June 16th, 2025

Climate Migration: A Crucial Dimension of Climate Crisis Education

By Richard Beach and Allen Webb

Link to JSE May 2025 General Issue Table of Contents

Link to Article PDF

 

Abstract: This article describes the importance of having students study the relationship between climate change and migration as phenomena currently impacting millions of people now and more so in the future. Teachers can have students examine how their communities develop resilience or mitigation practices to cope with climate change impacts to reduce the need to migrate, study the history of migration due to different reasons, the use of positive and negative language employed to describe migrants, and the portrayals of migration in literature as well as in the media, movies, or documentaries, in ways that lead to their perceiving the need to address the climate crisis.

Keywords: migration, climate change, heat, sea rise, history, language, literature, media

 

Environmental Impacts Making Migration Inevitable

Our increasing greenhouse gas emissions continue to raise global temperatures and cause climate migration directly through unsustainable heat, drought, flooding, sea-level rise, and severe weather events (Miller, 2017) and indirectly as unsustainable environmental impacts foster economic crisis, conflict, and social breakdown. The impacts are being most intensely experienced first in the Global South but are also occurring in all parts of the globe.

In the United States, a 2020 real estate survey indicates that people who own homes in areas impacted by climate change are worried about climate risks, leading them to consider migrating. People need home insurance to sell and buy homes, and that insurance is rapidly becoming more expensive due to climate impacts, or even not available as in parts of Florida or California. First Street (2025) has correlated this increase in insurance rates with a prediction that more than 55 million Americans may migrate, given climate risks in the next three decades.

Increasing drought in the Southwest has led the Colorado River to decline by 20 percent, putting some of the fastest-growing American cities at risk; Denver acquires half of its water from the river, and Las Vegas, which gets 90% of its water from the river (Brulliard, 2022; Lustgarten, 2022). As Greenland and Antarctic ice melts and the warmer ocean expands, 133 million people along the North American Atlantic and Gulf coasts may need to move.

Global heating events have high costs. For example, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused a $161 billion loss for New Orleans; Hurricane Opal in 1995 caused a 9.6 billion dollars loss to the Florida panhandle; Hurricane Milton in 2024 caused a $85 billion loss to central Florida; and Hurricane Helene also in 2024 caused 250 billion dollars in loss to communities in the Southeast, particularly western North Carolina (Stevens, 2024). Given these high costs, communities, states, and/or the federal government may lack the funding to cover these costs and the need to fund the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide immediate responses to these hurricanes. These costs and reparations are borne unequally as climate change intensifies existing inequality.

It is estimated that by 2070, extremely hot zones that currently consist of less than one percent of the globe, as in the Sahara, will cover a fifth of the globe, impacting one in three people who may be forced to migrate. Many people in the African Sahel, on the border of the Sahara, have already begun moving to the coasts and cities (Lustgarten, 2020). Given this increased heat, as well as increased droughts, flooding, and extreme weather events, there has been a decline in agriculture in low-income countries, countries where 59% of employment involves agriculture, resulting in the need to migrate (Adepoju, 2000). The warming of water in the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic resulted in the highest number of hurricanes in 2020 in history while flooding in the Midwest caused damage of $11 billion (Lustgarden, 2022), as well as increased heat and drought in the Southwest resulting in fewer water impacts leading to migration (Adamo & deSherbinin, 2014).

 

Climate Impacts Leading To Migration

These climate change impacts have increased global migration (Soukharev, 2025). One analysis of global migration found that from 2019 to 2022, an average of 30 million people migrated for each of those years (Chi et al., 2025). 4.1 million people immigrated to the United States in 2022, with 840,000 leaving the country, an overall increase of 3,2 million, resulting in the country with the highest number of immigrants of any country in the world.

The present-day movement of “economic migrants” or “political refugees” often has climate dimensions; droughts in Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Southern Mexico, and Central America are factors increasing conflict and economic desperation, and that conflict and desperation often lead to forced migration (Soukharev, 2025).

