Human rights at the crossroads: The politics of climate refugees in an increasingly polarized world

Abstract

The study aims to examine how the convergence of migration that is caused by climate changes, nationalism, and exclusionary border politics subversion modern human rights institutions. It postulates that hardening of nationalist control system has a relationship with the quantifiable deterioration in exercising the refugee protection. The research employs a quantitative comparative study of the immigration policies and human rights compliance indicators of 30 countries (2010- 2025) on the basis of which multivariate regression is used to assess the connection between the nationalistic indices of politics and the rate of refugee’s admission. Policy documents can be analyzed using supplementary deuterative content analysis to interpret statistical trend across a wider socio-political analysis. Results indicate the statistically significant negative relationship (r = -0.65, p < 0.01) between the measure of refugee integration and the measure of nationalist policy orientation. States with a high polarization have significantly less respect to international conventions on refugees. The figures show an increased divergence between the legal undertakings and the effective implementation of the human rights regulations. The results of the study emphasize that issues of global polarization are undermining the universality of human rights by turning climate protections of refugees into a subject of dispute politics.