ABSTRACT
People have always migrated temporally or definitively during periods of droughts, floods, and other climatic events. However, it is since anthropogenic climate change entered the international political agenda that the interest in the links between environmental change and migration has spiked. Although climate change cannot be isolated from the other social, political, environmental, and demographic factors that together shape migration, human-driven environmental change adds very important dimensions of equity and responsibility into the equation. While research has greatly evolved from environmental deterministic explanations to more sophisticated accounts of migration in the context of climate change, migration is still often either framed as a ‘problem to be solved’ or as a ‘solution to be managed’. This chapter seeks to demystify the mainstream security and adaptation frames upon which analyses of climate and migration interactions rely. Examples from Africa and Asia are used to illustrate the political, and not environmental, nature of human migration in the context of climate change.
