Sweden and Finland have had on their law books legal provisions providing protection to people unable to return to their countries of origin due to environmental disasters; these were repealed in 2021 and 2016 respectively (Scott and Garner 2022). In Austria, despite no explicit provisions being in place, disasters are being taken into consideration in asylum cases (Mayrhofer and Ammer 2022). In contrast, over this same period of time, legislation in Italy has been amended to explicitly include environmental factors, making Italy “currently the only” EU Member State “to offer explicit and multiple protection statuses to people displaced because of environmental factors” (Scissa 2022, p. 16). However, with policymakers grappling with both issues at the local level, fear surrounding migration is a stronger mobilising force than climate change, which is often side-lined (Bettini et al. 2021). In Germany, although parliamentary debates were held on the introduction of a climate passport, the policy measure was not introduced (Nash 2023a).

This complex landscape highlights that policy analyses of climate change and migration in European countries need to go beyond analyses of laws, regulations, and policy frameworks. These analyses would simply fail to capture the contours of policy expansion, failed policy initiatives, and policy dismantling that are all occurring concurrently. This is a space where an analysis of policy discourses can contribute: how are the links between climate change and migration being understood? How are European countries positioned in relation to this linkage? What impact is this having on the policy proposals that can be made? In what ways can policy develop in the future and what does this mean for the EU level? Interrogating how policy discourses are organised and the concepts that are at their centre is therefore not only an important undertaking for understanding the adoption of policies but can also contribute to a deeper understanding in cases of non-adoption.

Existing studies that analyse policy discourses and framing of climate change and migration have identified various underlying discourses and logics that structure policy discussions. Most prominent is a focus on people forced to move under the framing of “climate refugees”, who are constructed either as victims of climate change requiring humanitarian assistance or as a threat to international security (Bettini 2013; Bettini et al. 2017). Another more optimistic discourse identifies migration as a climate adaptation strategy (Black et al. 2011), although it has been critiqued for its neoliberal roots (Felli 2013), which leads it to place responsibility for coping with climate impacts on the shoulders of affected individuals rather than polluters (Bettini et al. 2017). Overly optimistic claims of this discourse are increasingly being questioned, with a focus emerging on the maladaptive potential of migration (Vinke et al. 2020). Overall, debates surrounding climate change and migration have been identified as racialised (Baldwin 2022) and Eurocentric (Nash 2023a).

At the EU level, Hahn and Fessler (2023) highlight four framings that dominate: (1) “a ‘root causes’ narrative” that problematises all migration and seeks to address its causes (Hahn and Fessler 2023, p. 14); (2) a securitised narrative whereby migration presents a threat to international security; (3) humanitarianism in the short term, combined with development assistance to prevent long-term displacement; and (4) a sedentary bias. These narratives are tied in with an overwhelming conceptualisation of migration in the context of climate change as occurring in, or originating from, the Global South, with countries in the EU positioned as destinations for migrants (Nash 2023b). This persistence of the conceptualisation of EU Member States as destinations for migrants remains a key element in the policy discourse despite research frequently highlighting the greater impacts of climate change on internal rather than international migration (Hoffmann et al. 2020).

This article complements and builds on existing analyses by interrogating the policy discourses of individual EU Member States and, although not providing an exhaustive or generalisable analysis of their politics on climate change and migration, it provides important insights into the understandings of climate change and migration driving policy discussion. It concludes that in three of the four countries analysed, migration prevention is the key normative ordering concept that structures how climate change and migration are being understood by policy communities. In the outlier case of Sweden, where humanitarian narratives have dominated the discourse, there are open questions surrounding whether the discourse will change following a political shift towards a more migration-critical government. The article therefore warns that, far from driving integrative policies on a key nexus issue in climate policy, the policy discourses of the countries examined are entrenching an approach firmly located in migration prevention, thus restricting the policy avenues and options that are open to policymakers.

The following section briefly sketches the concepts of CPI and normative ordering concepts on which the analysis is grounded, before the third section outlines the methods and case study selection. Four sections follow that consider the cases of Austria, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden respectively, before moving to a discussion and conclusion.

2. Normative Ordering Concepts and the (Non-)Adoption of Integrated Policies

The dearth of studies on the nexus issue of climate change and migration in EU countries stands out given the dominance of European analyses in the climate policy literature (Nash et al. 2021). With many EU Member States designated as “early movers” in climate policy, or as climate leaders (Torney 2019; Wurzel et al. 2019), this literature has been able to provide analysis of potentially replicable success stories and longitudinal analyses (Schoenefeld et al. 2018). Therefore, for this analysis I draw on the core climate policy literature that has routinely engaged with policy landscapes in European countries to examine policymaking on the under-represented nexus issue of climate change and migration specifically. By drawing on concepts from this core analytical toolbox, I can view this, for Europe, relatively new climate change nexus issue through an established analytical lens and examine whether the nexus issue is being drawn into the core of, or set apart from, climate policymaking.

