Kolejna wielka migracja. O wędrówkach ludzi i zwierząt na zmieniającej się planecie

by Sonia Shah, Urszula Gardner (Translator)

Sonia Shah argumentuje za przyszłością, w której migracja będzie źródłem nie obaw, lecz nadziei.

W codziennych wiadomościach roi się od historii ludzi wyrwanych ze swojego środowiska i zmuszonych do podjęcia wędrówki. Dzikie zwierzęta także opuszczają ocieplające się morza i pustynniejące lądy, masowo odpełzając, odpływając i odlatując z dotychczasowych siedlisk. Media przedstawiają te migracje jako niemające precedensu i wywołujące strach przed chorobami i wojnami wśród mieszkańców Zachodu. Po obu stronach Atlantyku eksperci przewidują zalew milionów najeźdźczych obcych, niepowstrzymanych jak tsunami.

Takiemu nastawieniu przeczy nauka stojąca za migracją roślin, zwierząt i ludzi. Proces ten nie jest szkodliwy – przeciwnie, jest stary jak świat i ratuje życie w obliczu zmian środowiskowych. Można go wręcz nazwać biologicznym imperatywem równie ważnym jak oddychanie. To właśnie zmiany klimatyczne wywołały pierwszą falę migracji ludzi z Afryki. Obniżający się poziom mórz umożliwił nam pokonanie Cieśniny Beringa. Niepowstrzymywani przez drut kolczasty nasi prehistoryczni przodkowie zdołali zaludnić całą planetę, docierając na szczyty Himalajów i na najodleglejsze wyspy Pacyfiku, tworząc i rozprzestrzeniając biologiczną, kulturową i społeczną różnorodność, która pomaga przetrwać zarówno ekosystemom, jak i społeczeństwom. Mówiąc inaczej: migracja to nie problem, to rozwiązanie.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History, Politics, Environment, Audiobook, Nature

432 pages, Paperback

First published June 2, 2020

About the author

Sonia Shah is a science journalist and prize-winning author. Her writing on science, politics, and human rights has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Scientific American and elsewhere. Her work has been featured on RadioLab, Fresh Air, and TED, where her talk, “Three Reasons We Still Haven’t Gotten Rid of Malaria” has been viewed by over 1,000,000 people around the world. Her 2010 book, The Fever, which was called a “tour-de-force history of malaria” (New York Times), “rollicking” (Time), and “brilliant” (Wall Street Journal) was long-listed for the Royal Society’s Winton Prize. Her new book, Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond, is forthcoming from Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux in February 2016.

Reviews

[Kelsey Breseman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Strength was debunking fear of migrants. Central point was weak, that migration is normal for humans- it is, but no commentary on speed and scale and how our next might be different from ordinary migration. Title implies that this is the subject of the book. References were primarily if not all pop science books and news articles rather than scientific papers. Metaphor and story can be excellent framing for nonfiction, but in this case it was the whole of the book

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our teenage son volunteered at a local nature center every summer. One of the activities the counselors in training participated in was pulling up Purple Loosestrife. It is an considered invasive species that thrives along Michigan's lakesides.

So, I was shocked to read that Canadian researchers concluded "there is certainly no evidence that purple loosestrife 'kills wetlands' or 'creates biological deserts'!"

Investigative journalist Sonia Shah's book The Next Great Migration is filled with such iconoclastic insights, smashing prevalent notions contending that ecosystems were meant to be unchanging, pristine, and unadulterated.

Instead, she systematically argues that no place on Earth has remained untouched by the migration of species. Including human migration.

Shah takes readers through the entire history of the migration of species and the ideas humans have held about migration. Bad science and ingrained beliefs have lead to false assumptions that impact the political landscape to this very day. Most disturbing is the rise of Eugenics and categorization of human groups to justify our fearful reaction to newcomers.

Building walls, Shah contends, cannot stop or solve the reality of migrating human populations. She writes, "Over the long history of life on earth, its (migrations) benefits have outweighed its costs." Embracing migrants can be a solution to the problems we face.

Shah's book was an engrossing read that shed light on how we 'got to here'.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[Rincey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is good, but I was a little disappointed because I thought it would deal a little bit more with nature and the migration of plants and animals. Instead it is mostly a book about immigration and various immigration laws and biases toward migrants over time.

