1 00:00:10,630 --> 00:00:17,080 Good evening and a very warm welcome to the Oxford Martin School, I'm Ian Golden, the former director of the school, 2 00:00:17,080 --> 00:00:23,560 and it's a huge pleasure to introduce this evening Professor Robin Cohen Robbins, a very good old friend. 3 00:00:23,560 --> 00:00:29,500 I first met him when I was doing my doctorate in Oxford, and he was professor of sociology at Warwick. 4 00:00:29,500 --> 00:00:38,020 He's been a professor in many, many universities in the West Indies, in Nigeria and South Africa, and here in Oxford, 5 00:00:38,020 --> 00:00:47,170 where he was professor in the International Development Department and was the director of the International Migration Institute, 6 00:00:47,170 --> 00:00:54,790 which was one of the groups that the Oxford Martin School founded to work on migration. 7 00:00:54,790 --> 00:00:58,420 He's someone who I've always thought of as one of the wisest, 8 00:00:58,420 --> 00:01:10,150 clearest thinkers on migration and who's been able to combine a passion for the subject with extremely deep analytical rigour and policy coherence, 9 00:01:10,150 --> 00:01:15,820 and has always approached it in a different way to many others with a real feel for 10 00:01:15,820 --> 00:01:22,000 the people involved and has introduced into the literature many vital dimensions, 11 00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:26,170 not least related to the Diaspora and diversity. 12 00:01:26,170 --> 00:01:38,530 So it's with huge pleasure that we launch in Oxford this evening, his new book, Migration and it's incredibly well-produced book. 13 00:01:38,530 --> 00:01:45,700 Robin is going to be selling it afterwards at the giveaway price of £10 because it actually says £20 on the back, 14 00:01:45,700 --> 00:01:53,200 and I think it must have cost about £30 a copy to produce because it's so full of colourful illustrations, 15 00:01:53,200 --> 00:01:55,930 and it's really a very, very beautifully produced book. 16 00:01:55,930 --> 00:02:05,050 But is it is the best summary I've seen of the various strands of what's significant in migration, 17 00:02:05,050 --> 00:02:13,630 and I can think of no better way of thinking and seeing oneself into this extremely complex and increasingly vital subject. 18 00:02:13,630 --> 00:02:28,360 So Robin provenance with huge pleasure that I ask you to introduce us to the book. 19 00:02:28,360 --> 00:02:34,540 Well, thank you very much, and I particularly want to thank in not only for his generous marks, but, of course, 20 00:02:34,540 --> 00:02:47,620 the fact that he helped to launch the International Migration Institute, which now has found a new home at the University of Amsterdam. 21 00:02:47,620 --> 00:02:55,870 And we were a very friendly school in the Oxford Martin School, 22 00:02:55,870 --> 00:03:03,820 a very great launch to a brilliant idea and and there's been a very distinguished director of it. 23 00:03:03,820 --> 00:03:11,020 OK, so this is a book called the title of which is rather a sort of grand. 24 00:03:11,020 --> 00:03:17,440 And of course, publishers being what they are, they want the bigger, the better the wilder. 25 00:03:17,440 --> 00:03:25,180 So you can imagine it's not completely simple to say that even humankind from prehistory to the present and 26 00:03:25,180 --> 00:03:34,390 squeeze everything in of significance and impact the way the book is set out is that there are 44 chapters. 27 00:03:34,390 --> 00:03:40,030 There is some guiding principle to this these chapters. 28 00:03:40,030 --> 00:03:49,420 What should we say? It's less than comprehensive and more than random property is the easiest way to explain it, 29 00:03:49,420 --> 00:03:54,640 but we won't be able to get through these chapters in great detail this evening. 30 00:03:54,640 --> 00:03:57,730 So I'm going to pick out three themes. 31 00:03:57,730 --> 00:04:07,720 The first theme, which is also the title of the first chapter out of Africa when migration and human migration began. 32 00:04:07,720 --> 00:04:18,310 The second looking at Irish immigration, I think it's sort of middle period of the historical period that I'm covering. 33 00:04:18,310 --> 00:04:28,330 And in the final period, which combines two themes looking at the growth of migration and in particular, 34 00:04:28,330 --> 00:04:45,280 the mass displacement of refugees and other survival migrants, and how, if any way the attempt to try and wall people off is working or not. 35 00:04:45,280 --> 00:04:50,770 Working will also be time for question and answer a little later on. 36 00:04:50,770 --> 00:04:59,440 And I'll take the opportunity to read very briefly from each of those three themes something in the book. 37 00:04:59,440 --> 00:05:07,300 So the first theme in South Africa and of course, migration scholars have to learn new skills. 38 00:05:07,300 --> 00:05:12,580 In the old days. It was all. In fact, it was linguistic traces. 39 00:05:12,580 --> 00:05:19,870 It was fossil remains. Now it's DNA and we have a DNA map. 40 00:05:19,870 --> 00:05:25,690 They're tracing human migration. I'll show you another one a little later on. 41 00:05:25,690 --> 00:05:36,610 First half of Africa and then the yellow banding and erectus and the orange banding and the end of [INAUDIBLE]. 42 00:05:36,610 --> 00:05:40,510 And of course, there's been a lot of stuff in the newspapers every now and again. 43 00:05:40,510 --> 00:05:49,030 There's a new discovery, a new fossil, a new bit, and that seems to throw people off and say something. 44 00:05:49,030 --> 00:05:53,260 Oh, they didn't come from Africa. Some of them came from Europe. 45 00:05:53,260 --> 00:06:02,620 This is not the case. Human migration starts in Africa, and Neanderthals also start in Africa, although at a different time. 46 00:06:02,620 --> 00:06:13,090 But a couple of years ago, there was a lot of publicity around the meeting of the Undersells and Homo sapiens in the southwest of Europe. 47 00:06:13,090 --> 00:06:20,590 But about two percent of the genome of humans are now seem to have Neanderthal. 48 00:06:20,590 --> 00:06:25,990 So that's very interesting because it implies that humans were not quite as smart, 49 00:06:25,990 --> 00:06:31,960 didn't out with the undersells as had subsequently as had previously been thought. 50 00:06:31,960 --> 00:06:43,930 We also just had just last month, the discovery of the new discovery of AU Human Being started in Botswana or Namibia was the year before. 51 00:06:43,930 --> 00:06:50,710 And of course, it is the case that there are, if you like, in Africa to zones that are very important. 52 00:06:50,710 --> 00:06:59,740 One is South Africa, southern Africa going up towards the normally the Namibian border and it's the cradle of humankind. 53 00:06:59,740 --> 00:07:05,380 And if you want to express it in a slightly different way, East Africa, 54 00:07:05,380 --> 00:07:13,360 the Rift Valley can be easily represented as the nursery of humankind a little later on. 55 00:07:13,360 --> 00:07:27,000 Well, I wanted to. Focus on this slide, because in this book, I have a discussion, I say thinking upside down. 56 00:07:27,000 --> 00:07:34,710 And it's a counterfactual, and you probably know that historians and others are rather not very keen on counterfactuals. 