In the absence of concrete policy frameworks, the normative structuring of policy discourses can give key insights into what direction policy discussions are taking, what is driving these discussions and resulting policy decisions, whether they are compatible across policy domains, and whether nexus issues are being genuinely considered together and developed holistically. A useful concept for understanding these structures is that of normative ordering principles, which I take to refer to an idea around which much of the policy discourse and, when policies are adopted, policies themselves are organised. This understanding draws on similar concepts from theories of discourse analysis, in particular Laclau and Mouffe’s concept of a nodal point, which delineates “privileged signifiers that fix the meaning of a signifying chain” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, p. 99). A normative ordering principle therefore constitutes a concept around which other elements of a discourse are structured and articulated, building a value-oriented central node within a particular policy discourse.

Normative ordering principles find their place in the core climate policy literature as an integral part of the literature on policy integration, which follows the basic tenet that in many cases the success of policies will depend on how well they are integrated with those of other sectors (Tosun and Lang 2017). This goes beyond checks for policy coherence, which, in the lowest-threshold iteration is concerned with the absence of contradictions either within a policy itself (internal coherence) or between policies (external coherence) (Deters 2018). Given the structural fragmentation of the climate policy apparatus, both vertically and horizontally, policy integration is a central concern for the climate policy literature, within which the climate policy-specific concept of climate policy integration (CPI) has emerged. It is closely related to environmental policy integration (EPI) (Nilsson and Nilsson 2005), which emerged in discussions around sustainable development and recognised that the environment is an integral component of development agendas (Lafferty and Hovden 2003).

The EPI, and subsequently CPI, literature is broad. The analysis of EPI as a “normative prerequisite” (Nilsson and Nilsson 2005, p. 364) or ordering principle falls under a first category of analysis of how policy integration can be interpreted. Two other analytical categories analyse EPI or CPI as a process of governing or as a policy outcome, which can be understood as “the influence of any EPI related activity on the state of the environment” (Jordan and Lenschow 2010, p. 154). To work with these two analytical categories, concrete policymaking activity is a prerequisite, while normative ordering principles can already be identified ex ante in the policy discourse.

3. Methods and Case Selection

I conducted the study between March 2020 and August 2022. The analysis is based on empirical data gathered from documentary analysis and interviews. Documents encompassed parliamentary speeches, government strategies, policy proposals, evidence, and transcripts of parliamentary debates, political party manifestos, and reports and press releases produced by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that were published no earlier than 2016 (post-Paris Agreement), with a cutoff for new documents in April 2022 (see Appendix for bibliographic information on the documents). Most documents are published in German, Danish, and Swedish and were analysed in the original languages. Quotes in this article are my own translations. The documents selected for analysis focussed on climate change and migration to various degrees. For example, while NGO reports often focussed solely on the topic, governmental strategies frequently only included several relevant sentences or paragraphs. However, all documents selected for analysis had a substantive input on climate change and migration and either existed within or engaged with policy communities and debates. As such, while many documents were found via online search engines, others were provided by interview partners, or by systematic searches.

I also conducted 34 semi-structured online or telephone interviews with civil society representatives, civil servants and parliamentarians between September 2020 and April 2022. The interviews conducted in Austria and Germany were in German. Interviews conducted in Denmark and Sweden were in English. The interviews allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the work that individual actors are conducting on climate change and migration, as well as what prompted that work, information regarding collaborations with other actors, and the conceptual and strategic discussions that have taken place in the background. Furthermore, I asked questions on how actors view the broader discourse in their respective countries, as well as how they see it developing in the future. These insights were important on two levels: firstly, the interviews provided practical information about relevant documents, other important actors in the respective national contexts, and contacts for further interviews; secondly, the interviews were themselves important for the discourse analysis, providing sources on aspects of the topic not necessarily covered in published documents and also serving as an important check on my analysis.

The interviews were transcribed and, together with the document corpus, were coded using ATLAS.ti following Prainsack and Pot’s three-step coding protocol (2021: 144–155, see Appendix for more information on codes and themes). First, broad codes were noted summarising key text passages or themes. Second, these codes were analytically concentrated. I also wrote memos for central codes that recorded what characterises different codes, what links codes with each other, which codes are particularly analytically interesting, and what gaps emerged during the coding process. Third, the codes were grouped into themes. It was in the code memos in particular that the normative ordering principles identified in this study came to the fore, whereby normative ordering principles were important for the characteristics of a number of different codes, as well as building links between different codes. This was an important step, as normative ordering principles are not always explicitly articulated and therefore only become visible through close qualitative analysis.

The analysis was grounded in an interpretivist approach to comparative politics (Boswell et al. 2019), concerned with decentring explanations of the social world. This approach has implications for data analysis, which followed abductive reasoning. This is a puzzling-out process in which “the researcher tacks continually, constantly, back and forth in an iterative-recursive fashion between what is puzzling and possible explanations for it” (Schwartz-Shea and Yanow 2012, p. 27).

The interpretivist approach also influenced case selection. Cases were chosen due to intrinsic interest rather than utilising traditional comparative labels such as “most similar”, “least similar”, “typical”, or “deviant”. Furthermore, the interpretive perspective assumes that cases will have “weaker or stronger affinities along multiple dimensions” and therefore the task is to “explore, compare and contrast the overlapping pictures as we change the standpoint from which we inspect the narratives” (Boswell et al. 2019, p. 60). Therefore, both climate and migration dimensions were considered when selecting interesting case studies.

