Heidi Barathieu-Brun

Published on The Globe and Mail, Canada, by Tavia Grant, Dec. 30, 2011.

Ten years ago this month, an English economist coined the term “BRICs” to describe four fast-growing, dynamic countries he believed would transform the global economy: Brazil, Russia, India and China. 

Since then, they’ve reshaped the world in a way even he never imagined. The four now comprise quarter of the world’s GDP from 11 per cent 10 years ago. And it’s not just the BRICs – emerging markets from Turkey to Indonesia, with booming populations and a growing middle class are turning old notions of wealth and power upside down.

What was economic theory a decade ago is now playing out in the most concrete of ways: altered migration patterns. Workers are voting with their feet to join these emerging economies, while traditional magnets for the world’s workers, such as the United States, are losing their lustre.

“The shifting balance of global economic growth is bring global migration flows with it,” says Madeleine Sumption, policy analyst at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute. “We’re seeing lower migration to crisis nations, whereas most of the growth is towards developing nations.”

People are still seeking work in traditional markets, like Germany or Canada. But new, surprising flows are taking place in this post-recession, rocky recovery era — Mexican Americans are returning home, for example, and Spanish graduates are emigrating to Chile and Chinese scientists in the U.K. are leaving to return home. The shift promises to create new types of diasporas, change remittance flows and alter labour markets

Here is the world that was, as told through key flows in labour migration: … (watch the chart … and read the full text).

Links:

Migration: Watch this video, published on YouTube, 7.38 min;

Forced Migration Online;

Migration Information Source;

Migration Watch;

Human migration on en.wikipedia;

Migration on en.wikipedia;

Migration on Internet Geography;

Active Record Migrations;

Google Images for migration.

(My comment:

• For me migration IS (should be) a natural human right. But since a far long time – since in old ages people begin to settle – we became used to have a personal space, instead of sharing all the spaces.
• The result: not only we POSSESS this space, but we began to belong to it … we became identified with. Today it is in our interest to belong to a country, if possible a family or clan – for our safety, our survival, and we forget now that we became also the property of this place … mainly women and children …
• how many small people are denied the right to leave a country? We not only developped possession, greed and war, we also became the possession of the owner of this space … may it be a dictatorial government prohibitting travel outside of its frontiers.
• we became submitted to a place, a clan, a family, a culture, a dogma … and now often we have to fight for our freedom, we struggle to escape all that …
• yes, I often dream the right to be a nomad. A nomad not only on this planet, but in the whole univers … oh yes, this is my dream!).

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