Europe's many migrant crises

an article by Rowan Williams published in the New Statesman

Today’s migrant crisis is often talked about as an anomaly. But high levels of displacement and mobility have long been routine and widespread in postwar Europe.

The Unsettling of Europe: The Great Migration, 1945 to the Present
Peter Gatrell
Allen Lane, 576pp, £30

Much of the familiar political discourse about migration returns obsessively to the claim that the high – and highly visible – number of migrants attempting to enter European countries in recent years represents a kind of apocalyptic anomaly. It is true that in sheer numerical terms, the statistics for people displaced for various reasons across the globe are at a peak – many being “internally” displaced in countries such as South Sudan, as a result of long-term factional violence and atrocity. But one of the major contributions of Peter Gatrell’s meticulously researched and documented survey is to remind us of the levels of displacement and mobility that were routine and widespread across Europe in relatively recent times.

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Hazel’s comment
I found myself nodding in agreement at a large number of the assessments made by Rowan Williams – which is not always the case with the ex-Archbishop.
I’m wishing that my mental health would allow me to read serious books, just at the moment I am struggling to concentrate on light fantasy, I’d be down at the library looking for this book. And then I could refute some of the more bizarre claims about immigrants which are made.

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