First, borrowing the “follow the people” method from migration studies, nation states that share borders, and at times constitute a migration route for people moving northwards through Europe, were selected. Second, in Germany and Sweden this selection includes the two European nation states that welcomed the highest number of people arriving during the so-called “refugee crisis” or “migration crisis” in 2015/16 both in absolute terms and proportionate to the population. At the same time, Austria and Denmark provide examples of nation states with more restrictive migration policy. Thirdly, all four nation states are relatively high climate performers,¹ suggesting that policymaking on climate change nexus topics may be relatively advanced.

4. Four Comparative Case Studies

4.1 Austria

In Austria, attention to climate change and migration by formal political institutions has been scant. The only entry of terms such as “climate migration” or “climate refugees” in the parliament’s verbatim record of parliamentary debates is from one parliamentarian warning in a speech that by 2070 “we will be confronted with hundreds of millions of climate refugees in Europe” (Österreichisches Parlament 2020, p. 70, Shetty). Other than this brief aside from an opposition politician, the Federal Government has presented its position on climate change and displacement via the Foreign Minister, who responded to a provocative parliamentary question from a right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) parliamentarian on whether he will work to ensure that “the settlement option for climate refugees will not be an option for Austria” (Bundesministerium europäische und internationale Angelegenheiten 2020, p. 2). The Minister’s response illustrates not only opposition to considering options for people displaced by climate change to settle in Austria, but even more fundamentally a clear split between displacement and migration policy, and an overall restrictive approach to migration.

In the programme for government a clear division between immigration and asylum is envisioned. Austria will continue to have a clean separation of the questions of displacement and migration in the future. Austria has not joined the UN Migration Pact and will hold this line. In asylum policy, Austria recognises the legally anchored right to international protection, the Geneva Refugee Convention, as well as the European Convention on Human Rights.

At the same time, the Federal Government believes sustainable contributions to the reduction of displacement and migration drivers are necessary, such as for example support in countries of origin in order to create perspectives in place. This should take place, for example, through the consideration of migration-relevant goals in international development work, in order to strengthen help in place, create perspectives and reduce the causes of migration. (Bundesministerium europäische und internationale Angelegenheiten 2020, p. 2)

The Austrian government therefore clearly conceptualises migration in the context of climate change as originating outside Austria, further exemplified by a document produced by the Ministry for Sustainability and Tourism (at the time responsible for the climate policy portfolio), which considered forced migration due to climate change under the heading “Climate change far away from Austria also affects us!” (Bundesministerium Nachhaltigkeit und Tourismus 2018, p. 15).

The key relevant governmental priority, as set out by the Foreign Minister and included in the principles Austria follows in international development cooperation, is therefore working to address the root causes of irregular migration and displacement (Bundesministerium europäische und internationale Angelegenheiten 2022, p. 7). The identification of climate change as “one of the central root causes of conflict, poverty, hunger and migration worldwide” (Bundesministerium europäische und internationale Angelegenheiten 2022, p. 5) clearly links the Austrian government’s understanding of climate change and migration to this migration prevention agenda.

Prior to its entry into coalition government in 2019, the Green Party’s framing of climate change and migration was subtly different, drawing on imagery of desperate people fleeing to underline the severity of climate change:

But a world in which the global temperature has increased by 3 or 4 degrees Celsius looks very different socially. Heat, drought, and storms put pressure on the political system. People see no option other than to flee their homes. Democracy will be subjected to a stress test by the climate crisis. Freedoms are in danger of being restricted. (Die Grünen 2019, p. 62)

Austrian commentators have identified this argument as being made by supporters of climate protection, to emphasise “why climate change needs to preferably be curbed” (Auer 2021).

A similar line is adopted by climate activists from civil society, for example visible in a briefing produced by the popular petition on climate (Klimavolksbegehren), which underlined that the impacts of the climate crisis “can intensify regional, ethnic and social conflicts and the probability of violent outbreaks increases, above all in states that cannot guarantee conformity with human rights and social order. All of these situations can cause people to flee” (Klimavolksbegehren 2020, p. 27). The briefing document goes on to specifically emphasise what this might mean for Europe, drawing on a misinterpretation of data to do so: “The World Bank assumes that in the coming years, 80 million people will migrate from the African continent to the north, or rather to Europe, due to climate change” (Klimavolksbegehren 2020, p. 28).²

Appealing to the government priority of migration prevention, civil society is therefore arguing that “ambitious climate protection in Austria and the EU is the most important instrument to take on global responsibility and contribute to reducing root causes of displacement” (Greenpeace 2021). Therefore, although the Green Party (prior to its entry into government) and civil society climate activists are both pursuing the goal of increasing support for climate protection and the introduction of policies to mitigate climate change, even in this iteration of the policy discourse, climate priorities do not constitute the underlying normative ordering principle of the argument. Instead, it is structured according to the underlying normative ordering principle of migration prevention, with anyone who “wants to reduce the reasons for people fleeing” needing to “contribute to diffusing the climate crisis” (Die Grünen 2019, p. 48).

4.2 Germany

In Germany there are more examples of official government policy discourse on climate change and migration. A variety of actors, including the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and advisory bodies that respectively provide advice to the government on climate policy (German Advisory Council on Global Change) and migration policy (Commission on the Root Causes of Displacement) have all produced briefings, research papers, and recommendations. Furthermore, in 2019, the German Parliament debated a proposal to introduce a so-called “climate passport” in Germany upon the initiative of the Green Party.