Watch me discuss this in my November wrap up: https://youtu.be/X0GX5Du0e9I

[Dave Schoettinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading this book, I can be fairly certain that Sonia Shah is not on the short list of Donald Trump's possible nominees for Secretary of Homeland Security for his second term. For one thing, as a fiftyish, American-born daughter of South Asian immigrants, Mr. Trump might well confuse Ms. Shah with a former governor of South Carolina whom he has been bad-mouthing in recent weeks. More importantly, Ms. Shah sees migration as an intrinsic quality of life, be it animal, vegetable, or human. She considers the kind of border restrictions which Mr. Trump has been championing for the past decade as short-sighted, and ultimately counterproductive.

To reach these conclusions, Ms. Shah recounts the history of science learning of the extent of migration in the animal world, much of which was unknown until relatively recently because of the limited means that science had of tracking animal migrations. Much of this was certainly unknown to me, and I found it very interesting. She makes analogies to human migration, the extent of which has also been revised in recent decades because of the ability to extract DNA from human remains and analyze the history of those humans. The author also discusses current attitudes toward human migration among current populations. If you sympathize with the "Build the Wall" crowd, you may want to skip the last few chapters.

[Raghu Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Immigration, both legal and illegal, is a polemical issue in Western democracies nowadays. Some native population welcomes it.  Others feel it as a disruption. Liberals point out the benefits of immigration to the economy. It contributes to more diversity and a better future for the aging native population. The conservatives fear the stress on social cohesion and the impact on jobs and wages. They associate terrorism, crime, and squalor with immigration. In this book, the science journalist, Sonia Shah, argues that migration is natural to humans, animals, and all species. She says it is mistaken to think about migrants as “invaders”. Migration has an ecological function transporting genes, bringing genetic diversity. Far from being a disruptive behavior, migration is a biological imperative, natural as breathing. Migration is not the crisis, but the solution.

Shah traces the negative views on migration to the eighteenth-century Swedish naturalist, Carl Linnaeus. By the twentieth century, his ideas on taxonomy influenced naturalists to consider migration a useless and dangerous ecological behavior. They warned of disaster if migrant animals moved unrestricted across borders. This swayed eugenics to see sexual reproduction between people of disparate ancestry as resulting in degenerated, mutant hybrids. Conservationists warned of “invasive alien species” moving into habitats already populated by native ones. Biomedical experts warned of migrant species carrying foreign microbes into virgin locales, sparking epidemics, and threatening public health. Against such a backdrop, it is not surprising that people fear and resist new immigrants and refugees. 

The author says migration contributes to genetic diversity and is crucial to survival. She cites the example of a clan of wolves in Michigan’s Isla Royale and its evolution. One breeding pair crossed over to the island across the frozen channel in the winter of 1949. They found abundant prey and settled there, inbreeding among themselves because they had no access to the mainland. They had generations of offsprings. However,  over half the wolves developed congenital spinal deformities and serious eye problems. As the wolf population declined, the chance arrival of a lone wolf to the island in 1997 saved it. Within a generation (a little less than five years), fifty-six percent of the young wolves carried the newcomer’s genes. This piece of luck and additional conservation efforts saved the wolves and preserved the environment. As I read this, it rang a bell within me about inbreeding in the Indian society for millennia. Indians of all religions and castes have practiced endogamy for two millennia. It is the practice of marrying within a specific social group, caste, or ethnic group, rejecting others as unsuitable for marriage. This affects the genetic differentiation among Indian Jati groups (an existence determined by birth) living in the same village. It is two to three times higher than the genetic divergence between even northern and southern Europeans. We think of India as a country of large, diverse populations. In genetic terms, India comprises many small populations. In demographic terms, few Indian groups are large. All other countries of South Asia also deal with this problem. Author Shah is a person of Indian origin.  I would have liked her to discuss the consequences of such endogamous relationships alongside the anecdote about the Isla Royale wolves.

