The porous frontier

摘要

In Exodus, Paul Colliers objective is to initiate an evidence-based debate about international migration and debunk the biases - especially among liberal thinkers' -that he says make such a debate taboo. Worldwide, about 3% of people live in a country other than that of their birth, but in England and Wales, for example, that proportion is 13% and rising. Collier argues that liberal elites wilfully ignore the views of ordinary citizens, who think that this influx can undermine society and the economy. He provides an analytical framework to account for migration, surveys some of the evidence, identifies supposed intellectual biases and offers policy conclusions. Collier makes many powerful and thought-provoking points accessibly, and migration scholars would mostly agree with his analysis. But his contribution to the debate is weakened by occasional lapses in consistency, citation and tolerance for opposing views (including mine). For example, Collier argues that the policy question is not whether migration is good or bad, but whether a bit more of it is desirable.