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00:00People understand the concept of moving thousands of miles away from home for better opportunities
00:05when it's an influencer heading to LA.
00:08I'm doing it! I'm moving to LA to be an influencer!
00:11But when it's an immigrant crossing a border for survival, suddenly it's a criminal.
00:17We all share this earth, so why does your right to move depend on the passport that you were born with?
00:25Let's uncover that.
00:26I remember my grandparents' stories, all of them European migrants who arrived in Argentina
00:30beginning of the 20th century, when the American continent received 55 million Europeans.
00:36As far as I knew, all of them took their own decisions, forced by their circumstances
00:42and also having to face a huge challenge in their destination countries,
00:46but without having to ask a special permit or authorization to do so.
00:50So what had happened?
00:51Migration is one of the oldest human behaviors, and yet one of the most judged and restricted today.
00:57If a French national moves to Vietnam, they're called an expat.
01:02If an influencer is moving to LA to follow their dreams, they're just living their best life.
01:08But if an Indian moves to Germany for work, they are called an immigrant.
01:13If a boy from Ghana crosses the Mediterranean on a boat to reach Italy, he is called a refugee or,
01:19worse, an illegal.
01:21But if we think about it, essentially they are all doing the same thing, moving from one part of the
01:26earth to another in the search for better opportunities, safety, or to follow their dreams.
01:33But somehow each of these stories is treated completely differently.
01:37Some people are welcomed with open arms, their visa processes are extremely easy, or there's no need
01:42for visa at all, and no one questions their intentions.
01:46Others have to prove that they deserve entry.
01:49With hundreds of pages of documents, the right amount of money in their bank account,
01:54and endless waiting at the mercy of cold bureaucratic systems, which maybe soon will be AI-powered.
02:00And some people, those with the fewest options, risk everything.
02:04They walk through deserts, they cross dangerous waters.
02:08If they survive, they might be detained, and that, sadly, can be the best case scenario.
02:13And of course, there are nuances to every story, but this is the general truth.
02:18Some humans are given more rights than others because of the place that they were born.
02:23Citizenship ends up mattering more than humanity.
02:26So, in this video, I want to explore that, the tension between migration and citizenship,
02:32and the discourse around migration in the past years.
02:35What it means to move and the incredibly difficult experience of living in another country,
02:40which I know for stand.
02:42Let us not only save the birds.
02:44Let us follow them.
02:46Let them teach us how to live with the seasons again.
02:49How to move when movement is needed.
02:52How to stay without clinging.
02:53How to belong without borders.
02:56Craig Santos, Paris.
02:57Human beings have always moved to follow water, food, safety, or seasons.
03:03Long before the idea of countries and passports,
03:06movement and migration was a natural response to changing environments.
03:11It was an act of survival.
03:13While the concept of citizenship and the borders that uphold it is relatively new.
03:18Only a couple of centuries ago, your identity and rights were tied to
03:22religion, tribe, or allegiance.
03:25And not rigid lines drawn on a map.
03:27The outbreak of World War I in 1914 marked a turning point.
03:33Governments concerned with spies, draft evasion, population control,
03:37and many other things began implementing strict travel restrictions,
03:42identity checks, and documentation systems.
03:45So, passports transformed into tools of state surveillance.
03:49It's a way to monitor loyalty and regulate movement.
03:53So, migration was no longer just a human act.
03:56It became a bureaucratic one.
03:58And after World War I, the collapse of empires like the Russian and the Ottoman
04:03created millions of stateless refugees.
04:06And the League of Nations responded in the following way.
04:09They hosted passport conferences, for example, the one in Paris in 1920,
04:14to standardize travel documents, introduced the Nansen passport in 1922,
04:20which was a travel document for stateless people,
04:23and established legal frameworks for dealing with statelessness and forced migration.
04:28So, borders as we know them today were born out of wars and fear,
04:32and not out of any natural human need.
04:34In theory, citizenship is a legal status.
04:37But in practice, it's like a lottery ticket,
04:40because you can't choose where you're going to be born.
04:42But it determines what rights you have, where you can go,
04:46and what kind of life you're allowed to live.
04:49So, yeah.
04:49Most people acquire citizenship through birth.