A strong drift in the book is that migration is natural for humans, animals, and species, and hence one must not try to resist it. The author paints the opposition to migration with the brush of xenophobia and dismisses the anti-migration anxieties of resident populations. I agree with the positives of the free migration of people. However, I have some reservations about some of her other arguments. I am not sure that migration is ‘natural’ for humans. Comparing human migration with that of animals and birds seems to conflate different things. Many species, including birds, migrate to warmer locations during winter to escape unfavorable or even hostile natural environmental conditions. Circannual rhythms start the migration of birds both in autumn and spring. This function of timing migrations is important for birds that spend the winter close to the equator. Their migration is cyclical rather than permanent to another spot in one direction. Modern human migration is often because of civil strife, oppressive regimes, war, ethnic violence, terrorism, etc, and less because of natural disasters like floods and tsunamis. Human societies also exhibit territorial affinity and feel anxiety when they encounter an influx of refugees. Summary dismissal of these anxieties by liberal regimes forced citizens to opt for Brexit in the UK. It gave rise to right-wing politics in the US and Europe. I think the author makes a mistake in dismissing the discussion on “invasive species” in Nature and clubbing it with xenophobia in a social context. 

The book contains a lot of shocking details on the prejudices and biases against migrants. For example, the US Immigration Dept administered intelligence tests to new arrivals on Ellis Island in 1917. It “showed” that 83 percent of Jews, 80 percent of Hungarians, 79 percent of Italians, and 87 percent of Russians were feeble-minded. During the war, officials administered intelligence tests to 2 million military recruits. They deemed 89 percent of black soldiers as morons, as per their definition. Other discoveries were the intellect of foreign-born peoples decreased from the West to the East. The English and Dutch people scored the highest, and Russian, Italians, and Polish the lowest. This may have caused the flow of immigrants into the United States from over 800,000 in 1921 to 280,000 in 1929, and fewer than 100,000 a year after that.

Part of my fascination with this book faded when I came to the chapter titled, ‘The Migrant Formula’. Like most journalists nowadays, this author also quotes experts who say that climate change will cause massive disruption and migration in the next thirty years. The accepted wisdom is that food and water shortage, catastrophic floods, and sea-level rise will lead to instability and cause hundreds of millions to displace. Shah quotes Norman Myers that up to 200 million may move. She then cites the UN’s Inter-Governmental Panel for Climate Change’s  (IPCC) prognosis that climate change could lead to the collapse of civilization itself.  It is ironic that earlier, Shah quotes other experts like Carl Linnaeus, Thomas Malthus, and Paul Ehrlich and shows how wrong they were in their apocalyptic predictions. So, how come the apocalyptic predictions of IPCC alone deserve acceptance? It is because “climate change” has become the 21st century Gospel. Food and water shortage are nothing new to the world’s poor. I have lived through such times in the 1960s in India, but it did not cause mass migration. Instead, society used science and technology to solve the problems and let us remain where we were. The Green Revolution dealt with food grain shortage. Water shortage is still an issue in most Indian cities. It is a water management problem and an infrastructure problem. Still, most cities ration water and manage their affairs rather than empty-out and leave en masse. Sea-levels may rise a maximum of 0.83 meters (the worst-case scenario) by the end of this century, according to IPCC. Even if it happens as predicted, we can learn from the Dutch how to deal with it. They have lived and prospered for centuries in towns as much as seven meters below sea-level. We already produce enough food for ten billion people. The global population is likely to peak at around 8.5 billion by 2060. Then it may decline to 7 billion by the end of the century, according to experts in demography. So why would civilization collapse?

The author lays the blame for migration’s bad image at the doorsteps of Western culture. For the past three centuries, she says people like Carl Linnaeus, Malthus and Ehrlich have cast migration as an irregularity, a disorder, and a disruptive force. This has led to the tyranny of eugenics and Nazi genocide. All of them have been from the West. However, we see many erstwhile poorer countries in Asia becoming middle-income countries in the 21st century. But we do not see them accepting refugees in their region. It is still only the Western world that steps forward to absorb Syrian, Afghan, Yemeni, and Libyan refugees. Countries like Japan, Korea, China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia do not accept any such humanitarian responsibilities because of xenophobic tendencies. India, as a Hindu culture, which has a tradition of welcoming refugees, turned down a measly 40000 Rohingya Muslim refugees under the new Hindu nationalist ideology. When this is the reality, why single out Western culture alone for criticism on this question?

The book addresses many fundamental issues on migration and argues for a more humane and favorable outlook towards migration of all species. Despite my reservations, I find it an important book in today’s somewhat intolerant climate towards refugees and other types of migrants. 