This migration is most likely with poor people moving from rural to urban areas within their own country (internally displaced). “The equivalent of a million-person city will be built every ten days over the next eighty years, as we undergo the biggest mass migration in our history.”  (Vince, 2022, p. 46). Most urbanization in the coming decades will consist of poor people in Africa and Asia migrating from rural areas for paid work. Almost all of them may live in slums with densities as great as 2,500 people per hectare or 2.47 acres, sharing just two or three toilets (the same number as the average US family home). There are around thirty megacities today, and by 2050, they are expected to merge into dozens of mega-regions, like Hong Kong–Shenzhen–Guangzhou in China, where more than 100 million people will live in a seemingly endless city.

Estimates of future climate migration vary. The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) estimates there may be more than a billion climate migrants by 2050 (McAllister, 2024). While the poorer nations in the Global South are most adversely impacted, migrating poor people from these nations will be difficult as they encounter political resistance in wealthier countries (Rikani et al., 2022). Increased migration into Europe due to climate change impacts in Africa and the Middle East has already created a political backlash (Weise, 2025).

A review of research on factors precipitating migration finds that “the determinants of migration, and especially climate-related migration, are complex” (Letta et al., 2024, p.1239). For example, while sudden short-term flooding may not lead to migration, repeated and long-term flooding does lead to migration. Another factor shaping migration is how people’s cultural or emotional attachments to certain communities or places serve to define their identities, leading to their reluctance to migrate (Amin et al., 2021; Daoust & Selby, 2024). Deep connections based on lived experiences may override empirical media or policy analyses indicating the need to migrate (Farbotko, 2022).

 

Use of Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric

Climate migration also crosses national boundaries and will increasingly do so as entire regions become excessively hot and dry or permanently flooded. The largest populations of migrants and refugees are migrating from neighboring countries in the Global South to northern countries. This movement of climate migrants to the global North has led to politicians fostering nativism, a conservative perception of migrants as engaged in illegal actions.

Yet a recent and extensive 6-year study in Texas showed that “undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes (Portocarrero, 2025). Moreover, undocumented immigrants had the lowest rates for felony crime, far below that of American citizens and even below that of documented immigrants, and documented immigrants were significantly less likely to commit crimes than American citizens (Portocarrero, 2025).

In the United States, immigrants and their children comprised 26% of the U.S. population (approximately 84.8 million people) in 2021 (Esterline & Batalova, 2022). These immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. In 2022, a year with good data, undocumented immigrants, in particular, paid $59.4 billion in federal taxes and $37.3 billion in state and local taxes (ITEP, 2024). However, undocumented immigrants, including DACA holders, are ineligible to receive these federal benefits (ITEP, 2024).

Higher immigration levels correspond to higher employment rates for native-born Americans, given how immigrants play a critical role in driving economic growth, entrepreneurship, and innovation and are substantially more likely to start businesses than native-born individuals with similar characteristics. Immigrants also take on difficult, low-paying jobs that natives are reluctant to fill; half of all farmworkers in the United States are undocumented immigrants (Costa & Shierholz, 2024; Macis, 2024).

A research review finds more public support for environmental migrants than economic migrants, particularly in higher-income countries (Banulescu-Bogdan & Huang, 2024). Migrants displaced by shorter-term disasters such as floods or hurricanes may receive more support but less support if they remain displaced longer.

Given the public’s anxieties over migration, planned, orderly migrations versus unpredictable migration also receive more support. There is an urgent need for sustainability education and media aimed at the general public to address the links between climate and migration and the misinformation, distortions, and lies about immigrants. There is also a need for teachers to provide increased support for students from immigrant families related to families coping with climate change impacts (Wang & Yu, 2021).

 

Sustainability and Migration

Since the beginning of life on earth, plants and animals have migrated to find better, more sustainable environments. Migration is one of nature’s most important survival strategies. Human beings have always migrated. Over hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors migrated back and forth across Africa to adapt to changing climates and ecosystems, which profoundly shaped human evolution.

