"Climate migration" and its implications for social work

Research on the connection between climate change and migration contradicts narratives of an expected influx of "climate refugees" to Europe in the near future. Social work in Germany and other countries of the Global North must, above all, take up the scientific findings on "climate migration" in various areas of education in order to meet the diverse challenges posed by the megatrends of climate change and human mobility.

The effects of climate change are becoming increasingly evident worldwide. In addition to fears of increasing heat stress in city centres or growing problems with drinking water supplies, many people in Germany and Europe are concerned that the consequences of climate change in other regions of the world will affect the "old continent" in the form of (refugee) migration. A glance at the media debate on the topic of "climate migration" in Germany or its neighbouring countries reveals almost alarmist fears of a gigantic influx of tens of millions of "climate refugees" in the near future. But are these fears of millions of "climate refugees" from Africa or other regions of the global South arriving in Europe realistic? What are the findings of research on the connection between climate change and migration? What challenges does social work need to prepare for here?

The "climate refugees" narrative

Climate change and all its consequences must not be understood as a purely natural event. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that global warming is man-made - and that this is the case is hardly doubted within the relevant scientific community. Secondly, the consequences of climate change are increasingly affecting people and societies in terms of human security, livelihoods, economic systems and politics. The processes (co-)caused by climate change must therefore also be understood as social events. Accordingly, terms such as "climate refugee" or "climate migrant" are social constructions that define social attributions on the one hand and reflect (global) social structures on the other. The descriptions or categorisations of groups of people or certain circumstances in the context of climate change and migration therefore reflect or reproduce power relations.

The terms mentioned as part of the discourse on climate change and migration cannot be viewed in isolation from the general discourse on migration and forced displacement. The so-called refugee crisis of 2015/2016 has created or at least reinforced a narrative in Europe and Germany that, interestingly, is largely shared by various political camps and social groups - even if there are different emphases and interpretations. For example, the assumption that Germany, Europe and the entire global North are at the centre of an almost gigantic wave of immigration or that this is imminent is a key component of the narrative. There is hardly any differentiation between the various forms of human mobility and the term migration has a predominantly negative connotation in this context. "Invasion" or "mass migration" are typical vocabulary inherent to this narrative. In addition, depending on the context, individual factors such as overpopulation, poverty, armed conflicts or climate change are used as supposedly monocausal explanations for migration/forced displacement processes. There is also a tendency to see human mobility as the product of a simple stimulus-response scheme: The higher an incentive such as poverty or the effects of climate change, the more people would choose to emigrate. This migration arithmetic is used not only by politicians, but also by activists, especially in the context of global warming. A quote from the German journalist and environmental activist Franz Alt summarises this pattern of thought: "Those who neglect climate protection will reap climate refugees".

The quote shows that the narrative of "climate refugees" is usually associated with an imperative to demand or act. In the past, non-governmental organisations such as Greenpeace have linked their own political demands in the field of climate protection or development policy to the warning that a lack of climate protection will lead to "climate refugees". However, various actors are also using the "climate refugees" narrative to call for larger defence and military budgets. In OECD countries, there has long been a general tendency to view the consequences of climate change as a challenge to national security.

Scientific findings on the climate-mobility nexus

For a long time, factors such as the environment or climate played at best a subordinate role in migration research, which has existed since the late 19th century. This slowly changed in the 1990s, when a scientific debate on the connection between climate change and migration began to develop and individual case studies on the topic were carried out here and there. Scientific activities have been significantly intensified since the late 2000s: Since then, a number of research projects, including larger ones, have been carried out on the interactions between global warming and processes of forced displacement and migration. Based on these intensive research activities, the following general conclusions can be drawn about human mobility in the context of climate change:

Climate change is leading to a greater probability of occurrence and a potentially higher intensity of extreme weather events worldwide. This applies to both sudden events such as hurricanes or tidal waves and gradual processes such as changing precipitation characteristics in a region. This increases the global risk to human safety, both through more direct threats to life and limb from floods or storms and more insidious threats such as crop failure as a result of fluctuations in precipitation. However, there is by no means a simple automatism between climate change and human mobility, a term that encompasses processes of forced migration as well as other forms of (more) voluntary migration. Rather, even in countries and regions that are already severely affected by the effects of climate change, migration decisions and processes are quite complex and are triggered not only by climate impacts, but also by political, social or economic factors. In other words, it is not only droughts or floods that cause displacement or migration, but in many cases also a lack of income opportunities, political repression or conflicts, for example. It is often difficult to determine whether the consequences of climate change are the main cause of a migration process or whether other factors are the decisive factor.

