Climate Protection for Migration Prevention: Comparison of Policy Discourses on Climate Change and Migration in Austria, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden

Abstract

Climate is no longer a niche policy issue, and research increasingly focusses on how integrative policies are adopted, including on nexus topics such as climate change and migration. Comparing Austria, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, this article analyses to what extent these countries’ approaches to climate change and migration constitute normative climate policy integration, whereby climate concerns serve as a normative ordering principle. It concludes that rather than integrating these policy areas, migration prevention underlies and motivates climate and migration policy discourse, impacting how entire policy communities understand and make policy on the links between climate change and migration.