Ian Goldin, The Shortest History of Migration: When, Why, and How Humans Move—From the Prehistoric Peopling of the Planet to Today and Tomorrow’s Migrants. New York: The Experiment, 2025. 304 pages.
With immigration, as with many issues of public policy, it is easy to get bogged down in the details and the here and now, but it is often worthwhile to take a step back to look at the whole picture. In The Shortest History of Migration, Ian Goldin takes a step way back – 300,000 years back – to Africa and the beginnings of our species Homo sapiens to look at how the world has been populated. The voyage is well worth the detour.
A personal motivation
Ian Goldin is an economist, professor of globalization and development at Oxford University and founding director of the Oxford Martin School, a leading centre for interdisciplinary research into critical global changes. The story of migration is very personal to Goldin because it’s an integral part of his own story. His grandparents on both sides fled eastern Europe to avoid pogroms and the Holocaust. Not being welcome in western Europe, his father’s family ended up in South Africa where he was born.
Participating in the opposition to apartheid in South Africa led Goldin himself into exile, in the U.K., France and later the United States. He returned to South Africa to support and advise Nelson Mandela and was appointed head of the Development Bank of Southern Africa. When Mandela retired, Goldin first moved back to the United States and in 2006 returned to England where he resides.
The migrations in the author’s own life story help the reader understand his approach to the subject in this book, which is made clear right up front in the foreword. He feels that the world needs a full picture of what migration is all about and its critical contribution to the survival of the species:
We owe our progress as a species to our migratory nature. We have learned new ways of doing things and been able to pollinate ideas through migrant encounters. It is this pollination that is essential to all historical leaps in progress and which we require more than ever to meet current global challenges such as climate change.
Migration lies at the heart of human development. My primary interest as an economist is in how this development occurs. Why do some countries become rich and others remain poor? Why are some people wealthy while others live in desperate poverty? Above all, what can be done about it? Understanding why inequality persists and how it can be addressed requires that we understand migration.
And the introduction closes with:
By identifying what made people move in the past, and how that is changing, my aim is to provide a fresh perspective on current debates about migration. These generate a great deal of heat but very little light. By understanding migration better we can help to shape its – and our – future.
The first three quarters of the book are devoted to explaining migration from the emergence of Homo sapiens up to today; the last quarter takes on migration today and tomorrow.
The book is published as one in a series that popularizes the history of various complex issues. It a kind of “Migration for Dummies” but much better documented, with close to 300 endnotes and many maps, graphics and photos, as well as inserts with examples of specific migration events. All of these do indeed help make the subject easier to understand and more relatable for the target readership.
The history of humanity in 300 pages1
Goldin takes us back to the first long-range migrations of Homo sapiens in Africa more than 200,000 years ago, largely following the animals and fresh water. He reminds us that climate change affected movements from the beginning. The end of the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago, made movement farther north possible.
But much earlier, two routes were possible out of Africa, the northern route along the Levantine Corridor across Egypt and the Sinai and the more difficult southern route from Ethiopia across the southern end of the Red Sea into the Arabian Peninsula. From these points, between 130,000 and 35,000 years ago, humans travelled north and west, mingling with Neanderthals in Europe and the Near East and with Denisovans in Asia. Early migrations into the Americas date back to between 27,000 and 13,000 years ago.
Clearly Homo sapiens were on foot over hundreds of thousands of years. About 6,000 years ago people began riding horses, and 4,000 years ago, in central Asia, the wheel was adapted for transport. This allowed humans to cover longer distances more quickly with their goods and animals, adapting crops to new landscapes and climate conditions as they went: “As more and more groups of people migrated, the chances of meeting others increased. With these more frequent encounters came opportunities to exchange knowledge and goods. People learned novel ways of growing food, organizing communities, and dealing with health problems and other challenges.” About 5,000 years ago migrants also began to share writing systems.