57 00:07:34,710 --> 00:07:43,500 I say, please don't use counterfactual. Actually, I like counterfactuals because the conflict was all what would have happened if and they say, 58 00:07:43,500 --> 00:07:46,860 Oh no, look, deal with reality, deal with how it was done. 59 00:07:46,860 --> 00:07:51,630 Deal counterfactual. All the good questions are based on counterfactuals, 60 00:07:51,630 --> 00:08:01,080 and the counterfactual in this case is what would have happened if we hadn't had urban civilisations. 61 00:08:01,080 --> 00:08:09,810 What if we had remained rather like the people in that in that slide? 62 00:08:09,810 --> 00:08:21,580 So I'm going to read just a short passage. We often imagine civilisation as the triumph of the sedentary over the mobile. 63 00:08:21,580 --> 00:08:28,120 But human settlements have created enormous problems with humans bumped up against each other, 64 00:08:28,120 --> 00:08:34,960 diseases spread while many city planners have struggled to provide adequate food, housing, 65 00:08:34,960 --> 00:08:42,460 transport, security, education, potable water and sewage to feed urban populations. 66 00:08:42,460 --> 00:08:49,990 The countryside has been blighted by commercial agriculture, pesticides and land clearances. 67 00:08:49,990 --> 00:08:56,920 As the planet itself has become threatened by pollution, climate change and global exploitation. 68 00:08:56,920 --> 00:09:04,330 Perhaps we can learn something from a more ecologically sensitive migration ancestors. 69 00:09:04,330 --> 00:09:12,040 Now, these ancestors spent something of the order of 35 hours a week foraging for food. 70 00:09:12,040 --> 00:09:22,090 We have to spend at least 10 hours a week more in developed countries and workers in developing countries spend double again. 71 00:09:22,090 --> 00:09:25,900 So maybe it wasn't quite so tough out there. 72 00:09:25,900 --> 00:09:30,850 It may have been somewhat easier than is easily imagined. 73 00:09:30,850 --> 00:09:37,480 So this is the other diagram that I wanted to show you, and it's really kind of an interesting venture. 74 00:09:37,480 --> 00:09:43,090 Paul Salopek is doing a seven to 10 mile walk. 75 00:09:43,090 --> 00:09:49,990 We're not quite sure how long it's going to take for the National Geographic setting out from the Rift Valley, 76 00:09:49,990 --> 00:09:57,850 and he's basically walking to the Cape Horn and along the way is reporting for the National Geographic magazine. 77 00:09:57,850 --> 00:10:04,570 But the virtue of this map is that it sort of gives us a sense for the first time. 78 00:10:04,570 --> 00:10:16,750 I think basis period, those slices are in a different time zones and also of the practicalities of it. 79 00:10:16,750 --> 00:10:24,880 So you can see somehow that it made sense that the continents did link together in some obvious sense. 80 00:10:24,880 --> 00:10:34,480 Now, of course, it's not the case that it was a simple movement from place to place be they may have been three different movements out of Africa. 81 00:10:34,480 --> 00:10:42,490 There was definitely a big move back as I think people hit Siberia and said this is mighty cold and turned back again. 82 00:10:42,490 --> 00:10:52,630 So it's not a simple story, and we have to spend a long time trying to uncover these as new fossil remains and become manifest. 83 00:10:52,630 --> 00:11:03,350 OK, so that's the first theme. Now we jumping, you know, quite long, a lot of years, and we go to our second theme. 84 00:11:03,350 --> 00:11:13,120 And the second theme is about Irish immigration, and I thought quite hard about what? 85 00:11:13,120 --> 00:11:22,780 To select for today's talk, and I thought this sort of makes sense because suddenly Ireland is in our minds again, 86 00:11:22,780 --> 00:11:27,010 we think about it in relation to Northern Ireland and Brexit. 87 00:11:27,010 --> 00:11:42,490 We even had, I think, a minister talking terms of food being a potential source of leverage against the Irish in some Brexit related discussion. 88 00:11:42,490 --> 00:11:47,660 Quite unaware, of course, of the horrific story of the famine. 89 00:11:47,660 --> 00:12:02,500 The exodus from Ireland in 1846 to 1951, when the potato crop failed and Irish people were forced to leave Ireland, 90 00:12:02,500 --> 00:12:09,910 losing about 20 to 25 per cent of the total population is very high in that short period of time. 91 00:12:09,910 --> 00:12:14,950 And this sculpture, I think, is a very, very moving sculpture actually. 92 00:12:14,950 --> 00:12:20,740 In the book, we only use one of the figures rather than this whole figure. 93 00:12:20,740 --> 00:12:29,080 But I like this particular one because you can see the normality of people walking alongside in the paths and these very strange, 94 00:12:29,080 --> 00:12:34,960 haunting Giacometti like figures on Dublin docks, 95 00:12:34,960 --> 00:12:48,310 which tell the extraordinary story of people being driven to the United States, to Britain and to and to the island to Australia. 96 00:12:48,310 --> 00:12:56,010 But I want to use this story in another sense as well. It's a slightly odd tale. 97 00:12:56,010 --> 00:13:00,840 One of the theories of migration, we have many theories of migration, of course, 98 00:13:00,840 --> 00:13:11,040 but ones that have been kind of disappeared off the face of scholarship is the theory developed by Marx and Angles, 99 00:13:11,040 --> 00:13:16,190 and they developed a theory of migration entirely from the Irish experience. 100 00:13:16,190 --> 00:13:23,370 Engels, actually, as you probably know, inherited his father's factory in in Ireland, 101 00:13:23,370 --> 00:13:29,430 and one of the workers was a young Irish woman, Murray, who he had an affair with. 102 00:13:29,430 --> 00:13:32,050 So he knew the stuff. 103 00:13:32,050 --> 00:13:43,870 From a very intimate setting, but they developed a theory of migration, which is, I think, worth just touching on, so let me just read this passage. 104 00:13:43,870 --> 00:13:49,870 The second passage I read the movement of Irish workers to England during the industrial 105 00:13:49,870 --> 00:13:57,370 revolution was the key historical experience in forming the Marxist theory of migration. 106 00:13:57,370 --> 00:14:02,890 One that's still generational change, a challenging alternative to conventional ideas. 107 00:14:02,890 --> 00:14:14,380 Monks started by observing that although it is widely believed their population pressed on capital, the true relationship was invented. 108 00:14:14,380 --> 00:14:25,360 Capital pressed on population The purpose was to release enough labourers to staff the emerging factories while depressing the cost of labour, 109 00:14:25,360 --> 00:14:30,970 but without destroying the peasant economy that had to be sufficiently preserved 110 00:14:30,970 --> 00:14:36,790 to ensure that the cost of reproducing workers covering pre-natal feeding, 111 00:14:36,790 --> 00:14:45,430 birth, child rearing education and old age care failed not to the capitalist but to the source country, 112 00:14:45,430 --> 00:14:50,260 or that migrant workers could thus be recruited when needed. 