Environmental Mobility in a Polarized World: Questioning the Pertinence of the “Climate Refugee” Label for Pacific Islanders

This note offers thoughts on the conceptual and empirical debate surrounding the “climate refugees” label, created as a theoretical category of migrants to reflect the plight of environmentally vulnerable communities. This note challenges this status on conceptual terms. First, we investigate its academic foundations and contend that it fails to portray the complexities of choice, agency, and causality in climate-induced mobility. We then parallel this concept with narratives on traditional asylum seekers to argue that, in a context of heightened anti-immigration sentiment, using security and victim frames may be counterproductive. Finally, we contend that the concept of “climate refugees” is difficult to institutionalize at the international level because it would require challenging dominant conceptions of humanitarian and environmental distress and call into question the West’s responsibility in global climate change and inequality. We conclude that promoting more humane and effective governance regimes requires integrating affected communities’ perspective and conceptualizing climate-induced mobilities as complex and multifactorial processes. Keeping in mind the political context in which it is being used, we argue that the label “climate refugees” is inefficient and inadequate in contemporary politics.