The author stresses the impact of agriculture, reaching back about 12,000 years in the Near East:
Food surpluses allowed more and more people to learn skills and develop ideas unrelated to their immediate day-to-day survival. Urbanization was a major step in the evolution of human cultures and technology, requiring the cooperation of large numbers of people. It also enabled specialization. In these more food-secure environments, there was time for thinking, imagining and creating. Urbanization and agriculture made possible larger and more complex societies, as well as more hierarchical and unequal ones.
He notes,
All of these urban dwellers depended on farmers producing agricultural surpluses, although increasingly it was the ruler and traders and not the farmers who were able to exercise control of the distribution of feed as well as farming methods. As new forms of control and power emerged, so too did different kinds of employment, ranging from slavery and bonded servitude to free wage labour.
Much of migration has been forced
This brings us to one of the most striking reminders in the book: the astounding level of migrations which have been forced over the centuries: “The earliest empires grew rapidly through the use of forced migrant labour and travelling armies, although their influence extended through commerce as well as through conquest.”
The numbers of people moved involuntarily are breathtaking. Goldin provides examples from all continents and over many centuries of importing labourers and soldiers, moving humans from one continent to another to work as slaves or later as indentured labour, or exiling criminals or people of certain religions or origins:
Historical records suggest that coerced labour has been the most dominant mode of labour transaction all the world over and in all ages. Conversely, free labour – labour-power obtained through free consent of the labourer, without involving psychological or physical coercion – has been the road less travelled.
In the modern era, openness to voluntary movement was at its height from the mid-19th century to the First World War. This was the period when the population of North America was rapidly increasing – and when Canada was establishing itself as a country. The importance of immigration to this country took root at this time, though it has always been highly selective, originally by origin or religion and from the 1960s by more neutral criteria such as education, age, work experience and official language skills. Over the last 10 to 15 years, this type of selection has been overshadowed by much less predictable temporary immigration.
How the Fathers of Confederation viewed the purpose of immigration was indirectly enshrined in the 1867 Constitution when the provinces and the federal government were given joint responsibility for immigration and agriculture. With public lands deemed provincial, it is likely that recognition of the provinces’ role in these jurisdictions was linked to the perceived need to populate the land.
The remarkably open period of transatlantic movement did not last for more than a few decades. Goldin describes what happened:
In the decades prior to the First World War, the view that open borders encouraged prosperity and provided a means to escape hardship began to be eclipsed by rising nationalism, chauvinism and economic protectionism. A widening variety of rules on movement were introduced which sought to control entry and exit on the basis of race, nation, age, class, religion and skills … The global conflict of 1914–1918 greatly increased antipathy towards foreigners, bringing the age of mass migration before it to an abrupt end.
Passports and travel documents only became commonplace at this time, a little over 100 years ago.
It is impossible in a short review to do more than list the different aspects of migration that the book sets out. These include the influence of diasporas, the rights of expatriates, the critical importance of remittances, the control of the Hajj, the “brain drain” debate, the privatization of migration, the effects of colonization in the eradication of native peoples either by disease or by war, and how new borders and countries result in attempts to redefine the identities of people already settled on the territory.
Goldin draws attention to the enrolment by European colonial nations of tens of thousands of men from the colonies to contribute to the war effort in the Second World War and the attraction of hundreds of thousands postwar for reconstruction. He also notes the displacement of the Palestinians, digital nomads and the effect of climate change on internal and external migration. He elaborates on the challenges of building reliable data on international migration when each country has its own way of counting immigrants, often based on political objectives.
An edition for North American readers
In the North American edition inserts have been added, such as the competition for immigrants in the late 19th century, especially between the United States and Canada, the treatment of First Nations in the early days of those two countries, the U.S.-Mexico border, the support for immigration in the U.S. midwest, the experience of African-American troops in the Second World War and Donald Trump’s claim that migrants are taking Black jobs.