113 00:14:50,260 --> 00:14:57,850 Any drifted while not while simultaneously reducing the bargaining capacity of indigenous workers? 114 00:14:57,850 --> 00:15:02,950 Well, it's an elegant theory. And there's enough in it to be plausible. 115 00:15:02,950 --> 00:15:11,530 But the implied rational balancing of countervailing forces was too conspiratorial and too mechanical in the mid-19th century. 116 00:15:11,530 --> 00:15:16,840 No cunning capitalist plan was able to preserve Irish peasant economy. 117 00:15:16,840 --> 00:15:18,760 The Irish peasant economy, 118 00:15:18,760 --> 00:15:27,040 which was at a fragile tipping point at nearly the same time that Marx and Engel's were publishing their momentous manifesto. 119 00:15:27,040 --> 00:15:31,960 The potato blight struck Ireland and the Great Famine commenced. 120 00:15:31,960 --> 00:15:38,380 About 1.5 million Irish people left the country, mainly to North America. 121 00:15:38,380 --> 00:15:49,910 OK, so that tells that story. But I wonder also told this story to your attention because it also tells of. 122 00:15:49,910 --> 00:16:00,300 And. Something that we also need to know about international solidarity, and we feel we are part of that story as well. 123 00:16:00,300 --> 00:16:03,270 And the Irish seem to be rather good at public monuments. 124 00:16:03,270 --> 00:16:16,710 This comes from Cork in the park and it's in the shape of a feeding bowl, but it's made up of Suva feathers eagle feathers from the Choctaw Nation, 125 00:16:16,710 --> 00:16:24,510 one of the Native American peoples who, amazingly because they had just been displaced themselves. 126 00:16:24,510 --> 00:16:30,170 And this phenomenon, known as the Trail of Tears, raised money. 127 00:16:30,170 --> 00:16:34,610 In support of the Irish famine victims. 128 00:16:34,610 --> 00:16:44,330 And this is a commemoration of that, and in fact, the chief of the Native American tribes, each of those came over to dedicate that. 129 00:16:44,330 --> 00:16:50,120 So it's a wonderful tale of migration and of connexion between people. 130 00:16:50,120 --> 00:16:53,930 And this last slide is another connexion, 131 00:16:53,930 --> 00:17:05,870 one that I think British politicians would be wise to understand because Irish America is a very powerful force in the United States politically, 132 00:17:05,870 --> 00:17:14,070 and it's conventional for people without even remotely connexion to visit their ancestral home in Ireland. 133 00:17:14,070 --> 00:17:23,980 Here you can see Reagan doing doing this in a coat that is clearly covering a bullet proof vest or something that doesn't quite fit. 134 00:17:23,980 --> 00:17:31,070 But you go. So that's the Irish story, and I want to then turn on to my third theme, 135 00:17:31,070 --> 00:17:42,710 which links together two chapters one on mass displacement and the other on the question of wolves and whether wolves can stop liberation. 136 00:17:42,710 --> 00:17:45,200 So here's the first slide. 137 00:17:45,200 --> 00:17:56,150 And this is a slide not of migration or international migration at large, because we're talking about bigger numbers than this. 138 00:17:56,150 --> 00:18:05,810 But the numbers of people who have been displaced and have come to the attention in various ways of the United Nations High Commission for refugees, 139 00:18:05,810 --> 00:18:10,460 these are refugees. They displaced people, internally displaced people. 140 00:18:10,460 --> 00:18:18,620 They include those people in Gaza and so on. But just look at that extraordinary graph from 1951, 141 00:18:18,620 --> 00:18:31,070 when the United Nations Convention on Refugees was formed and when we first developed a legal framework to integrate refugees and displaced people. 142 00:18:31,070 --> 00:18:38,840 And how, in a sense, the numbers have gone completely in the wrong direction in the South. 143 00:18:38,840 --> 00:18:47,420 When I say the wrong direction, they seem to be growing at such a pace that the nation state system, 144 00:18:47,420 --> 00:18:52,220 the migration refugee system, is unable to process them. 145 00:18:52,220 --> 00:18:57,650 So let me try and illustrate this with this little. Thank. 146 00:18:57,650 --> 00:19:11,190 OK, in the time that that took to swivel. One person was displaced and in terms of the every day. 147 00:19:11,190 --> 00:19:21,000 Integration of Displaces, who was settled in 19 in 2018, last year, only 1.3 percent was settled. 148 00:19:21,000 --> 00:19:31,190 So we're talking about a very big problem. OK, then on one hand, the growth of people who need settlement is going on now. 149 00:19:31,190 --> 00:19:38,130 On the other hand, a capacity or willingness to integrate them and settle them is came down. 150 00:19:38,130 --> 00:19:43,370 So another one. And what has been the response? 151 00:19:43,370 --> 00:19:47,180 Well, of course, there are many examples of generosity of spirit. 152 00:19:47,180 --> 00:19:55,040 One has to think, for example, of the Jersey girl or Chancellor Merkel in Germany. 153 00:19:55,040 --> 00:20:03,380 But the generality of the responses has been to ward of migration, 154 00:20:03,380 --> 00:20:12,350 rather than to embrace people who are displaced or seeking settlement for other reasons. 155 00:20:12,350 --> 00:20:23,030 And we can now document this. So that's the wall going up, the Berlin Wall going up symbolically, of course, the wall. 156 00:20:23,030 --> 00:20:30,450 When we talk about walls and it came down in 89, I. 157 00:20:30,450 --> 00:20:41,460 Yes, that's right. In 89 and at that time, there were roughly speaking, 16 walls worldwide. 158 00:20:41,460 --> 00:20:45,380 Now I use walls more metaphorically then. 159 00:20:45,380 --> 00:20:59,310 Exactly because wolves can be quite exotic. And if you look at the Spanish Sahara, there is a wall that is made out of sand and. 160 00:20:59,310 --> 00:21:06,620 Been banked up, and you say that can't be very formidable. Well, it is actually if it's been mined, which it has been. 161 00:21:06,620 --> 00:21:14,210 OK. And there are fences there, barbed wire, there are all kinds of ways of walling people off. 162 00:21:14,210 --> 00:21:26,120 So we use the word in a rather loose sentence. And you sense 15 in 1989, 65 walls of similar sort now. 163 00:21:26,120 --> 00:21:28,130 So quadrupling the number of walls. 164 00:21:28,130 --> 00:21:37,010 So it's not just President Trump who's building walls and walls between India and Bangladesh, and there are many other examples. 165 00:21:37,010 --> 00:21:42,190 And I want to just show you one or two. Look at that one. 166 00:21:42,190 --> 00:21:56,830 Now that isn't breaking the law. That is a very good artist, drawing a break in the wall, and it's one of the ways in which walls have, 167 00:21:56,830 --> 00:22:06,220 as it were proliferated in terms of our own understanding of wills is as we proliferate the vocabulary of walls. 168 00:22:06,220 --> 00:22:10,570 So this one is called a separation barrier, not a rule. 169 00:22:10,570 --> 00:22:19,600 The Israelis insist it's not a war that looks quite like a wall to those people looking to photograph. 