The Mainstreaming of Climate Migration within the European Commission

The growth in public and policy attention for climate change and its ramifications has led to an increased recognition at the global level for climate migration and its many nuanced aspects. Such increased attention has highlighted the multi-disciplinary characteristic of climate migration and the necessity for the subject to be addressed across a wide range of disciplines. Within the EU-sphere, this need for a multi-disciplinary approach has translated into an exigency for mainstreaming. The requirement for mainstreaming within the realm of this topic has been advocated for by the global community with its mention in the Paris Agreement, the COPs and the Global Compact for Migration. In light of the global promotion for climate migration mainstreaming, this study has asked; how is climate migration mainstreamed within the European Commission, and what hinders and facilitates it? In order to answer this research question, a content analysis was conducted of 24 key documents from DG ECHO, DG DEVCO, DG HOME and DG CLIMA – the four sample DGs upon which this study was based. This data was compounded with the inclusion of 7 semi-structured interviews with policymakers from the abovementioned DGs, and 2 semi-structured interviews with external experts from IOM and the EU-UN Delegation in Geneva. The culmination of the data collated, in line with the theory, was the deduction that climate migration is not currently mainstreamed within the European Commission. Furthermore, the initiation of mainstreaming is currently hindered by the sample DGs failure to fulfil the prerequisites required for the successful initiation of mainstreaming.