Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

1 MIGRATION, AND MIGRATORY MYTHS
WORLD MIGRATION
Current opinion is that human beings originated in East Africa. From East
Africa they migrated throughout the world. Everywhere else in the world,
therefore, people are either immigrants or descended from immigrants.
People migrate for a variety of reasons. Some migrations are voluntary, in the
sense that people migrate to conquer and colonise new territories, to improve
their economic well-being and prospects of employment, or simply to see the
world. Many migrations are involuntary. People have been forced to migrate
as slaves or indentured labour. Or they are forced to flee famines, wars or
political persecution. Usually the very poor cannot migrate, except perhaps
to neighbouring countries. Currently the vast majority of the world’s
refugees are in countries where poverty is as great as it is in the countries
they have been forced to flee from. On the other hand many of the most
recent economic migrants, to the United States in particular, are from Asian
countries where there has been rapid industrialisation, and where private
foreign investment has both created links with industrialised countries and
broken links with traditional methods of making a living.
Current nation states are the result of successive waves of immigration,
most of which took place before the twentieth century. Although migrants
are currently vilified and subjected to unprecedented levels of restriction, to
deny the validity of migration is to deny part of the social nature of human
beings. But the rate of migration in relation to total population is now lower
than it has been at times in the past. In spite of scaremongering about the
supposed threat of ‘swamping’ by immigrants and refugees, there is in fact
little evidence that migration is increasing significantly, or likely to do so.
The numbers about which so much fuss is made are in reality rather small.
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution and the imperialist
expansion of Europe, the main migratory movements (apart from
emigrations from Europe) have resulted from the requirements for labour of
capitalist industry, mines and plantations. In the conquered territories these
were often satisfied by the more or less overt use of force. In The New Helots
Robin Cohen describes a spectrum of labour recruitment which ranges from
total compulsion, as in the slave trade, through situations where people are
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