170 00:22:19,600 --> 00:22:28,760 But. What's interesting about this war is you'd think, well, OK. 171 00:22:28,760 --> 00:22:35,480 Most people would not be very keen on the idea of a wall separating one sovereign country to another. 172 00:22:35,480 --> 00:22:48,770 But perhaps as a result of the enormous conflicts in the area, the Green Line, which is the 67 barrier, could be walled off. 173 00:22:48,770 --> 00:22:54,200 Could be. So is that what this is about, this is about? 174 00:22:54,200 --> 00:23:03,380 No, it turns out that the Israeli separation barrier is twice the length of the Green Line, 175 00:23:03,380 --> 00:23:14,690 and it snakes its way to incorporate various Israeli settlements and to squeeze out various Palestinian settlements. 176 00:23:14,690 --> 00:23:30,290 So this is a wall. There is also a statement not merely of national sovereignty, but of some kind of movement, of some claim to new land and so on. 177 00:23:30,290 --> 00:23:34,890 So that's kind of interesting war and look at this one. 178 00:23:34,890 --> 00:23:50,100 This CO2. One of two positions that Spain has in those African enclaves in Morocco, and it's only about nine miles, 179 00:23:50,100 --> 00:23:57,540 14 kilometres to Cadiz through the province of Cadiz in Spain, across the Straits of Gibraltar. 180 00:23:57,540 --> 00:24:05,840 And in this little Spanish enclave, that's of course, European territory and. 181 00:24:05,840 --> 00:24:13,270 Africans who are standing on the top of that wall spoke fence. 182 00:24:13,270 --> 00:24:17,910 Occasionally break the fence down, jump over it. 183 00:24:17,910 --> 00:24:28,050 And are in Europe, which point their incarceration in a camp in Qatar, but some of them make it through. 184 00:24:28,050 --> 00:24:35,960 So this is the raw end of Fortress Europe and they have been known. 185 00:24:35,960 --> 00:24:45,740 In the sense of people approaching the fence and getting clubbed or with fists then punched back across the border, 186 00:24:45,740 --> 00:24:54,300 so this is about as raw and as horrible as it gets. And that's Europe. 187 00:24:54,300 --> 00:24:58,680 And then we come on to the notorious wall, 188 00:24:58,680 --> 00:25:11,220 the wall that President Trump wishes to build across the Rio Grande Valley along along the Rio Grande, which he calls his big, beautiful wall. 189 00:25:11,220 --> 00:25:17,370 And you may recall that during his presidential campaign, over and over again, 190 00:25:17,370 --> 00:25:26,010 he recited the core build that will build our border, and the supporters responded Build that will build a wall. 191 00:25:26,010 --> 00:25:31,980 He had all the various fanciful ideas that Mexico would pay for the wall and so on. 192 00:25:31,980 --> 00:25:39,680 But this is a very interesting case because, as you can see from that diagram. 193 00:25:39,680 --> 00:25:47,030 There isn't no war and then a war or a proposed war. 194 00:25:47,030 --> 00:25:53,570 There have been barriers of various sorts going up for years on end, 195 00:25:53,570 --> 00:26:05,570 and so it's been possible to track the effect of increased ordering or creation of orders from and. 196 00:26:05,570 --> 00:26:06,860 Over time. 197 00:26:06,860 --> 00:26:19,730 And one very important population, sociologist, demographer called and Douglas Massey at Princeton has been analysing whether will work and to do so. 198 00:26:19,730 --> 00:26:25,190 He's been trying to look at the effect of the gradual hardening of the wall. 199 00:26:25,190 --> 00:26:36,140 And what he's found generally is as the wall gets tougher and tougher as more of the easy crossings get walled off. 200 00:26:36,140 --> 00:26:41,540 So it's become more and more expensive to cross the wall. 201 00:26:41,540 --> 00:26:52,760 So for that reason, it one way crossings have accelerated compared with. 202 00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:55,940 Transversal circulation. 203 00:26:55,940 --> 00:27:07,130 OK, bear in mind, this is a common Zain, it's been economically the same zone for many, many years and Hispanic America as Mexico extended. 204 00:27:07,130 --> 00:27:12,170 That's why the place is called Los Angeles and San Francisco and so on will be Spanish 205 00:27:12,170 --> 00:27:20,930 names or indicative of the fact that Spanish America was part of the in terms of politics, 206 00:27:20,930 --> 00:27:28,670 law, economics, culture and everything else. So what Massey found is as the world gets tighter. 207 00:27:28,670 --> 00:27:41,060 So the one way crossings go up, go up and people don't find it's the reason being, of course, it's more expensive to hire people. 208 00:27:41,060 --> 00:27:44,030 It's more expensive to pay off the border crossings. 209 00:27:44,030 --> 00:27:55,130 And so it's not worth your while coming back for family holidays, for routines, for retirement and so on. 210 00:27:55,130 --> 00:28:05,130 Because if you come back to Mexico, you will find it very difficult and very expensive to return to the United States. 211 00:28:05,130 --> 00:28:18,420 So the paradox of this, as and as he points out, is the war is actually keeping people in rather than keeping them out. 212 00:28:18,420 --> 00:28:22,470 And he's got lots of statistics to try and demonstrate. 213 00:28:22,470 --> 00:28:33,630 So this is a one interesting example, but I want to also turn to something, if you like, of a more symbolic understanding of the war because you know, 214 00:28:33,630 --> 00:28:43,690 it may be that walls don't literally work in the sense of keeping people out or don't work very well or don't work in all circumstances, 215 00:28:43,690 --> 00:28:52,050 we have to talk about all sorts of different examples. I'm not making a generalisation that they never work and they don't work at all. 216 00:28:52,050 --> 00:28:58,560 But that they work at different levels. And one of the ways in which they work is symbolic. 217 00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:06,440 So I wonder, in my last passage, talk about why build a wall? 218 00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:10,250 So. This is what it reads. 219 00:29:10,250 --> 00:29:19,730 It would be an exaggeration to say that walls and similar barriers have no effect on inward investment, inward migration flows. 220 00:29:19,730 --> 00:29:27,290 But the potency is vastly exaggerated in the USA Mexico situation. 221 00:29:27,290 --> 00:29:32,270 There's a good case to be made that facilitating return through easy remittance of 222 00:29:32,270 --> 00:29:39,410 earnings tax breaks and working with the Mexican authorities to enhance return, 223 00:29:39,410 --> 00:29:44,930 these investments would be more effective in barrier controls. 224 00:29:44,930 --> 00:29:49,610 This suggests that walls are being erected for other reasons, 225 00:29:49,610 --> 00:29:57,680 principally as a way of assuaging longstanding residents as residents angry reaction to foreigners. 226 00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:08,250 Trump's big, beautiful wall, as he calls it, is a visible and concrete reminder of the phrase We hear you there. 227 00:30:08,250 --> 00:30:12,420 In observing a similar similar phenomenon in Israel. 