Caravan in Mongolia. Shutterstock/ Allocricetulus. All rights reserved.Theories of international migration are often dull affairs. Migrants are seen as the mere by-products of greater forces, of economic ‘push factors’ or conflicts. The immobile theorise the mobile, reducing migrants to pawns to be shunted around. But slowly, migrants are turning the tables: a new migrant-scholarship wave has emerged, with a unique perspective on the world. Through this lens, we begin to see migration as a driving force of international order.
If human mobility and nomadism have done much to define territorial order, it is because they came first: we moved before we settled. Moreover, the tension between mobility and order has not yet been resolved. Individuals want to move, but societies need stability. Individuals move for reasons of security, economy, curiosity; societies pin them back down with violence, efficient means of production, and the so-called borders of the mind (ideology and religion). This tension has driven humanity to progress from feudalism to nation-states to empire and beyond.
The scale of human mobility, in one form or another, will never quite match the existing bounds of territorial order. The most successful units of order are therefore those that adapt to encompass mobility. They open up new spaces for people to move about, and to do so in the rhythms and patterns that they like. In so doing these units have to avoid either overstretching the limits of their own social cohesion, or stepping on the toes of other units. Think of international relations as a kind of geospatial competition. The creative spark is human mobility.