In the government-led³ portions of this discourse there is a focus on international development cooperation as well as on the root causes of displacement. The BMZ has projects active on climate change and migration, and funds the German Society for International Development (GIZ) to work with governments in partner countries affected by climate and migration, “supporting the development of political guidelines, studies and workshops” (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung 2020, p. 2) so that partners are better equipped to respond to the impacts of climate change. Early interest in the topic by the BAMF (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge 2012) did not progress into a concrete work programme, with ownership of the issue area being located in the BMZ.

The shift in policy forum from the BAMF to the BMZ is indicative of the conceptualisation of mobility in the broader German discourse on climate change and migration, which very much locates migration in the context of climate change as happening and/or originating in the Global South. The independent expert commission on the root causes of displacement also highlights a government priority in terms of preventing displacement, which set the commission the task of considering both displacement and irregular migration, identifying the central root causes and compiling approaches to effectively mitigate them (Fachkommission Fluchtursachen der Bundesregierung 2021, p. 14). Within the report itself, it is argued that the Federal Government should, “alongside ambitious climate protection in Germany and Europe, support countries of the Global South in climate-friendly restructuring of the economy, in order to slow down climate change as a driver of flight, displacement and irregular migration” (Fachkommission Fluchtursachen der Bundesregierung 2021, p. 12). The second action point identified by the commission is to “support the possibility of adaptation to climate change in a more targeted, future-oriented way in order to prevent its impacts from displacing people from their homes” (Fachkommission Fluchtursachen der Bundesregierung 2021, p. 12). However, subsequently, “few of these recommendations have been taken up” (Hoffmann et al. 2023, p. 7).

A second thread of the climate change and migration discourse that has taken place in official institutions in Germany is surrounding the proposal for a climate passport (Nash 2023a), which has been proposed by the German Advisory Council on Global Change (Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen 2018) and then within the parliament in an official legislative proposal by the Green Party (Deutscher Bundestag 2019b). The official debate othered people who were depicted as potential recipients of the passport according to old tropes common in broader climate change and migration discourses (Bettini et al. 2017). In the debate, supporters of the instrument emphasised the vulnerability of people displaced by climate change and the inevitability of their displacement, especially from Pacific island states, whereas opponents equated people impacted by climate change with economic migrants, stressed the importance of international development cooperation, and focussed on the spectre of impending large-scale migration from Africa to Europe (Deutscher Bundestag 2019a). In their arguments both groups drew on problematic securitised images of migration in the context of climate change. The inevitability and scale of migration in the context of climate change are depicted similarly across both discursive strands, instilling foreboding about what is to come.

A security framing is also shared by civil society actors, who frequently link climate change and migration to conflicts, either as part of the causal chain leading to people being displaced, or as a result of influxes of climate refugees into new communities (UNO Flüchtlingshilfe Deutschland für den UNHCR n.d.; Welthungerhilfe n.d.). A common argument made in the German discourse is therefore, as also seen in Austria, that “climate protection is an effective way to fight the root causes of displacement” (Caritas Deutschland 2022).

As in Austria, the German discourse is therefore not dominated by climate policy-related priorities but is normatively structured around the idea of preventing unwanted migration. However, there is more nuance in what kind of migration this may be. A clear emphasis is placed on displacement or forced migration and the Austrian focus on preventing any irregular migration is not so present. Furthermore, there is a much stronger focus on concrete action on the part of the government, for which “inactivity is not an option!” (Klima Allianz Deutschland and Verband Entwicklungspolitik und Humanitäre Hilfe 2017, p. 4).

4.3 Denmark

The Danish climate change and migration discourse is infused throughout with Denmark’s restrictive migration policy context and, similar to Austria, migration prevention is the normative ordering concept that guides how policy issues are understood and acted upon. Despite having had a social democratic government since 2019, Denmark has the most restrictive migration policy context of all four countries I have analysed (at the time of analysis), with the Social Democrat Party holding a clear restrictive policy line (Socialdemokratiet 2018). Migration and climate change are both prominent areas of governmental concern in their own right and are increasingly being brought together, primarily in development policy.

In the 2021 development strategy these areas of policy make up the dual priorities of the strategy, firstly “prevent[ing] and fight[ing] poverty and inequality, conflict and displacement, irregular migration and fragility” and secondly “lead[ing] the fight to stop climate change and restore balance to the planet” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark 2021, p. 7). The policy areas are also explicitly joined up in the strategy document, which draws a line between fragile states, poverty, climate change, displacement and migration, conflict, prosperity, rights, and security, setting the whole relation up as the prevention of irregular migration to Europe:

Within the framework of the Refugee Convention, we must take action to help people in fragile countries and in regions of origin. This is where poverty is increasingly concentrated. And this is where the climate crisis has the hardest impact. Displacement and irregular migration stem from the inability of fragile and conflict-affected societies to provide their citizens prosperity, jobs, rights, democracy and security. Fighting poverty and creating new opportunities for people in regions of origin and in fragile countries helps to prevent irregular migration towards Europe. (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark 2021, p. 19)

