Are We Living in a Time of Unprecedented Migration?

Are We Living in a Time of Unprecedented Migration?

PART 1/10 OF MIGRATION 101

More people than ever before are on the move, right? Not exactly. More people may be moving, but there are also more people in the world.

In this episode of Migration 101, a course on the drivers and impacts of migration with Professor of Sociology Hein de Haas, one of the world’s leading migration researchers, we take a closer look at the history of migration and what this means for the future.

Recommended Reading

Have a look at Chapter 1 of The Age of Migration, one of the world’s leading textbooks on migration written by Hein de Haas.*

Hein explains how the world has not, in fact, become more migratory in this article for the International Migration Review.

For a fun and interactive picture of the global flow of people, visit the Global Migration project.

This is an eye-opening read from Spiegel Online on the large numbers often quoted in connection to migration: The World is Staying Home.

What will migration from North Africa look like? A report on the future of migration from that region to OECD countries.

For an example of how global migration may be changing, an article on China’s first immigration agency from Bloomberg.

And since we are on the subject of counting humans… Our world feels like an overpopulated place, but according to this fun analysis in Wait by Why, if we lived as densely as people do in Manhattan, all 7.3 billion of us would fit into New Zealand.

*Extract from The Age of Migration, 5th Edition by Stephen Castles, Hein de Haas and Mark J. Miller. Reproduced with permission from Palgrave Macmillan.  For full details see here.

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Hein de Hass

Hein de Haas

Hein is Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. He was a founding member and director of the International Migration Institute at the University of Oxford. He is a co-author of The Age of Migration, a leading textbook in the field of migration. You can find more information and free downloads of his publications on his website. He also maintains a blog – we recommend this entry titled “Human migration: myths, hysteria and facts” and this one on migration and climate change.