Abstract
The question of how to appropriately respond to migration linked to climate change is increasingly being debated in academia, in government and policy circles, and, crucially, in international legal and climate policy forums. These debates often center on data and on understanding the true numbers of people who might migrate in the context of climate change, and how much of this migration can accurately be linked to climate change, or on the security and logistical concerns associated with responding to this “challenge,” or on the appropriate legal box into which people migrating in this context can be shoved. Too often, what gets left out of these debates is the genuine lived experiences of the people whose homes and ways of life are threatened in a changing climate, and the historical and current economic, social, and cultural forces that created that threat. In this Article, I add to the growing body of literature that is remedying this oversight by looking at climate change-related migration through a climate justice lens, and particularly by calling attention to the racialization of the “climate migrant” and the ways that racialized colonial and neocolonial systems have shaped who is subject to migration in the context of climate change and how they are received and perceived. This inquiry unites work on the racialized nature of international migration law and governance with work on the racialized nature of climate change impacts and policy, and particularly those proposing climate change reparations and migration as reparation. I argue that these considerations of the impact of race and colonialism on climate change-related migration, and the related need for a reparative justice approach, have been particularly absent just where they are most needed: in the international community’s efforts, through the United Nations Framework on Convention on Climate Change and related processes, to craft a meaningful global response to the climate crisis. Including a reparatory justice perspective in the international response to climate change-related migration will ensure that that response more effectively addresses the concerns and needs of affected individuals and communities and forges a future that does not perpetuate the injustices of the past.
Recommended Citation
Monica Visalam Iyer, Race, Reparative Justice, and Climate Change-Related Migration, 20 FIU L. Rev. 1089 (2026), https://doi.org/10.25148/lawrev.20.3.12.
Included in
Environmental Law Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, International Law Commons, Law and Race Commons, Public Interest Commons
