Neva Löw/Maximilian Pichl, 13.10.2025: How the climate crisis and global migration are linked

The climate crisis and global migration are closely linked. Emancipatory forces must demand and defend the right to be able to leave, but not to have to leave. This means defending and expanding asylum rights.

At the end of July, the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau ran the headline “First country on Earth to become uninhabitable – alarming forecast.” The island nation of Tuvalu in the South Pacific will most likely become uninhabitable in the coming decades due to rising sea levels. In response, the Australian government has been offering an annual quota of 280 people from Tuvalu unlimited residence permits since 2023, with the prospect of resettling all Tuvaluans in Australia within the next 40 years. At the same time, however, the Australian migration regime is known for its harshness, which violates human rights. No refugees who attempt to reach the country by boat are admitted. Those who are caught fleeing must fear imprisonment on Pacific islands – without due process of law. The prison on Manus Island gained notoriety through the writings of a former prisoner and current literary prize winner, Behrouz Boochani. Boochani reports on the torturous conditions during his seven years of imprisonment. Both are therefore part of the Australian regime.

Temperatures on Earth and in the oceans are rising, causing the climate to change. Man-made climate change is evident in the increase in extreme weather events. It destroys livelihoods globally and within nation states and exacerbates inequalities. Climate change will also lead to an increase in climate refugees and migration. The United Nations predicts that 200 million people could flee due to climate change by 2050. The UN Refugee Agency reported that three-quarters of the 120 million people who are already displaced worldwide live in countries that are severely affected by climate change. But climate migration is not a future scenario; it is already happening today.

In the following, we look at the connection between the climate crisis, its political and legal handling and global migration. We will first explore the role the current debate on migration plays in the wake of the climate crisis. We see the discussion about migration (policies) as an escalation of social conflicts. We then argue that Europe’s borders are selectively opened and closed and that restrictive migration policy measures lead to further disenfranchisement of people and most importantly massively exacerbate inequalities. We conclude with an emancipatory perspective that demands the right to be able to leave, but also to not have to leave.

Alarm bells for environmental refugees

The term "environmental refugee" has been part of the political debate since the late 1980s. The 1990 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) already describes climate-induced flight alarmingly as follows: "migration and resettlement may be the most threatening short-term effects of climate change on human settlements" (Rouviere et al. 1990: 5-9). While the debate originated in international organisations, an academic and political debate on this topic also developed over the following decades. On the one hand, it was centred on the possible categorisation of different climate migrants (Bates 2002; Biermann 2001; Jakobeit/Methmann 2007: 8 ff.); on the other hand, it addressed the quantifiable extent of climate migration (Myers 1997; 2002) and finally the international legal level of the possible protection status of environmental refugees (Ammer et al. 2010; Docherty/Giannini 2009).

Critical voices also point out that the talk of migration as a consequence of climate change is an essential component of a larger security policy dispositive that increasingly presents climate change as a threat to national security (see, among others: Gupta 2009; Hartmann 2010). Climate-induced migration is portrayed as a chaotic mass phenomenon that primarily affects the Global South. The reference to one’s own "national sovereignty or the fear of losing it" became a "central aspect of the environmental refugee policy" (Becker 2020: 181). In her study of these policies, Marlene Becker has shown that the integration of this discourse into neoliberal migration management logics and security policies legitimises more robust border regimes to prevent environmental refugees (Becker 2020).

This threat scenario is also used to emphasise the urgency of comprehensive climate protection measures. At the climate conference in Cancun in 2010, the signatory states agreed to take and coordinate measures to deal with climate-induced displacement and migration movements (paragraph 14(f) of the Cancun Declaration, 1/CP.16). The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) published a comprehensive report on "climate migrants" in 2024, in which it describes the "profiles" of threatened communities and the socio-economic situations of the individuals concerned (IOM 2024). Almulhim et al. published an article in the journal Nature npj Climate Action in 2024, in which they argue that far more people will migrate and flee as a result of climate change than previously assumed. They summarise: "Without proper planning and adequate resources, migration may escalate and significantly impact human security." (Almulhim et al. 2024)  