Canada also gets a shout-out with a mention of Justin Trudeau’s famous tweet in 2017 welcoming all those “fleeing persecution, terror and war” followed by a description of the diversification of Toronto, noting that 45 per cent of the city’s population is foreign-born. The author recognizes that “the price of Toronto’s success in attracting new migrants is the growing lack of affordable housing and increasing congestion experienced by locals and newcomers alike” and asserts that “to sustain the diversity that has powered the cultural and economic engines of Toronto and other dynamic cities, municipal and federal governments need to ensure that policies regarding migration are aligned with investments in housing, education, and other public services.”
Leaving us hungry for more
Given its objective of rendering a very complex subject accessible to the uninitiated in a short work directed at a wide readership, Ian Goldin’s book leaves the reader with the sense of being much more informed, but still wanting more in-depth analysis of certain issues. For example, while religion is mentioned briefly several times in various contexts, its specific role in migration and impact on culture are not addressed as such.
Unions are mentioned once in relation to trying to prevent the arrival of migrant workers in the early 20th century, but their current role in protecting temporary workers’ rights is missing. The analysis of the effect of migration on the economy does not take into account what can happen when too much low-wage immigration arrives too quickly, as we have been experiencing in Canada over the last few years. No mention either of migrants bringing tensions from their home countries to the new host society. International criminal people-smuggling networks get a four-paragraph section and two minor mentions.
Though the book is unapologetically on the migrants’ side, it is not sentimental: affirmations are backed up with facts. For example, citing recent European headlines such as “Tidal wave of migrants could be the biggest threat to Europe since the war” (Daily Mail, June 26, 2015) and “Migrants: the invasion has begun” (L’Opinione delle Liberta, September 15, 2023), he asserts,
Xenophobic warnings of “invasions”, “tidal waves” or “swarms” of undocumented African migrants by politicians and media outlets can create a sense of impending crisis or threat. While politically convenient, these toxic metaphors are callous and highly misleading.
Around 95 per cent of African migrants arriving in Europe do so on an authorized flight or ship. They account for just 14 per cent of the world’s migrants living outside Africa. Well over half of African migration is between countries within the continent. According to recent research, 80 per cent of Africans considering migration have no interest in leaving the continent, and no intention of moving permanently.
Goldin gives other figures that put some current trends in perspective. He reminds us that “anywhere from a fifth to a half of all migrants return home or move to a third country within five years.” While the numbers of migrants have been increasing along with the increase in world population, the proportion migrating has remained relatively constant – 3.6 per cent in 2020 compared to 3.1 per cent in 1960 – and the world’s population is expected to peak in the next 25 years. And lest we forget, the vast majority of these migrants travel with legal travel documents.
Properly managed, a force for good
Goldin’s emphasis on the importance on managing migration properly comes with some advice. He makes the case against walls and fences, which
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.
The author underlines the urgent need for an international framework for managing climate refugees: migration is too important to be left to politicians and bosses, calling for a long overdue, “mature, evidence-based conversation about the pros and cons of migration” to confront fears and misperceptions. And then, almost like throwing down the gauntlet, he offers a quote by Robert Putnam: “The central challenge for modern diversifying societies is to create a new broader sense of ‘we.’”
Ian Goldin vows to give us some perspective on this increasingly divisive issue and he delivers. He describes migration since the beginning of humanity, the whys, the hows and the outcomes. He reminds us how so much of migration has not been a whim of individuals just looking for adventure or a better job or free health care.
Goldin’s work sheds light on how much good has come of this movement, forced or voluntary. He takes on the current political discourse that too often hypes the perceived dangers of mixing up people of different backgrounds, condemning the hypocrisy of shipping people around the world to fight or to work and then forcing some of them out if they have “outlived their usefulness,” don’t seem compatible or have committed crimes.
The current negative and often ideological discourse around immigration can be extremely discouraging and disheartening. Putting this very human phenomenon into a positive historical, social, cultural and economic perspective is inspiring and uplifting and makes an important contribution to one of the most critical issues of our time.
Note
¹The UK version of the book that came out in July 2024 is a mere 242 pages, but the North American edition launched toward the end of January climbs to 300 because it includes a few extra examples relatable to Canadian and U.S. readers.
