Environmental and climate migrations: an overview of scientific literature using a bibliometric analysis

Climate change is a key issue in twenty-first century international politics, as is evidenced by the twenty-four world conferences devoted to the subject that have been called by the United Nations. The effect that climate change exerts on human migration is a matter that has recently started to acquire considerable importance, not only as an element of public opinion, but also as a subject of academic publications. While available data on the matter is still far from precise and there are no definite figures on the climate change refugees numbers, published research shows that a colossal wave of migration could come about, caused by climate environmental conditions. In the view of the ever-growing importance of the connection between migration, climate and environmental change, the international scientific community has experienced a rapid growth of interest in these matters over the last ten years. The present contribution sets out to present, by means of a bibliometric analysis of scientific publications, a critical ‘snapshot’ of the development of the research that has been undertaken, paying particular attention to the integration of semantic elements that climatic and environmental change have in common with the issue of migration.