Moving on a Changing Planet: Knowledge and Policy on Climate Change and Migration in the Netherlands

“Policymaking is not simply problem solving. It is also a matter of setting up and defining problems in the first place” (in Rose, 1991, p.11). Considering the discrepancy between at-tention given to migration and climate change in academia and the attention given to this nexus in policy making in the Netherlands, this thesis is an inquiry to this discrepancy. The aim of this study is to shed light on the knowledge process in relation to public policy, with a focus on climate change and migration, in the Netherlands. The main research question is: what is the relation between knowledge and policy making regarding climate change and mi-gration in the Netherlands and how can this be explained? Taking theories on knowledge production and knowledge utilisation as primary concepts, it was found that there is an “epis-temic community” (Haas, 1992) concerning the nexus. However, knowledge utilisation of knowledge on the nexus is basically non-existent, apart from people realising that the two phenomena do affect each other to some extent. Policy making in the Netherlands happens in silos and does not reflect the synergy that is found between the two policy topics of migration and climate change as presented in literature and research projects. It is argued that this is because of the dynamics of policy making. Politics, for a large share, determines the course of policy action and therefore simultaneously establishes its limits. As a derivative of this, ur-gency is necessary for a topic such as the nexus to end up on the policy agenda. An integrated approach to the policy design regarding climate change and migration is argued to result in more adaptive, adequate solutions.