Book Extract | The Shortest History of Migration by Ian Goldin

… the widely held convention that a migrant today is anyone who crosses an international border. Beyond this basic definition, ways of classifying migration vary considerably. Does a day trip count? A month-long visit? Should students, tourists and business travellers be considered migrants? To these questions can be added the usual problems associated with statistics, from poor record keeping to distortion by politicians.

Migration is Exceptional
What we do know is that the number of migrants worldwide has been rising steadily in recent decades, nearly doubling from 153 million in 1990 to 281 million in 2020, the most recent year for which the UN has published its global tally. As a share of the total population, however, there are not many more migrants today than in the past. The world’s population has increased by almost 3 billion in the past thirty years, meaning that the proportion of people migrating has in fact remained relatively constant. In 2020, about 3.6 per cent of all recorded citizens were born in a different country; thirty years earlier, it was 2.9 per cent.

While this percentage could well fluctuate in future, the overall number of people on the planet may be approaching its peak. The pace of global population growth is slowing after a period of rapid increase – from 2.5 billion people in 1950 to 5.3 billion in 1990, to today’s figure of 8 billion. The world’s population is expected to reach somewhere around 9.5 billion in the middle of this century, then fall to below current levels by the end of it.

Numbers Game
Migration statistics should be regarded with great wariness. Not only are they notoriously difficult to collect and analyse, but they are also vulnerable to manipulation for political purposes.

Countries define and count migrants in different ways. Some measure a stay or period of absence from day one, others only after a year. Some add estimates of undocumented travellers to their overall tally of migrants, while others do not. There is no border control between the twenty-nine ‘Schengen’ countries of Europe, for example, so a large amount of guesswork is necessarily involved.

Even the richest countries are unable to measure migration accurately. The United Kingdom is one of many places that record entry and not departure. This results in significant discrepancies between reported figures for immigration and those for emigration. For example, Poland’s records of its migrants to the UK show far lower numbers than the British statistics reveal – and neither of the two is likely to be accurate.
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Migration is inherently difficult to define. Distinguishing between travel with the intent to settle and a journey made for tourism, business or study is not easy, even with the help of specific visas, entry cards and permits. We have much more accurate data on the flow of goods than on the movement of humans across borders.

While most authorities consider a migrant to be someone who moves across an international boundary, there is no consistency as to whether a brief stopover is counted in the same way as a visit for permanent settlement. Nor is there always agreement on what constitutes an official border.

More than fifty new countries have been created in the past fifty years, from newly independent ex-Soviet republics to those born from the fragmentation of other European, African and Asian countries. People who previously moved within these countries are now regarded as international migrants – one more reason why statistics on migration trends should be analysed with care.

Internal Migration
…. the importance of migration within borders, … far exceeds that across national frontiers. This internal movement often follows the routes migrating humans took long before the days of nation states and borders. People may move within countries for seasonal work, to settle in larger towns where there are more opportunities, or for a host of other reasons – including moving to a big city as a stepping stone for a longer journey.

Indeed, the distinction between internal and international migration can be exaggerated. Ethnic or racial minorities who move within their own country often share similar experiences with those who cross borders, particularly in large and ethnically diverse countries where languages, religions, cultures and lifestyles differ greatly from one place to the next.

As we have seen, historical events can create migrants. A citizen can suddenly become an international refugee when a border is drawn. Or the reverse may occur when countries are absorbed into wider frameworks, as happened with the creation of the Soviet Union and more recently the European Union. Understanding these movements in isolation from one another, or in terms of rigid legal categories, ignores the fact that on a social, economic or political level, internal and cross-border migration often entail very similar things.

Leave or Stay?
Around 97 per cent of the world population do not become international migrants. Most people are not prepared or able to venture into the unknown. They may prefer the comfort of their familiar surrounds or be prevented from travelling abroad by poverty, age, ill health or other restrictions.

The fact that there is vastly more migration within countries than migration between countries also reflects the difficulties of crossing borders and the desire of many people to remain close to home. It is hard enough to move within one’s own country; moving abroad is harder and riskier still.