The Minister for Foreign Affairs also identified working on climate change and migration as a central area of concern for Danish participation in EU external affairs with Africa:

From the Danish side, there is active support for strengthening the EU’s partnership with Africa, including in relation to placing climate, environment, and migration central to the collaboration. Close partnerships with African countries are necessary to effectively address the root causes of irregular migration and strengthen migration management. (Folketinget 2020)

Civil society actors are joining up climate change and migration using the same logic. In recommendations given to the Foreign Policy Committee, CARE Denmark argued that “climate change is a decisive and growing cause of millions of people being driven from their homes and forced to flee” and that “political action is required now if international migration and displacement caused by climate change are to be minimised” (CARE Denmark 2017, p. 1). The document further goes on to link the discussion to policy measures to address root causes of migration, arguing for “strengthened management of existing and future migration flows, so that more predictable and lasting solutions can be created” (CARE Denmark 2017, p. 1).

Fittingly, this understanding of climate change and migration from both government and civil society is often accompanied by calls to action in international development cooperation policy (CARE Denmark 2016; Danchurchaid, Norwegian Church Aid & Act Alliance 2020). For example, in a press release announcing a substantive report published by CARE Denmark, it is set out that the report was launched during climate negotiations in 2016, “to give impetus to concrete plans for how we help those who have to flee from climate change – and to ensure that the rich countries contribute to the billions bill for climate adaptation in developing countries” (92-Gruppen – Forum for Bæredygtig Udvikling 2016).

Across the board, the Danish discourse on climate change and migration is, as a result of the emphasis on the scale of the potential problem and links to migration, heavily securitised. For example, in a 2030 governmental strategy document published by the Finance Ministry, the government sets the links between climate change and migration against the background of international security:

Climate change, natural disasters and competition for resources also challenge global security and stability. Extreme weather phenomena such as drought are putting increasing pressure on people’s livelihoods in ever more parts of the world. When people’s livelihoods disappear, it contributes to humanitarian crises, instability and increased migration. (Finansministeriet 2022, p. 55)

The prism of fear through which predicted increases in migration (to Denmark) are presented can also be viewed in understandings of the links between climate change and migration as articulated by left-wing political parties that have not adopted the social democrats’ more restrictive stance on migration policy. For example, in their 2019 election manifesto, the Red–Green Alliance pointed to the “doomsday-like consequences” for future generations with global temperature rises of over 3 degrees Celsius, which would involve “a changed world, with devastating storms, floods, droughts, famines, and climate refugees in the millions. It will drastically change life as we know it, also in Denmark” (Enhedslisten 2019, p. 18). Regardless of positioning on the political spectrum, the links between climate change and migration therefore remain heavily securitised.

Denmark has the most consistent policy discourse on climate change and migration of all the four countries, whereby the restrictive migration policy context creates a dominant narrative of combatting the root causes of migration. This therefore provides a normative ordering concept around which the policy discourse on climate change and migration is fitted and does not leave space for climate policy to structure the debate. This not only organises policy thinking on climate change and migration but predetermines the policy avenues that are open to policymakers.

4.4 Sweden

On the surface, the Swedish policy discourse on climate change and migration is relatively contradictory. On the one hand, of all four countries analysed, the Swedish policy discourse is most limited, and few attempts have been made to explicitly link climate change and migration. On the other hand, despite the low profile of climate change and migration on the political agenda, Sweden has previously had a relevant provision in domestic migration legislation that could provide protection to people already in Sweden unable to return home due to an environmental disaster, which has subsequently been dismantled (Sveriges Riksdag 2005, p. 4(2a(2))). The deletion of the paragraph received little attention, as it was part of larger reforms to the migration legislation, many of which were more far-reaching and immediately relevant. The paragraph on environmental disasters never resulted in international protection being granted (Scott and Garner 2022).

Formal political institutions have been relatively silent on the links between climate change and migration. An exception is the Green Party, which was in coalition government with the Social Democratic Party in various constellations between 2014 and 2021. In both 2017 and 2021 Green Party parliamentarians drew attention to the linkages, highlighting the humanitarian concerns and protection issues that displaced people face (Sveriges Riksdag 2017, 2021).

Both speakers raised the need for international cooperation on protection concerns in the parliament, arguing, for example, that

the term “climate refugee” is not included in the refugee convention, so those forced to flee for climate reasons do not have the same rights as those fleeing conflicts. However, we are faced with the fact that many more than before will migrate for that reason, because the access to water and cultivation simply does not exist as before. What rights should look like for them is something that the international community must think about. (Sveriges Riksdag 2021)

The impetus is not always on preventing people from moving. Although it is highlighted that “we already see clear traces of this [international migration] from Africa to Europe today”, the speaker argues that “we must see this as an opportunity” and not a problem to be solved with far-sighted policy responses (Sveriges Riksdag 2017). This tallied with the party’s election manifesto from 2018, which raised the protection implications of climate change and increased refugee flows, arguing that “climate change will mean new refugee flows in the future and Europe needs to be ready to create long-term sustainable ways of receiving both asylum seekers and climate refugees” (Miljöpartiet de Gröna 2018, p. 7).