As humanity faces its greatest environmental challenge–a population of 10 billion people, resource limitations, and a demographic crisis–we should not be handicapping ourselves by limiting our most important survival tool. We will only meet our global challenges through planned and extensive human movement and redistribution. (Vince, 2022, p. 47)

Communities can adopt sustainable and resilient practices that limit adverse impacts and reduce the need to migrate so long as earth temperatures are prevented from soaring (Coren et al., 2024; Hill, 2019). The Netherlands has a long history of building dikes, floodgates, dams, and sea walls as adaptability practices. Coastal cities are installing floodgates and redesigning drainage systems. Communities coping with heat-induced wildfire have passed regulations to remove plant growth around houses, limit fire spreads, utilize safe burns to reduce fire load, and adopt new building codes to reduce damage to homes and buildings.

Given that communities in the Great Lakes Region (GLR) could experience an influx of migration due to lower temperatures, natural resources, and ready access to water while at the same time experiencing a loss of manufacturing and populations, community members are beginning to engage in planning on how to adjust to potential increased migration (Van Berkel et al., 2022).

Given the difficulty and expense of migration, there are proposals that governments and fossil fuel corporations compensate for the loss of property and pay community relocation expenses (Wündisch, 2022). For example, after the building of the Yangtze River Dam in China which flooded communities along the river, the Chinese government assisted that those people living along with river with compensation to migrate. At the end of the Obama administration, the federal government allocated one billion dollars to 13 states to help people migrate from their communities (Davenport & Robertson, 2016).

In contrast, despite the increased threat of migration within the United States due to increased flooding from sea rise, rising heat, and more extreme weather events due to climate change resulting in migration, the second Trump administration has adopted policies to deport a large number of immigrants, policies 46% of Americans oppose (YouGov, 2025). It has also adopted a stance denying climate change by defunding government agencies and universities researching climate change mitigation and adaptation, including stopping collecting data on climate change impacts and supporting increased production of fossil fuels that cause climate change.

    

Justification for Teaching About Climate Change and Migration

Given the impact of climate change on their present and especially their future, young people have a right to climate and sustainability education, especially and most immediately for the 90% of 1.8 billion youth aged 10–24 years who live in developing countries that are first and most impacted by climate change (Barford et al., 2021).

Teachers are often overwhelmed with teaching established curricula, and district and state standards rarely focus on climate change. Many teachers have not received training on climate change in their college/university programs. An analysis of the degree to which 1,068 bachelor’s and master’s degree programs focused on media/communication instruction from 28 European countries found that only 14% of programs focused on sustainability topics. Only 6% of universities offered dedicated modules on the topic, with the exceptions being “Media and Environmental Communication” at the University of Brighton and “Sustainable Communication” at Jönköping University (Karmasin & Voci, 2021). Media studies at John Cabot University in Rome focuses on multimodal media climate-themed writing, climate blogging, use of visual memes, public service announcements, and audiovisual proposals for final course projects (Lopez, 2024); see also the special issues on Ecomedia Literacy in the Journal of Sustainability Education (Lopez et al., 2020).

Teachers in Florida, a state that experiences some of the highest climate change impacts, are often discouraged from teaching about climate change. The state’s Department of Education required that science textbook companies remove references to climate change in their textbooks (Branch, 2024). The department also approved videos featuring disinformation and misrepresenting climate science (Waldman, 2023).

In contrast, in 2022, New Jersey began instruction based on climate change standards for all grade and subject areas (Shendell et al., 2023). An analysis of students taking an “Introduction to HS Students to Climate Change, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice,” consistent with those New Jersey standards, found that students acquired knowledge connections of climate change to human activities and the need for taking action related to addressing environmental justice issues (Shendell et al., 2023). Another study of students in 14 high schools in low-income communities in South Africa found that they acquired equivalent knowledge about climate change impacts and the need for humans to take action (Kutywayo et al., 2022). Other states, including New York, Illinois, California, and Minnesota, have now adopted state standards for teaching climate change.