Within the international refugee law system, there is as yet no way of adequately dealing with ecologically induced flight. The grounds for persecution under the Geneva Refugee Convention, for example, always require an individual reason for persecution and a specific actor of persecution, both of which are not given in the case of systemic climate crises and disasters. On 23 July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) published a groundbreaking opinion (see the blog symposium of the Verfassungsblog), which was commissioned by the General Assembly of the United Nations but was originally the result of an initiative by young students from the island state of Tuvalu (Pacific Island Students Fighting for Climate Change (PISFCC)). In its opinion, the ICJ reaffirmed climate protection as an obligation under international law that results not only from the Paris Agreement, but also from numerous international agreements and human rights declarations. At one point, the ICJ also addresses climate-induced flight: "The Court considers that conditions resulting from climate change which are likely to endanger the lives of individuals may lead them to seek safety in another country or prevent them from returning to their own. In the view of the Court, States have obligations under the principle of non-refoulement where there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk of irreparable harm to the right to life in breach of Article 6 of the ICCPR if individuals are returned to their country of origin." (ICJ Opinion, para 378) Although this is only a very brief statement, the ICJ nevertheless makes it clear that environmental refugees are protected by the principle of non-refoulement if they face serious harm or a threat to their lives as a result of deportation. The Romanian judge Bogdan Aurescu even stated in his special vote on the opinion that, in his view, states have a positive obligation to protect in order to prevent human rights violations by environmental refugees (special vote Aurescu, 25-26). The ICJ opinion is not directly enforceable in the countries of the Global North, which are considered destination countries for migration. However, the ICJ's reasoning and the link between climate-induced damage and the international refugee law system will play a greater role in future legal battles before courts in Europe. Lawyers, NGOs and those affected will be able to appeal against deportations from the lower administrative courts all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights, citing possible dangers for people seeking protection who have fled from countries that are particularly affected by climate change.

Maintaining the status quo

It is undisputed that the climate crisis and its current handling are exacerbating global power relations and inequalities. Anne Tittor has used the term "post-fossil extractivism" to show that the expansion of renewable energy sources goes hand in hand with an intensification of the (climate-damaging) extraction of raw materials in the Global South (Tittor 2023). However, such a political-economic perspective is marginalised in the debates on environmental refugees. It takes place primarily within a security policy framework, with the image of the environmental refugee serving as a threat scenario for maintaining the status quo.

Researchers Brand and Wissen (2024) also note an intensified discourse on migration policy in connection with climate change among the "authoritarian right". In their analysis of which forces want to deal with the climate crisis and how, they identify a hegemony project of "authoritarian stabilisation" (ibid: 170). In the wake of the climate crisis, authoritarian right-wing forces are thus promising to maintain the status quo in an exclusionary manner. This refers to the preservation of a fossil-fuel way of production and life for an exclusive group of people, which implicitly means the exclusion of those who represent an assumed threat "from outside" (ibid). This goes hand in hand with the erection of walls and the disenfranchisement of parts of the population in the global North and South. The extreme right, according to Brand and Wissen "draws on racist dispositions that are firmly anchored in the everyday minds of many people and combines these with experiences of social disregard to create a politically effective narrative: It is the refugees who are threatening our model of prosperity. And it is corrupt politicians who support the refugees while they stand idly by and watch the social decline of the local middle and lower classes or even actively encourage it." According to Quent, Richter and Salheiser, researchers of right-wing extremism, we can also speak of "climate racism" propagated by extreme right-wing movements (Quent/Richter/Salheiser 2022).

From a feminist perspective, Cara Daggett (2024) argues along similar lines when she says that the far right in the USA has recognised that living conditions will change drastically due to the climate crisis. As a new response to the reality of the climate crisis, the far right promises an exclusive group the preservation of the fossil-fuel way of life. This promise goes hand in hand with the devaluation of those who are to be kept away from this way of life – above all migrants. Daggett impressively traces how hypermasculinity interacts with fossil fuel energy and misogyny and how these three elements are mutually dependent – she calls this "petromasculinity" (Daggett 2024, see also her comments in the interview). She describes it as follows, among other things: "Clinging to the righteousness of a fossil fuel-based lifestyle and all the hierarchies that depend on it creates a desire not only to deny climate change, but even to reject it." (ibid: 46) This also includes the construction and turning away from "the other", in this case, among other things, from people read as migrants: "More precisely, authoritarian desire is presumably fuelled not only by the emergence of others – such as climate refugees from the Global South – at the borders, but also as a reaction to perceived enemies within the state..." (ibid: 47). This is another reason why the climate movement is a central enemy of the global far right. And the example of the Last Generation shows the vehemence with which the movement was criminalised  through the use of preventive detention and prosecution for the alleged formation of a criminal organisation (Pichl 2023).

Philosopher Lea Ypi argues along similar lines in her Vienna speech to Europe 2025: "And yet migration is still invoked as a problem in political discourse. This problem is political and not cultural. The fact that there is a problem has nothing to do with migrants, but everything to do with the crisis of liberal democracy, a crisis that migrants did not create and that is not worsening because of them (...). The problem is that the right dominates the migration discourse and that there is an inability or – to appeal to the use of reason – a lack of courage to make critical use of one's own mind and to think beyond the ideology and propaganda that would have us believe otherwise." (Ypi 2025: 52)

It becomes clear that migration discourses and policies represent an intensification of existing social conflicts and must be viewed in a systematic context with other crisis discourses such as the climate crisis. Overall, these are radical transformation conflicts (Dörre et al. 2025) in the transition to the Anthropocene age, i.e. human-made climate change, in which questions of power and domination are being renegotiated on a global scale.

