By Daniel Muth (VU) & Johan Ekstedt (ULB)

The framing of migration and climate change has evolved considerably over recent decades. The extensive literature on the securitization of migration demonstrates how migration has increasingly been construed as a security threat, particularly within European political and policy discourse (Léonard & Kaunert, 2023). The emerging debate on the intersection of climate change and migration reflects a distinct, though related, approach to framing the issue. The European Union (EU), in particular, tends to conceptualize the relationship between climate change and migration in ways that portray mobility primarily as a dangerous or destabilizing consequence of environmental change. Within this framework, migration is largely understood as a problem to be managed or contained—typically through measures that seek to limit movement and anticipate how climate change will impact migration flows in the future.

The Climate Change Induced Migration (CLICIM) project, a research initiative led by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission illustrates this point. The project aims to improve understanding of how climate change and demographic trends jointly influence migration dynamics. The CLICIM reports cover a large number of aspects of the question at hand, but are heavily focused on the climate-security nexus–climate change as a driver of migration–and research on how to predict migration flows caused by climate change (European Commission, 2024).

Intergovernmental and international organizations often frame the relationship between climate change and migration quite differently. Given the close connection between migration and development, the World Bank has devoted greater attention to climate-induced migration and its implications for sustainable development. It adopts a more holistic viewpoint, emphasizing how climate, mobility, and development are interconnected. However, the World Bank’s approach remains technocratic: migration is treated as a process to be managed through policy planning, with an analytical focus mainly on internal (within country) migration (e.g., Clement et al., 2021).

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) considers climate migration primarily as an aspect of adaptation, and increasingly as part of the emerging “loss and damage” workstream addressing the adverse effects of climate change in developing countries (Mayer, 2017). This perspective is backed up by a growing body of academic literature, which has begun to argue that climate-induced migration should primarily be framed as part of the solution to climate change, rather than a dangerous consequence of it. Viewing migration as adaptation, rather than solely as a risk, can help shift narratives and policy design—but this requires deeper institutional reform, better data, and long-term commitment from the EU. Three key tensions have been identified: shifting narratives (security versus adaptation), weak institutional coordination across EU Directorates-General, and inconsistent funding mechanisms (Milazzo & Hahn 2024).

However, viewing migration and mobility only as effective adaptation strategies risks oversimplification. The evolution of the “migration as adaptation” discourse emerged as a counter-narrative to alarmist depictions of “climate refugees.” A distinction has since been made between reactive and proactive migration, where the latter—when planned and supported—may enhance adaptive capacities by diversifying livelihoods, spreading risk, and generating remittances. Yet, an uncritical framing of migration as adaptation can exacerbate underlying inequality which, in turn could reinforce vulnerability, deepen poverty, and lead to non-economic losses such as cultural dislocation and identity erosion. Migration can also conceal systemic governance failures, shifting the burden of adaptation from states to individuals and communities. Hence, a more precise and justice-oriented use of the term “migration as adaptation” is needed to avoid normalizing inequality and justifying state inaction (Vinke et al. 2020).