Cosmopolitanism & Agenda setting in the U.K. & Spain How media portrayed climate migrants from 2005 to 2022

This paper is the result of an investigation on the portrayal of climate refugees in four newspapers: two in Spain and two in the United Kingdom, two progressist ones and two conservative ones. Under a set of parameters based in Immanuel Kant’s perpetual peace and Copenhagen School’s securitization theory this paper explores if the information published in the cited newspapers between 2005 and 2022 pivots towards a securitization approach or a cosmopolitan one. The research uses the agenda setting theory to explain why a specific portrayal of climate migrants and refugees in the media can shape the public opinion on them. It is a picture of the current situation of the issue of climate migrations in the media and a proposal on how the information about it could be analysed through the media agenda setting theory. A spectrum with securitization acts in one of the extremes and the perpetual peace standards in the other that allows to discern if media set the agenda from a securitization approach or through the cosmopolitan values described by Kant. With a small sample size this research has reached the conclusion that the climate refugees’ portrayal currently is mainly positive. Even though the conservative publications tend to a securitization approach and the progressist ones to a cosmopolitan framing. Regarding the small sample it appears quite revealing the fact that overall is not a vastly discussed issue in the press, neither in the academia. The awareness about the issue has increased during the last two decades. More academical literature has been published and the press is progressively giving more space to climate migrants and climate migrations. Nevertheless, it is a relatively new concept that is still wining its own space in academia and the public debate. This paper is an exercise of critical assessment of the press, awareness about a problem that is getting bigger every day and the exploration of a new way to approach agenda setting analysis applied to a very specific issue.