The Landless, Displaced, and “Crisis”: Addressing the Impact of the European Union's Securitized Externalization Practices on Climate Migration

Introduction

Describe On November 6, 2021, climate activist Elizabeth Wathuti gave the speech Please open your hearts at COP26 in Glasgow (Muiruri, 2022). She makes it clear that there is an internationally skewed distribution between which states have caused climate change and which states experience the most devastating consequences. Wathuti highlights the problems underlying this skewed distribution by pointing out that Kenya accounts for only 0.1 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions that created the climate crisis but is nevertheless one of the countries hardest hit by climate change, (Ayompe et al., 2020). The World Bank reports in Groundswell, Preparing for internal climate migration, that climate change is estimated to displace 143 million people up to and including the year 2050 if no concrete measures exist are added (Barron, 2018). Climate migration is thus an international challenge. The World Bank highlights three regions where migration will majorly impact: sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. In addition to the estimated climate migration, these regions have something in common: widespread poverty prevails. The World Bank, therefore, notes that the most vulnerable areas will be most affected by climate migration (Barron, 2018). Despite this alarming prospect, there are currently no effective international regulations to protect the rights of climate refugees (Wyman, 2013).

Frank Biermann and Ingrid Boas, Professor of Global Sustainability Management at Utrecht University and Associate Professor of Environmental Policy at Wageningen University, respectively, put their finger on this through a presentation of the Geneva Convention, which regulates the right of all people to seek asylum (Biermann & Boas, 2012). This has been adopted by most of the world’s countries but fails to protect climate refugees as they are not included in the refugee provisions of the convention. Therefore, more efficient handling of their rights is required (Biermann & Boas, 2010).

Given this problem description, it is relevant to investigate why climate refugees lack better care. The world system analysis and Securitization are two theories that can be sought for an explanation within, which is the subject of the chapter. Immanuel Wallerstein, professor of sociology at Yale University, theory of World systems analysis defines the political science structural problems that can be considered to have generated climate migration (Kumar & Welz, 2001). Through this theory, it is possible to discuss the relationship between the central states’ influence on the climate affecting the climate migration in the peripheral states. The structural design of the world system based on a capitalistically imbued center-periphery model also raises the question of what kind of political climate refugees face during their quest for a safer life in the EU. The EU’s migration policy has a clear security perspective, and the security perspective is therefore central to the debate on the protection of climate migrants (Estevens, 2018). Barry Buzan, professor of political science at i.e., London School of Economics and an honorary professorship at the University of Copenhagen, Securitization theory explains the EU’s chosen approach regarding climate migrants. Through the theory of Externalization of Borders, it is also possible to see that the EU moves its borders to protect its privileges, similar to the World System Analysis’s picture of the global structures (Buzan et al., 1998), (Léonard, 2010), (Wallerstein, 2004). Against this presented background and the initial reflections based on the World System Analysis and Securitization and Externalization of Borders, this chapter will lead a discussion about why there is no better care for climate refugees. This chapter investigates the structural factors that lead to climate migration, how I can understand these, what mechanisms the EU creates to limit climate refugees, and how I can understand these.