                   

Activities for Teaching About Climate Change and Migration

The following activities could be used by teachers in all subjects to engage students in activities that teach about climate change, migration, and sustainability.

 

Studying the History of Migrations Over Time and in the Present

Students could study the history of previous migrations to better understand people’s needs, risks, and migration challenges. The PBS program, Great Migrations: People on the Move (https://www.pbs.org/show/great-migrations-a-people-on-the-move) is a valuable resource. The African American Great Migration was a massive movement of people from the rural South to urban areas in the North, Midwest, and West, primarily between 1916 and 1970. Driven by a combination of economic hardship and the desire to escape the harsh realities of the Jim Crow South, including segregation and violence, led to approximately six million Black Americans migrating.

Students can access interactive visual maps to view examples of migration from countries throughout the world (Kingsbury, 2025). For example, there are maps of migration for people going to certain destination cities from the United States, Brazil, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, India, and Australia (http://t.ly/Ip3_i).

Students can also study their own family’s migration through family oral history, investigate historical events and patterns of migration related to their ancestry, and share what they learn with peers (Ernst-Slavit & Morrison, 2018). Students learning about and sharing narratives and family examples enhanced their understanding and attitudes toward migration (Blanck (2021).

For a multidisciplinary Spanish course at the United States Naval Academy, the instructors created a teaching module focused on climate impacts and migration in Mexico and Central America, focusing on migration and the “Dry Corridor,” water scarcity, water abundance, and hurricanes (Peart et al., 2020). A qualitative analysis of students’ learning in this course found that students acquired an enhanced understanding of the connections between migration and these climate images and the decision-making processes involved in deciding to migrate.

High school students, some of whom migrated from another country and who were now living on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, engaged in a role-play activity in which they recalled an experience of a climate impact in their home country that may have led their own family or other families to migrate (Ditchfield, 2021). Each role-play group received a letter from a relative who had migrated to the United States inviting them to migrate to the relative’s community, leading the students in each group to address the questions of whether they would want to migrate, the possibility of splitting up their family and then coping with living as undocumented in the United States, leading to students recognizing the complexities and risks of migration.

 

Analyzing the Language of Climate Migration

The Council on Foreign Relations (2023) employs the following definitions: “International migrants” relocate from one country to another, a category that includes “economic migrants” seeking better economic opportunities elsewhere, “refugees” who are leaving a country due to persecution or conflicts, and “environmental migrants” who are leaving for environmental reasons. “Legal immigrants” or “asylum seekers” can apply for a visa to live in a host country. In contrast, “undocumented immigrants” or “illegal aliens” lack these permissions and may be deported.

While the United States government distinguishes “refugees” from “asylum seekers” based on when and how they apply for protective status, in contrast, “refugees” apply from a country outside the United States before going to the border, while “migrants” apply when they arrive at a border. In contrast, the United Nations considers “migrants” who flee persecution and war to be “refugees” regardless of when or where they request permission.

One issue in this use of language in terms such as “climate refugee” versus “climate migrant” is the degree to which those words imply different degrees of agency in adapting or not adapting to framing climate change as a threat (Sakellari, 2021). While “climate refugee” implies a sense of fatality, “climate migrant” implies an ability to employ adaptation practices.

The language of everyday discourse and the media often frames immigrants in separated, even racialized “us” versus “them” terms. This discourse is unlikely to analyze how immigration takes place in response to greenhouse gas emissions generated by the “us” of the Global North (Sakellari, 2021). In reflecting on his students in a college located near the US-Mexican border writing about their own experiences with migration, José Luis Cano (2024) notes the difficulty of distancing himself from the often racist “institutions at the US-Mexico border [that] remind me of their stuckness in achievable or aspirational whiteness” (p. 252). Establishing whiteness as an ideal norm facilitates negative stereotyping and scapegoating of immigrants as a dangerous “other,” a strategy of the Trump administration.