228 00:30:12,420 --> 00:30:23,520 Rachel Busby, Rachel Buzz Bridge suggests that a wall is a performance of sovereignty, a way of bombastic Lee declaring a physical space to be ours. 229 00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:32,040 She explains that a wall also quote reflects deep power asymmetries, with its materiality holding profound, 230 00:30:32,040 --> 00:30:41,400 discursive and effective implication for the subjectivities and psyches of the respective nations, unquote. 231 00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:52,230 So a wall is sending a powerful message, not only saying you can't come here, but also that we can enforce our will because we are stronger, 232 00:30:52,230 --> 00:30:57,690 which is precisely the message that Trump supporters wish to hear in shooting. 233 00:30:57,690 --> 00:31:08,210 In short, controlling migration is far less important to populist leaders than appearing to control migration. 234 00:31:08,210 --> 00:31:13,370 OK. Right, sir. 235 00:31:13,370 --> 00:31:25,190 The last slide simply is the rather extraordinary picture of a young woman that appears on the front cover next to the Frontispiece in the book, 236 00:31:25,190 --> 00:31:29,540 so hopefully that will encourage you to buy a book. 237 00:31:29,540 --> 00:31:36,140 So we've got a quick Q&A and I'm going to take the opportunity to pass a copy 238 00:31:36,140 --> 00:31:43,030 around if you make sure it comes back to me and I'll turn now to our team. 239 00:31:43,030 --> 00:31:55,210 Thanks. Thanks so much, Robyn. That was fantastic. 240 00:31:55,210 --> 00:32:04,090 Three remarkable little tasters of the book, which I'm sure will entice us all to suggest it. 241 00:32:04,090 --> 00:32:09,470 And I particularly liked your starting with the dad. Incidentally, if any of you interested in your own DNA, 242 00:32:09,470 --> 00:32:19,720 National Geographic and various others allow you to set off a bit of saliva and you will see that we all come from East Africa. 243 00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:26,530 Just I did it on both my mothers and father signs. The front and back of my book Exceptional People, is that traced? 244 00:32:26,530 --> 00:32:33,370 But we all Africans, and that was a very good starting point, not least for two South Africans. 245 00:32:33,370 --> 00:32:39,790 Great. We have about twenty five minutes who would like to pose the first question. 246 00:32:39,790 --> 00:32:44,470 We are being live streamed and webcast and video. 247 00:32:44,470 --> 00:32:50,860 So if you don't want to be recorded, I suggest you don't ask a question. 248 00:32:50,860 --> 00:32:58,340 There is in the back as to a person of the. First of all, very fascinating talk, thank you very much. 249 00:32:58,340 --> 00:33:08,090 One of your slides there was looking at the numbers and the increase of displacement saw quite a significant spike around 1972 1973, 250 00:33:08,090 --> 00:33:11,090 which seemed to kind of precede the trend in growth. 251 00:33:11,090 --> 00:33:16,010 And I was just wondering what happened around that period that might have contributed towards that, 252 00:33:16,010 --> 00:33:20,600 that spike and that that influenced the growth in numbers over subsequent years. 253 00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:30,370 You. I think you might have floored me on looking, does anyone have the answer? 254 00:33:30,370 --> 00:33:34,870 With my friend Geoffrey and Oliver? 255 00:33:34,870 --> 00:33:39,710 Yes, it's the expulsion from Uganda. Oh yes. 256 00:33:39,710 --> 00:33:45,340 Yes, that would have accounted for some, but not as if not quite those numbers. 257 00:33:45,340 --> 00:33:50,170 I think it may be the expulsions from East Africa and in particular from Uganda 258 00:33:50,170 --> 00:33:54,400 that created a spike because it was in the hundreds of thousands and ultimately. 259 00:33:54,400 --> 00:33:59,340 So I may be wrong, but I think that was it because the Vietnamese boat people came out. 260 00:33:59,340 --> 00:34:04,540 I'm sure that's part of it. That, of course, is a crucial element there. 261 00:34:04,540 --> 00:34:15,660 I suspect I'm just sort of thinking on the torture here that this was a period when legitimate. 262 00:34:15,660 --> 00:34:20,250 Migration was squeezed rather dramatically in Europe. 263 00:34:20,250 --> 00:34:25,350 I mean, I'm sure you Ugandans are part of the story, but they're relatively small numbers involved, 264 00:34:25,350 --> 00:34:32,520 given that we're talking about millions and I suspect this may be the displaced people. 265 00:34:32,520 --> 00:34:40,770 This is a different gate because they couldn't come in as legitimate refugees because there was a big I remember the 266 00:34:40,770 --> 00:34:51,120 recession following the oil price hikes of the early 70s led to quite a strong squeeze on legitimate migration into Europe. 267 00:34:51,120 --> 00:34:55,500 So that may also be part of it. But thank you very much. That's a good contribution. 268 00:34:55,500 --> 00:34:58,860 I was living at the time. Yeah, I'm good. 269 00:34:58,860 --> 00:35:04,770 I guess the mikes in the front now, and we'll move backwards if. 270 00:35:04,770 --> 00:35:06,930 Thank you. 271 00:35:06,930 --> 00:35:19,980 Using biological terms at one point in history, did the Negro population turn into the three races of Negro aged Caucasian, Caucasian and mongoloid? 272 00:35:19,980 --> 00:35:30,000 Yeah. OK, so these expressions, of course, on someone I've dated, people don't tend to use them quite so often. 273 00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:40,050 But I want to address your point quite directly by pointing to something that I think was a bit of a surprise for most of us, 274 00:35:40,050 --> 00:35:46,350 which was a fossil discovery in the Cheddar Gorge in the UK, 275 00:35:46,350 --> 00:35:57,270 in which reconstructed produce somebody who had a dog's skin for at least 30000 years longer than people had anticipated. 276 00:35:57,270 --> 00:36:08,150 So this is a little peculiar because obviously light is lighter, skin is better adapted to. 277 00:36:08,150 --> 00:36:14,720 Climates where you would have lower sun and you need vitamin D for your health. 278 00:36:14,720 --> 00:36:19,730 So the assumption was that adaptive response had come quite a lot earlier. 279 00:36:19,730 --> 00:36:29,330 So it seems as if darker skinned people were in Europe much later than had normally been sued. 280 00:36:29,330 --> 00:36:35,590 Now, obviously, people look different and the evolutionary. 281 00:36:35,590 --> 00:36:45,540 The story is partly that is best expressed in terms of the tree. 282 00:36:45,540 --> 00:36:53,200 OK, if you imagine the branch and all branches of trees splayed out to the different continents, 283 00:36:53,200 --> 00:37:02,560 the continents then drifting apart or access becoming much more difficult because of the Ice Age or various other phenomena, 284 00:37:02,560 --> 00:37:08,140 then you begin to get certain genetic characteristics and customs taking place. 285 00:37:08,140 --> 00:37:14,080 And I suppose one would want to take those different points. 