Complicating "Migration"
In this project, I focus on forced migration, a process where migrants have no choice to leave their homes, home countries or towns, in order to save their lives. In many of the examples I give here, humans have been uprooted from their homes, without their consent and sent elsewhere, again, often without their approval, and with very few opportunities to return. U.S. history is filled with these: the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the atrocious displacement and genocide of indigenous peoples of the Americas are prime examples. Circassian exile, the Armenian genocide, Kurdish displacement in the recent decades, Syrians' recent exodus from their homelands, the 5.6 million Palestinian refugees under the UNRWA's mandate, and 3.6 million Venezuelans displaced abroad constitute other examples of forced migration due to war, persecution or ethnic cleansing. Today, 79.5 million people are forcibly displaced, that is, 1% of humanity is displaced.
UNHCR- Displaced People report 2019.pdfPlease view UNHCR's Forced Displacement report for more detailed information.
Another form of forced migration is encapsulated by the concept climate refugees. As sea levels rise, and extreme events like draughts or floods become more common and more intense, we can expect more and more people losing their livelihoods and/or homes, and seeking refuge elsewhere.
How about labor migrants? Many of them "choose" to leave their homes for jobs or a better life but to what extent is their journey the result of "choice"?
I have recently watched the Oscar-winning film Nomadland. The film is based on a non-fiction book and tells the plight of an elderly group of men and women who can't afford to live on their social security checks and become "houseless" nomads, who live out of their vans and trailers, and do seasonal work in the service industry, including, interestingly, an Amazon warehouse. The main character Fern becomes a "nomad" after she loses her job at the only factory in her hometown of Empire, Nevada because the factory shuts down. Ironically, the story is set in the U.S., the country where virtually every asylum seeker wants to end up. In the age of neoliberalism, deindustrialization and the ensuing collapse of the safety net, not even the citizens of the world's richest country are immune to forces of migration.
Fern's story has at its heart the loss of her home due to deindustrialization, loss of jobs at factories in the last five decades in richer nations like the U.S. and Europe, as some of those jobs were automated and others were outsourced to poorer countries where regulations are more lax or not enforced, and thus, non-union workers do them for lower wages, no benefits, often in unsafe conditions, and on a temporary or contractual -precarious- basis (rather than as a stable, permanent job).
How about those who leave their homes in various countries of Latin America and Asia every day, in search of a better future, or simply, a future. One thing that's missing from that conversation is the historical underpinnings of how Latin America and some Asian countries like India and the Philippines have remained poor while countries like the U.S., U.K., Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium have developed successful capitalist economies. Here are some helpful resources that discuss the role of colonialism as the root of poverty and political instability in so-called "developing nations."
An equally fascinating body of work today discusses how American capitalism could have never developed into the world giant that it is today without the economic contributions of slavery (Edward E. Baptist's "The Half Has Never Been Told") and that the U.K.'s exploitation of India and its other colonies was at the heart of its rise as a global power.
As Aditya Mukherjee writes: "Economic development in Europe both in terms of the rise in living standards in human development and in the sense of the structural breakthrough with the rise of capitalism was closely linked with Europe’s relationship with the rest of the world from about the 15th century. The imperial connection between Britain and India contributed to British industrialisation and its emergence as a hegemonic power in the world, sustained Britain through her period of relative decline in global competition in the industrial sphere, enabled her financial supremacy in the world till the first world war to finally seeing her through the crisis years of the 20th century and up to the second world war." (Mukherjee 2010).
Here, you may watch Edward E. Baptist talk about his book and Georgetown University's debt to the descendants of slaves.
Immigrant Experiences and Digital History
My research into Circassians brought me in contact with a number of excellent digital history projects, which trace the history of migration into the U.S. and the contributions of migrants to the economic development of this country.
To go deeper, please visit the project webpage: Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University
Other projects explore the Braceros, guest workers from Mexico who were invited, on a temporary basis, to work in agriculture. The program began during the labor shortage of World War 2 and continued until 1964. It is estimated that approximately 4.6 million Mexican nationals came to work in the U.S. as Braceros.
On slavery:
An online resource developed by the Stanford University on teaching immigration in general:
What Does It Mean to be an American
I have really enjoyed The Seeing White Podcast recently, which goes deep into the historical roots of the current racial structure of the U.S. In it, podcast host John Biewen remarks:
"A mental image kind of came to me without, sort of uninvited. And it's an awful image but maybe it's useful for this conversation. Picture a gigantic scale. Right? On one side, the bodies of white people killed by Black people throughout history in this part of the world. On the other side of the scale, the bodies of Black people killed by white people in the United States and Colonial America in the last 400 years. It's grotesquely out of balance, of course."
Decolonizing Museums, Decolonizing our Thinking
In the last decade or so, and especially in the wake of the protests following George Floyd's death in the hands of the police, a new way of thinking is increasingly gaining hold where we are placing historical figures and events in their appropriate place. For example, there is an effort to decolonize museums, as places where historically oppression, plunder, and colonialism are glorified. Hopefully, statues of plunderers like Christopher Columbus will one day be displayed in museums with the appropriate teaching of the atrocities he has inflicted upon the indigenous people of the Americas. Some interesting reading materials on this subject include:
Christopher Columbus statue being removed in San Francisco, June 2020. Source: KQED
Migration: Escape from What?
I would like to conclude this discussion and complicate the concept of migration with the question: escape from what? Our categorizations of types of migration and often, the assumptions we make about migration (legal vs. illegal, forced vs. voluntary, labor migration vs. other types) are based on this question: Are the migrants running from something? Do they have a legal right to enter another country? Can they return home if the conditions were set right again?
However, consider a historical event like the Great Migration, often labeled as a form of labor migration. As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in The Case for Reparations, the migrants' only concern was not the emerging industrial labor markets in the North but also escape from the violations of their human rights in the Jim Crow South:
"The Great Migration, a mass exodus of 6 million African Americans that spanned most of the 20th century, was now in its second wave. The black pilgrims did not journey north simply seeking better wages and work, or bright lights and big adventures. They were fleeing the acquisitive warlords of the South. They were seeking the protection of the law.
Clyde Ross was among them. He came to Chicago in 1947 and took a job as a taster at Campbell’s Soup. He made a stable wage. He married. He had children. His paycheck was his own. No Klansmen stripped him of the vote. When he walked down the street, he did not have to move because a white man was walking past. He did not have to take off his hat or avert his gaze. His journey from peonage to full citizenship seemed near-complete. Only one item was missing—a home, that final badge of entry into the sacred order of the American middle class of the Eisenhower years." (Coates 2014)
As Papadopoulos et al. write in their book "Escape Routes," "escape comes first" (Papadopoulos 2008, xv). "Escape from" becomes relevant only because we regulate human movement and impose restrictions on it. We need to remember that national borders are arbitrary and human-made. Our movement across the globe should not be restricted or regulated. At the same time, our right and desire to remain in our homes, if we wish to, also needs to be protected.