Where will you live in 2030? Where will your children settle in 2040? What will the map of humanity look like in 2050?
In the 60,000 years since people began colonising the continents, a recurring feature of human civilisation has been mobility - the constant search for resources and stability. Seismic global events - wars and genocides, revolutions and pandemics - have only accelerated the process. The map of humanity isn't settled, not now, not ever.
As climate change tips toward full-blown crisis, economies collapse, governments destabilise and technology disrupts, we're entering a new age of mass migrations - one that will scatter both the dispossessed and the well-off. Which areas will people abandon and where will they resettle? Which countries will accept or reject them? As today's world population, which includes four billion restless youth, votes with their feet, what map of human geography will emerge?
Here global strategy advisor Parag Khanna provides an illuminating and authoritative vision of the next phase of human civilisation - one that is both mobile and sustainable. As the book explores, in the years ahead people will move to where the resources are and technologies will flow to the people who need them, returning us to our nomadic roots while building more secure habitats. Move is a fascinating look at the deep trends that are shaping the most likely scenarios for the future. Most importantly, it guides each of us as we determine our optimal location on humanity's ever-changing map.
To move is human. Humankind has spent the past 70,000 years spreading out of Africa onto all continents. Even our past 2,000 years of recorded history features enormous migration waves due to conquest and crusades, colonialism and conflict. In the past century, the share of the world population living outside of one's home country held steady at 3 per cent; today that translates into roughly 300 million migrants.
Now we stand at the beginning of another era of global mass migrations, one that could witness several billion people moving. We are not talking about the distant future; this is happening in our lifetimes.
As we follow the movements of billions of people over the next decade and beyond, we will witness humankind's progress not just from one place to another, but from one model of civilization to another. There are many books about migration - but at its most fundamental level, this is not one of them. Activists and scholars often make the case for more open borders on humanitarian or economic grounds. But today's migrations are just one piece of a far grander narrative of the evolution of human civilization. This is the ultimate story: the future of our geography.
A nuanced discussion of the increasing importance of free movement across the planet. Khanna makes an urgent, powerful argument for more open international borders
