Climate Migrants or Climate Refugees? Danes’ Attitudes to Whether Climate Migrants Should Have the Right to Apply for Asylum

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-2443001/v1

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Climate Migrants or Climate Refugees? Danes’ Attitudes to Whether Climate Migrants Should Have the Right to Apply for Asylum

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2443001/v1

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As climate changes increase in rate and intensity so will the number of people displaced from their homelands by climate events. This will in inevitably lead to the question of whether European countries should allow this group to apply for asylum. This will matter significantly for their chances of being granted a temporary or permanent stay. Despite sometimes being referred to as ‘climate refugees’ then people who are displaced by weather events are not protected under UN rules about asylum. Therefore, it would require public support to change policies towards this group. Using Denmark as a case for this I show that there is no support for giving climate migrants the right to apply for asylum. I also show that the resistance towards this is biggest among Danes with climate sceptic values, who vote for more right-leaning parties, and who worry about the number of climate migrants.

Climate migrant

climate refugee

asylum

attitudes

climate change

The global climate is getting warmer. This is predicted to bring about upheaval on a global scale, including the displacement of millions. The International Displacement Monitoring Center estimates that in 2020 nearly 30 million people were displaced due to weather events like droughts, storms, and floods (International Displacement Monitoring Center, 2020). Though it is difficult to make causal claims about the impact of climate change on the number of climate migrants, then research predicts that their numbers will increase in the future. As a result, climate migration could potentially increase a lot in the future. The most cited studies predict that in 2050 between 140 and 250 million people will be forced to migrate by climate-related events. Most of these migrants will be displaced internally or head to neighbouring countries, but some will head to Europe (Myers, 2002; Rigaud et al., 2018; Stern et al., 2006). This will increase over time, as climate changes ramp up and the increasing standard of living in Africa and Asia makes the cost of migration more affordable (Rigaud et al., 2018).

If the predicted increase in climate migrants does occur, it will give rise to many new issues. One of them is under which migration regime this type of migrant should be managed. Even though the terms “climate refugees” or “environmental refugees” sometimes are used to describe people displaced by climate events, then they are normally not included in the United Nations 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol relating to the status to seek protection, and therefore they cannot seek asylum (Biermann & Boas, 2010; Burkett, 2012). Thus, the policies regarding this type of migrant might be very dependent on whether the populations are supportive giving them the right to apply for asylum. Though there is a budding literature about the general attitudes to climate migrants in different countries (Arias & Blair, 2022; Hedegaard, 2022; Helbling, 2020), then there is no knowledge about this subject. Therefore, I ask the following questions: Do the Danish population think that climate migrants should be treated as asylum seekers and what explains variations in these attitudes?

People who have been forced to migrate due to climate events go by several different names in the literature: climate refugees, climate migrants, or environmentally displaced people being the most common (Ramlogan, 1996). Though different terms are used throughout the literature, then the literature seems to be trending towards the term climate migrants or climate change migrants. This term is generally preferred as it captures the fact being displaced by climate does not grant refugee status the UN conversions with a few exceptions. Therefore, if climate migrants are to be treated as climate refugees, and given the ability to apply for asylum, this would require political support and thus public support (Sharp, 1999).

There are three studies which focus on attitudes to climate migrants in the European context. The first is by Helbling(2020) who uses a factorial survey design to study the willingness to allow different types of migrants into Germany. The study compares climate migrants, who left because of droughts or rising sea levels, to political refugees and economic migrants. The second is by Hedegaard(2022) who draws on a conjoint experiment on attitudes to granting permanent residency conducted in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark. The study again compares reasons to leave the origin country and overall favorability in the population. The third is by Arias and Blair(2022) who again using a conjoint experiment in Germany and the US compares types of refugees and finds that migrants occupy a middle position between economic migrants and refugees in terms of being deserving of help. The studies tell us something about overall attitudes to climate migrants in Europe, but not about whether they should have asylum rights. Based on these studies I expect that the Danes are not willing to grant climate migrants any special rights, compared to other migrants. This forms the basis for the first hypothesis.

Hypothesis 1

The Danes are not supportive of granting climate migrants the right to apply for asylum

Next, I will outline theories to explain variations in attitudes, to answer the second part of the research question. Here I will draw on the conclusions of the much more developed literature on attitudes to migration in general, and link that to the specific studies on attitudes to climate migrants when possible. Based on this I find that there are two overall explanations, which seem to consistently explain attitudes to welcoming or rejecting climate migrants: (1) values and ideologies and (2) threat and worry. As these have been shown to best explain variations in attitudes migrants (Dinesen & Hjorth, 2020), I will apply the same in explaining attitudes to granting asylum.

