Climate and migration: a user’s guide to navigating the research

Our latest report offers guidance on creating clear and empathetic communication that can combat dangerous or inaccurate narratives that may put people at risk. It is designed to help practitioners navigate the academic research on communicating and framing the intersection of climate change and migration. It also helps practitioners understand how to deploy relevant research insights in creating communication campaigns and projects. 

We would urge you to read our report in full. But if you’re short on time, here are 10 things we found about where the research should go next: 

1. Greater care in the terminology used to describe climate-linked (im)mobility. At the moment, it could be anything from internal and cross-border displacement due to disasters, to people moving seasonally or permanently as a way of adapting to slowly unfolding climate impacts. It makes it difficult to know whether campaigners, policymakers, researchers, or anyone discussing this subject, is talking about the same things.
2. Greater diversity in research participants. We need less focus on Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic populations and more on geographic areas and populations that are most likely to experience climate-linked (im)mobility.
3. Consideration for how people with lived experience want to be depicted. More focussed research into how narrative and framing impact people’s perception of climate-linked (im)mobilities and how people experiencing climate-linked (im)mobilities want to be depicted. And centering their lived experience in the conversation.
4. Research on internal movement and lack of movement. Explore internal climate-linked mobility (within borders) and narratives of climate-linked immobility.
5. True multidisciplinarity. Closer collaboration between migration, climate and communications experts in research design, in order to capture nuance and complexity of climate-linked (im)mobilities whilst still telling powerful stories practitioners can amplify.
6. Give agency to people on the move. Explore stories that show people have agency, such as depicting migration as an effective strategy for coping with – and adapting to – climate change impacts.
7. Stop assuming climate change will necessarily result in more migration. The exact amount of people moving in the context of climate change remains unknown and is very difficult to predict accurately.
8. Study governments, the media, and NGOS. Work more directly with – and include as participants – powerful actors like governments, the media and NGOs, to account for their outsized influence in shaping the public discourse.
9. More representative and nuanced ‘test narratives’. Avoid ‘test narratives’ that portray climate-linked migration as a crisis and ignore nuance. Ensure greater representation of migrant or origin community perspectives in the narratives and frames that are being tested.
10. More qual to balance the quant. More interdisciplinary expertise, particularly with input from migration studies, and a stronger qualitative focus to highlight nuance and personal experiences is needed.

We need narratives that are nuanced and portray the variety of experiences of climate-linked movement. They must raise awareness of dangerous narratives and their impacts on the public conversation, without downplaying the increasingly clear connection between climate change and new patterns of migration and displacement. 

Report authors: Luisa Melloh, Jenny Gellatly, Fahmida Miah, Alex Randall. Editor: Dr Chris Pollard.