Why are immigrants absent from environmental movements? - A qualitative report of educated immigrants’ perspectives on climate change and environmental activism in Sweden

Abstract

Environmental crisis is one of the most important issues of the past decades therefore ecological movements tackling it are getting more and more attention. This report explores the reasons behind the lack of participation in climate change activism for educated immigrants. The research is based on the Swedish immigrant population using grounded theory on three focus groups and one individual negative case interview. Attitudes, feelings, and opinions on the subjects of climate change, environmental movement and activist participation were investigated to answer the research question. For theoretical basis, this paper employs the theory of accounts (Scott & Lyman, 1968), the framework of emotions and social movements (Jasper, 2011) and Klandermans and Oegema’s (1987) theory about steps towards participation in social movements. This study’s results argue that immigrants understand the climate crisis but often fail to see environmental movements as an efficient solution for it. To address this problem, organizations and politicians need to reach out to immigrants directly and adapt their messages and policies to account for the specificities of this population group. Doing so would increase political participation, contributing to the crisis’ resolution and improving political engagement of foreign-born inhabitants.