Hein de Haas (Viking Books)
EVERYONE who starts geographer Hein de Haas鈥檚 How Migration Really Works will have opinions about migration 鈥� few will finish with their preconceptions intact.
Drawing on three decades of research from his time at the University of Oxford and the University of Amsterdam, de Haas shows that everything we think we know about migration is wrong.
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This isn鈥檛 because migration is an especially complex matter, but because economic and political interests, on both the left and the right, have lost sight of the evidence 鈥� that is, when they haven鈥檛 actively misrepresented it.
De Haas explores trends in global migration patterns, examines the impacts of migration on both destination and origin societies and closes with a series of fairly devastating takedowns of popular ideas.
The problem runs deep. Take the frequently quoted figures released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which 鈥渟eem鈥� to show that the global total of displaced people increased nearly 50-fold from 1.8 million in 1951 to 100 million in 2022.
What explains this shocking rise? Globalisation? War? Climate change? Issues with the statistics?
鈥淲hat appears to be an unprecedented increase in refugee numbers,鈥� de Haas explains, 鈥渋s in reality a statistical artefact caused by the inclusion of populations and countries previously excluded from displacement statistics.鈥� UNHCR鈥檚 current figures are now truly global. But its 1951 baseline figure was drawn from a database covering just 21 countries.
It is the direction of migration after the second world war that some in Western nations have found so disconcerting. The numbers have hardly changed. At any time, around 3 per cent of the world鈥檚 population are migrants. A tenth of those are refugees. The figure for unsolicited border crossings (de Haas refuses to use the term 鈥渋llegal crossings鈥�, as it doesn鈥檛 capture the legal position outlined in the UN Refugee Convention) fluctuates erratically, depending on labour demand in destination countries and conflict in origin countries, but the underlying number remains stubbornly consistent.
If migrations levels are stable, historically, why all the emotion? De Haas pulls no punches: 鈥淎lthough they may advocate very different solutions, politicians from left to right, climate activist and nativist groups, humanitarian NGOs and refugee organizations and media have all bought into the idea that the current era is one of a migration crisis.鈥�
That this results in staggeringly wrong-headed policy-making comes as no surprise 鈥� witness massive US investment in border enforcement since the late 1980s. This, writes de Haas, has 鈥渢urned a largely circular flow of Mexican workers going back and forth to California and Texas into an 11-million-strong population of permanently settled families living all across the United States鈥�. They stay because it is too costly in every sense to keep moving.
Catastrophising migration also has a cultural impact. In host nations, nightmare migration scenarios are peddled to tickle every political palate. An international cabal runs people smuggling. (No evidence.) The mafia are trafficking young women for sex. (No evidence.) Migration flows mainly from the poorer southern hemisphere to the wealthy north. (Wrong.) Migration lifts all boats. (No. It overwhelmingly benefits the already affluent.) Where is the scenario that credits migrants themselves with connections, ambitions, foresight, agency or even intelligence?
How Migration Really Works is a carefully evidenced critique of a political culture that would rather use migration as a domestic passion-play than treat it as an ordinary and governable part of civil life. To be pro and anti immigration is to miss the point entirely. You wouldn鈥檛 ask an economist whether they are for or against the economy, would you?
We are constantly told we need 鈥渁 big conversation鈥� about immigration. I am rereading this book (something crabbed reviewers never normally do). Until I am done, I am going to keep my big mouth shut.
Simon Ings is a critic and writer based in London