A similar pattern is visible among civil society organisations, which in Sweden have not concentrated on the links between climate change and migration to the same extent, but when they do, they frame their work in more rights-based or humanitarian terms. For example, the consequences of climate change and displacement have been viewed through the prism of children’s rights (Rädda Barnen n.d.) and the Swedish Red Cross includes displacement due to climate change as one of the justifications in a call for funding its climate-related work (Svenska Röda Korset n.d.). A marked difference to the policy discourses in Austria, Germany, and Denmark is therefore provided by the framing of climate change and migration, which is structured according to humanitarian concerns and not migration prevention.

However, with a change in government in 2022 to one that proclaims that “a paradigm shift is now taking place in Swedish migration policy” (Government of Sweden 2022, p. 7), with Sweden’s largest economic and social problems described as stemming from “high levels of immigration, in combination with failed integration and hundreds of thousands of people living in social exclusion and benefit dependence” (Government of Sweden 2022, p. 2), there are indications that the migration policy discourse is shifting and will likely provide a more restrictive background against which discussions on climate change and migration will be held. This continues the trajectory of more restrictive reforms designed to curtail migration to Sweden initiated under the previous government.

5. Discussion and Conclusions

In the four European countries I have analysed, climate policy concerns are not a key normative ordering principle for policy discourses on climate change and migration. Instead, in three of the four countries examined in this analysis – Austria, Germany, and Denmark – the overriding normative ordering principle of the discourse is migration prevention. A slight difference does emerge in how migration prevention itself is understood, with a more nuanced understanding of migration prevention prevailing in the German discourse. In Germany, the focus is more specifically on forced migration or displacement (in German-language texts, usually utilising the word “flight” – “Flucht” in German). In Austria and Denmark, where the migration policy contexts are generally more restrictive, there is less nuance, and the prevention of irregular migration to Austria and Denmark is weighted evenly with the prevention of displacement.

An outlier is provided by the case of Sweden, where the policy discourse (at least prior to 2021/22) was predominantly structured around humanitarian concerns, but also received much less attention. However, given the recent trajectory of migration policy in Sweden, an open question remaining in this analysis is whether the Swedish policy discourse will also develop in the same direction as those of Denmark, Germany, and Austria. Only time will tell, and it will be interesting to revisit this question in the coming months and years.

An interesting approach for further teasing out these differences could be to complement policy discourse analysis with analysis of narratives from other state institutions. For example, in their comparative study of judicial practices in Austria and Sweden, Ammer et al. (2022) identify rich legal reasoning and country of origin information related to disasters in considerations for eligibility for subsidiary protection in Austria, despite the absence of specific provisions and the presence of a highly restrictive political discourse surrounding migration. In Sweden, where such provisions have previously existed, this was not the case and “executive and judicial decision-makers overwhelmingly failed to carefully consider claims for international protection relating to disasters” (Ammer et al. 2022, p. 22). This suggests that combined judicial and political analysis could yield interesting results.

Having established on the basis of this analysis that climate priorities are not a normative anchor nevertheless prompts the question of whether climate concerns should be ordering these policy debates. This is in itself a difficult normative question. There is certainly a mismatch between the European countries analysed here and international policymaking, where policy discussions on climate change and migration are mostly located within the international climate change negotiations of the UNFCCC (Nash 2019). Climate policy concerns and concepts are therefore central to policy debates and permeate many aspects of the discourse. However, in the run up to the Paris climate negotiations in 2015 the inclusion of a displacement coordination facility in an early negotiation text was critiqued by many who didn’t view the UNFCCC as the place to be making decisions about protection for displaced people (Vanhala and Calliari 2022a). The same could be argued at the national level, namely that climate policy does not provide a suitable range of (conceptual) tools to provide policy solutions to climate change and migration.

The dominance of migration prevention as an underlying normative ordering concept is still concerning. This analysis has highlighted restrictive approaches to migration structuring the whole debate, even when arguments are being articulated by climate policy actors and on the surface are articulating a call for increased climate action. It is therefore by no means certain that pursuing climate policy goals translates into a policy discourse that is built on normative foundations anchored in climate policy. From the perspective of integrative climate policy, especially on nexus issues this leads to questions around the longevity of any climate policy goals pursued in such a way. For example, if the concerns normatively at the heart of the policy discourse (in this case migration prevention) become more pressing, or can more efficiently be achieved via other means, what will this mean for climate policy?

This leads me to two warnings for policy communities working on climate change and migration. First, the policy discourse that is rooted in migration prevention frequently goes hand-in-hand with securitised understandings of climate change and migration. Here, warnings already abound in the established literature on discourses on climate change and migration, which argues that securitised discourses are likely to lead to policies that further restrict migration or even militarised policy responses (Hartmann 2010; Baldwin et al. 2014; Bettini et al. 2017). I would therefore warn that these approaches are currently dominant in the European countries I have analysed and more studies are needed that strive to understand whether this is the case across the EU more broadly.

Second, this analysis highlights the key role played in European countries by the increasing entrenchment of restrictive migration policy, including from parties on the centre-left of the political spectrum. This has made it difficult to work constructively on migration policy and is impacting the way in which entire policy communities understand and communicate about climate change and migration. Therefore, a key task for any integrative policymaking will have to be working towards a more nuanced discourse on migration policy.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the organisers of the workshop “Climate Action through Policy Expansion and/or Dismantling: Country-Comparative Insights” in Mannheim in October 2022 and to all the workshop participants for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments that led to many improvements in my analysis.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships, grant agreement number 840661.