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Migrants are unusually prepared to take risks and make sacrifices. These qualities prevented the extinction of our species during its early evolution, when threatened by droughts and famine. They lie at the heart of the extraordinary progress made by humans since. Though migrants are in the minority, we should not assume that being sedentary is somehow better or more natural. Migrants may be simultaneously very ordinary and highly exceptional people.

Where Are the Migrants?
Of the estimated 281 million migrants in 2020, over two thirds were workers, of whom over a half (59 per cent) were men and two thirds were working in high-income countries.

Europe is currently the main destination for migrants, hosting 87 million, or almost a third of the total number worldwide. Very close behind is Asia, where there are an estimated 86 million migrants, or 30 per cent of the total. About 59 million (a fifth) live in North America and 25 million (9 per cent) in Africa, although the statistics regarding border crossings between Africa’s fifty-two countries are particularly unreliable, so this last figure is likely to be far higher.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, migration has doubled in the past fifteen years to 15 million people (5 per cent of the global migrant population), although these too are significant underestimates given the scale of undocumented flows between Central American countries and recent emigration from Venezuela.

Geography and population sizes explain some statistical features. The extremely large, diverse and sparsely inhabited region of Oceania has the highest proportion of migrants, with about 22 per cent of those living in one country being born in another. By comparison, migrants constitute 16 per cent of the population of North America and 12 per cent of Europe’s.

The United States is home to the largest absolute number of migrants – 51 million, or 15 per cent of the total – with most originating in Mexico, India, China and the Philippines, in that order. Over 11 million migrants have entered the US from Mexico, with the border between the two accounting for the most recorded crossings globally.

The US is followed by Germany, which has 16 million migrants, constituting 19 per cent of its population. Saudi Arabia is the third largest destination: the 13.5 million migrants living there make up 38 per cent of its population, with India, Indonesia and Pakistan as its top three origin countries.

As a share of its population, however, the United Arab Emirates hosts the most. About 88 per cent of people living in the UAE are foreign-born.189 Around 3.8 million Indians work in the country, with over a million coming from Kerala and half a million from Tamil Nadu.

Forced Displacement
The UN Refugee Agency estimates that in the second half of 2023 there were 114 million migrants forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, violence and violations of human rights. That figure is forecast to be 130 million by the end of 2024.

Of these, 35.3 million were refugees under the agency’s mandate, 5.9 million were Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA, 62.5 million were internally displaced people and 5.4 million were asylum seekers waiting for legal recognition of their need for protection.

Three quarters of all refugees were hosted by low-income and middle-income countries. The forty-five least developed countries, as classified by the UN, were providing asylum to 20 per cent of the total.

Most refugees flee to the closest place of relative safety. Nearly 70 per cent of people in need of international protection live in neighbouring countries. Turkey and Iran host the most refugees globally – about 3.4 million each, mostly from Syria in Turkey and from Afghanistan and Iraq in the case of Iran. The United States receives the most individual applications for asylum, but it ends up hosting a relatively small number of refugees.

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The Long Wait
The legal limbo in which asylum seekers find themselves typically hinders them from working or establishing themselves in their host communities. Many are housed in refugee camps, given meagre food rations and not permitted to leave to find work. Countries decide at their discretion whether the situation ‘back home’ is safe enough to warrant accepting refugees. In the first half of 2023, around 400,000 refugees returned to their countries of origin, with most returning to Ukraine despite the war and to South Sudan from Sudan as it too descended into civil war.

The US and Canada admit more refugees for resettlement than any other countries. Yet the numbers are still tiny, both in relation to the number in need and the size of the respective populations. In 2022, the US accepted only 29,000 permanent refugees, while Canada, whose population is around 10 per cent that of the US, accepted 47,600. 193

This picture is in stark contrast to the mid-nineteenth century, when half a million European migrants were arriving in the United States every year. In recent years, the US has lowered its admission ceiling for refugees as well as introduced new restrictions prohibiting travel from ‘high-risk’ countries on the grounds their citizens might pose a security threat.

Since refugees generally travel to the closest place of safety, Greece and Italy have found themselves carrying a disproportionate share of the burden of those seeking shelter in Europe. In 2023, the twenty-seven states of the European Union agreed a ‘solidarity mechanism’ which compels all members to accept up to 30,000 refugees a year or pay other members to house their quota. It remains to be seen whether this proves enforceable.