[Mylena · Rating 2 out of 5]

i think this book has the wrong title. If you want to know more about next migrations, or future conditions about migration, this is not the book. I will tell you what this book talks about:
-History of racism
-History of science of migration and a little bit of taxononmy
-Racism and migration
-Migration and the nowadays situation

I did enjoy a lot of things of this book, and the author talks indeed about the beauty and terror of life in move. It gives you a broad outlook about the people who migrate this days under politic and environmental stress.
I understand that the title is related to the final point of the author (which i think it does not need to wait till the final 15 pages to mention) but it certainly gives the wrong idea about the whole topic of the book, which is related more to the past and present and not to the future of migration.

Now this is personally, i didn't like very much the way she writes, not because of the words or the way she retales a story. There are a lot of beautiful sentences and paraghraphs right after you start the book. It comes from the way she takes too long just to make the point. She is repetitive and she takes to much space of the book to talk about thing that can be done in less. And lastly, i think that she left aside some interesting topics.

In spite of that, i liked it, i didn't know the history of racism in the world nor about the scientific populist movements of the 20th century. The book's content is very valuable and shows a reality everybody should be aware of. You will never see migration in the same way again.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book. What I can recall is that migration is very common and natural. Migration is also inevitable especially with climate change. The nativism and nationalism will not stop the tide, because there are places that will become uninhabitable. The water will rise. Fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, natural disasters are some reasons. Others are labor, resources, violence, degradation of social order etc. Humans are not the only living things that migrate, plants, animals, fish etc. Migration is a basic part of the cycle of life on the planet.

4 Stars

Listened to the audio book. The author did a very good job at narration.

[Lisa Kentgen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an important book for me - helps me get perspective on the positions toward welcoming immigrants that have been around and will continue to be around. What was most eye opening is ways in which science has perpetuated, insidiously and blatantly, some version of white supremacy (and at times eugenics). If leaders would read this book it would help us navigate a humane path toward the coming migration, of which we are all participants.

[Rodzilla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting premise but way too wedded to that premise. Dismisses the extreme dangers of over-population because white supremacists once used population control as an excuse for bigotry. Dismissed the damage done by invasive species under the premise of "everybody's gotta migrate." These just aren't sound enough arguments, and the book loses its nuance through these breezy dismissals of existential threats.

[Britta Böhler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for the BTP Quarterfinals Nonfiction.

[Ivana · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary book about migration. Like many species in the animal and plant kingdom, we too are migratory creatures. The book discusses the folly of our attempts to categorize each other by otherness and insist on arbitrarily drawn borders that stand against our very evolutionary mechanism that has moved us across continents over millennia. A particularly eye opening aspect of this book was our views on conservation and war on “invasive species”, which is something I’ve given not enough thought. I love this book because it turns the long held beliefs about what is native and what is invasive on its head, and it posits migration in the light of rapid climate change not as a weakness but a strength of our species and a way to a solution.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A necessary book. Draws on biology, paleontology and more to show how migratory animal and human populations offer more positives than right wing scare tactics suggest. Argues for more permeable borders for both humans and animals. I'd have liked to see more about trends of climate driven migration, but there's probably another book I can find about that.
A small caveat is that the author is a journalist rather than a subject matter expert, but a well trained journalist is supposed to be able draw on the right sources for this kind of book. Examine the references and notes and draw your own conclusions.

[Mehrnaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

مسئله اینه که این کتاب چیزی که عنوانش بیان میکنه نیست.
من انتظار داشتم که بیاد دیدگاه علمی پژوهشی نسبت به مهاجرت بیان کنه.
و فصل‌های ابتدایی که مثل مقدمه بودن، برام واقعا جالب بود. رفتاری که نسبت به مهاجرها شده. آزمایش‌هایی که روشون انجام شده. و این مقدمه‌ی بسیار جالبی بود. تا اونجا که این مقدمه شد کل کتاب. جو حاکم بر کل کتاب اینجوری بود که انگار به یه دانشجوی دکترا بگن برو هرچیزی که تو روزنامه‌ها و مجلات چاپ شده علیه مهاجرها، هر آزمایشی که روشون انجام شده ، هر نقل قولی از آدم‌های معروف رو در بیار و لیستشون کن. و با این دید آره کتاب خیلی جامع و خوبی بود.
همه‌ی این‌ها به کنار نوع رفتاری که با مهاجرها شده در طول تاریخ برای من واقعا جالب بود.
۲.۵*

