Borders, Bias, and the Climate Refugee

When we picture a “refugee,” most of us imagine someone from far away — someone fleeing war, famine, or disaster in a place we’ve never been. Someone from “somewhere else.”

But what happens when the refugee is you?

In 2015, Europe faced its largest refugee crisis since World War II. Families from Syria, Afghanistan, and beyond arrived on our shores with nothing but the clothes they wore and the hope they carried. Many found compassion, but many more met suspicion, bureaucracy, and razor wire. Politicians called them “migrants” instead of “refugees,” as if changing the word could make them less deserving of safety.

Now imagine a different crisis — one where the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the ocean current that keeps Northern Europe mild, collapses. Winters plunge far below freezing. Summers shorten to a blink. Crops fail. Power grids break under the strain. Within a few years, Northern Europe becomes unlivable.

And millions of us — from Copenhagen to Berlin, from London to Oslo — are the ones on the move.

That’s the scenario in my novel MALI, where Northern Europeans become climate refugees, heading south into regions already battling heatwaves, drought, and political instability. The tables turn — and with them, the question of whether our biases will, too.

Will we be welcomed? Or will we meet the same walls we once defended?

Climate change will test our borders, but it will also test our humanity. The answers we give now — to those knocking at our doors — may one day be the answers we receive.

MALI isn’t just a story about survival.

It’s a mirror. And the reflection may be uncomfortable.