A vital contribution to a discussion that should be at the top of world leaders’ agendas.
A clear argument that the world needs a new approach to refugee policy.
Collier (Economics/St. Antony’s Coll., Oxford; Exodus: How Migration Is Changing Our World, 2013, etc.) and Betts (Forced Migration and International Affairs/Univ. of Oxford; Survival Migration: Failed Governance and the Crisis of Displacement, 2013, etc.) write that the current global refugee catastrophe is on a scale only comparable to such “major moments of international crisis” as the 1971 breakdown of the international monetary system or the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Many of the assertions and cited statistics may shock readers, especially those who are unaware of the contents of annual reports circulated by the United Nations Refugee Agency. Currently, there are more than 65 million refugees and displaced persons worldwide (“the highest proportion of the world’s population ever recorded: one person in every 113”), and the number of refugees doubled over the past 8 years. Collier and Betts demonstrate beyond reasonable objection that the U.N. has become incapable of fulfilling its statutory mandate to provide protection to refugees and find long-term solutions to their plights. Though the dependence on voluntary contributions from member countries is insufficient, the agency is increasingly forced to deal with escalating problems, which is not sustainable. The authors put blame on widespread “violent disorder” and “mass violence” but note that wars—e.g., in Iraq and Syria—are extreme cases of a crisis driven by the 40 to 60 nations whose existences are considered to be fragile. Of the 65 million global displaced persons, at least 20 million are considered to be cross-border refugees. Roughly half of these are living in camps like the infamous Dadaab in Kenya, and the average stay for such camp-bound refugees is increasing. The remaining 45 million are the internally displaced, including 11 million in Syria. Among other elements of autonomy and humanitarianism, the authors vigorously discuss the absolute necessity of jobs to create “a workable system that can sustainably offer sanctuary to the world’s refugees.”
A vital contribution to a discussion that should be at the top of world leaders’ agendas.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-19-065915-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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