Cities typically treat migration and sustainability as separate policy domains. When migration is highlighted in the context of sustainability in urban destination areas, it is typically understood to have no, or at worst, negative impacts on sustainability. As a result, migration and migrants are commonly left out of sustainability policy and planning. Here, we present emerging evidence to reframe the debate, demonstrating that migration is a force for sustainable development and that migrants can be sustainability actors in urban environments. We point to key action points for cities to better address the migration–sustainability nexus and harness this potential.

For long, migration has been recognized in literature as a force for societal transformations. Yet, mainstream policies dealing with sustainability generally downplay the role of migration. The Sustainable Development Goals, for example, frame migration as a temporary phenomenon needing management rather than as an integral part of sustainable development. As a result, cities generally overlook broader perspectives on migration and transformation in their sustainability strategies. Here, we present key policy insights building on an emerging field of research exploring the migration–sustainability nexus in urban governance. We focus specifically on the city scale, recognizing that cities are situated at the crossroads of migration and sustainability challenges and opportunities, bringing new possibilities to address current sustainability challenges. For example, migrants interact with their destination areas through influencing consumption behavior and resource conservation and migration contributes to sustainable development through the potential of enhancing wellbeing of residents. There is thus an urgent opportunity to address policy gaps to embrace the potentially transformative role of migration for sustainability transitions. We present critical action points to incorporate new insights into policymaking, emphasizing integrated, coordinated and reflexive approaches across all levels of governance.

Migration drives sustainable development. We show how urban governance can seize opportunities for transformation.

A widely held belief is that once the impacts of warming are experienced more directly and substantially, especially by affluent populations, the necessary support for a politics prioritising ambitious emissions reductions will follow. But consideration of the indirect socioeconomic impacts of warming suggests this could be false hope.

There is some evidence to support the common intuition that, as the direct impacts of warming intensify – particularly in the affluent Global North – a politics ambitious enough to confront the climate emergency may finally find support. However, it seems at least equally likely that the opposite trend will prevail. This proposition can be understood by considering various indirect impacts of warming, including the widening of socioeconomic inequalities (within and between countries), increases in migration (intra- and inter-nationally) and heightened risk of conflict (from violence and war through to hate speech and crime). Compiling these impacts reveals a considerable and highly inconvenient overlap with key drivers of the authoritarian populism that has proliferated in the 21st century. It highlights the risk of a socio-ecological feedback loop where the consequences of warming create a political environment entirely at odds with that required to reduce emissions. Such a future is, of course, far from inevitable. Nonetheless, the risks highlight the urgent need to find public support for combined solutions to climate change and inequality, which go well beyond the status-quo. This is necessary not only for reasons of economic and climate justice, but in order to mitigate political barriers to carbon mitigation itself.

As the impacts of warming are experienced more directly and substantially, we may vote for precisely the wrong people.