Securitization of climate change induced migration: analysis of the European Union discourses and policies

Migration has always been a way for people to reach a better life and a strategy to adapt to changing conditions. Since the early 1000s, climate-related environmental changes have begun to directly impact communities whose way of life is dependent on nature and local resources. Owing to climate change, which is mostly a result of human activity, and the devastating environmental changes it has created, people have begun to relocate voluntarily or forcefully, to abandon their homelands, and these migrations within the country or across borders are now evident. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) made a sobering prediction in 2008 that 200 million people will migrate in 2050 due to climate change (IOM, 2008). Internal Relocation Monitoring Centre (IDMC), one of the most cited and widely recognized data sources on disaster displacement, reported in 2021 that: "In 2020, 30.7 million new displacements were triggered by disasters in 145 countries and territories.". The globally warmed world is now facing with mass-scale human displacements which became a “threat multiplier” for human security. Although knowledge about migration as an impact of climate change has been analyzed for a while, there is a gap of empirically based study on the linkage between climate change and securitization to be researched furtherly in academic and political discourse of international relations. This thesis aims to analyze climate change induced migration and security nexus through theoretical framework of human security and in the context of the securitization theory developed by the Copenhagen School; and how the European Union (EU) structured securitization policies on climate change related migration; and as an estimable actor and global leader since the ratification and adaptation of Paris Agreement, how EU’s securitization policies have been processed under the Union’s legal initiatives.