Notes on contributors

Sarah Louise Nash

Sarah Louise Nash is a political scientist, and currently senior scientist at the University of Continuing Education Krems. Her work focuses on the politics and policy of climate change and migration. She works primarily on international climate governance and on policy discourses in Europe.

Notes

1. In the 2023 Climate Performance Index, Denmark and Sweden were ranked highest, with Germany and Austria taking up the 16th and 32nd positions respectively (Germanwatch, Newclimate Institute & Climate Action Network 2022; Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2023).

2. To support this figure, the briefing document references a news article published by DW on “Spain’s Fight with the Climate” (Müller 2019), which in turn does not include a reference to support the figure. My presumption is that this statement is a misinterpretation of the World Bank’s 2018 Groundswell report (Rigaud et al. 2018), which finds that Sub-Saharan Africa could see up to 86 million internal climate migrants by 2050. The conflation of internal migration within African nation states with international migration to Europe is a problem frequently seen in discussions on climate change and migration (Durand-Delacre et al. 2021).

3. The German Government changed in December 2021 from a grand coalition government under Angela Merkel to a so-called “traffic light” coalition made up of the Social Democrat Party, the liberal Free Democrat Party, and the Green Party. The governmental discourse analysed in this section is of the previous government.

Appendix

Document Corpus and Coding Protocol DocumentCorpus - Austria

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SK2	Sveriges Riksdag. (2017). Klimatförändringar skapar migration. Available at: https://data.riksdagen.se/fil/8A9F721D-F7B9-44D2-84C2-F8BE4E5D8970 accessed 28/09/22.
SK3	Regeringskansliet. (2016). Policyramverk för svenskt utvecklingssamarbete och humanitärt bistånd. Available at: https://www.regeringen.se/contentassets/daadbfb4abc9410493522499c18a4995/policyramverk-for-svenskt-utvecklingssamarbete-och-humanitart-bistand.pdf accessed 25/10/22.
SK4	Rädda Barnen (n.d.). Klimaflyktingar - Barn tvingas lämna sina hem. Available at: https://www.raddabarnen.se/vad-vi-gor/katastrofer/klimatet/klimatflyktingar/ ?TSPD_101_R0=082953afa5ab2000bdfd403122798e126af9a5ef4d7b8688 ab11f7034015aabbde8bf5d03e99cc7508269e23d7143000a9531bc396989 89b7a21916005ac15afd6f095a0b6836467f3e2e80227044c716250c9feb0316eb78ec2689d24044c8b accessed 25/10/22.
SK5	Amnesty International Sverige. (2020). FN Konstaterer: Klimaförändringar kan vara ett asylskäl. Available at: https://www.amnesty.se/aktuellt/fn-konstaterar-klimatforandringar-kan-vara-ett-asylskal/#:~:text=FN%3As%20kommitté%20för%20mänskliga,fara%20på%20grund%20av%20klimatförändringar. Accessed 25/10/22.
SK6	Oxfam Sverige. (2019). Klimatrelaterade katastrofer tvingar 20 miljoner på flykt varje år. Available at: https://oxfam.se/nyheter/klimatrelaterade-katastrofer-tvingar-20-miljoner-pa-flykt-varje-ar/ accessed 25.10.22
SK7	Concord Sverige. (2020). Barometer 2020. Civilsamhällets granskning av Sveriges politik för global utveckling. Available at: https://concord.se/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/barometer-2020-civilsamhallets-granskning-av-sveriges-politik-for-global-utveckling-concord-sverige.pdf accessed 25/10/22.
SK8	Jakobsson, E., & Research Institute of Sweden. (2019). Climate change and migration. Policy approaches for a sustainable future. Available at: https://fores.se/publikation/climate-change-and-migration-policy-approaches-for-a-sustainable-future/ accessed 25/10/22.
SK9	Föreningen för Utvecklingsfrågor. (2019). Miljömigrant eller klimatflykting - varför är definitioner så viktigt? Available at: https://fuf.se/magasin/miljomigrant-eller-klimatflykting-varfor-ar-definitioner-sa-viktigt/ accessed 25/10/22.
SK10	Utrikespolitiska Institutet. (2021). Klimatmigranter - därför kallas de inte flyktingar och så hanterar världen problemet. Available at: https://www.ui.se/utblick/utblick-7-klimatmigranter--darfor-kallas-de-inte-flyktingar-och-sa-hanterar-varlden-problemet/#:~:text=Klimatmigranter%20–%20därför%20kallas%20de%20inte%20flyktingar%20och%20så%20hanterar%20världen%20problemet,-12%20mars%202021&text=Miljontals%20människor%20måste%20redan%20fly,dem%20är%20en%20komplex%20fråga. accessed 25/10/22.
SK11	Svenska Röda Korset. (n.d.). Klimatförändringar - akut bevhov at hjälp till drabbade. Available at: https://www.rodakorset.se/var-varld/klimatforandringar/ accessed 25.10.22
SK12	Centerpartiet. (2018). Nytt ledarskap för Sverige framåt. Centerpartiets valmanifest 2018. Available at: https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu//down/originals/2019-1/11810_2018.pdf accessed 13/05/2020
SK13	Kristdemokraterne. (2018). Valmanifest. Du ska kunna lita på Sverige. Available at: https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu//down/originals/2019-1/11520_2018.pdf accessed 13/05/2020
SK14	Liberalerna. (2018). Försvara friheten. 2018 års vägval för Sverige och Europa. Liberalernas Valmanifest. Available at: https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu//down/originals/2019-1/11420_2018.pdf accessed 13/05/2020
SK15	Miljöpartiet de gröna. (2018). Nu. Klimatet kan inte vänta. Valmanifest 2018. Available at: https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu//down/originals/2019-1/11110_2018.pdf accessed 28/07/2020
SK16	Moderaterna. (2018). Nu tar vi tag i Sverige. Valmanifest 2018. Available at: https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu//down/originals/2019-1/11620_2018.pdf accessed 13/05/2020
SK17	Socialdemokraterna. (2018). Valmanifest 2018. Det Största Trygghetsprogrammet i Modern Tid. Available at: https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu//down/originals/2019-1/11320_2018.pdf accessed 13/05/2020
SK18	Sverigedemokraterna. (2018). Valplattform. Sverigedemokraternas valplattform 2018. Available at: https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu//down/originals/2019-1/11710_2018.pdf accessed 13/05/2020
SK19	Vänsterpartiet. (2018). Vänsterpartiets Valplattform. Available at: https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu//down/originals/2019-1/11220_2018.pdf accessed 13/05/2020

