Not a Security Issue: How Policy Experts De-Politicize the Climate Change–Migration Nexus

Abstract

Policy experts play an important role in coping with the climate change–human migration nexus. They offer expert solutions to decision makers, and thus, they contribute to de-politicizing the issue. The aim of this paper is to find out how different policy experts envision the climate change–human migration nexus. The Netherlands has been nominated as the seat of a Global Center of Excellence for climate Adaptation and aims to become a Global Center of Excellence in the water safety and security domain. Policy experts were selected based on a structured nominee process. We conducted semistructured interviews with policy experts and analyzed policy expert documentation. Interview transcripts and documents were examined via a coding frame. Unlike policymakers who link climate change and conflict, policy experts stress the economic and political factors of migration in which climate change issues happen. The major difference between the view of policymakers and policy experts on the link between climate change and human migration emerges from the frame of the climate refugee. In the context of the climate change–human migration nexus, policy experts act as a countervailing power that prevents the political exploitation of the nexus into a security issue.