An Italian call to action against the G8 summit, arguing that migration is the new ghost haunting the world, contained an important truth. For at the core of People Flow today is the underlying social challenge of no less an event than the birth of a globally-mobile world proletariat.
In its most extreme form, the tension between the right to free movement and the nation states’ claim to defend their borders and control access to their territory is quite simply a matter of life and death. Moreover, what happens on the ground is no coincidence, but a mirror-reflection of the discussion over migration taking place on the international stage, and now represented in the People Flow debate initiated by Demos / openDemocracy.
In that discussion, American policy advisors have been coming to appreciate the approach of a conservative French thinker and Le Figaro essayist who has helped them prepare the ground for a ‘militarisation of migration control’.