Students can also analyze how the use of language reflects how certain discourses or metaphors frame climate change in general as well as climate migrants in particular in negative ways (Beach, 2025). For example, the “WAVE” metaphor applied to immigration equates the notion of a large amount of water to the concept of large numbers of migrants moving into a new area, “overwhelming” communities. (Bellewes, 2024). Students can study the use of metaphors describing the movement of immigrants, which serve to imply negative meanings, for example, “tide wave,” “spiraling tsunami,” “flooding,” or nations being “swamped” (Bellewes, 2024).

Teachers can have students critically examine how language use can privilege a human-only perspective instead of defining how humans are a part of ecosystems necessary for human survival (Appleby & Pennycook, 2017). For example, in an undergraduate class, students were asked to review words related to migration from the TIDE Keywords site (http://www.tideproject.uk/keywords-home) related to how the use of certain words such as “stranger,” “alien,” “settler,” “traveler,” “vagrant,” and “exile” implies certain positive or negative meanings in ways that distinguish and divorce immigrants from their ecosystems (Dhar, 2021, p. 63). Students then picked one keyword to study the history of its meaning as employed in the past and now in the present to present their findings to the class. One student noted, “‘being a denizen sounds like being a second class citizen—like if you’re from Puerto Rico [and in the US].’” (p. 64). Another student stated, “‘I’m seeing that Merchant of Venice speech about an “alien” plotting against a “citizen” now in a whole new light.’” (p. 64). Students in the class give fifteen-minute presentations about their analysis of keywords followed by discussions, leading to students creating a summary to post on the course website.

 

Responding to Literature Portraying Climate Change Impacts on Migration.

Students can also respond to portrayals of climate change and migration in literature (Salazkina & Siddiqu, 2025). In an undergraduate class taught at The Ohio State University, “Movements, Migrations, Memories,” Amrita Dhar (2021), who transitioned from a non-resident to a U.S. resident, shared her experiences coping with border challenges with her students.

She had students read graphic memoirs, novels, and essays about migration through climate change and environmental justice perspectives, including Refugee Tales (Herd & Pincus, 2016) and Gun Island (Ghosh, 2020). Students posed questions such as “‘What can I do for you [the refugee I have read about] now? What can I do but listen? What can I do more than listen?’ or ‘How can I help you [the detainee I have read about]? Can I help you within the system we are both in?’” (p. 67). These questions led to their writing letters to immigrants based on reflecting on responses to their readings and topics in the course.

In his seventh-grade class, Beutel (2021) showed students an infographic from the United Nations Refugee Agency along with images of migrants moving from their original to their new places, leading to students posing questions in response to these images related to reasons for migrating and how migrants were treated in supportive and restrictive ways. Students then read the novel Refugee (Gratz, 2017), which portrays young adult characters migrating in the 1930s, 1990s, and 2015. In class discussion, students examined the connections between the book’s different migrations and the characters’ challenges.

Allen Webb, the co-author of this report, taught an introductory course on climate refugees. His students were first- and second-year college students with majors across the spectrum. The central text of this class was The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck, 1939), which won the National Book Award in 1939, the Pulitzer Prize in 1940, and was cited by the Nobel Prize Committee in 1962. Set in the 1930s Dust Bowl, the novel describes a severe drought in the Southern Plains States that created massive dust storms, removed topsoil, and destroyed food crops. The primary characters in the novel, the Joads family, departed from Oklahoma on their journey to California; just one family of 3.5 million people who left the Great Plains, the largest short-term migration in American history. ​​(Recent tree-ring research indicates human-caused global warming contributed to the Dust Bowl (Foderaro, 2019)).

The novel naturally divides into three parts, corresponding to the experiences of many climate refugees: environmental crisis (drought), migration, and life in the new land. Steinbeck used those three ideas to frame reading and facilitate connections between the novel and climate refugees in the real world. The Grapes of Wrath describes the challenge of crossing the California border. One of Allen’s students, Linda (pseudonym), explains,

The migrants had great hopes for the journey ahead. Unfortunately, the country [state] they were about to travel to would not be as free or welcoming. “This is a free country. Fella can go wherever he wants.” “That’s what you think! Ever hear of the border patrol on the California line? Police from Los Angeles- stop you. Says, got a driver’s license? Let’s see it. Tore it up. Says you can’t come in without no driver’s license.” (Steinbeck, p. 11)

Upon their arrival to California, they were “welcomed” with cops demanding to search through their things and being threatened that if they do not leave, they will be burned out.