Coding Protocol

Theme	Codes
Protection	Access to
	Asylum (Global North)
	Asylum (Global North) – prevention
	Climate Passport
	Humanitarian assistance
	International laws – amending
	Legal protection gap
	Legal status
	Non-refoulement
	Refugee Convention – amending
	Refugee Convention – relevance
	Role for DE/AT/DK/SK
	Role for EU
	Solutions
	Subsidiary protection
	Support
Citizenship	Acquiring
	Citizens (DE/AT/DK/SK)
	Citizenship-like rights
	Statelessness
Climate Diplomacy	Gender
	Leadership
	Status
Climate Justice	Fairness
	Risk
	International (e.g. Global North/Global South)
	Within communities
Prognoses/figures/estimates	1 billion
	10-25% of all displaced people
	140 million (internal)
	166 million (2008-2014)
	1^st place (most important driver)
	24.2 million in 2016
	26.4 million annually
	200 million
	3.3 to 3.6 billion people in danger
	3 times as many as for conflict
	80 million (Africa – EU)
	Increasing
	Lots
	Millions
Climatic/environmental drivers	Conflict
	Homes destroyed
	Hunger
	Lack of food
	Lack of water
	Missing harvests
	Natural disasters
	Poverty
	Sea-level rise
	Slow-onset
	Spreading of disease
	Sudden-onset
	Weather extremes
Climate negotiations	1.5°C
	Adaptation
	Limit global warming
	Loss and damage
	Mitigation
	UNFCCC – engagement with
Gender	Child Marriage
	Gender (in)equality
	Human trafficking
Multicausality	Bundle of reasons
	Risk multiplier
	Structural causes
Experts	Amnesty International
	Caritas
	Doctors without borders
	Foresight Report
	IDMC
	IEP
	IOM
	IPCC
	Journalists
	National climate scientists
	Norwegian Refugee Agency
	Research
	UN – Guterres
	UNHCR
	WGBU
	WHO
	World Bank
Action	Inaction
	Government action (calls for)
	International
	Urgency
Climate crisis	Catastrophic
	Crisis
	Critical
	Threatening
Development	Climate finance
	Corruption
	Failure
	Finance
	Global Justice
	Help in Place
	Humanitarian Assistance
	Perspectives
	Population Growth
	Rural poor
	Resilience
Geographical examples	Africa
	Andes
	Bangladesh
	Caribbean
	China
	East Africa
	Himalaya
	Horn of Africa
	India
	Pacific (Island States)
	Philippines
	South-East Asia
	Sub-Saharan Africa
	Syria
	Tuvalu
Transformation	Climate protection
	Just
	Social-ecological
Prevention of movement	Ambitious climate politics
	Control
	Fight drivers of displacement
	Migration prevention
Conflict	Destruction of homes
	Droughts and conflict
	Energy Sources
	Oil and gas
	Terror
Types of mobilities	Anticipatory
	Climate Refugees
	Dignified
	Displacement
	Economic migration
	Illegal
	Immobility
	Internal
	Internal displacement
	Irregular
	Mixed
	Self-determined
	Separation displacement and migration
	Within EU
Security	Identification of securitisation
	Security threat
Human Rights	Catalogue of human rights
	Convention on the Rights of the Child
	Protection of human rights
	Right to food
	Right to health
	Right to housing
	Right to life
	Right to water
Adaptation	In order to stay
	Migration as adaptation
Knowledge	European knowledge
	Indigenous knowledge
	Local knowledge
Responsibility	Common but differentiated
	Loss and damage
	Polluter pays
	Solidarity