134 Quotes About Migration
"On the rare occasions when Romani Gypsies meet south Asians from India or Pakistan, they are astonished to discover that they can understand many of the words these people use in their language, such as Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi. There is thus a connection with eastern Europe - Romania and Hungary - but also with far-away India."
"Cemeteries are deceptive places. You go there for quiet remembering and find yourself assailed by noisy questions. If Mr. Wong didn't turn his back on his homeland, if he didn't forget it or forsake it, what then did he feel about becoming a Canadian citizen? Was it a statement of belonging?"
"The news in those days was full of war and migrants and nativists, and it was full of fracturing too, of regions pulling away from nations, and cities pulling away from hinterlands, and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart. Without borders nations appeared to be becoming somewhat illusory, and people were questioning what role they had to play."
"As ecological breakdown triggers tipping points, as agricultural output declines, as mass displacement undermines political stability, and as cities are ruined by rising seas, the environmental, social and material infrastructure that underpins the possibility of growth – and indeed the possibility of organised civilisation – will fall apart."
"When this flood blocks the road I am worried more by my soil getting washed, than by getting late to reach my destination."
"Ensuring labor protections and citizenship status is the most ethical and effective counter to the far right's anti-migrant racism. Otherwise, attacks on migrant workers -- buttressed by ubiquitous anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, anti-Muslim, anti-Roma and anti-Latinx racism -- will continue to work as intended for capitalist interests: channeling irregular migration into precarious migration, lowering the wage floor for all workers, and expanding carceral governance."
"Notably, during this era, the notion of illegal immigration did not conjure the same political and legal consequences that it would after 1965 [...] The southern border of the United States was not militarized or guarded in the manner it would become in the late twentieth century, and seasonal, uncapped migration from Mexico was an accepted and expected labor reality."
"I believe that it is not beneficial either to idealize Romani culture or treat it as exotic. Romani culture is not simply Indian or Asian, though some aspects of it clearly reflect its historical origins in India, language being one of the most obvious. Nor is it inherently a culture of poverty or a culture of resistance or defiance against mainstream norms."
"Topography defines place and the human situation therein."