Human history has always been marked by the movement of people and
populations, from the earliest movement of human beings out of Africa to
the flows of migrants and refugees today. While mobility is intrinsic to
human nature, migration is not always voluntary: it can be the result of
free choice, but it can also be forced in varying ways and to varying
degrees.
In this book, Massimo Livi-Bacci examines migrations past and present
with reference to the degree of free choice behind them. The degree can
be minimal, as when migration is compelled by war, natural disaster or
the actions of a tyrant, but in other cases the decision to migrate can
be fully voluntary and deliberate, as when individuals and groups weigh
up their options and decide whether to move. Between these two poles
there is a continuum of different situations, with gradually increasing
or decreasing degrees of freedom and choice. Livi-Bacci explores these
variations by focusing on fifteen stories of migration from Antiquity to
the present day, ranging from the Greek colonization of the Eastern
Mediterranean in the Ancient world to the great migration of millions of
people from Europe to the Americas in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Taken together, these stories of human movement shed fresh
light on the millennia-long history of migration and its motivations,
causes and consequences.
