Migrants: The Story of Us All

Product Information

Migrants cuts through the toxic debates to tell the rich and collective stories of humankind’s urge to move. 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.

Ongoing Covid restrictions, reduced air and freight capacity, high volumes and winter weather conditions are all impacting transportation and local delivery across the globe. However, in trying to take on these sorts of right wing arguments, he argues that humankind has an “urge to move”. This means the book ahistorically lumps together very different things—for example, Miller talks about the devastating nature of colonisation and settlers bringing diseases to North America. But the beginning of the British Empire was driven by our ruling class’s interests, not an age-old human desire to move around.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. Timely and empathetic: a rare combination on this most controversial issue' Remi Adekoya, author of Biracial Britain Migrants presents us with an alternative history of the world, in which migration is restored to the heart of the human story. And in which humans migrate for a wide range of reasons: not just because of civil war, or poverty or climate change but also out of curiosity and a sense of adventure. 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.

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”.You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.