Values and ideology

Overviews of the literature shows that values and ideologies are among the strongest and most explanation of attitudes to migration and migrants (Dinesen & Hjorth, 2020). The subject taps into clear value-based and ideological differences. For the same reason, it has become one of the most polarizing political issues. Turning from attitudes to migration in general to climate migrants I find the same overall pattern. The three studies from the European context find that people who vote for more right-leaning parties and/or hold more climate change sceptic values or attitudes are less to grant climate migrants access to their countries (Arias & Blair, 2022; Hedegaard, 2022; Helbling, 2020). Based on this I formulate the next two hypotheses:

Hypothesis 2

Danes who reject the existence of climate change are less likely to agree that migrants should be able to apply for asylum.

Hypothesis 3

Danes who vote for more right-leaning parties are less likely to agree that migrants should be able to apply for asylum.

Threat and worry

The debate in the migration literature has for a long time focused on whether who are more exposed to competition from migrants also are more critical of migration. However, studies show that when accounting for ideology and values this theory has very little relevance (Dinesen & Hjorth, 2020). Similarly, then studies of attitudes to climate migrants show very little relevance of socioeconomic factors. Indeed, Helbling (2020) does not find systematic differences in attitudes when comparing respondents with high skills and longer educations to those with low skills or shorter education. Hedegaard (2022) also finds no difference in acceptance rates across income, educational levels or types of employment.

This does not mean that economics and migration do not intersect. However, it seems that people do not consider how it will impact themselves, but how it will impact society in general. This is also called sociotropic and egotropic thinking (Kinder & Kiewiet, 1981). Thus, people who believe that migration poses a threat to society might be less willing to grant climate migrants asylum. In this regard, it is worth noticing that stories about climate migration often focus on the sheer scale of the issue. Publications from think tanks, charities, or NGOs often highlight how many migrants climate changes might induce and where they might be displaced to. This forms the basis of the fourth and final hypothesis.

Hypothesis 4

Danes who are worried that climate changes might increase the number of migrants in the future are less willing to agree that climate migrants should be able to apply for asylum

Data

The hypotheses outlined above will be tested using a survey collected in Denmark in December 2021 and January 2022. The survey was collected by the survey company YouGov and contains a total of 3.048 respondents. Weights are used to ensure that respondents are representative of the population (+ 18 years old).

Variables

As the dependent variable, I have used the following statement: “people who leave their homelands because of climate change should have the right to apply for asylum”. To this respondents could say that they fully disagree, somewhat disagree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat agree, fully disagree, or don’t know. The don’t know answers, which was 11% of the total sample, are not included in the study.

The first independent variable on climate values or perceptions of climate change is captured using the following statement: “climate changes are manmade”. Here the respondents could reply on a five point scale from scale from fully disagree to fully agree.

The second variable on ideology is captured using voting intentions. In Danish politics the issues of climate and migration both track with the ideological left-right divide. Therefore, the parties were coded into four groups: left, mainstream left, mainstream right, and right. Which parties are placed into which groups is shown in table A1 in the appendix. As quite a substantial part of the respondents answered “do not know” (14%), “will not say” (4%) or “cannot vote” (4%) I have included this as a combined category. They are included in the analysis, as removing them would bias the results.

The third independent variable on perceived threat or worry related to the number of climate migrants is captured using the following statement “I am worried that climate changes will increase the number of people who head towards Denmark”. Again, we use the same five point scale from fully disagree to fully agree.

In addition, I also controlled for several compositional variables which other studies have shown to impact attitudes to migrants in general or climate migrants specifically. Therefore, I included the respondent’s gender, age group, education, urbanization, occupation, and personal income.

Figure 1, below, shows that 35% of Danes fully disagree, while 19% somewhat disagree, with the statement that “people who leave their homelands because of climate change should have the right to apply for asylum”. There is thus a majority who are not supportive of this. At the other end of the scale, 12% somewhat agree and 7% fully agree with the statement, meaning that a combined 19% of Danes who support the idea. Finally, there is 26% who neither agree nor disagree with the statement. It is difficult to know what this middle position truly means. Some are likely ambivalent towards the idea, while there are likely also some hidden don’t know answers in here, though such an option was also provided. Overall, this supports the first hypothesis that Danes are not supportive of granting climate migrants the right to apply for asylum.