[Mehtap exotiquetv · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eine Geschichte der Migration. Die Journalistin Sonia Shah macht einen geschichtlichen Rückblick über die Motive von Migrationswellen der Menschheit aber auch von Tieren und anderen Lebewesen und wie diese Bewegungen schon immer kritisch und populistisch ausgebeutet worden sind. Gerade heutzutage werden Migrationsbewegungen medial ausgeschlachtet und mit absurden Rassentheorien gefüttert, die selbstverständlich niemals wahr sind.
Abschließend werden auch zukünftige Flüchtlingsbewegungen vorhergesagt, dessen Ursprung in der Klimakrise sein wird.

Spannendes Buch

[Valerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, Sonia Shah looks at the place of migration in nature and human society. She argues that migration - whether by plants, animals or humans - has been a central and essential component of life on earth, ensuring the survival of species and promoting biodiversity. She also explains how erroneous scientific ideas about biological classification and the geographical fixity of plants, animals and humans contributed to ideas about 'the threat of migration' and racial hierarchies. I am sure her argument will not sit comfortably with many people but I found her explanations for why migration is not a threat very convincing and I hope many people will be willing to read this with an open mind. The only minus point for me was that I wish she had engaged as much with the social science research on migration as with the natural sciences literature. For instance, at the end of the book she briefly touches on the question of the drivers of xenophobia but doesn't really delve into it - even though I think it is an essential component of the question of how to 'manage' migration.

[Jeremy Randall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny how we believe a bunch of BS just because it supports what we already want to believe. Or are convinced easily by absolutely cheap and weak “facts”. Racism is such a dumb and caustic thing. And the belief that we are all the same could change everything. This was a cool book

[Charles Breit · Rating 1 out of 5]

The topic has potential, but it degenerates into a screed against Trump's immigration policies. Nothing new. Nothing that changes minds or opinions.

[Rick Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book that combines the ecological ideas of “native” species “natural populations” and ideas around human migration.

It’s got a slow buildup and the first half is a little sleepy. But it’s worth it for the second half which discusses advances in ecology around using GPS trackers and genetic research.

The book, in my opinion, compellingly brings its point home by gesturing at the migratory plants and animals that we smile and nod at, monarch butterflies, swallows, wandering coconuts and what not. And then gesturing at the reader to say “why are we different bro?” (Bro added).

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Next Great Migration by Sonia Shah
Author Sonia Shaw who has written about pandemics, malaria and how Big Pharma tests their drugs in the world’s poorest. In this book she looks at migration of people. She challenges the idea that there we’re ever sedentary people who were just in one spot and belongs there. There is no such thing. People have been moving around the world since they’ve been around and not just walking on land bridges. People often used boats and it is common now. Technology has changed but movement has not. She covers the ways people have moved, why and how some people have tried to stop it or movement has caused problems. A very interesting book.

[Shauna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be incredibly beautiful, and the subtitle: “the beauty and terror of life on the move” is absolutely not an understatement.

Shah takes a measured stance to everything explored here; and the array of topics is vast. From the taxonomy of species (featuring an entertaining and embarrassing portrait of Linnaeus) to lemmings to Nazi landscape design to fungus in Hawaii to white supremacists chugging milk, she intertwines thread to create an optimistic view of how ingrained migration is in Homo sapiens (homo migratio?) and it is for the earth itself.

Setting the stage with her own family history of migration against the backdrop of American xenophobia, this book simultaneously horrifies and delights. There are plenty of fun anecdotes about history, animals, and peoples. However, these are often juxtaposed with the horrifying reality that we are living through, which Shah details with no shortage of unflinching testimonials.

I recently finished Nihjuis’s Beloved Beasts—and this book overlaps with that one nicely. Shah provides some more in-depth information on figures mentioned in Beloved Beasts, but also takes it further to include animals. She also has a knack for playing Devil’s advocate (though significantly more interesting than the term implies). As someone who has been fascinated with extinction for most of my life, I found her defense of invasive species fascinating, taking a broader view to look at biodiversity as a whole and think big picture of the world.