Selective border openings

The authoritarian right combines a policy of isolation with the promise of maintaining current social conditions. This makes it clear that it is not about a general sealing off or actual closed borders, but about a selective opening and closing of borders. Ypi describes this as follows: "Borders have always been (and will continue to be) open for some and closed for others. The same applies to barriers on integration and civic participation." (Ypi 2018: 2) It is nothing new that borders have always been selectively open or closed and that these filters have class differences as a marker of orientation.  The selective permeability of borders results in different rights and access (stratification) to welfare state benefits for those who reside on a territory – while some receive full civil and social rights, other groups have no access to justice and the welfare state at all. In this context, Alana Lentin calls borders and passports "institutionalised demarcations of national inclusion" (Lentin 2008: 193).  The "national-social state" (Balibar 1999: 2) creates hierarchies that are also reflected in the claim to social rights.

The fact that national affiliation is increasingly also a question of social class becomes clear in the possibilities for obtaining European citizenship. Citizenship and thus full rights within nation states are increasingly becoming commodities that can be purchased. For example, it was possible to buy a citizenship in Malta for 650,000 euros, a practice that the European Court of Justice declared to be contrary to European law. The “marketing" of European citizenship is unlawful (ECJ, judgement of 29 April 2025, case C-181/23). But Portugal also has a fast-track citizenship procedure for financial and property investors, and in the UK the necessary documents for obtaining the citizenship can be collected at home for 9,000 pounds (Ypi 2018: 5 f.). It goes without saying that this process is completely different for those without such financial resources. According to Ypi, this great inequality must be addressed (ibid.).

Ypi therefore advocates focussing on the connection between social class and migration. In the course of transformation conflicts as the climate crisis intensifies, this is a necessary perspective in order to place the class dimension at the centre of the discussion. Ypi writes: "On this rival analysis then, migration related distributive conflicts should be analysed as presenting not an injustice in their own right but as part of a larger account of social injustice, which focuses on a common source of oppression for both vulnerable native citizens and immigrants." (Ypi 2018: 7) Class-related social obstacles within Europe must be addressed first when talking about migration. 

The right to not have to leave

A class-based perspective that takes up the political and legal struggle for socio-ecological transformation conflicts cannot therefore dismiss migration – not only because the extreme right places migration at the centre of its racist mobilisations, but also because migration is systematically linked to the socio-ecological inequalities that need to be overcome.

From a trade union perspective, demands must therefore be made that include an internationalist perspective of global solidarity. One such demand would be to insist on the right of those affected by the climate crisis to not have to leave. We understand this to mean standing up for the preservation of the livelihoods of all people so that they are not forced to leave their countries of origin. This must be about more than just changing the political, social and ecological conditions in the countries of origin. Sonja Buckel and Judith Kopp have shown in their study "Das Recht, nicht gehen zu müssen" (2021; “The right not to have to leave”), based on climate policy, trade policy and arms deliveries, that the balance of power in the countries of the Global North in particular must change. A socio-ecological transformation must therefore come from the countries responsible for the climate crisis, which have so far shifted the consequences of this policy onto other countries. Such a perspective of combating the causes of migration also strengthens the political options for action by civil society stakeholders and trade unions, which, through their strategies for changing political and economic conditions in the Global North, simultaneously make a contribution in solidarity with people in the South and break up neo-colonial conditions. One example of this is the close alliance between Fridays for Future and ver.di, which organised joint strike campaigns in 2024 for climate-friendly public transport with good working conditions for employees. Transnational cooperation between activists and workers is also essential to create global solidarity

No matter how promising a socio-ecological transformation might be in the future, the destruction caused by the fossil-fuelled mode of production to date is already causing unalterable damage to the climate. Even if all CO2 emissions worldwide were reduced to zero overnight, people would still have to leave their homes and places of residence in the future due to droughts, floods and overheating. Migration researchers and social movements are therefore also formulating the need to defend and expand asylum rights in the future.

Defence of democratic spaces

A socio-ecological transformation and standing up for the right not to have to leave can only succeed if democratic room for manoeuvre is maintained and further expanded. In the face of global authoritarianism and fascist groups, it is therefore about the defence of democracy. The current crises of democracy are inextricably linked to the ecological crises and they exacerbate each other. The migration policy debates are part of this and must be embedded in the general crisis dynamics of societies. For progressive forces, it cannot therefore be about staying silent on migration – or, even worse, adopting right-wing policies in the form of migration isolation – but about expanding democratic spaces and inclusive solidarity. 

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The article in German language: Wie Klimakrise und globale Migration miteinander verbunden sind