Age of Global Migration Disrupts, Stabilizes Politics and Cultures Worldwide

Of the world’s 7.7 billion people, half a billion, or more than 500 million people are either global migrants or are supported financially by them through remittances. Labor has shifted dramatically since the year 2000 — the numbers moving from one country to another have doubled.

“Were these half billion or so people to form their own country, it would rank as the world’s third largest,” writes Jason DeParle in A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21st Century. 

He calls this the Age of Global Migration, “the defining story of the twenty-first century.” And he predicts that no single nation nor single political leader can stop it. “Migration disquiets the West, but demographic logic suggests it will grow. Aging societies