286 00:37:14,080 --> 00:37:18,610 But this is what in a sense kind of surprising me because you suddenly find, Oh, 287 00:37:18,610 --> 00:37:27,880 here's a discovery of somebody in Indonesia on Sumatra who looks somewhat like somebody in Polynesia or Madagascar. 288 00:37:27,880 --> 00:37:31,250 So it's not quite so obvious as splitting into three, 289 00:37:31,250 --> 00:37:39,400 but certainly that that splitting phenomena in terms of physical appearance did occur through adaptive response, 290 00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:44,080 genetic drift and a degree of clustering of genetic clustering. 291 00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:52,180 And you may want to add something you know, you said that, uh, you know, 292 00:37:52,180 --> 00:37:59,380 I wondered if you in your research for your book and the book itself looked at the very 293 00:37:59,380 --> 00:38:04,750 important historical walls like ancient Hadrian's Wall and the Great Wall of China, 294 00:38:04,750 --> 00:38:09,010 the short and long term effects of those you yeah. 295 00:38:09,010 --> 00:38:21,270 And when I say, look, Judge, I was aware of that when I was doing that chapter on walls and thought quite hard about whether that, 296 00:38:21,270 --> 00:38:25,420 you know, there were analogies that could be drawn from that. 297 00:38:25,420 --> 00:38:33,550 And of course, there's no doubt that they did mark of a civilizational outposts. 298 00:38:33,550 --> 00:38:40,150 So Hadrian's Wall was really saying the Roman Empire kind of ends here. 299 00:38:40,150 --> 00:38:45,880 I'm less convinced that it was really an effective. 300 00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:52,050 Barrier, you know, if you haven't walked Hadrian's Wall, but. 301 00:38:52,050 --> 00:38:59,760 I've seen pictures of and talk to people who've walked in, and it actually isn't that formidable an obstacle. 302 00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:09,840 So one does wonder whether it was much more like the Trumpian symbolic war that it was a way of saying. 303 00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:13,980 Here we are. There you are. 304 00:39:13,980 --> 00:39:22,650 And I think that's probably untrue of the Great Wall of China, which would seem to be a pretty serious affair with, 305 00:39:22,650 --> 00:39:30,780 you know, soldiers patrolling it and the gift attempt to keep out alien invaders. 306 00:39:30,780 --> 00:39:41,610 So I think the answer is what the study of rules is really interesting because they work at different levels, practical and symbolic. 307 00:39:41,610 --> 00:39:47,970 And that, I suppose, was the kind of argument I was trying to make. 308 00:39:47,970 --> 00:39:56,010 In the in the first part of your book, you you emphasised all the disadvantages of sedentary. 309 00:39:56,010 --> 00:40:14,810 Yep. OK. 310 00:40:14,810 --> 00:40:20,330 You fight it off a little bit. But I think you was saying, what about the advantages of the sedentary life? 311 00:40:20,330 --> 00:40:28,160 Yeah. Well, of course, you know, in a way, I was trying to contradict the conventional wisdom. 312 00:40:28,160 --> 00:40:39,980 So virtually every sort of undergraduate or school textbook would talk in terms of settled agriculture, civilisation of Mesopotamia of Egypt, 313 00:40:39,980 --> 00:40:51,350 praising the sedentary and as if you like the the form of civilisation that is sort of obvious, that is is teleological. 314 00:40:51,350 --> 00:40:56,180 That's where human beings we're we're we're destined to be. 315 00:40:56,180 --> 00:41:10,580 And I think this new take on it basically arises from the post Gaia world, where we are understanding the Earth is a much more fragile object. 316 00:41:10,580 --> 00:41:19,820 So civilisations tramping through the jungles and putting up Great Mayan pyramids are not really what it's all about. 317 00:41:19,820 --> 00:41:30,410 What is it all about now is stewardship of trying to ensure that this fragile planet is not further trampled or further disadvantaged. 318 00:41:30,410 --> 00:41:39,260 So I think perhaps one might want to say there is a golden age of sedentary civilisations which may be coming to an end. 319 00:41:39,260 --> 00:41:46,610 And this sounds very apocalyptic. I don't mean to sound like a prophet or something like that, 320 00:41:46,610 --> 00:41:57,140 but we're beginning to understand that there are serious disadvantages when we put up skyscrapers and millions of birds smash into them. 321 00:41:57,140 --> 00:42:01,100 And that is in such great, such great news. 322 00:42:01,100 --> 00:42:10,940 And when we have floods that arise from the fact that we've just saved away all our wetlands, we too have settled agriculture. 323 00:42:10,940 --> 00:42:14,840 That's not such great news. And of course we can. You know, we can. 324 00:42:14,840 --> 00:42:18,590 We can, we can carry on that argument. 325 00:42:18,590 --> 00:42:29,780 And the the two authors that I quote on Harare, people will know his book Sapiens Book it often for perhaps less often read, but he doesn't. 326 00:42:29,780 --> 00:42:37,010 He does make this point about the relative hours that we spend. 327 00:42:37,010 --> 00:42:46,010 Making our life livelihood compared with early and forages and another important book by Suzman on, 328 00:42:46,010 --> 00:42:56,360 I think it's called primitive affluence and where he suggests actually these folk were living in pretty good lifespans. 329 00:42:56,360 --> 00:43:07,460 They were in good health. They had a sort of harmonic relationship was with nature and and of course, they lasted for 200000 years. 330 00:43:07,460 --> 00:43:13,850 And they're not that many empires. In fact, there were none that lasted for 200000 years. 331 00:43:13,850 --> 00:43:27,220 And so I think one does need to rethink our conventional narrative of human history and maybe say, Well, maybe we're not doing it completely right. 332 00:43:27,220 --> 00:43:34,840 Yeah. Oh, actually, I'll be backtracking a little bit, I wanted to add on to the discussion about the Great Wall of China. 333 00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:43,810 And I was thinking that actually an interesting idea about the potential ambivalence of walls because while at certain points in Chinese history, 334 00:43:43,810 --> 00:43:46,930 walls were to keep people like there was not, 335 00:43:46,930 --> 00:43:56,290 one group of people called the song out of China because they were trading at other points that there were actually political negotiation type, 336 00:43:56,290 --> 00:44:01,720 intellectual marriages with the Chinese state to kind of keep the border pacified. 337 00:44:01,720 --> 00:44:10,990 And then we have, at other points, the empire going beyond the walls to conquer people and to expand its territory. 