The weight of numbers

Shelley Walia

The first humans migrated out of Africa some 80,000 years ago, in search of a better life. Thus began the history of populations that have left their homes and migrated across continents to seek a higher quality of life for themselves and their group. In fact, the history of the human race is undergirded by migration and the ensuing struggles of vast groups spanning thousands of years. The spectre of migration is an integral part of our historical consciousness. In modern times, population movements imply the existence of the subaltern, the underprivileged migrant, the asylum seeker or exiles who have perpetually been on the move across time and space. Many would rather not move if it was not for economic need or the fear of violence at home. The heart-wrenching condition of migrants from Syria or the arduous migration of thousands across Central America and Mexico to the US, the freezing waters of the Adriatic or the blistering conditions of aridity and thirst are no deterrent to the overpowering dream of finding a new home which guarantees a modicum of financial stability and peace.

Paul Morland’s The Human Tide attempts to understand the foregrounding of issues of migration, of population shaping the questions of nationalism and identity politics, and the lure of capitalism that underpins the variant nature of demography. We are now living in uncertain times, xenophobia and a narrow vision of nationalism loom large, native populations are alarmed by the unfamiliar, are in fear of strangers arriving amongst them, causing them to adjust their way of life to accommodate the migrant. This is fast wearing away the interdependence on which a civil society rests.

As Morland underscores, the discourse of demography and migration has to be taken to a new level of protest and assertion, a force in history that has brought in its wake visible social transformation from the days preceding the industrial revolution to the present times when it is nearly impossible to visualise the hunger and pain of rural Britain, Germany or Russia. From a billion people in the 18th century, we now have more than 7 billion. 

Population booms across the world are leading to new challenges and new economic fortunes experienced in the era of imperialism. Economies have risen and fallen. Pax Britannica gave way to Pax Americana. The Arab Spring emerged from a people’s movement for freedom and justice. China rose to a global economic power to reckon with. Neo-nationalism seen in Brexit or the rise of Trumpism has become the dominant fascist ideologies. Implicit in such a decathlon of history lies one factor; the multiplication of populations, a significant “weight of numbers” shaping the modern world.

For instance, in the 18th century Britain, the child survival rate was one in six before reaching the age of one, whereas now ‘only one child in three hundred born in England does not reach the age of one’. As Morland maintains, a life of deprivation would force many young women, for instance, to move away from home, leaving behind their infants to die owing to lack of proper care. It was a common “story of desperation, abandonment and infant death”. A life of economic deprivation indeed led to moving to more prosperous locations, visible in Sub-Sahara Africa where populations migrated on a large scale to countries like Italy, resulting in the noticeable shrinkage in population. It was in Europe, on the other hand, that the explosion of population led to mass exodus to countries like America or Australia. In the case of Russia, in the Tsarist era, there was a population explosion resulting in the legalising of abortion which, interestingly, was banned during Stalinism. 

It is clear the writer’s thesis represents the contemporary times of neo-liberalism and extreme forms of xenophobia, where the question of demography is front and centre, much more than the all-enveloping notion of class conflict that dominated the world of Marxist thinking. However, it would be naive to conclude that such daunting migratory journeys are embarked on for any other reason except in search of the ever present dream of a better life. Behind each such migration lies a history of fleeing from a world of desolation caused by the scourge of neo-liberalism, the imposition of the empire, of starvation and political torture and death. Space and cultural habits are lost, giving rise to a struggle for our egalitarian right to equality and an assertion of our choice to migrate and reside as we choose. Fences, borders and walls are powerless to stop the sea of humans seeking to improve their lot and are an anathema to the furtherance of our civilisation.