I thoroughly enjoyed (maybe a strange word for what I felt?) this book. There are so many avenues opened up that I look forward to learning more about. Initially jarring, by the end of the book, Shah was able to bridge the huge abyss between a hopeful biological view of migrants and the horrifying reality of our politics, making me at least the tiniest bit more optimistic about the future.

[Jason]

How frustrating it must be to write a book so perfectly of the moment -- only to have that moment end before most people can read it.

"The Next Great Migration" is about the migrations of humans, other animals, and even plants. Shah argues that migration is natural and often benign if not beneficial (despite those who would claim that human and animal migration can endanger "native" species.)

Shah has thoroughly researched the topic. But her primary contention -- that the dangers of migration are overblown -- are undermined by a global pandemic that is spread in large part by human movement. Shah, who also wrote "Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond," offers a few paragraphs about the dangers of humans bringing their pathogens with them when they travel.

Unfortunately, these paragraphs will likely overshadow everything else Shah discusses, including her research into the history of human migration and the social factors that affect its perception.

[Ina Lenca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shows how our views and biases, be they private or societal, find their way into science and into politics and how oftentimes these views and these biases inform research and policy, how politics can actually come before science, choosing some and silencing others (as it also happens with scientific paradigms and dominant narratives). In general, of course, it is no surprise, but never before had I seen the links between the aforementioned so clearly in the case of migration. Quite illuminating.

[Lisa Konet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Glad I saved my money and borrowed this from the library. Some good information but too much doom and gloom. Definitely not a favorite nature book read for this year. I do appreciate the amount of research the did for this book, but it is very opinionated and one sided point of views. Not impressed. I liked the maps.

[Yivrett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kolejna Wielka Migracja to niedawna premiera Wydawnictwa Słownego napisana przez Sonie Shah - dziennikarkę naukową pochodzenia hinduskiego.

"Wszystko co żyje, przemieszcza się."

Każdy z nas chcąc nie chcąc ma jakąś opinie dotyczącą migracji - szczególnie w obecnym świecie gdzie Europę zalewają kolejne fale migracyjne z różnych stron świata. Cześć naszych przekonań jest ukształtowana przez to, jakie informacje dostajemy od różnego rodzaju mediów i jakich ludzi spotykamy na swojej drodze. Ja często spotykam się z dość negatywnym nastawieniem, szczególnie wśród informacji w pozornie prawdziwych mediach. W tej książce możemy znaleźć te przekonania poddawane krytyce dzięki dowodom naukowym i historycznym.

Wśród wielu państw Europejskich widzę politykę antymigracyjną i dzięki manipulacji przedstawianej rzeczywistości udaje się im poprzeć swoje obawy względem migrantów. Często są rozpatrywani jako zagrożenie, nosiciele chorób z innych stref klimatycznych, albo główni winowajcy wzrostu przestępczości w danym państwie.

Mam wrażenie że autorka posiłkując się naprawdę bogatą bibliografią (ma 100 stron) przedstawia nam prawdę - albo po prostu chciałbym w to wierzyć jako człowiek otwarty dla wszystkich bez względu na religię, orientację, narodowość czy rasę. Często czuje frustrację, że ludzie są traktowani gorzej ze względu na jeden z czynników wymienionych wyżej - sam z tym nic nie mogę zrobić, a polityka całej Unii Europejskiej stara się tych ludzi traktować jak odmiennych od nas.
Ale moim zdaniem to są tacy sami ludzie jak my, tak jak wśród nas są i dobrzy i źli ludzie, tak u grup różniących się od nas znajdują się ludzie z obu szal wagi moralnej. Nie uważam, że powinno się kogokolwiek dzielić zakładają, że są źli z natury.

Kolejna Wielka Migracja to właśnie taka książka, która nam udowadnia jak wszyscy jesteśmy jedną społecznością, jednym gatunkiem, który powinien działać razem. Poprzez opisaną historię polityki antymigracyjnej trochę nie dziwie się dlaczego wielu ludzi jest przeciwko - propaganda trwająca setki lat zakorzeniła się w umysłach ludzi. Dlatego ta książka jest tak WAŻNA by tego uczyć, pokazywać prawdę i nadawać nadzieję. Autorka próbuje udowodnić że migracja jest zjawiskiem całkowicie normalnym w naturze i może służyć jako rozwiązanie wielu problemów współczesnego świata.

