The climate crisis is emerging as a major driver of migration. Climate refugees—those displaced by climate disasters or gradual ecological degradation—are likely to play a significant role in global migration patterns as climate impacts intensify. This evolving crisis presents challenges for educators and remains underexplored in critical scholarship, yet it is already influencing literary narratives. In contemporary young adult (YA) fiction, climate refugees take on the archetypal role of the orphan, a destabilizing figure that disrupts social structures. This essay examines War Girls (2019) by Tochi Onyebuchi and The Marrow Thieves (2017) by Cherie Dimaline to highlight how these novels depict climate refugees as both vulnerable and transformative figures.
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Feldman et al. (2025) studied this question.
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