Review of 'Addressing Environmental Migration in the European Union Discourse'

This review has been provided by Calum TM Nicholson

Major Comments 

In the content of its analysis, the article is workmanlike and diligent, and in places quite interesting. However, one does get the sense that it is not helped by the way it engages with and opines on the ontological and normative questions around the topic of ‘enviromental/ climate migration’, both of which seem beyond the purview of the paper, which was to engage with the EU discourse on the topic. This expansive approach is absolutely not to the paper’s advantage, s it opens it up to a range of questions, and indeed, criticisms, deriving from the thorny nature of the topic's ontological and normative status.  

I’ll give two examples of what I mean, but there are many throughout the paper. First, in the introduction, there is a presumption that ‘environmental migrants’ are a distinct, identifiable demographic. This ontological claim is unsupported, and anyway surely irrelevant to a critique of how the EU has talked about ‘climate’ or ‘environmental migrants’ in its discourse. Second, and on the second page, the author refers to ‘such migration’. What is ‘such migration’? It isn’t simply the case that the term ‘environmental migration’ has no legal definition. It also has no empirical one: anyone or no one could be an ‘EM’. 

Engaging with the ontological status of ‘EMs’ or ‘CMs’ leads the author into a thicket of challenges for which there is little room - and no reason - to discuss in this paper. For instance, they write that ‘I identify the migrants as the main victims of environmental and climate change’. Can, however, they identity a single case of someone who has been meaningfully categorised as a ‘climate’ or ‘environmental’ migrant? Likely not. Therefore all that is achieved by engaging with the ontological question in this way is to open the paper up to criticisms that it is not intended to address. 

My first major suggestion would therefore be to carefully go through the piece, and reframe it (or excise certain sentences) where necessary to make sure the paper is discussing the discourse on ‘EMs’/‘CMs’, but without loading the argument normatively (what ought to be done about ‘them’), nor even taking a position on whether ‘they’, ontologically, exist/ can be identified. Again, the real purpose - and strength - of the piece is in examining the way ‘EM’ has been discussed in EU discourse. Therefore, it is entirely irrelevant to the argument - and even a hindrance and a source of confusion - to talk about ‘their’ normative or ontological status. 

My second major suggestion is that the author would do well to reference more recent literature. For instance, throughout Section 1, Environmental Migration as a Phenomenon’, the author refers to very old and out of date literature - Homer-Dixon (1991); the Stern Review (2006), the council of Europe (2008); Myers (1995); Christian Aid (2007). They ought perhaps to look at more recent literature, such as Boas et al. in Nature Climate Change (2019). 

Minor Comments 

Be careful with the use of English. In the conclusion, for instance, they write ‘there is still a long way forward when it comes…’. The more standard phrasing is ‘there is still a long way to go when it comes…’, although the meaning is nevertheless clear.