Why has migration policy been failing us year after year? Why have border restrictions actually produced more migration? As debates have reached fever pitch, how can we sort the facts from the fearmongering?
Migration is one of the most hotly debated, but also one of the least understood public issues.
Most that politicians from the left to right, mass media and interest group tell us about migration is either simplistic, misleading or outright propaganda.
Debates have become so polarized and toxic that most nuance gets lost, while migration policies keep on failing us because they are not based on an understanding of how migration really works.
This blog is here to change that.
I decided to start this blog to help readers to see through the myths, political spin and plain propaganda that abound on this topic.
In How Migration Really Works, I will provide regular commentary on current migration events, with the aim to equip readers with an understanding human migration, in a way that is firmly rooted in the best data and evidence.
My ultimate goal is to stimulate a real debate on migration, in which that politicians no longer get away with propaganda or misguided policies that satisfy their desire for political showmanship but don’t solve any real problems and instead often make them worse.
This is the companion blog to my book How Migration Really Works. In this book, which is being translated in 14 languages, I debunk 22 popular right- and left-wing myths about migration.
But, above all, it advocates a new paradigm of migration. By necessity, this is a holistic view that tries to understand migration as an intrinsic part of broader processes of social, cultural and economic change affecting our societies and our world, and one that benefits some people more than others, can have downsides for some, but cannot be thought or wished away.
This is important, because understanding the central role in economic development and social transformation will lead us to a totally new way of understanding human mobility – a new paradigm on the very nature and causes of migration that belies almost everything that we are usually told on the subject.
I hope you will find my new Substack useful. To support me in my new adventure, and I would be very grateful if you can spread the news and let people now about this new source of independent information about migration. Of course, you can also buy my book… Thank you!