Attitudes to Climate Migrants: Results from a Conjoint Survey Experiment in Denmark

As global warming increases the temperature of the planet, so does the likelihood that European countries will be faced with climate migrants. Since climate migrants cannot apply for asylum, they would need public and political support to gain residency in the countries to which they migrate. In this article, I show how likely Danes are to grant residency to climate migrants compared to other types of migrants and explore what individual- level factors explain variations in this. I answer the two questions by combining the results of a conjoint survey experiment with an election survey. The results show that climate migrants are perceived to be less deserving of permanent residency than migrants who typically could qualify for asylum, but more likely to be deemed deserving than those who could broadly be called economic migrants. The results also show that three factors explain variations in this – attitudes to climate change, attitudes to migration and ideology.