The Missing and the Dead
Globally, the overwhelming majority of migrants make authorised border crossings. Undocumented or irregular migration, however, is by its nature difficult to quantify as it often involves clandestine, perilous journeys made by desperate people.

At least 60,000 people have died in the past ten years in the attempt to migrate to another country, with nearly half having disappeared without trace, their bodies never found. In 2023, the deadliest year for migrants in the past decade, an estimated 8,565 people died trying to reach their destinations. The Mediterranean is perhaps the biggest graveyard for missing migrants, with tens and at times hundreds of thousands of desperate migrants attempting to cross every year.

A tiny fraction of the bodies of migrants who drown at sea are recovered; most of these ‘invisible shipwrecks’ vanish without trace. Among those seeking to enter the US from Mexico, thousands disappear or die each year because of kidnappings, vehicle accidents, snake bites, dehydration and starvation.

Walls and fences are not solutions. They encourage migrants to take clandestine and dangerous routes, and embolden traffickers who prey on the vulnerable. Tighter borders also encourage some migrants to stay longer than they would like or remain undocumented instead of leaving and running the risk of never being able to return.

Such restrictions interrupt historical patterns of seasonal and circular migration for work. This has been shown to be the case for migration between Mexico and the United States, as well as between both Morocco and Turkey and the EU. Hard borders do not protect host nations from threats, but they do prevent their economies from benefiting from the value that migrants can bring.

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Ian Goldin, The Shortest History of Migration,‎ Pan Macmillan India, 2025. Pb. Pp.290

From the earliest human wanderings to the rise of the digital nomad

For hundreds of thousands of years, the ability of Homo sapiens to travel across vast distances and adapt to new environments has been key to their survival as a species. Yet this deep migratory impulse is being tested like never before as governments build ever-stronger walls that adversely impact the lives of migrants and the well-being of our societies.

In The Shortest History of Migration, visionary thinker and a migrant himself, Ian Goldin chronicles the movement of peoples that spans every age and continent to arrive at the heart of what truly makes us human. He recounts strange, terrible and uplifting tales of migrants past and present, examining the legacies of empire, slavery and war. Learn about how the first humans originating in Africa populated the world; the exchange of knowledge, food, language and religion through migration, and the exploited migrant populations that built the modern Western world, only to be shut out of it.

Finally, Goldin turns his attention to today’s increasingly fragmented world, bringing together historical evidence and recent data to suggest how we might create a more humane future where we can reap the tremendous benefits that migration has to offer.

Ian Goldin is Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford, Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford University, was the founding Director of Oxford University’s Oxford Martin School, and leads its research programmes on Technological and Economic Change, Future of Work and Future of Development.

He has an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a MA and Doctorate from the University of Oxford.

From 1996 to 2001, he was chief executive and managing director of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) and at that time also served as an adviser to President Nelson Mandela.

From 2001 to 2006 Ian was Vice President of the World Bank and the Group’s Director of Policy and Special Representative at the United Nations. Previously, Ian served as Principal Economist at the EBRD and the Director of Programmes at the OECD Development Centre.

He has been knighted by the French Government and received numerous awards. He has published over 60 journal articles and 23 books. His most recent is Rescue: From Global Crisis to a Better World. His previous books include Terra Incognita: 100 Maps to Survive the Next 100 Years, Age of Discovery: Navigating the Storms of Our Second Renaissance and The Butterfly Defect: Why Globalization Creates Systemic Risks and What to Do, in which he predicted that a pandemic was the most likely cause of the next financial crisis. Other books include: Development: A Very Short Introduction; and Is the Planet Full? He has authored and presented three BBC Documentary Series After The Crash; Will AI Kill Development? and The Pandemic that Changed the World. He has provided advisory services to the IMF, UN, EU, OECD and has served as a non-executive Director on six globally listed companies. Ian is an acclaimed speaker at TED, Google Zeitgeist, WEF and other meetings and is Chair of the core-econ.org initiative to transform economics.