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Mouth of Shark

In their book Good Economics for Hard times, the authors refer to this beautiful poem by Warsan Shire as they explain the complex drivers of migration and what that means for the wages of the natives. I am listening to this book during my walks these days. Unlike the Gawande book that I recently finished, this ones does not flow nearly as easy. It takes effort to focus and a lot of the arguments are repetitive. 

Yet, there are some useful things to ponder over - one of being what it really takes for  migrant to leave their village to move to a city where they know they could be more prosperous. What it takes to leave one's country. At some level home would need to feel like "the mouth of a shark" for this to happen. The incentives to leave what is known, familiar and even comfortable could come from that feeling or from a desire to take risk that is higher than the average for their native counterparts. 

It seems like both of those arguments would weaken if the destination local or international is one where a person can reasonably expect a strong social network and degree of familiarity. Coming to America in the 1950s from India would have taken a huge degree of audacity. In the 2000s not at all if you were willing to jump through the immigration hoops. To that end, the types of people who migrate in different waves is very different. 

I recently re-connected with one of my father's old friends who came to America in the late 70s. I have vague memories of having seen him as a child but we met a few times since I came here. Over the years, we had drifted apart and I reached out to him recently to make sure he was well. It was a happy reunion and the man looks great for seventy. He is still working nearly full-time, and is sharp as a tack. I wondered what compelling forces were at work when he left his stable public sector job in India. He was newly married then and from what I have heard had a trophy wife. She wanted a better life abroad, keep up with some of her affluent family members in Canada and so they moved. 

Maybe there is a sliding scale of forcing functions that go from "mouth of a shark" to burning desire for a "better" life whatever that entails for a person, that drives migration. Depending on where they fall on that scale, the time of the migration and the destination, outcomes for the person and the natives they impact directly and indirectly could be very different. 

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