Book review: ‘Arrival City’. And why refugees are good for your country.
Would you like to work 10 hours a day, seven days a week, own 29 possessions (including 4 chopsticks and a mobile phone), live in a dormitory and be able to count with your hands the number of times you’ve been alone in the same room with your spouse?
For millions of urban migrants across the world, the answer is ‘yes’. They have been voting with their feet by leaving their villages and rural lives to come and knock on the doors of the world’s cities.
In his book Arrival City, Doug Saunders, European bureau chief for the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, tries to understand what drives Chinese, Indian, Polish, Turkish or African peasants to take on these parallel journeys, as if driven by the same force.
The result is an insightful book somewhere between a travel dairy and an anthropological study. Saunders visited migrants in Brazilian favelas, African shantytowns, French banlieues and Turkish gecekondular and observed that, contrary to popular belief, those ‘arrival cities’ are far from being deadends. They are vibrant communities at the fringe of wealthy cities and serve as launchpads to those migrants hungry for social elevation whose “migration might not be one of happiness, but is one of hope.” They certainly don’t see themselves as losers, and have more hunger to succeed that the millions who have already arrived.
Saunders makes vividly clear that this wave of humanity is a global phenomenon that will not be dented by immigration policy, whether hardline or soft.
Instead of narrowly equating migration issues with border protection, he observed the reality of a ‘globalised’ world where not only goods and services are moving across ‘open markets’ but also humans. The logical conclusion is that the exponential commercial globalisation the majority of voters seem to embrace cannot be dissociated from accepting population movements of the same magnitude. In this globalised, free-market world, if you want cheap goods and services to move across borders, you might have to accept that people do as well.
In contrast with the usually heated debates opposing migrant advocates and border vigilantes, Saunders honored his anthropological approach by rationally exposing the challenges and upsides for the migrants as well as the destination countries.
He finds that nations which make migration a success not only do good to millions of migrants, but also do themselves a favour by boosting their economies and social fabric.
From awakening dormant societies as Italians and Greeks did in Australia, to encouraging economic circuits helping developing nations, the untold migration upsides are numerous. The magnitude of the remittances sent back to villages is one. This flow of cash is a benefit too often ignored when judging this global migration. We are not exactly talking about pocket money. As an example Saunders remarked that “each year Bangladesh receives almost $11b from resident living abroad, equivalent to export earnings. Far larger and effective than the foreign aid.”
Doug Saunders, in his critical appraisal of a global trend, reaches the same conclusion as the most fervent refugee advocate, but via a different route: compassion, it seems, is also rewarded economically.
A good enough reason to put Arrival City in the hands of voters, politicians, policymakers and commentators for its compelling and considered case to turn short term denial and sandbagging into a long term positive investment.
{ this post is a longer version of the review first published in the April 2011 print issue of Cosmos Magazine }
.
