In migration history, researchers often look at the people who leave and their new environment. The laggards are less interesting, because little changes with them. But is that really so? And why do some people choose to emigrate and others stay? A Philosophical Look at Migration for History Month with the Borders theme.
Discovering the world is part of Western culture. Since ancient times, epics have celebrated traveling to new places and the associated adventures. The emphasis is mainly on the travellers, ie the departing party. Any sad stragglers should pull themselves together, even if they may never see the other person again. But if there is so much sadness involved, why do we emigrate? And why does that seem to affect those left behind in particular?
Discovery journeys
When we look at history, it was mainly Europeans who went on a voyage of discovery. After the great discoveries, such as America by Columbus in 1492, this took off. Searching for unknown worlds, peoples, flora and fauna and natural resources got an even more positive association. Staying at home was the less exciting option.
The advent of the steamboat in the nineteenth century brought long-distance travel within reach of even more people. Between 1800 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, more than 60 million Europeans traveled to other continents. Europe was a real emigrant continent, few non-Europeans came this way for a long time.
Traveling took a lot of time, was unsafe and expensive, so that this mainly concerned one-way trips. Maintaining contact with the home front was cumbersome. For a long time, writing letters was the only reasonably affordable option, but these vital signs were on the way for weeks.
Not being
At a time when migration was generally permanent and opportunities for contact minimal, the departure of a loved one was almost equivalent to the loss through death. The chance that family members would see each other again was as good as zero and the grief, especially among those left behind, was great. But why this particular group? In her new book, Marli Huijer says Staying behind including the book Being and not being by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) to explain it.
The bottom line is that the person left behind continues to feel the presence of the departed person in the places where they used to be together. Only the straggler suffers from this as he still comes to these shared places and the departed does not. In addition, the emigrant has to work hard in the new location to build a new life, so that he has less time to grieve than at home.
Today the world seems to have gotten a lot smaller. Distances can easily be bridged by plane and by means of Skype you can also see and speak to each other when you are on the other side of the world. A farewell is no longer final and this has drastically reduced the dramatic aspect of emigration. But emigration continues to hurt. This 'little death', as Huijer calls it, does not make it any less difficult for those left behind to deal with the lack. When you know you'll never see someone again, it's easier to distance yourself from that person. As long as the hope remains that the other person will return, the lack and desire will continue to eat away at you.
Drifting
Why do people leave when it is accompanied by so much loss and sadness? Scientists and philosophers have unleashed different theories on this. It would be in our hunter-gatherer DNA, just look at the spread of Homo Sapiens from Africa. Either it was greed that caused man to move (Aristotle) or the misery of war drove them adrift (Kant).
Promo of a TV program about Dutch people who emigrated after the Second World War.
The emigration figures that Huijer cites show that people are not very mobile at all. The percentage has remained at 3% of the world's population since the 1960s, despite globalization. So most people prefer to stay in the environment and culture they are familiar with. When many people do emigrate, they do so mainly for negative reasons, such as the exodus after the Second World War. Due to a lack of jobs, housing and other perspectives, more than half a million Dutch people emigrated to Canada, the United States and Australia at that time. Who doesn't have them in the family?
Inverted world
Due to the good conditions today, Europe is no longer a continent of emigration but rather a magnet for refugees. There has been peace since World War II (not counting the former Yugoslavia) and there is no shortage of food. For Europeans, the need to seek refuge in another continent has greatly diminished. This does not mean that there is no travel. On the contrary:in our culture, seeing the world still equals adventurous and open-minded and those who stay at home deprive themselves of the opportunity to broaden their horizons. But now it is mainly the wealthier Europeans who travel for work, study or to develop themselves internally.
The difference is not only that contact with the home front is easier to maintain with technological aids, but above all that a home front continues to exist. For many Europeans, emigration is not a final goodbye and Huijer also refers to this group as semigrants or lifestyle migrants. For poorer Europeans, the largest group of emigrants in the nineteenth century, it has become more difficult to emigrate. Popular immigration countries such as Canada and the United States no longer allow people without money and little education.
Where Europeans used to flee from poverty, with no possibilities to return, now it is mainly the rich who travel. They have the means to escape a painful farewell for a long time by returning to the home front or flying their families over. Poverty, war, famine or natural disasters on other continents deprive residents of those options. A one-way ticket away and then hoping for the best is often the only chance for a better future.
For this article is the book Staying Behind. A new philosophy for a boundless world (Boom Uitgevers Amsterdam, 2016) by Marli Huijer used. This philosophical booklet is written in a very accessible way, but that is also to be expected with the positions of Huijer:she is not only Thinker Laureate but also professor by special appointment of public philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She looks at migration in a different but enlightening way and gives appealing examples with her personal anecdotes.
For those who want to know more about Dutch people who emigrated en masse after the Second World War:Andere Tijden, delivery Emigration to Canada.