The Shape of Things to Come: International Migration in the Twenty-First Century

There have been three eras of mass international migration: the forced migration of Africans to the Americas during the mercantilist era, the mass movement of free Europeans to the Americas and Oceania during the laissez-faire industrial era, and the global movement of people from varied origins to diverse destinations during the neoliberal post-industrial era. This chapter forecasts the likely course of migration in the 2020s through a review of the demographic, economic, climatic, and governmental circumstances prevailing across world regions. It foresees an acceleration of migration between developing and developed regions composed increasingly of people moving to evade threats at places of origin rather than to access opportunities at places of destination. The coming decade will require a better theoretical integration of refugee and migration studies, close attention to the tradeoffs between internal and international migration, and a greater effort to theorize how states will behave in adapting to the realities of migration in an era of climate change.