In an article for The Ecologist, the world’s leading environmental affairs platform, Dr Maria Sakellari urges the media to stop treating migrants as victims or security threats and instead focus on vulnerable communities’ fight for a safe future.
Dr Sakellari writes: “The news media connects climate-induced migration with security, risk and victimisation, rather than with the plight of displaced people.”
Dr Sakellari, who is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the university, goes on to point out the paradox that the most vulnerable countries – and those least responsible for climate change – will be most “dramatically and immediately affected”.
As a result, people from at-risk countries migrate to wealthier and less vulnerable regions in order to cope with the impacts of a changing climate. Dr Sakellari cites evidence that suggests there is no link between migration and criminal activity.
She writes: “This new wave of refugees will supposedly fuel crime rise, even though there is no empirical connection between migration and crime. Victimisation deprives at-risk communities of political agency.”
Part of the solution to the representation problem, Dr Sakellari posits, could be to encourage the media to look at migration as a human rights issue.
“We need to empower journalists and media professionals to enable the emergence of climate change debates beyond the energy, policy and security frame, and push for policies that address historical injustices, protect human rights and contribute to the transformation of how climate change-induced migration is perceived.”