Human Mobility and the Longue Durée: The Prehistory of Global Migration Law

Abstract

The long history of human migration sets the stage for a probing engagement with current migration law and the challenges of bringing it into alignment with contemporary needs and rights. If very large scale movements of people are a constant element of life on earth, should we reconsider the migration panic that has gripped political leaders and their publics, and should we reassess the responses that are being advanced? Instead of crisis should we be talking of continuum, instead of restrictions on foreigner entry should we be considering support for human ingenuity and opportunity? Despite its scale, should we consider ways to extend to distress-migration the facilitatory infrastructure we routinely apply to business or service related human mobility?