The politics of environmental migration in climate change policy

The main purpose of this Master's thesis is to research, explore and explain the operation of environmental migration as a frame and approach to addressing the impacts of climate change within international, regional and national policies. This thesis examines how far and in what ways policy discourses and legal conventions construct and control 'environmental migration' in climate change policies. Migration is used as a traditional coping strategy in the Pacific region; however, preliminary research indicates that there is an absence of policy addressing environmental migration. This thesis investigates climate change policies relevant to the Pacific region. It contextualises these policies, situating environmental migration within them, and inquires how 'environmental refugee' is located within these policies. Such inquiry gives rise to a broader debate about the rights and entitlements of people affected by environmental degradation, the representation of the phenomenon in policy and legal conventions, and the practical solutions that people affected by environmental degradation can seek. To address these questions and debates, this thesis conducts a critical frame analysis of 18 climate change policies to uncover the dominant and subordinate policy frames informing them. The thesis explains how powerful nations and international organisations construct and control several frames including 'adaptation and mitigation', 'environmental migration' and 'environmental refugee' and in so doing control the outcomes of climate change policies. A key finding of this thesis is that 'environmental migration' is consistently absent from climate change policies and hence is not politically accessible to people affected by environmental degradation, such as those in the Pacific Island states, Tuvalu and Kiribati.