People have traveled and moved, migrated and settled, gone and come - since time immemorial. In the past and today, people have moved to seek better living conditions, with better land for their animals, better fishing banks at sea, more trees for logging, more reliable rainfall and better climate, and so on and so forth. And, people have moved because of wars and conflicts; and they have moved away from despotic leaders, if things became unbearable and there was freedom to leave, and land and opportunities elsewhere. Often, the men have traveled and moved to bring home goods and money to their families. Often, people have migrated not only to make life better for themselves and their own generation; they have done it for the sake of their children and the future generations.
America was ‘discovered’ in 1492. The Europeans found huge sparsely populated land masses. The indigenous Americans were already there, notably the Red Indians as we used to term them, and the Inuit, earlier termer Eskimos. Europeans were seafaring people and had ships and gunpowder and could reach and concur the ‘new world’.
Europe was overpopulated and most people lived in poverty in feudal societies, with few human rights, such as religious, economic, political and social rights.
But the Americas were far away; it was an unknown world, and it was costly to leave home and seek better opportunities elsewhere. Hence, it was to begin with the upper classes and their servants who travelled. In the last few hundred years, emigration accelerated, including that of slave trade, mainly from Africa, which was abolished and made illegal in USA in 1965 and later also in Latin America.
From Europe, most countries sent high numbers of emigrants. Ireland and Norway top the list as percentage of their populations. From 1825 to 1925, Norway sent some eight hundred thousand emigrants from a total population of about two million people that time. About twenty-five percent returned to Norway, either because they had done very well and wanted to invest money in industry and other activities at home, or just help their closest family members. Others returned because they did not make it in the ‘new world’.
Some pull factors were also put in place in the sending countries, to reduce the drain of good people. For example, in Norway, the government began providing free land and other incentives so that more farmland could be cultivated. For poor people that would lead to betterment of living conditions and social mobilization. The ongoing industrialization in Europe that time also meant that it became important to keep workers; there were more jobs, not well paid but more independent than to be a farmhand.
In Norway, the large shipping industry needed sailors and uneducated young men could take such jobs. That opportunity has now almost vanished just in the last generation or two. But it was a ‘security valve’ to avoid unemployment for many ordinary Norwegians, and shipping was indeed an important foreign currency earner, and the money the sailors brought home was of great importance to ordinary families.
Today, the sending countries of emigrants and foreign workers are mostly the developing countries, and Asian countries send many, including Pakistan. They generally do well abroad and they also play an important role for their home country in way of sending home remittances.
From Europe, there are today relatively few emigrants who travel to other continents, but due to the free movement of people within the 28 European Union member states, and agreements with the few countries who are not within EU, there is massive movement of people within Europe.
When the Soviet Union collapsed two and a half decades ago, and later when many former Eastern European countries became EU members, many Western European countries experienced an unprecedented influx of foreign workers and immigrants.
As per international agreements, the West also receives refugees from countries at war; the numbers are seen as large for the host countries, but they are small as measured against the number of refugees and other displaced persons in the world today, which is over forty million people. After all, refugees are usually only able to flee to their neighbouring countries, not to Europe. Today, most refugee sending and hosting countries are in Asia and Africa, and they are mostly Muslim countries.
A few days ago, Hilde Haugsjerd, the former editor-in-chief of ‘Aftenposten’, Norway’s large and most influential newspaper, said that the country could not have managed without the over half a million immigrants that have come to the land in the last thirty-forty years. In recent years, an increasing number comes from Europe, not from countries far away. The largest group of seventy thousand people comes from Poland, but many also come from Sweden and other neighbouring countries, sometimes lands that are not quite considered foreign.
The immigrants or foreign workers come to earn money, not always to stay for good. And all of them bring their willingness to work, expertise and knowledge and they help the host country in its daily business and advancement. True, immigrants also needs to take language courses and learn other things about the new land. But generally, they are an asset, even if it takes a couple of generations to integrate fully. Besides, it is about time that Norway and Europe at large realize that multiculturalism is positive. I believe both the German leader Angela Merkel in Germany and UK’s David Cameron should not get away with saying that multiculturalism has failed. The old days when almost everyone European was a Christian and lived his or her life in the town they were born is over. That is probably good, too.
Will people travel, immigrate and work far from home in future, too? It is difficult to say, although I think so. But I also think that countries with good economies will outsource work to low-cost countries such as Pakistan. Then people will not have to leave their homeland although they have few traditional labour union rights. Many are also hesitant to travel, especially since there seems to be a growing discrimination and xenophobia in the West. But that may just be on the surface.
The ‘old world’ is likely to want more foreigners, too, partly because they will need them for jobs in their aging populations, and in jobs that cannot be done online, notably labourers for manual work, nurses, social workers, salesmen and women, hotel and restaurant workers, bus and taxi drivers, and many other fields.
People from the West are also likely to travel and live abroad for long periods of time. Some will like to retire abroad where the care is good and the cost of living is lower, noting, too, that pensions are not likely to increase in the West.
As it happened with people from countries in the South going to countries in the North, some of the Northerners may also settle for good in their new lands, although they had not planned to do so.
When I was young and I worked for the UN and as a diplomat in Africa, there were still many technical experts from the West on the continent, not only UN staff and diplomats in offices. Today, most countries have their own experts and foreigners are usually only needed for short-term assignments as consultants and visiting staff. Perhaps, though, developing countries can benefit more from foreigners in ordinary posts in their countries, paid for by the countries themselves, not by development aid. I also believe that it is time for level playing fields and cooperation between countries in the South and the North, and expanded South-South cooperation. Developing countries can benefit from such cooperation but must watch out for how it is organized; it is important that it is not only the rich in the North and the rich in the South that benefit, but the developing countries as a whole both from government and private sector cooperation.
Finally, in future, we must make sure that foreigners are integrated in their host countries. That is a responsibility of the hosts as well as the newcomers. People must be included in their new lands, and there must be demands on them. The responsibility for inclusiveness and integration – and multiculturalism – remains mainly with the hosts, in the North and in the South. In other words, Europeans in the South, including in Pakistan, must be part of the land they live in. Then we will not feel that we are working and living far away from home.

The writer is a senior Norwegian social scientist with experience from research, diplomacy and development aid.

Email:atlehetland@yahoo.com