ON THE ROAD AGAIN

摘要

Humans migrate. It is a characteristic of our species. Yet now a migration crisis is headline news. More than a million desperate people fled to Europe in 2015, and nearly 4000 died trying. The influx is increasing and about to swell more as the weather improves. The United Nations says Europe faces "an imminent humanitarian crisis, largely of its own making". And it is not alone. The UN has also censured Australia for sending boatloads of refugees to squalid camps in other countries. And US politicians talk of building a wall while tens of thousands of lone children flee violence in Latin America across the US-Mexican border. In January, the World Economic Forum ranked large-scale refugee flows as its global risk of highest concern. When the US Council on Foreign Relations drew up its top 10 priorities for conflict prevention in 2016, it included political instability in the EU caused by the influx of migrants. Concerns about refugees and economic migrants are grist to the mill for those who want Britain to vote to leave the EU in June. And there's no doubt that migration will increase as the world's economy becomes more globalised, and as demographic and environmental pressures bite.