Excellent. I’d put this alongside Rothstein’s The Color of Law and Alexander’s The New Jim Crow as one of the top three books explaining the institutionalism of racism in today’s society, providing readers with the tools to begin the long process of dismantling the framework. Like so many other hot button subjects, immigration tends to be argued in an emotional manner with little regard for the facts. Perhaps the adage for The Next Great Migration should be that you can NOT lead a horse to water; however, if you can put this book in their hands and prompt a read, this is the sort of title that will alter a lot of perspectives and shift societal dialogue in a positive direction.

Last month, science writer Sonia Shah released her next great book, The Next
Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move. Through this book’s four
hundred pages, readers travel through time and space: the Himalayas circa 2009,
Hawaii prior to human habitation, even her own childhood in 1970s Mumbai. Shah does
not jolt readers around to disorient us, but to reorient readers to this book’s central truth:
humans, just like all animals, have migrated for millennia, and we will migrate around the
world for many more centuries, especially as the climate crisis worsens. The Next Great
Migration works not only to instill this central truth, but to show how deleterious anti-
migration policies and actions are to the natural movements of ordinary humans. This
isn’t a book for policy wonks or scientists; this is a book for anyone with empathy, and
that broadness will help build the ranks of the climate justice movement. Shah has
penned previous books that expertly reveal the severity of the the climate crisis (2015’s
Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond is especially
notable this year), but for us, as climate justice activists, The Next Great Migration feels
like it is coming at the right time and tackling the right questions—although it should be
only one of many books that will dismantle the dystopian system that has built our
immigration policies and our mindsets about race.

In The Next Great Migration, Shah tracks down and tackles the racist and
ecofascist narratives that act as the climate movement’s ball and chain. The primary
narrative that Shah deconstructs is the idea that migration is unnatural and dangerous.
To smear the reputation of migrants and migration, Shah writes, generations of
scientists and philosophers used time-worn tools for justification of oppression: Judeo-
Christian theology and racist biology, among others. Shah frames the flawed logic of
Western migration policies as emerging from the same way of thinking espoused by
Carl Linnaues, an Enlightenment-era natural historian who grew up with the
understanding that God created each creature in its place, enforcing
“sedenterianization” and leading Linnaeus to conclude that if other humans existed in
places other than Europe, they must not be the same species as Europeans. Shah
spends much (maybe too much) of this book showing us the men who made the
ecofascist myths we still live with: there’s Madison Grant, a fierce advocate for both
conservation and eugenics who dedicated reams of paper and decades of his life to
defending the existence of biological borders between humans of different races with
his cadre, resulting in the codification of a xenophobic American immigration bill into
law. Another mythmaker is Paul Ehrlich, an ecologist and self-identified community
activist who rose to national attention with his Population Bomb rhetoric.
By walking through the scientific and environmental work of Linneaus, Grant, and
Ehrlich, The Next Great Migration reveals the long, seedy history of the environmental
movement actively working against racial justice efforts. Paul Ehlrich, Shah writes,
prescribed vastly different solutions to the “crisis” of overpopulation in white and non-
white countries (family planning for the United States versus forced sterilization for India).

“Ehrlich was not an overt racist. On the contrary, he championed civil rights,” she writes.
Much as third-wave feminism took lessons from second-wave and grew for the better
from it, our wave of youth-led environmental activism needs to grow out of past
movements while actively working against its worst actors and tendencies. That means
first learning, through books like Shah’s, the racist logic in Ehlrichian Population-Bomb
rhetoric we have inherited from a deeply flawed historic environmentalism, and breaking
climate silence on racial justice.

Although Shah dots this history of mythmaking with quick, biting counterpoints, it
is only surrounding this narrative that she fills in an alternative to ecofascist myths: a
rich tapestry of biological triumph across the millennia. Shah knows that holding a stance
against a myth isn’t enough; myths must be supplanted by stronger stories. This, Shah
fulfills, collecting truths that can form the basis of new and hopefully more generative
myths. Across interviews, ecological research, visits with rare butterflies, and
investigations into the development of our existing shaping narratives, Shah is looking
for the stories we need to prepare us emotionally for the next great migration—whether
readers are refugees or the keepers of safe refuge. All species migrate, and humans
are no exception, Shah argues. Birds, fish, lemmings, and more cross great distances
to meet their needs. There are always members of a species who push past traditional
borders and begin the long process of adaptation. Shah offers a better question than
“what causes people to migrate and how can we stop it”, asking instead, “what should
we do with the fact that people migrate and will continue to migrate in greater
numbers?”

