This chapter analyzes the discursive architectures through which climate change and migration are rendered intelligible in public discourse. It draws on sociological and philosophical insights—including Rancière (2009)’s concept of the ‘distribution of the sensible,’—it interrogates how dominant media and political narratives frame these phenomena through apocalyptic, technocratic, or securitarian lenses. Highlighting the cognitive and communicative traps and the prevalence of denialist, techno-utopian, and apocalyptic narratives that either minimize the crisis or foster fatalism and inaction, the analysis reveals how climate narratives are frequently depoliticized and presented as distant or inevitable, thus evading accountability while reinforcing elite interests. In parallel, migration is persistently framed as a crisis—a framing that oscillates between humanitarianism and securitarianism, casting migrants as either victims or threats, and legitimizing exclusionary state responses. These binary constructions, deeply embedded in Western-centric epistemologies, obscure the structural drivers of displacement and deny the agency of mobile populations. The chapter critiques the rise of neoliberal integration discourses that repackage migrants as entrepreneurial assets, thereby masking systemic inequalities under a utilitarian logic. In response, it advocates for a more critical, justice-centered narrative politics—one that destabilizes symbolic borders, amplifies subaltern voices, and supports solidaristic imaginaries capable of galvanizing transformative social and policy change.

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Narratives of Climate Change and Migration

  • Elena Giacomelli,
  • Pierluigi Musarò

摘要

This chapter analyzes the discursive architectures through which climate change and migration are rendered intelligible in public discourse. It draws on sociological and philosophical insights—including Rancière (2009)’s concept of the ‘distribution of the sensible,’—it interrogates how dominant media and political narratives frame these phenomena through apocalyptic, technocratic, or securitarian lenses. Highlighting the cognitive and communicative traps and the prevalence of denialist, techno-utopian, and apocalyptic narratives that either minimize the crisis or foster fatalism and inaction, the analysis reveals how climate narratives are frequently depoliticized and presented as distant or inevitable, thus evading accountability while reinforcing elite interests. In parallel, migration is persistently framed as a crisis—a framing that oscillates between humanitarianism and securitarianism, casting migrants as either victims or threats, and legitimizing exclusionary state responses. These binary constructions, deeply embedded in Western-centric epistemologies, obscure the structural drivers of displacement and deny the agency of mobile populations. The chapter critiques the rise of neoliberal integration discourses that repackage migrants as entrepreneurial assets, thereby masking systemic inequalities under a utilitarian logic. In response, it advocates for a more critical, justice-centered narrative politics—one that destabilizes symbolic borders, amplifies subaltern voices, and supports solidaristic imaginaries capable of galvanizing transformative social and policy change.