Why we will Never Stop Migration.

It’s what humankind has always done.

A friend of mine believes the first settlers in North America arrived from Siberia as the ice of the last ice age retreated northwards. He has written a young adult novella, yet to be published, based on that assumption.

Anthropologists assert that the first examples of Homo Sapiens emerged in Africa and spread outwards from there. Whether or not you believe the Judeo/Christian creation myth, there can be no doubt that the first books of the Old Testament are a history of repeated migrations and wars over access to the most fertile lands.

In more recent, European, history, say a millennium or so ago, we see a succession of peoples — Saxons, Vikings, Normans, among others — contesting for occupation of various parts of the continent and the many islands close to its shores. Subsequently, those same Europeans crossed the seas and settled North and South America, parts of Africa and Asia, and the Antipodes.

Towards the end of my forthcoming book “Called to Account”, set in famine stricken County Clare, the protagonist, Arthur Kennedy, muses about Thomas Malthus’s theories regarding the limits on population. Arthur concurs with many of the thinkers of his time in their belief that there is ample space in the New World and that emigration is the solution…