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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MJB" data-source="post: 3323015" data-attributes="member: 88928">Well, Andy, to attempt an answer to your question (and I'm in no way saying it's the only answer, far from it), consider this: imagine if you will that you are the head of a family in a Sahel country that is threatened with the 'starvation or move' choice. Do you think that neighbouring or more distant countries in Africa are likely to be more stable than your own disintegrating country? If so, which ones are these, and what opportunities do they present? You mentioned Zimbabwe having a labour shortage, but it also has rampant inflation, and no means of worthwhile currency exchange. Now, consider Europe: even the economic situations of Greece and Italy appear better than that of your own disintegrating country, and despite unrest, quite often on a large scale, famine isn't anywhere near threatening there, and in comparison with many African countries, Greece and Italy's instabilities are of a first-world nature, not a third-world's. If Greece and Italy can be seen as better than many African countries by people with the 'die or move' option, think what the others look like. Thousands of US and European movies and news bulletins have for decades been viewed world-wide, the overall if unintentional effect being of presenting on social media a kind of 'streets paved with gold' metaphor. In many parts of Africa nowadays, business (and even virtual currencies) trades at the village and small town level via mobile phones powered by solar chargers - it's a huge audience. Essentially the West has presented itself as a cornucopia of consumer goods: it's also trumpeted itself as the repository of freedoms, no matter how fragmented, and the main source of rational thought, no matter how fitfully it may have achieved that. What's not to like? Fine, so this just happened, little consideration being given to how it all may appear to the have-nots, in the long run. Now, following medium-scale population movement (when compared to Earth's near 8 billion), the view is being presented 'we have all this, but now you're excluded' as one thread in the argument (I know, it's a gross generalisation, but you get the idea).Already, we've seen over the last two decades a steady increase in people-trafficking. Hundreds of thousands have crossed the Sahara and then sought to cross the Mediterranean. As of 2013, Spain has 682 000 Muslim migrants from or via Morocco, Portugal at least 40 000 (<a href="http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/spring2013/moving-iberias-new-muslims):" target="_blank">http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/spring2013/moving-iberias-new-muslims):</a> Spain may have about the same number of non-Moslem, non-European migrants; of the migrants in Morocco, many as workers, the number of undocumented migrants is unknown, but 30 000 applied for registration after Morocco introduced a scheme for assisting temporarily those in greatest need; racism against black Africans and factors such as fear of Ebola (<a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/13/morocco-sets-unlikely-precedent-in-hosting-sub-saharan-migrants.html" target="_blank">http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/13/morocco-sets-unlikely-precedent-in-hosting-sub-saharan-migrants.html</a>) (no known cases in Morocco) has made many undocumented people avoid this scheme, but it's likely that around 300 000 undocumented people (low estimate) are in Morocco, and proportionate numbers in Algeria and Tunisia. Some context here: <a href="http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/morocco-setting-stage-becoming-migration-transition-country" target="_blank">http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/morocco-setting-stage-becoming-migration-transition-country</a>.It thus appears that many African countries already have significant numbers of undocumented migrants, but their infrastructure struggles to cope, or may be corrupt.Of course the above is only a small part of what's happening in Europe, Africa and Asia - the number coming from China and Central Asia is rising. I don't pretend to have a panacea solution, for there are so many factors to cover, but my point remains, the present level of mostly Syrian migrants, is likely to be but a harbinger of much larger numbers, given the extent of soil degradation in so many countries whose biomes have little resilience if seasonal regularity of rainfall is worsened.Birds, of course may have more flexibility than humans in their ability to move, but habitat extent and variety is disappearing worldwide at a high rate, which correlates with human population increases...MJB</blockquote>

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