Students examined not only drought impacts in the 1930s novel but also the drought impacts today in Mexico and Central America. His student, Samual (pseudonym), connects the climate refugees in Grapes of Wrath with the current crisis:

Most were farmers who were fleeing because their acres could no longer support them. They faced discrimination from the Californians they came in contact with and the police. It was brutal. ‘Okies,’ a term that once reminded them where they came from, soon became an insult. People took advantage of their desperation. They got paid low wages that were hard to live off of and were often given poor living conditions in the camps.

In our modern-day world, immigrants from Mexico and Central America are treated harshly… robbed by local police…thrown off of a moving train…taken by gang members… hard for them to leave Mexico and cross over into the United States because of our flawed system and Trump’s hatred of immigrants.

Students learned that migrant discrimination and scapegoating justify mistreatment and loss of rights. Nancy (pseudonym), noted that,

It seems to me that it was easier to take away the basic human rights of these migrants if the authorities and the local people could make them seem less human. With this novel, we get to see how nearly impossible it is to survive without basic human rights.

After reading The Grapes of Wrath, students explored a variety of other literary works with climate refugee themes. They read climate fiction, “cli-fi,” including Water Knife: A Novel (Bacigalupi, 2015) which portrays a violent future for refugees in the parched and overheated American Southwest. Students also read the moving poem “Home” by Warsan Shire (https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/home-warsan-shire) and “Dear Matafele Pienem” (https://www.map.llc.ed.ac.uk/creative-writing/dear-matafele-peinem) the poet and climate activist Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner from the Marshall Islands. Students viewed the film Sleep Dealer (Rivera, 2008), which portrays a dystopian future with migrants coping with closed borders. In the other class noted above, students responded positively to Ai Weiwei’s (2017) documentary, Human Flow, about the global refugee crisis related to climate change impacts on refugees.

Students also read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948) to discuss human rights violations portrayed in their reading and issues surrounding the definitions of “climate migrants” and “refugees.”

Allen also taught a graduate seminar focused on climate migration for public school English teachers and English graduate students aspiring to teach English at the university level. Novels including the prophetic Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (1993) and Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (2017), the memoir Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli (2017), and the monograph Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security by Todd Miller (2017). They also listened to presentations by people from local non-profit organizations supporting migrants and refugees who facilitated questions about rights, justice, borders, militarism, and the challenges of making life in new contexts in the climate emergency.

The seminar examined the construction of school knowledge and why and how climate migration issues are typically excluded. This seminar also had students engage in critical and creative thinking, develop strategies for teaching and research, and include input and involvement from and with local organizations.

Students developed teaching plans for a two-to-three-week unit addressing the Mexican/American border that could be incorporated into various courses. They were told to focus on a literary work such as a novel, play, several short stories, collection of poems, memoir, several essays, film, photo collection, or other genres. Ellen Ruhlman created a unit focused on climate justice using the text, The Devil’s Highway: a True Story (Urrea, 2004), where her students would examine specific terms in the text “wetbacks,” “tonks,” “illegals,” “taco-benders” and the website of a conservative congressman from Colorado describing “illegal immigration” to understand how the climate migrants were considered “aliens before they ever crossed the line.” Alex Nussio built her unit around the book Those Damned Immigrants: America’s Hysteria Over Undocumented Immigration (Román & Olivas, 2013). She wanted her students to “examine the views and attitudes of individuals close to them, friends or family members, who may have been affected by anti-immigrant rhetoric.”

