Climate Change and the Materiality of the “Climate Migrant”

Page numbers: 75-84

Author: D. McCormack

“The “migrant crisis” has become a familiar media trope. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, portrays Latin American migrants, immigrants and refugees as a threat to American security (Durkin & Lakhani, 2018). His politicization of Latin American migrants as part of “a growing humanitarian and security crisis” (Rucker & Sonmez, 2019) calls on heightening the American security apparatus. The “climate refugee” or “climate migrant” is increasingly a human rights subject and scholarly focus (AI, 2018a, Baldwin, 2014; Bettini, 2017). In this root cause analysis, I examine the “migrant crisis” through the lens of climate change to illustrate why citizens of Latin American…”