by Dick Edelstein

According to today’s newspaper, Spain is expected to lose some 30% of its population over the next 75 years, based on current birth rate projections, a loss of over eight million inhabitants—too great to cover through the influx of migration (La Vanguardia, 17 May). And what about other European countries? The study cited above predicts a still greater per capita drop in Italy’s population. So why aren’t people more worried about who will supply the labor power that we will need to secure future social benefits, rather than heeding absurd declarations by right wing populists like Meloni and Trump on the supposed dangers of migration?

At a time when it is essential to be able to separate the facts and realities of migration from the myths and lies, author Ian Goldin offers us timely assistance in a brief book entitled The Shortest History of Migration, an indispensable guide when the facts of migration are obscured by a baseless hysteria whose effects span the political spectrum, influencing the attitudes of groups and individuals on the left as well as the right. This is an opportune moment to take a good look at those facts. The author, with a gift for synthesizing detailed material, has produced a concise book, with an apt cover blurb that says: “Read in a day. Remember for a lifetime.” Goldin takes a very long view, explaining to readers how migration has always been an intrinsic part of the evolution and development of the human race as he traces the phenomenon throughout all of the eras of human history.

As a migrant myself, and someone whose recent ancestors migrated from Europe to the New World for some of the reasons succinctly described in this book, for me this is a personal as well as a social question, although most people have some personal interest in migration as well as their own viewpoint. Read more »