 

Responding to Portrayals of Climate Migration in the Media, Movies, or Documentaries

In her analysis of media coverage of migration and climate change, Sakellari (2021) identified two competing frames shaping perceptions of migration associated with her previously mentioned analysis of language about migration. The security threat frame focused on how migration poses an actual or potential threat to countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Despite limited evidence linking migration and crime, this frame was a central theme in the Trump presidential campaigns and administrations. A “victim frame” portrays immigrants as passive, helpless victims of climate change impacts, leading to perceptions of instability associated with migrant groups and, therefore, as potential threats (Sakellari, 2021).

These frames position climate migrants as the “other” and fail to address and support communities impacted by climate change. Therefore, there is a need for more media coverage based on a social justice perspective that portrays how and why certain people and communities are more vulnerable to climate change impacts and ensure that compensation approaches do not trigger the victim/threat duality. A justice framework would make visible the political-economic structures that reduce resiliency and recovery from climate-related stresses (p. 76).

Students could identify how the news/social media, movies, TV programs, or documentaries present reasons for people migrating related to the role of climate change. Students could also learn about the actual experience of migrants, their decisions about leaving, their experiences traveling, and the extent to which their new communities were welcoming and/or better alternatives to their original communities.

Students can also examine how media reporting and political discourse on climate change migration draws on racist depictions, false information, and/or lack of information about the causes and impacts of climate change and how to address it. The Project 2025 document, for example, argues for defunding of federal government attempts to address climate change by asserting that mitigation and adaptation policies would be expensive, but fails to address the expense of failing to mitigate or adapt to climate change and the potential economic benefits of renewable energy (Bolsen & Shapiro, 2018).

Students could then produce documentaries, podcasts, or even TikTok videos to share with peers and larger audiences. For example, students could interview local immigrants in their communities and peers from immigrant families about their experiences or their ancestors’ experiences. They could learn and share about change impacts in their communities, how their communities are addressing these impacts, and/or whether those impacts would or would not result in people deciding to leave those communities (Beach & Smith, 2024).

 

Summary and Conclusion

We have reviewed research indicating the close relationships between the increasing impacts of climate change on heat, droughts, sea rise, flooding, extreme weather events, and subsequent human migration. We believe climate migration education should take place within a comprehensive sustainability approach that is environmental, economic, and social. The current environmental and political crisis underscores the urgency of this topic and approach.

Along with learning about the climate crisis in its environmental, economic, and social dimensions, students benefit from studying the histories of previous migrations, how and why people are on the move today and in the future. Language matters and students can examine the positive and negative use of language framing climate change and migration.

By responding to literature and accounts portraying people undertaking migration, students understand both the environmental contexts that generate migration and the human experience of moving from one place to another. Students can examine how the news/social media, movies, or documentaries portray climate change and generate their media to communicate to peers and members of their community about the need to address climate change and better understand immigrants and migration.

Given that students are currently experiencing or anticipating a future impacted by climate change, the study of climate change and migration can help them recognize that they and their families may need to migrate, undertake difficult decision-making about the options of staying or leaving, and find their way in new settings and circumstances. With this study, students will come to understand better that treating immigrants as problematic outsiders fails to recognize their humanity and their fundamental right to leave dangerous environments and find better ways to live. Students will also more clearly see the need to assume an active role in addressing the climate crisis.

The approach of treating so-called “outsiders” as dangerous and militarizing borders in the face of the climate crisis that Christian Parenti (2011) describes as climate fascism “based on exclusion, segregation, [and] repression [that] is horrific and bound to fail.” He states,

If climate change is allowed to destroy whole economies and nations, no amount of walls, guns, barbed wire, armed aerial drones, or permanently deployed mercenaries will be able to save one half of the planet from the other. (p. 11)

Climate change is making it clear that we must learn how to share our planet with our brothers and sisters.

That sharing is going to lead to massive changes. Migration works best with cooperation rather than antagonism. There are rapidly declining birthrates in the Global North, and we need to recognize that accepting migrants strengthens rather than weakens our society. We must use our imagination not to be frightened by scary “others,” but to conceive and build a survivable, sustainable, and cooperative world drawing on the diverse talents and energies of all of us, all members of our human family.

 

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