04:52The countries have either you soli, which is rights of soil,
04:55you're a citizen of where you're born,
04:58or you sanguinis, or right of blood.
05:00You're a citizen based on your parents' citizenship.
05:03And that's it.
05:03You're locked into a legal identity based on pure luck.
05:07Legal scholar Ayla Chahar calls this the birthright lottery,
05:12an unearned advantage passed down through generations,
05:16much like aristocratic titles or inherited wealth.
05:20In a deeply unequal world,
05:22citizenship becomes a global caste system.
05:25If you're born, for example, in Germany, Canada, or Japan,
05:29you inherit rights, protections, freedom of movement,
05:32and many other advantages.
05:34But if you're born in Syria, Sudan, or, let's say, Afghanistan,
05:38you inherit barriers, suspicion, and statelessness.
05:42This inherited privilege shapes access to education,
05:45healthcare, safety, and mobility.
05:48And despite the myth of globalization,
05:51the vast majority of people will never be able to change their citizenship.
05:55Harsha Walia says in her book,
05:57undoing border imperialism.
06:00Butterflies have always had wings.
06:02People have always had legs.
06:05While history is marked by the hybridity of human societies and the desire for movement,
06:10the reality of most of migration today reveals the unequal relations between rich and poor,
06:17between north and south, between whiteness and its others.
06:22Sociologist Sigmund Bauman brings another dimension to this topic,
06:27calling the modern world liquid.
06:29According to him, institutions, jobs, identity, and even borders are in constant flux.
06:35But in this liquid world, mobility is power.
06:39And unfortunately, not everyone has it.
06:41In liquid modernity, elites like corporations, billionaires,
06:47and even to some extent digital nomads, can cross borders freely.
06:52But the working class, the poor, the displaced, they are stuck in place, heavily policed and heavily excluded.
07:00He further talks about deterritorialization.
07:03Wow, I pronounced that word amazing.
07:05And dislocation.
07:07According to him, traditional bonds between identity and geography are slowly dissolving.
07:12Work, culture, relationships float between spaces, especially across the digital space.
07:19And due to that, people lose a sense of home, not just physically, but psychologically.
07:24And in this context, nations start losing sovereignty to global markets.
07:29And people lose stability to precarious work.
07:32And because global economy demands flexibility, we have gig jobs, short-term contracts, endless relocation.
07:41The old identity of I'm a factory worker from this town is gone.
07:45And what remains is constant economic anxiety and existential uncertainty.
07:51And Bauman argues that this dislocation is structural.
07:55Because when nothing stays solid long enough to build a coherent life,
07:59the freedom to move becomes a burden unless you already have power.
08:03So from all the scholars, we can conclude several things.
08:06First of all, today, the accident of your birthplace determines what rights you have.
08:12For example, an Italian citizen can enter around 190 countries visa-free,
08:17while an Afghan citizen only around 25.
08:21So essentially, passports have become global cost markers.
08:24In theory, all humans are equal.
08:26But in practice, your humanity is weighed against your nationality.
08:31And all of this becomes even more complicated in the context of the current globalized world
08:36and the liquid modernity, where capitalism demands you to be flexible and fluid to survive and thrive.
08:43Let the birds teach us again how to move when movement is needed,
08:48how to stay without clinging, and how to belong without borders.
08:52To go further, nowadays, there's another dimension to migration, which is linked to climate.
08:57As extreme weather events escalate, so does displacement.
09:02More and more people are not migrating just because they want to, but because they have to.
09:07But instead of being welcomed as victims of the crisis that they didn't cause,
09:12they are met with fences and detention.
09:15Meanwhile, the actual architects of the crisis fly first-class, carbon-heavy,
09:20and across borders without any issues.
09:24Essentially, the countries that are most responsible for the current climate crisis
09:28are not paying the price.
09:30The wealthy industrialized nations emit the vast majority of greenhouse gases.
09:35Yet, it's the global south that suffers the consequences, which we can clearly see with
09:41endless droughts, cyclones, and clones, and clones, crop failures, crop failures.
09:47And as the tropics become hotter and less habitable, the planet's climate sweet spots are shifting
09:54northward to Canada, Scandinavia, Russia, and the Arctic Circle.