338 00:44:10,990 --> 00:44:17,710 So I just thought it may be really interesting to think about how wars can mark a boundary, 339 00:44:17,710 --> 00:44:24,430 but maybe the kind of interaction that is happening is not necessarily one of separation, 340 00:44:24,430 --> 00:44:32,600 but actually underscores a specific kind of interaction that that sort of interaction could change with time. 341 00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:38,770 And I thought maybe interesting when we think about the wall between Mexico and the United States, 342 00:44:38,770 --> 00:44:48,020 because that actually the true picture is actually two countries that economically, socially and culturally intertwined in many ways. 343 00:44:48,020 --> 00:44:52,940 So yeah, I just wanted to add to that. OK, thanks very much. 344 00:44:52,940 --> 00:45:00,380 I'm not going to respond because you're clearly will [INAUDIBLE] of a lot more than I do, because thank you very much for that contribution. 345 00:45:00,380 --> 00:45:02,170 Yeah, thanks very much, Robin. 346 00:45:02,170 --> 00:45:10,090 As you know, there are dozens of articles which start off with the observation that international migration is now much larger in numbers, 347 00:45:10,090 --> 00:45:16,030 more widespread in geographical scale and more complex in nature than any other time in human history. 348 00:45:16,030 --> 00:45:21,580 Is that actually true? Okay. Jeff, thanks very much. 349 00:45:21,580 --> 00:45:28,150 This is a one one that US migration scholars wrestle with all the time because on the one hand, 350 00:45:28,150 --> 00:45:34,720 we want to make sure that we don't overestimate the crisis logic. 351 00:45:34,720 --> 00:45:44,980 Oh, it's so bad. The more migrants, the terrible. And then, of course, the the comparison point is important. 352 00:45:44,980 --> 00:45:49,390 And I suppose the easiest comparison which many people do use as the comparison 353 00:45:49,390 --> 00:45:54,610 point is with the United States and in particular with transatlantic migration. 354 00:45:54,610 --> 00:46:00,010 So without getting into the full international complexities, let's just deal with that. 355 00:46:00,010 --> 00:46:09,070 Atlantic migration, which happens essentially after the movement from sale to steam 1882 roughly. 356 00:46:09,070 --> 00:46:14,890 And then you begin to get a huge migration across the Atlantic to the point 357 00:46:14,890 --> 00:46:22,480 where it ends rather abruptly in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War. 358 00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:27,670 Because the merchant navy is then appropriated for war purposes, 359 00:46:27,670 --> 00:46:36,790 or it is feared that people migrating will be sunk by German submarines, as there were some examples of that. 360 00:46:36,790 --> 00:46:41,890 You may be aware so you've got this nice little period, 1880 to 1914. 361 00:46:41,890 --> 00:46:52,870 At that point, the level of migration relative to the local population was higher than the current level of migration. 362 00:46:52,870 --> 00:47:04,540 So, however, it was roughly foreign born to local at its height was roughly about 16 percent, I think. 363 00:47:04,540 --> 00:47:08,650 And now it's creeping up to about 13 percent. 364 00:47:08,650 --> 00:47:17,200 So it's certainly high by historical standards, but not the highest it's ever been. 365 00:47:17,200 --> 00:47:27,100 Particularly, of course, that migration flows are often determined by how keen not only the people who are migrating, 366 00:47:27,100 --> 00:47:31,980 but how keen they are you are to have migrants and. 367 00:47:31,980 --> 00:47:44,310 At the turn of the 19th 20th century, for many people, having a large population was an important way of affirming your national power. 368 00:47:44,310 --> 00:47:49,500 It was a way of expanding your industrial base in the United States. 369 00:47:49,500 --> 00:47:58,490 There is no doubt that the big push in industrialisation was driven by. 370 00:47:58,490 --> 00:48:06,380 Large scale immigration, and you can see it in the first instance from people being displaced off the land, 371 00:48:06,380 --> 00:48:12,110 the so-called great migration from the south to the north of, say and black Americans, 372 00:48:12,110 --> 00:48:24,860 but also transatlantic migrants who were used in the emerging factories and those who want to study and marvellously racist tract. 373 00:48:24,860 --> 00:48:29,450 You can have a look at Henry Ford's biography autobiography, 374 00:48:29,450 --> 00:48:37,700 where he describes how he wishes to use these different formations of immigrants for different purposes. 375 00:48:37,700 --> 00:48:44,180 So one group would be good on screws, the others would be good or nuts. 376 00:48:44,180 --> 00:48:50,420 And as for a dumb Pollux, his words, they would be good in cleaning up, you know, that kind of thing. 377 00:48:50,420 --> 00:48:56,480 So he was quite aware of the need for immigrant labour. 378 00:48:56,480 --> 00:49:05,640 So I don't know. That obviously doesn't answer the question entirely, because you'd have to take different sizes, different periods, different things. 379 00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:14,480 So it's a matter of measured response. It's not enormous by historic standards, but it is important now. 380 00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:22,190 Yeah. Good to see you, Jeff. I've done some recent work on this, and I think this is just some headlines. 381 00:49:22,190 --> 00:49:27,770 It's about 3.4 percent of the world's population now. It's been much higher in the late 19th century. 382 00:49:27,770 --> 00:49:31,610 It's been in this new normal for about the last thirty five years. 383 00:49:31,610 --> 00:49:37,130 That's particularly if you don't include refugees and a big part of this with big growth as being refugees. 384 00:49:37,130 --> 00:49:43,460 Of course, the absolute numbers must be. The other important point to bear in mind is that there's a hundred new countries and by definition, 385 00:49:43,460 --> 00:49:47,000 if migrants or people that cross borders create a hundred new countries, 386 00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:52,910 you would expect actually the numbers to be much higher than they were crossing the same space like the Soviet Union, 387 00:49:52,910 --> 00:49:59,480 disintegrated into 15 countries, for example. So if you discount that, it's actually lower. 388 00:49:59,480 --> 00:50:07,070 And of course, the other point is that we now count migrants. There were no passports until the First World War for most countries and most places. 389 00:50:07,070 --> 00:50:15,320 And so what we understand about migration is fundamentally different, and there's the counting might also be contributing to growing awareness. 390 00:50:15,320 --> 00:50:19,330 I mean, that's a that's a terribly helpful intervention. Things. 391 00:50:19,330 --> 00:50:31,190 And and in fact, those you haven't seen it, there's a very good paper by in which I think Citibank commissioned on the Oxford Martin School website, 392 00:50:31,190 --> 00:50:39,490 which goes through some of these data in considerable detail and some very nice graphs as well. 393 00:50:39,490 --> 00:50:45,290 Yeah. Hello. I really enjoyed the talk just as one point. 394 00:50:45,290 --> 00:50:51,440 I suspect that the spike in the early 70s may have been the then civil war between Pakistan and Bangladesh, 395 00:50:51,440 --> 00:50:55,000 which displaced at that time untold numbers of people. 