Zdecydowanie nie jest to książka łatwa w czytaniu i uważam, że momentami nawet zbyt szczegółowa i przechylająca się bardziej ku stronie naukowej niż popularnonaukowej. Książka mi się dłużyła, czasami nużyła i męczyła ale absolutnie nie żałuję, że ją przeczytałem bo porusza tematy bliskie dla mojego serca, a także odkrywa sekrety wielu manipulacyjnych trików i sztuczek np telewizji.
Książka jest kamieniem milowym geograficznej literatury i mogę tylko mieć szczerą nadzieję, że więcej osób po tę książkę sięgnie. Chciałbym kiedyś żyć na Świecie, gdzie wszyscy są szczęśliwi i przyjaźnie nastawieni do siebie nawzajem, nie zakładając, że jest zły tylko dlatego ze np. wyznaje Islam, czy ma czarną skórę albo lubi trzymać osobę tej samej płci za rękę.

Wydaje mi się, że informacje w książce bardzo mnie ciekawią, ale czyta się to męcząco...

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I clearly remember my grandfather's stories of slipping across borders on four continents as one of millions of stateless itinerants between the world wars. He never had a passport until he was 31 and had already lived in at least eight countries and traversed dozens more. I envied him that freedom, though of course it was a time of hardship. His stories endowed me early on with empathy and respect for people on the move, whether refugees, immigrants, backpackers, or international expatriates. I also firmly believe that war, nationalism, and racism would vanish if people of every race coupled and had children, eventually blending into one brown-skinned, brown-eyed human race. So it was with great anticipation that I opened this book which promised to set forth scientific and rhetorical arguments against xenophobia and racism.

Well, it kind of does that if you don't mind preaching to the choir. The author paints her agenda thick across every page rather than allowing the reader to make her or his own conclusions. Popular and scholarly studies in support of eugenics and against immigration are picked apart almost scornfully, while the book is interspersed with lump-in-the-throat vignettes of fearless, hardy, and upstanding people sacrificing everything to find a better life elsewhere.

The best parts of the book are those in which the migrations of plants and animals are described in detail and go to support her thesis that migration is not only common but natural.

This is all fine, and I actually agree almost entirely with her point of view. Trouble is, if one doesn't already agree with her points, then I'm not sure how convincing she is.

Too often the author counters a scientific study with her own biased statements which lack credence. One which particularly irked me had to do with honeybees. She quotes from a study about bees which describes parallels between bee colonies and humanity: "Wasn't the nation-state sort of like a hive, with its complex civilization enclosed within cozy borders? When the population of the bee colony exceeded the capacity of the hive to accommodate it, the bees took dramatic action. They evicted the dead weight (male drones) and closed the borders. Didn't their behavior, he wondered, 'raise questions about the human enterprise?'"

The author's rebuttal: "Actually, it didn't. A honeybee is more like a cell in a body than an individual in society... Many bees can't even feed themselves..." and so on.

From what source does her "actually" come from? I'll tell you: no source. Anyone who has ever kept or observed bees would know how far off base her remarks are. How many humans feed themselves--that is, harvest their own food? How are human nurses who eat in the hospital canteen any different than specialist nurse bees who rely on harvester bees for sustenance? Considering the amount of research that went into this book, I was surprised that she didn't look up any of the numerous studies of bee civilization that might have countered the simplistic argument that she wanted to rebut. Instead she resorts to an unsubstantiated assertion based on her own assumptions.

Then there is the evidence that she completely omits from the book because it doesn't fit into her agenda. An entire chapter paints a picture of population control as based on falsehoods and that it is doomed to fail. She cites horrific failed attempts at population control in India and elsewhere in order to prove that population control can't possibly succeed. Yet how can a chapter about mass population control not even once mention China's One Child Policy? Yes, it could only have been implemented by a brutal dictatorship; yes, it led to countless human rights abuses and, combined with Chinese "traditional" preference for boys, resulted in female infanticide of unimaginable proportions. On the other hand, it worked. The vast majority of China's population adhered to it. And over a thirty year period, it not only stabilized China's population but may have been a factor in China's astounding rise in income and quality of life during that time. However, the fact that the One Child Policy achieved actual population control goes against the author's thesis, so she conveniently leaves it out.

