It's always beautiful to read and see the evidence of the impact of activism in the life of the people who were part of the Network, so thank you very much to Jonathan Karstadt for sharing 🧡 Thank you also for reminding us once again how much work is still needed to deconstruct toxic narratives on migration and to disseminate constructive and valuable discussions on this very central topic, constantly abused by populism. Ps we'll surely include the book by Hein de Haas in our list of readings 😉 #stayunited
A long train journey over the weekend finally gave me the opportunity to finish reading How Migration Really Works by Hein de Haas - a book I have been reading for the best part of a year since being gifted it last Christmas (massively reduced opportunities for reading having been one of the less desirable effects of becoming a dad!) Migration has been a key theme throughout my career in comms - from working with grassroots migrant support organisations at UNITED for Intercultural Action to campaigning for those denied their rightful legal status at Just for Kids Law and working to promote championing the cultural richness that migration has brought to our corner of North London at Haringey Council. So it's great to finally find a book that engages in a detailed but accessible way with the key issues in contemporary migration research. Many of the arguments in the book I was already familiar with - especially through my work at UNITED with Claudio Tocchi and others to counter far-right anti- migrant narratives - but there were also some genuine surprises for me, especially de Haas's takedowns of the prevailing narratives about the capacity of immigration to respond to demographic changes, and the inevitability of mass migration fuelled by climate change (both, it turns out, not supported by the data). As the book makes abuntantly clear, reductionist arguments "pro" or "anti" migration miss the point that migration is an innevitable facet of human life, and that policy needs to move away from such simplistic framing and focus on solutions that support the most vulnerable in both destination and origin countries. As de Haas concludes: "Any real debate on migration will therefore inevitably be a debate on the type of society we want to live in." 👏👏👏