Migrants: The Story of Us All

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But as Migrants goes on – and Miller retraces the migrations that made him – it becomes evident that the effort, if not wasted, is attachment to sedentary life. What is migration, anyway? Not much more than a hundred years ago, women regularly “migrated” to marry or to work as governesses, servants and in shops. And yet they would never have called themselves “migrants”. The cultural opprobrium attached to immigration has been building at least since Aristotle’s day, according to former BBC journalist Sam Miller’s flawed, fascinating stab at a global history of migration.

Miller himself knows identity’s appurtenances (genes, heritage, family and ethnic histories) are always contingent. None of that abates his desire for it. ‘I’ve never really felt at home in England, as if I didn’t belong there,’ he writes. He surmises ‘that I was born into the wrong nation’. He’s what George Steiner called a luftmensch, the common culprit-victim of modernity, resident everywhere, nowhere at home. His own travels – migrating, swallow-light, across the globe for work – provide solace but no solution. Migrants: The Story of us all by Sam Miller is an insightful and thought-provoking book that delves into the history of human migration. The author explores the concept of migration from its earliest origins to the present day, highlighting the role it has played in shaping our societies and cultures. In Migrants, Sam Miller writes that this was a lie. Metics – migrant workers, outlanders, living on the earth but not born of it – may have outnumbered citizens at several points in Athenian history. In a paradox later repeated across millennia, the burgeoning city-state found in them an economic buttress and an ideological foil. Even if their family had lived in Athens for generations, a metic would never be able to vote. Citizenship was heritage, a gift awarded only to the autochtons. To everyone else, the gates of the great assemblies were closed. This sets predictable limits on Miller’s work: after a certain passage of time, untold stories generally have to stay that way. Migrants, as a consequence, is uneven. We survey population movements in and out of Britain over the years: a resume of the case for the Viking invasions; a rundown of the Neolithic discovery of America; the horrors of the last slave ship to arrive in the United States. Mythic migrants – Aeneas of Troy, Brutus of Britain – have only walk-on parts. Today, “having a permanent home and a lifelong nationality are considered normal, as if they were part of the human condition.” On the contrary, says Miller: humankind is the migratory species par excellence, settling every continent bar Antarctica, not once, but many times over.Miller thinks that humans naturally emigrate, and our unease about this is the result of pastoralism, cities, and other historical accidents. What emerges from this onion of a book (fascinating digressions around no detectable centre), is, however, more than sufficient compensation. We have here the seed of an enticing and potentially more influential project: a modern history that treats the modern nation state – pretending to self-reliance behind ever-more-futile barriers – as but a passing political arrangement, and not always a very useful one. Miller, in a praiseworthy bid to tell a global story, adopts the broadest possible definition of migration: one that embraces “slaves and spouses, refugees and retirees, nomads and expats, conquerors and job-seekers.” Alas, the broader one’s argument, the less one ends up saying. While handsomely researched and stirringly written, our concept of migration isn’t much enriched by Miller’s brief tilts at historical behemoths like slavery and the maritime spice route.

Also alone of the peoples of the Aegean, he added, they could claim to be free. The two judgements – the purity of their origin and the perfection of their politics – weren’t unrelated. ‘Other cities are composed of unequal men from all sorts of spaces,’ Plato explained in Menexia, ‘and therefore their political systems are unequal… But we are all brothers born from the one mother, and we do not think we should be slaves or masters of one another.’ Different distances on the human story allow one to tell wildly different stories. If you follow humanity through deep time, our settlement of the almost the entire planet looks very much like manifest destiny and we’ll all surely end up on Mars tomorrow. But if you trace our movements over a few dozen generations, you’ll discover that, absent force majeure, people are homebodies, moving barely a few weeks’ walking distance from their birthplaces. Migrants left a lasting impression on me. Through its engaging narrative and authentic writing, it powerfully depicts the challenges and triumphs of those who embark on the migratory journey. Sam Miller's ability to humanize the experiences of migrants is a testament to his talent as a writer. This book serves as a poignant reminder of the shared struggles and resilience that define our common humanity. While I personally haven’t read up much on the world history of migration, I can say that I have read about what the author has to say in India’s context. The author does write that the arguments of the Aryan Invasionists and migrationists were pretty flimsy, and even recognises the theories of the two extremes. But then the author gives merit to Tony Joseph and his 2018 work Early Indians which basically claims AIT/AMT. Whereas many historians such as Abhijeet Chawda have debunked Joseph’s book and his so called research. Chawda wrote a rebuttal, arguing that the peer review process is flawed and that it being published in a oeer reviewed journal does not automatically endow a research paper with credibility , Josephs research is based misrepresenting the datings on the expansions. So I would not take this part of the book by Miller too seriously.It’s a powerful thing to have the earth for your mother. This was, Athenians told each other, their heritage and their unique gift. Alone of the peoples of the ancient Aegean, wrote Plato, the children of Athens could claim to be autochthonous, earth-born, living always in one place, ‘truly dwelling in the land’. Miller's adept handling of the theme of migration is commendable. The theme of belonging is beautifully explored, with the author highlighting the intricate connections between identity, culture, and the search for a place to call home. Migrants cuts through the toxic debates to tell the rich and collective stories of humankind’s urge to move. Tremendous: blends the personal and the panoramic to great effect' Robert Winder, author of Bloody Foreigners