Posted at 4:00 p.m.
In the French translation of the essay Migrationsscience journalist Sonia Shah, author of the gripping Pandemic, explores in depth the history of human movements, but above all how they have been perceived. Raking in the fields of biology, demography and the environment, she delivers an uncompromising plea on the phenomenon, which she presents as a denigrated historical driving force.
While migratory issues occupy more than ever the front of the stage (this was one of the poles of the debates during the last provincial elections, while the federal government has just announced its intention to welcome annually half a million immigrants by 2025), Sonia Shah starts from a double observation.
First, human populations have never migrated so much, and this trend will accelerate exponentially – we are talking about 60 million displacements in 2045 linked to drought, and 180 million migrations in 2100 motivated by the increase in ocean level.
Secondly, the author has the feeling that migratory movements are considered as anomalies, responding to an unnatural spring. Worse still, they seem to be seen as a multi-faceted “threat”, with many governments brandishing questions of national security, demographic balance, identity or economy to stem these flows as much as possible. In short, migration has bad press and political leaders hostile to it are multiplying.
The essayist then offers us to go back through the centuries and the sciences, sifting through the currents of thought that have explored the questions of the place of man on the continents.
The central question that has long heated the spirits: is the human being from a common stock, or did different peoples emerge on their respective territories? While genetics was not yet among the arsenal of scientific analysis, naturalists engaged in intense arm wrestling, opposing sedentary life and migration, racial hierarchies and common ancestor, pitting Linnaeus against Buffon or even Grant. and Darwin.
Eloquent example: thinkers have long wondered about the settlement of remote Pacific islands, some brandishing the hypothesis of an accident. Unless human beings had a much better ability to move than we supposed? This is what the author deplores: we have sought to minimize the role and the frequency of the movements of peoples.
On the sidelines of the showdown on the movements of humans over the millennia, Sonia Shah draws many parallels with animal migrations, developing several interesting chapters; from the displacement of checkered butterflies in the United States in response to climate change, to the myth of suicidal lemmings or the perception of so-called “invasive” species.
If he dwells too long on the part of the history of biological racism and suffers from a logical progression that is not always clear, Migrations deserves to be consulted for its in-depth insight into this hotly debated issue. Wanting to be a counterweight to the current discourse on immigration, it forgets on the other hand to balance the scales, completely obscuring the potential negative consequences of the phenomenon.
Extract
“Within Western culture, the idea that certain peoples and species had their place in specific places was part of a long tradition. By virtue of this logic, migration necessarily constitutes a catastrophe, insofar as it violates the natural order. This order had been established centuries earlier by a sex-obsessed Swedish taxonomist. Its fundamental principle is simple to summarize. Our place is here. Theirs is over there. »
Who is Sonia Shah?
Reporter and science journalist, Sonia Shah was born in New York to Indian parents. She signed in 2016 Pandemica book on the origins of epidemics that had a strong critical and public resonance.
Migrations — Greatness and Misery of Life in Motion
Sonia Shah
Eco-society
372 pages