Dagens och morgondagens klimatflyktingar. Meningsskapande representationer i politik, nyheter och populärkultur.

Sammanfattning: During the last decade the issue of climate change refugees has emerged as one potential important consequence of climate change. The aim of this thesis is to examine the circulation of representations of climate change refugees and related depictions of responsibility between Swedish politics, Swedish news media and popular culture. This is done through a discourse analytical framework drawing from Foucault and Laclau and Mouffe as well as studies of popular culture in a political science context. The focus of the thesis is on the years 2004-2010. Popular culture is studied through analysis of three films: The Day After Tomorrow (2004), WALL-E (2008) and Avatar (2009). I identify representations of climate change refugees as threats or victims connected to a securitization discourse and a global equity discourse respectively, and find that these discourses ascribe responsibility for climate change refugees to different groups. Furthermore, I find the common premise that it is natural that people are sedentary and settled within nation state borders, which leads to seeing migration as an aberration from the norm and the event of climate change refugees as a disastrous outcome to be prevented rather than as an adaptive strategy in the face of changing circumstances.