396 00:50:55,000 --> 00:51:00,800 My second question, my my other point rather, is I just wanted to pick up on something Professor Golden mentioned, 397 00:51:00,800 --> 00:51:05,750 which is perhaps the difference between being forcibly displaced and voluntary migration. 398 00:51:05,750 --> 00:51:13,310 I was wondering if you could give us forcibly displaced and forcibly displaced people and people who have migrated voluntarily for, 399 00:51:13,310 --> 00:51:18,020 you know, it's very difficult to judge what economic circumstances are forced upon which are not. 400 00:51:18,020 --> 00:51:22,130 But if you could give us some sense of scale, that would be very helpful to understand the context here. 401 00:51:22,130 --> 00:51:29,900 Thank you. OK, now this is the big hot potato, and we even have it institutionally hardwired into Oxford, 402 00:51:29,900 --> 00:51:34,790 where we have migration centre and we have a refugee study centre. 403 00:51:34,790 --> 00:51:44,250 And we have this debate endlessly about differences between the two, those people who are compelled and those people who are free to migrate. 404 00:51:44,250 --> 00:51:50,630 And of course, the great problem with this is that you spend a lot of time on the definition. 405 00:51:50,630 --> 00:51:54,920 I want to just make one or two fairly obvious points. 406 00:51:54,920 --> 00:51:59,330 If you look on the refugee side, quite a high proportion, 407 00:51:59,330 --> 00:52:10,130 an increasing proportion of people who are refugees deemed refugees or are seen as refugees by others 408 00:52:10,130 --> 00:52:17,660 who self proclaimed themselves as refugees are coming with children and with people accompanying them. 409 00:52:17,660 --> 00:52:27,530 So it's not 1951, when you have people who are self-declared refugees who might have a political opinion that differed 410 00:52:27,530 --> 00:52:34,880 from their country of origin and therefore therefore getting recognition in the legal system, 411 00:52:34,880 --> 00:52:41,210 you're having mass movement. And so it's very difficult to say this person is a refugee and that person is not. 412 00:52:41,210 --> 00:52:45,470 How do you classify child, for example, in those circumstances? 413 00:52:45,470 --> 00:52:55,970 Do they simply take on the definition of their parent and which parent so that it gets complicated on the other side as well? 414 00:52:55,970 --> 00:53:08,560 Because, of course, people. All pushed by all sorts of forces, some of which are not formally registered in the legal framework, 415 00:53:08,560 --> 00:53:17,440 which recognises refugees now, the most obvious, of course, is if economic factors, 416 00:53:17,440 --> 00:53:21,670 but also there are such things as, you know, 417 00:53:21,670 --> 00:53:34,390 gender discrimination or sex discrimination bill all people moving for all kinds of compelling reasons other than simply seeking a new life abroad. 418 00:53:34,390 --> 00:53:42,490 So the short answer is it's it's very difficult to get a kind of take on this question, 419 00:53:42,490 --> 00:53:50,320 but I'm going to do a big sort of end golden venture into big numbers. 420 00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:59,530 And you may correct me if I'm wrong and I think roughly on the on the defined. 421 00:53:59,530 --> 00:54:06,760 Migrants died about 270 million and on the defined displaced. 422 00:54:06,760 --> 00:54:15,400 Outside. 70 million. But just be careful about those numbers because definitions are incredibly 423 00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:21,750 important in understanding how we place people into one category or the other. 424 00:54:21,750 --> 00:54:26,940 I'm more or less. Yeah, absolutely. We got lucky the last just two quick questions. 425 00:54:26,940 --> 00:54:33,220 I'm just wondering what you think of thought about the late Barbara Harrison's work regarding refugees in Oxford. 426 00:54:33,220 --> 00:54:39,360 My single question will be whether you think about global displacement because of climate change or forced migration. 427 00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:41,680 Yeah, yeah. 428 00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:51,160 OK, thanks very much, because that's very important, and you know, of course, on climate displacement is not recognised in the 51 convention. 429 00:54:51,160 --> 00:54:57,790 So it's partly an answer to the previous intervention as well to say thank you for that intervention. 430 00:54:57,790 --> 00:55:07,190 There is a separate chapter in the book on climate induced migration, and obviously it's incredibly important. 431 00:55:07,190 --> 00:55:18,880 The broad generalisation I would make is that we tend because it's telegenic to focus on rising sea levels. 432 00:55:18,880 --> 00:55:26,260 And of course, there are some dramatic examples of countries that are about to disappear on one or two. 433 00:55:26,260 --> 00:55:28,780 Small cases have disappeared. 434 00:55:28,780 --> 00:55:39,490 And so we imagine that what is happening is the rising sea creates just mass displacement and then that then results in international displacement. 435 00:55:39,490 --> 00:55:43,930 And then you get quite a lot of alarmist discussion about this. 436 00:55:43,930 --> 00:55:52,540 The much more plausible argument to make is that sea levels are rising and rising relatively slowly, 437 00:55:52,540 --> 00:55:57,700 and people have to back off the sea into higher land. 438 00:55:57,700 --> 00:56:08,020 And so there is some element of adjustment. However, if you look at the big numbers on climate displaced migration, 439 00:56:08,020 --> 00:56:21,500 you often find places where horrible lands are no longer possible and where people cannot actually engage in settled agriculture anymore. 440 00:56:21,500 --> 00:56:28,570 So they become rootless. They move into that category of people seeking a new life. 441 00:56:28,570 --> 00:56:40,240 So yes, it's very important numerically, but don't be dazzled by the coastal story or then confine the argument to the coastal story. 442 00:56:40,240 --> 00:56:45,890 There's also a very important story about arable agriculture. 443 00:56:45,890 --> 00:56:48,140 Great. I think that's all we've got time for this. 444 00:56:48,140 --> 00:57:01,790 Over 40 chapters in the book and I encourage you to look at this incredible array of arguments, images and data that Robin's assembled. 445 00:57:01,790 --> 00:57:05,180 He's only got 40 copies of his book at 10 pounds available, 446 00:57:05,180 --> 00:57:11,810 so the first 40 will get them the rest of you going to have to buy to 20 pounds of black Blackwell's or elsewhere. 447 00:57:11,810 --> 00:57:20,660 And so I encourage you to buy it if the auction guys on screen not only give incredible free intellectual food, 448 00:57:20,660 --> 00:57:23,900 but you also get a drink after something like this. 449 00:57:23,900 --> 00:57:29,510 And so I invite you all to the reception, which will be out the door and next door, 450 00:57:29,510 --> 00:57:33,260 and then you can carry a new conversation with each other and with Robin as well. 451 00:57:33,260 --> 00:57:43,150 Thanks to you all for coming. It's been a dark, cold night and thanks to Robin. 452 00:57:43,150 --> 00:57:45,323 When you run.