Migration: a global lemonade opportunity

Most people are familiar with the proverb, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” It is commonly used to encourage optimism in the face of a challenge. But I think it is a more productive way of approaching and benefiting from migration. Rather than focusing on what is often perceived as a social and economic ‘lemon,’ we should adjust our mindset to focus on the proven ‘lemonade’ potential of international migration.

People who move = innovation

Across human history, migrants have always driven innovation at both the global level and in various sectors. A recent report identifies four ways through which migrants enhance innovation:

1. migrants’ higher concentration in economic sectors that tend to be more innovative;
2. through patents and as entrepreneurs;
3. their greater contribution to business start-ups compared with natives; and
4. by fostering investment, trade, and technology linkages.

Migration means an exchange of ideas; economic, technologic, as well as political ideas and approaches. In fact, migrants bring back to their origin countries political approaches and points of view. For example: “Filipino migrants from Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China, for example, showed a higher commitment to democracy, while returnees from Saudi Arabia expressed more ambivalence towards it.”

The presence of migrants in the society also helps and shapes pop culture. Pop culture is an impactful tool to drive key messages. When the Islamic, Egyptian footballer, Mo Salah, joined the Liverpool football team in 2017, researchers from Stanford University found that Islamophobic hate crimes dropped by 18.9%.

So the presence of people that weren’t born in the place in which we consider them migrants, brings social evolution, innovation in technology, and economic stimulation through new business. It also helps in tackling social issues or permits an acknowledgment in political approaches.

Integration and inclusion = food

Food can also be an important driver to activate migrant integration and inclusion similar to the football example. This happens through contamination. Examples of food cultural contamination can be found at every street corner. Consider our own Bolognese sauce, known all over the world. Without the international influence of Italian immigrants, it would remain the humble ‘ragu’ as we know it here in Bologna. We can further examine this example down to the primary ingredient — tomato. Today, tomatoes are a culinary symbol of Italy and the Italian cuisine, but actually, this product arrived in Italian dishes through the discovery of the Americas, and so through a cultural and agricultural contamination.

Food tells us in a very clear way that our identity is something that develops through time, it is not static. It’s a complex process composed of individual, social and cultural layers. In order to unify the different parts of its identity, an individual or a group of people gives sense to these parts through a narrative.

Future opportunities = migration

According to the United Nations World Migration Report 2020 (WMR) there were around 272 million international migrants in the world in 2019, which equates to 3.5% of the global population. International migration seems to be a relatively uncommon phenomenon at the global level. In fact, most of the world’s population seems to be static.

Despite this apparently “small” phenomenon, it has a disproportionately important resonance in our media, in our lives, and in our social organization. And, given the influence of climatic factors on local and regional population density, we can anticipate the number of migrants to increase over the coming decades.

Some projects are contributing to the discussion and to the solutions for a more integrative society. Chris Richmond Nizi, the founder of Mygrants, highlights the value of immigration and immigrants in every single area of the society, including their potential in the creation of new jobs and economic opportunities, while navigating the common challenges that immigrants face globally.

Indeed, if it is true that immigration is the effect of wrong policies, we should value more data in this field to better manage immigration. Financial and social exclusion, environmental degradation, and poverty are hitting the global population without any distinction. For this reason, it is necessary to understand that everything is interconnected and that migration is not only a phenomenon strictly linked to the dynamic nature of humans (we have legs, not roots!), but that it is often out of necessity for survival (running away from hunger, war, or climate disasters such as drought or extreme weather). Therefore, speaking about inclusion will not be sufficient as long as immigration continues to divide, rather than unite, communities in their diversity and as long as our mindset does not allow us to look at the world from an ecological perspective.

Changing the narrative = migration solution

The global narrative on migration is influenced by various factors. The way this narrative is told has an impact on how we look at it. According to the WMR of the United Nations, “much of the analysis on migrants has been undertaken from a destination country perspective, with some arguing that the most significant immigration country in the world — the United States — has disproportionately influenced the study of migrants globally.” The fact that the higher number of studies in migration is conducted in the US might influence the way migration is perceived and studied in other countries. Additionally, and most importantly, having only a destination country perspective might make us think of the migrant as a single pawn, moving only by his or her will and not acknowledging the fact that it is an ecosystemic issue.

“What we do recognize, however, is the importance of encapsulating a reasonable geographic and thematic diversity of research and analysis on the topic in what, after all, would make a migration report truly a World Migration Report.”

The time has come to build a new narrative that puts together more points of views and looks at the interconnections between us rather than our singularities. An objective and ecosystemic approach is indeed the only way we can address and benefit from the complex potential of migration.

Peacebuilding and reconstruction, social cohesion, economic and innovation contributions, and rebuilding political processes after post-conflict situations are just some of the aspects in which migrants can be important agents of change. During one of our Good After Covid sessions, Jude Kelly provided a meaningful reflection:

“After World War II, a high number of institutions were created. If you think about human rights and how it didn’t exist before and how it had to be codified and the idea of rights that people were actually entitled to have. It interests me to know how after this pandemic we are surfacing a desire for a new contract between ourselves. I think that our institutions are caught in the middle of all of that. I think we are longing to make sure that going forward we do a new contract and it’s not so crazy to think of, because after the war people did come up with new humanitarian contracts, they haven’t solved systemic justice but they took a step towards it. How will we forge these new contracts?”

Our society is changing, this is a fact. This change — in order to be understood — needs to be studied and looked through the lens of integral ecology: only looking at the connections between the parts, it is possible to be aware of the whole. If, as a global society, we adjust our mindset to see the tremendous potential inherent in the movement of people and ideas, we can realize innumerable lemonade opportunities.

This year I have the honor to be part of the B20 Italy Action Council on Sustainability & Global Emergencies, which have been identified as: :

• Environmental disasters
• Infectious diseases
• Information infrastructure failures
• Involuntary migrations

I am quite surprised that among the global emergencies nowhere has the great challenge of “feeding the planet” emerged, the true nexus of human health, environment, climate emergency, and peace. Food, in fact, connects and has the power to positively impact, all of the outlined emergencies for this year’s meeting.

Being part of these working groups always gives me food for thought and today I want to share with you some thoughts on one of the challenges we are facing: Involuntary migration.

Migration caused by political conflicts and natural disaster are at the highest level of their records (in 2019, 79.5Mn of involuntary migrants –26Mn of refugees, 45.7Mn internally displaced people4and 4.2Mn asylees)

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