Tip of the Iceberg

There's a wonderful article over at In Flight which discusses the fact that :

There are 200 million of us who live outside the borders of the nation-state where we – by mere random chance – happened to be born.

I’m one of that 200 million.

It's really refreshing to hear an economic migrant speak of his/her reasons for moving around the world:

A big part of it was wanting to keep on studying the thing I loved most – which it took me a good seven years of struggle and moral angst to finally abandon in favour of something that – well, I would say it lets me sleep at night, but that’s a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

Part of it was curiousity – wanting to see the heart of the Evil Empire up close and personal (and yes, in the time and place from whence I come, the United States was without doubt the Evil Empire. N.Z. is a client state but that doesn’t mean the populace likes it too much.)

Part of it was peer pressure: most of my close friends had left already. Part of it was that leaving was – in many ways at least – the path of least resistance. Which is a bit odd if you think about it, given that emigration is almost always an experience of profound dislocation – and it certainly did turn out to be so in my case.

But nevertheless, filthy lucre was up there somewhere very near the top of the list – not in the sense of a desire to earn millions but certainly in the sense of not wanting to worry about electricity bills and not being able to afford a doctor any more – and for that reason I shall always class myself as an economic migrant first and foremost.

What's most astonishing are the figures:

Still, we are only about 3% of the world's population in total or perhaps a little more.

Migration has often been thought of as a young man’s game, but almost half of us are women.

We come from everywhere and we go everywhere: the “distinction that has been made between country of origin, transit and destination” has become increasingly difficult to sustain” (GCIM, 5). In other words, you cannot escape us.

49 million of us live in Asia. 16 million of us live in Africa. 6 million of us live in Latin America and the Caribbean. The rest of us, if only by process of elimination, live in North America, Europe (that’s me!), Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Australasia and Oceania (and doubtless other places too that are not so easily categorised).

A few of us (like me) are educationally, economically and racially privileged: most of us are not.

About 20 million of us are refugees and most of that subset of us lead desperate lives indeed.

200 million. That's only 50 million short of the entire population of America. On the move!

It's a fascinating article providing an invaluable peek into the mindset of people that many have an opinion on without knowing the first thing about the reality of their situation.

One of the great benefits of joining Bloggers Against Torture - apart from the fact it's the morally correct thing to do - is that I have been exposed to great blogs that I may never otherwise have come across.

Make sure you check some of them out.

Click the title to read the whole article.

Tags: economic, refugee,