Another nitpick is that the author falls into the common trap of focusing on human migration from poor, corrupt, war-torn, or environmentally ravaged places to wealthier, more stable locales, as if human migration all flows in a single, predictable direction. The US State Department estimates that 9 million US citizens live outside the United States, a population that together would be the 11th most populous state. Hundreds of thousands from Britain, Germany, and other developed countries have left their wealthy, stable native lands behind. What motivates migrants who move against the tide? There is as much bias and misinformation about this population as there is about refugees (no, 99% of them are not the wealthy executives or cynical exiles or motivated by home country politics that they are caricatured as). A chapter about reverse migration would have made an interesting addition to the book, especially if she had used her rhetorical skills to undermine the biases about reverse migrants in the same way she knocks down the prejudices toward refugees. But perhaps they also don't fit the author's thesis.

There are many similar holes in this book, and toward the end it becomes a repetitive screed that seems focused entirely on debunking Trump-era anti-immigration policies, which may deserve debunking but that isn't what was promised in the title. My biggest disappointment is that the thing that I most looked forward to, the subject in the very title of the book, the next great migration, was nowhere to be found. I hoped to read a well-argued extrapolation of current migration trends to speculate about the next 50 to 100 years of human migration. What will be the biggest motivators, where will we come from and where will we go and what new challenges will we face, and how should this affect government policies and public attitudes? Not to be found. The title misleads.

I praise the author for tackling this rarely-covered topic. The prose is very well-written, the individual stories engaging. If you are intrigued about the parallels between animal and human migration, about the history of eugenics and anti-immigration policies, you'll find it fascinating. It might have been better if the author's editorializing had been confined to an introduction or conclusion rather than coating every page.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

Interesting! Some bits weaker than others, but I learned some new things & the author touched on some interesting areas.

[Edi · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've ever read.

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really well-written exploration of our misconceptions about animal and human migration. The discussion of the historical and changing understanding of the mechanisms of migration and how this influences modern politics was really interesting and made me question my point of view on invasive species.

[Bre · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not about the next great migration, but rather the history of migration of plants and animals and the biased science that has contributed to lamentable xenophobia and racism (for the latter subject, I recommend Angela Saini's book "Superior" over this one). The topic of climate change and how it relates to migration was ok but it was neither fully developed nor discussed enough, which was disappointing. While the ideas in this book are very important, they are not presented in the most logical or convincing way.

The author rightly criticizes notable publications and institutions for having endorsed or published biased science and/or ideas, yet also cites these same publications and institutions to establish credibility in defending their counterarguments.

Also, the majority of the book overuses a bait and switch writing technique which was oftentimes hard to follow. I also found the pace of the chapters to be slow, with the exception of the final chapters.

Furthermore, a small factual error that I noticed made me question the integrity of the book and its research. Isle Royale is in Lake Superior, not Lake Michigan like the book claims. Even though this is a small error, it made me wonder if there were other factual errors which could quickly work against the credibility of the editor/author.

Finally, in despite of the book's misleading marketing, I gave the book 3 stars because its ideas are important and need further investigation and solutions.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty wide-ranging book with a lot of interesting moments. I did not expect to learn nearly so much about the life of Carl Linne but the author certainly kept it interesting. Maybe the most intriguing arguments the author makes concern the concept of "invasive species" as it pertains to agriculture, horticulture, and the like. As someone who has an average amount of experience with both gardening and enjoying wild plants, I have always accepted the gospel of preferring native plants and rejecting foreign ones. Shah challenges this narrative, showing how our labeling of plants based on region was a product of 18th and 19th century attitudes, including those of scientists such as Linne, who thought that all plants and animals existed permanently in whatever regions and habitats they happened to be found at the time. As with so many other things, Shah demonstrates that change is the rule when it comes to animal and plant ranges, and living things are constantly migrating both on a yearly basis and over long geological periods of time. This doesn't completely upend the idea that native plants might be better for an ecosystem than invasive ones, but it certainly complicates the discourse.

I should also add that this book artfully combines ecological and anthropological narratives, showing how attitudes towards migration of both people and wild flora and fauna have been historically intertwined. I don't think I've seen another book quite like this one in that regard.