Human Mobility and Climate Change at the Crossroad

A Diachronic Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of the Nexus in UK and US Newspaper Discourse

Abstract

While climate change has gradually and crucially become a ‘defining symbol’ of our mutual relationship with the environment, an investigation of its role in complex, multi-causal phenomena of human mobility has emerged as a salient policy-making issue only during the last years, with the period between the Cancun negotiations of the UNFCCC in 2010 and the 2015 Paris negotiations representing a crucial moment in policy making as regards the climate change and migration nexus. The purpose of the article is to explore representations of migration and displacement in the context of anthropogenic climate change in newspaper discourse through a critical diachronic corpus-assisted discourse analytical perspective. For the purpose of this study, a diachronic, domain-specific corpus of newspaper articles from a selection of UK and US broadsheets has been gathered through the Nexis online searchable database. Particular attention is placed on whether any significant discursive shifts may be identified in newspaper discourse over the periods concerned to coincide with a change in focus from ‘climate refugees’ to migration as adaptation.