[Figure 1 about here]

Next, I turn to the second part of the analysis, where I explain variations in attitudes to this. To this aim, I use an ordered logit model. The results are shown as figures where the coefficients are plotted. In the model only the variables linked to the hypotheses are shown, this means that the results from age, gender, education, urbanization, and personal income are not shown here. However, the full model is shown in Table A2 in the appendix.

[Figure 2 about here]

Figure 2 shows the impact of the three main independent variables on attitudes granting climate migrants the right to apply for asylum. The first of the variables show the impact of agreeing or disagreeing with the statement that “climate changes are manmade”. This is interpreted to be an expression of climate change sceptic values. The reference category is those who agree, as I am especially interested in those who disagree. The effect of this on attitudes to granting climate migrants is indeed strong. Compared to the reference category who fully agree then those who fully disagree score almost one and a half lower on the five-point scale (-1,45^***). This is thus a strong and significant effect. The same is true for those who somewhat disagree (-1,025^***), neither agree nor disagree (0,554^***) and even those who somewhat agree (-0,318^***).

Next, is ideology, measured as voting intention in the next election. The parties are coded into left, mainstream left, mainstream right and right. Here the reference category is those voting for left-wing parties. Again, there are strong differences, even when controlling for the climate values above. Those who vote for right-wing parties score 2,3 lower on the five-point scale, which is a massive difference. This is not surprising, as this group also includes what would be called populist right-wing parties, which have a strong anti-migration. There is also a difference when comparing to those who vote for the mainstream right of 1,2 on the scale and about half that for the mainstream left (0,656^***). Finally, I also included those who did not know, will not say or cannot vote, out of a concern that leaving this large group out would bias the results. Here I see that they score about a point lower than those voting for left-wing parties, meaning that the end is almost exactly between the mainstream left and the mainstream right.

The final variable presented in the figure is whether they agree with the statement that “I am worried that climate changes will increase the number of people who head towards Denmark”. This is interpreted as more perceptions of the threat of climate-induced migration to society. Here the reference category is those who fully disagree. Compared to those then only those who somewhat agree (-0,813^***) or fully agree (-1,707^***) significantly differ from the reference category.

All the effects are also controlled for each other and the respondent's age, gender, education, urbanization, and personal income. However, of all the other variables included, only two are significant. Men are slightly more likely to disagree (0,171^***) and older groups are more likely to agree with the statement. The variation thus come down to attitudes and values, but groups.

Climate change will bring about upheaval on a global scale, which in turn will lead to a lot of new political questions. One of these is how European states will treat the potentially large number of migrants displaced by weather events. Though this group is often referred to as climate refugees in public debates they then they are not protected under international law. This means that they will likely have poor chances of temporary or permanent stay. If climate migrants are to have better chances it would require political support, which in turn, would require public support.

To study the public support for granting climate migrants asylum I used a survey collected in Denmark in the winter of 2021/2022. Denmark makes for an interesting case to study this. On the one hand, the Danes generally believe that climate change is real and requires action. These attitudes tend to create more positive attitudes towards climate migrants (Arias & Blair, 2022; Hedegaard, 2022; Helbling, 2020). Further, Denmark has previously given asylum to climate migrants, using the provision in the immigration law that provides access on humanitarian grounds (Jung & Ditzel, 2009). On the other hand, then migration policies have been increasingly tightened over the last two decades and are now among the strictest in Europe (Breidahl et al., 2022; Jensen, 2022), and political debates on the subject show limited political support for granting the group asylum, even among left-wing parties (Folketinget, 2022).

The results show rather limited support for this. Combined only one in five Danes somewhat or fully agree that climate migrants should be granted asylum, and a majority is against the idea. The results further show that resistance to this is strongest among those who do not believe climate changes are man-made, who vote for right-leaning parties and who are worried about the number of climate migrants. The results thus indicate that the issue of which migrant regime climate migrants should be treated under fits into existing political divides. This might change in the future, as more climate migrant start arriving, but for now the political fight for asylum right to climate migrants seems to be an uphill battle.

The author declares that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript

No relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose

The dataset and replication files will be made available on OSF after publication

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Climate Migrants or Climate Refugees? Danes’ Attitudes to Whether Climate Migrants Should Have the Right to Apply for Asylum

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Abstract

Figures

Intro

Climate Migrants, Rights, And Attitudes

Values and ideology

Threat and worry

Data And Variables

Data

Variables

Results

Conclusion

Declarations

References

Supplementary Files

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