Those particularly affected by climate change are poorer population groups in the global South, such as smallholder farming families, nomadic cattle herders or the urban poor. For the most part, these people do not have the resources, especially not the financial resources, to migrate over long distances. If they (have to) migrate, they almost always do so within the borders of their own country of origin or they go to a neighbouring country. Human mobility in the context of climate change is therefore a phenomenon that predominantly takes place within countries or regions. In addition, these processes are usually of a circular nature, meaning that many people seek shelter outside their home village from an approaching cyclone, for example. They are often able to return to their villages after a short time. Circular labour migration is also often involved in this context: individual household or family members leave their homes to earn money for a certain period of time in the cities or in commercial agriculture. If they succeed in doing so, this money is often used to compensate for the damage caused by climate change (e.g. crop or livestock losses). It is no coincidence that the question of the extent to which migration could not also be an adaptation strategy to the negative effects of global warming has become an important issue in research on the interactions between climate change and human mobility or the climate-mobility nexus.

Another important finding of research on the climate-mobility nexus over the last 15 years is that (forced) immobility is at least as serious a consequence of the effects of climate change as the various forms of human mobility that are (partly) caused by global warming. In the scientific literature - even if there are different connotations here - the term trapped populations has become established for this phenomenon. In the most common interpretation, this refers to people who are so poor - or who will become so poor due to the effects of global warming - that they are unable to migrate at all. This also means that they cannot migrate within their countries or regions. Undoubtedly, these trapped populations are among the groups that will be most affected by the current and future impacts of climate change.

In view of these research findings, which paint a complex picture of the climate-mobility nexus, it is hardly surprising that terms such as "climate refugees" or "climate migration" are often used in the media or even in parts of politics, but there are no generally recognised definitions for them - neither in international law, the academic debate nor in the political context. Accordingly, there are also no serious forecasts as to how many people will migrate in the middle or at the end of the 21st century due to the effects of global warming. Although the figure of 216 million "climate refugees" - in the event of an unfavourable emissions scenario - is often cited in the media as a forecast for the number of climate refugees by 2050 (see above), this figure is the result of a simulation calculation in a study published by the World Bank, which is by no means a concrete forecast. Furthermore, this simulation does not even refer to people fleeing their country or even continent of origin. Rather, the study explicitly refers to internal migrants. Even for the next few years, if not the next few decades, a "mass influx" of people migrating from parts of Asia or Africa towards Europe (primarily) due to climate change seems unlikely. It is much more likely that migration and refugee movements will increase in the context of climate change - if only due to the expected rise in sea levels - but they will continue to take place primarily within the affected regions of the world. In the coming years and decades, more and more people in Germany and Europe will have to be prepared to leave their homes due to the effects of climate change. Due to rising sea levels, for example, many coastal areas and coastal cities in Europe will be threatened in the coming decades.

It would fall short of the mark to reduce the climate-mobility nexus only to migration processes that are (partly) caused by climate change. Alongside digitalisation, global warming and human mobility are probably among the greatest global challenges of the 21st century. For this reason, the reverse effects between migration and climate change should also be considered or established. In Germany and other industrialised countries, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the problems associated with demographic change, such as the shortage of skilled workers, can be solved not least by means of skilled labour migration. This is becoming increasingly important for those economic sectors that play a key role in achieving the goal of a climate-neutral economy, such as the energy industry. The overlapping challenges of the climate change and migration megatrends will not be met if the corresponding synergies and positive potentials are ignored.

Conclusion: What does this mean for social work?

The narrative on the topic of "climate migration", which paints a threatening scenario according to Europe must expect a gigantic wave of "climate refugees", is largely without empirical basis. Migration and forced displacement in the context of climate change have complex causes and mainly take place within affected countries and regions. For the time being, social work in Germany and other countries of the global North will not face any genuinely new challenges in terms of integration or inclusion work for a new type of refugee or similar. However, it would be important to integrate the findings from the academic debate on the climate-mobility nexus more strongly into various areas of education, from school education to political adult education. On the one hand, this would be an important building block for climate literacy, i.e. basic education on the topic of climate change, which would help to develop a more realistic understanding of the consequences of climate change and adequately integrate this into discourses on climate justice or global justice, for example. On the other hand, it would be an important educational contribution to a nuanced understanding of flight and migration, which conveys both the associated challenges and the potential and counteracts the perpetuation of unrealistic threat scenarios.

This article is based on https://content-select.com/de/portal/media/view/64dba0aa-31fc-4fe7-9012-4e87ac1b0007