"Inevitable, Undesirable and Threatening": Uncovering State Representations of Climate Migrants in Canada and Australia

The expression “climate migrant” is increasingly used by policy makers, journalists and scholars to discuss the human impacts of climate change – with some authors evoking apocalyptic scenarios of mass displacement. Climate migration is frequently presented as a future or conditional phenomenon that will impact a variety of actors. States are foremost among these actors as they play a decisive role in legitimizing forms of migration. States decide who is permitted to enter and who is excluded from their territories. As both Canada and Australia have been tipped as potential strategic destinations for the resettlement of climate migrants, their respective governments have begun to discuss the political implications of climate migration. The term “climate migrants” is, however, ill-defined and empirically unsubstantiated. Moreover, it has been mobilized to evoke different meanings, often reflecting colonial and neocolonial biases. In other words, the use of the term reflects political undertones. Understanding how countries use the term is significant as it offers insights on these undertones. By engaging in a thick reading of state publications on climate migrants, I find that Canada and Australia represent climate migrants as an inevitable, undesirable and threatening consequence of climate change. Furthermore, I situate this representation within a broader hegemonic discourse on climate migration and human mobilities that views migrants as (racialized) “others” threatening to destabilize the Global North