Climate migration myths Misleading claims about mass migration induced by climate change continue to surface in both academia and policy. This requires a new research agenda on 'climate mobilities' that moves beyond simplistic assumptions and more accurately advances knowledge of the nexus between human mobility and climate change.

In recent debates on climate change and migration, the focus on the figure of ‘climate refugees’ (tainted by environmental determinism and a crude understanding of human mobility) has given ground to a broader conception of the climate–migration nexus. In particular, the idea that migration can represent a legitimate adaptation strategy has emerged strongly. This appears to be a positive development, marked by softer tones that de‐securitise climate migration. However, political and normative implications of this evolution are still understudied. This article contributes to filling the gap by turning to both the ‘climate refugees’ and ‘migration as adaptation’ narratives, interrogating how and whether those competing narratives pose the question of (in)justice. Our analysis shows that the highly problematic ‘climate refugees’ narrative did (at least) channel justice claims and yielded the (illusory) possibility of identifying concrete rights claims and responsibilities. Read in relation to the growing mantra of resilience in climate policy and politics, the more recent narrative on ‘migration as adaptation’ appears to displace justice claims and inherent rights in favour of a depoliticised idea of adaptation that relies on the individual migrant's ability to compete in and benefit from labour markets. We warn that the removal of structural inequalities from the way in which the climate–migration nexus is understood can be seen as symptomatic of a shrinking of the conditions to posing the question of climate justice.

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Policy making on climate change and migration has become a routine agenda point of global climate change politics. In particular, the period between the Cancun climate negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2010 and the Paris negotiations in 2015 was very important for the emergence of the nexus of climate change and migration as a policy priority. This article conducts a genealogy of policy making on climate change and migration and finds that the period between Cancun and Paris constitutes a distinct era of policy making. This analysis is structured around four areas where shifts have taken place that contribute to delineating this era from others, either through shifts in relation to the eras preceding or succeeding it, or in terms of substantial shifts and dislocations that have taken place during this era. These areas are: (1) the institutional settings for policy making; (2) the actors involved in policy making; (3) the language employed; (4) the mobilisation of knowledge. This analysis is an important undertaking for denaturalising policy making on climate change and migration and promoting understandings of it as contingent, as well as historically, socially, politically, and institutionally situated.