Explaining Climate Change Induced Human Mobility: Revisiting Traditional and Emerging Migration Theories in the Wake of Regularising Climate Change Induced Human Mobility under International Law

Abstract

The term “environmental refugees” was used by the United Nations Environmental Program in 1985, drawing the international community’s attention to environmentally induced human mobility for the first time. Almost 40 years on, migration experts, lawyers as well as the international community struggle to define and to conceptualise an imminent phenomenon. Migration studies as such are still struggling for their own emancipation among other fields of social sciences, and now migration experts are challenged with a novel social phenomenon, climate change induced human mobility. In fact, environmentally induced human mobility is not a new phenomenon, it is merely a novel research area. In this article, I will collect and summarise traditional and emerging migration theories and concepts, in order to establish whether climate change induced human mobility may be interpreted by any of these theories at all, or if not, how could these be adapted to understand climate change induced human mobility.