If we wish to better advocate for antiracist migration policies and a Green New
Deal, Shah’s style of storytelling and alternative mythmaking is a great place to look. By
touring readers across continents, millennia, and species, she presents countless
examples for readers to relate back to their own lives. Between these broad examples,
Shah intersperses personal, human tragedies: we follow water as it enters and
damages migrants’ textbooks, muscles tiring in migrants’ legs, the delayed identification
of migrant corpses after years of neglect. We are ushered past the statistic and into the
realm of individual experience. More than facts, these stories implore us to connect and
remember these details. Shah’s jumps from large-scale to small-scale, past to present,
and human to non-human help craft a wider, empathetic lens on migration.
Climate change calls for adaptation on a massive scale, and our species is not
exempt. But humans are unique possessors of one key adaptation: the ability to rapidly
change the way we react to conditions, by changing the lenses through which we tell
stories. Are migrants and refugees a threat which justifies massive resource
consumption in the arming of our borders? Are they resourceful, adaptive people with
recent experience to share in surviving great change? Are they us, eight to thirty years
in the future, in response to climate disruption? We can find stories to justify any of
these narratives, and Shah shows us how to frame the best argument for the kind,
cooperative, collective future we deserve.
As members of the Sunrise Movement, each of us fights for a just and equitable
world in our own states and hubs. We know that this crisis will get worse before it gets
better. The act of migration provides an opportunity to seek a liveable climate for the
next chapter of our lives, but while migration is highly accessible to people with

dominant, privileged identities—in money, citizenship status, and race, among other
intersecting and interacting elements of identity—it is made unequally available through
the myth that migration is “unnatural”. Instead of focusing on the sunk costs of flawed
environmental fights, like fighting “invasive species”, our fights can be closer to home to
build up a healthy and diverse community. Focusing on immigration reform through the
lens of American liberalism also comes with flaws, as both parties are responsible for
the militarization and construction of the border. If we rally behind liberal politicians, we
must remember and repeat that many of their accomplishments include the
intensification of mass incarceration, the amplification of forever wars, and the backing
of coups against democratically elected leaders in the Global South, then we can’t
expect those who create crises that lead to migration and refugee resettlement to
develop just immigration laws or effectively fight climate change without continued
pushes and victories by activists. We must lead the way with a bold vision, and the
politicians will follow.

The future of immigration in the United States seems even more precarious now
than when Shah wrote The Next Great Migration: migrant farmworkers are under
environmental and health threats, bleak policies regulate the lives of international
students, and the future of travel in an ill-handled pandemic only contains unknowns.
Although The Next Great Migration does explain the rhetoric, history, and ecology of
migration, it doesn’t provide many answers for the future. We were expecting the last
fifth of the book to discuss visions for a better future, but instead, it unexpectedly ends
(with a beautiful coda). Maybe the future of migration will become the topic of Shah’s
next book, or maybe, just like us, Shah has no idea what U.S. immigration policies and realities will look like in 2030. Rather than show us a specific future, Shah shows us our
potential, and that ability to discuss and move the Overton window is equally useful. The
Sunrise Book Club recommends The Next Great Migration, especially for those starting
to learn about the climate crisis, but we also urge readers to pair it with other climate
reads, such as The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What's Possible in the Age of
Warming, An Ecotopian Lexicon, and A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism
and Its Assault on the American Mind.

This book about the history of migration from all angles, including science and history lays out the case for migration being the solution for climate change. Unfortunately, since we are in the midst of a global pandemic when this is published, many people won't read this insightful book. This is just a case of bad timing, but I hope the author is able to reprint this book and gain readership.

This book will take everything you think you know about migration and turn it on its head. Incredibly well researched, this book gives readers a nuanced perspective on the idea that everything has one specific place or purpose in the biological world and that we can deduce all executive functioning from one definition of organisms or groups' behavior. Anyone hoping to meaningfully participate in the modern debate about immigration needs to read this book.

Interesting and Applicable. This is a truly remarkable work that traces the sociological and biological impetuses for and restrictions on migration at levels from the individual through the species. Shah does a superb job of combining history and science to make her case, and even impeaches at least a few organizations currently in the headlines along the way - even while clearly having no way of knowing that she was doing so, as the book was written before they became so prominent more recently. Spanning from the guy that developed the modern taxonomic system through late breaking issues with the Trump Presidency, Shah shows a true depth to her research and builds a largely compelling case. Very much recommended.

Our teenage son volunteered at a local nature center every summer. One of the activities the counselors in training participated in was pulling up Purple Loosestrife. It is an considered invasive species that thrives along Michigan's lakesides.

So, I was shocked to read that Canadian researchers concluded "there is certainly no evidence that purple loosestrife 'kills wetlands' or 'creates biological deserts'!"

Investigative journalist Sonia Shah's book The Next Great Migration is filled with such iconoclastic insights, smashing prevalent notions contending that ecosystems were meant to be unchanging, pristine, and unadulterated.

Instead, she systematically argues that no place on Earth has remained untouched by the migration of species. Including human migration.

Shah takes readers through the entire history of the migration of species and the ideas humans have held about migration. Bad science and ingrained beliefs have lead to false assumptions that impact the political landscape to this very day. Most disturbing is the rise of Eugenics and categorization of human groups to justify our fearful reaction to newcomers.

Building walls, Shah contends, cannot stop or solve the reality of migrating human populations. She writes, "Over the long history of life on earth, its (migrations) benefits have outweighed its costs." Embracing migrants can be a solution to the problems we face.

Shah's book was an engrossing read that shed light on how we 'got to here'.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.