09:58This means that these regions, many with shrinking population and aging demographics,
10:04will need to rethink infrastructure, governance, housing, and many other things.
10:11And this is essential not to just sustain the current residents, but also to welcome millions of more.
10:17Climate migration is becoming a bigger and bigger issue,
10:21and it's calling for a lot of nations to rethink how they view immigrants.
10:26In Nomad Century, the science journalist Gaia Wins makes this extremely necessary argument.
10:33Mass migration is not a crisis to prevent.
10:36It's a reality to prepare for.
10:38Vince frames the 21st century as the Nomad Century,
10:43where mobility becomes a survival strategy in a destabilizing world,
10:48a moral imperative for global justice,
10:50and a planning challenge that we must embrace and not resist.
10:54She argues that instead of clinging to the outdated ideas of static citizenships and fixed nations,
11:01we must build a world that supports movement, ethically and sustainably,
11:05and most importantly, compassionately, without deportation orders and detentions.
11:11The more immune you are to people's suffering, that's very, very dangerous.
11:17It's critical for us to maintain this humanity.
11:20Very often we need stories to understand what is truly going on behind concepts and words thrown around,
11:27like migrant, refugee, nomad.
11:30And that's why I thought it would be very useful to look at a few stories and
11:34kind of create this human connection, apart from all the theory that we discussed.
11:39And the first story is actually mine.
11:42So I thought it would be perfect to open up and tell you firsthand what it's like to be a migrant.
11:49So I spent most of my conscious, independent life ever since I was 17 as a migrant.
11:55And maybe a little bit of a background.
11:57I was born and raised in Armenia.
11:58I am fully Armenian.
12:00But I was sent to a Russian school where we did not learn Armenian history or Armenian language.
12:06So I already had this disconnection between my true Armenian identity
12:12and what I was taught about Russian history and needing to be patriotic about a country
12:17that I had no real connection to.
12:20And that's thanks to colonialism that made me feel like I didn't quite belong anywhere.
12:25And that's why I relate so much to what Sigmund Bauman wrote.
12:28According to him, in liquid modernity, identity is no longer given by class, religion or nationality.
12:36It must be constructed, curated and constantly updated.
12:40It's like a personal brand.
12:41And this leads to a lot of anxiety.
12:44Because in this shifting world, the identity, the self-identity never feels fully finished.
12:50And that was my experience exactly.
12:52So because I was so brainwashed into thinking that I had a Russian part of identity in me,
12:59at 17 I moved to Moscow to study international relations in a university that I really wanted to
13:05study at. And yeah, going to Russia just felt like a logical step.
13:10Living in Moscow, don't get me wrong, it was super exciting.
13:13It's an amazing city, but it never felt quite right.
13:16It never felt like I really belonged there.
13:18Then during my exchange semester in Lisbon, I experienced something new.
13:22This feeling of freedom that you have when you live in less patriarchal and
13:27less conservative societies.
13:31So I liked it so much that I moved to Italy for my master's and then to Berlin for work.
13:36And everywhere I went, I carried a suitcase and a huge pile of documents that I always needed to
13:41apply for visas in order not to miss deadlines, to be present at appointments.
13:47So all my life, it's been a never-ending pile of paperwork and visa anxiety and uncertainty about
13:54where I'd be in six months. I can never be fully relaxed and free and enjoying my present because
14:00I always have to think several steps, several months ahead. If I want to do a part-time job,
14:06I need to apply for a part-time permit and gather all the necessary documents. If I want to do freelance,
14:13I need to apply for a freelance visa and again, prove that I will be able to survive and that I
14:19have people that want to work with me. And if I don't do any of that in time, I'll just lose my visa
14:24and I'll have to go back to Armenia, which at this point, even though it's my country, I don't feel like
14:31I belong there either. It gives me this feeling of being provisional and in constant transition.
14:36I'm living in Germany now, but I don't feel fully free. I can't open a business for my YouTube channel.
14:42I can't legally freelance. I'm tied to a job contract. If I want to stay, I can't rest,
14:48travel or volunteer freely. I just, I can't just exist. And yet, this is still considered
14:55a relatively successful migrant story. I speak multiple languages. I always integrate relatively
15:01well. I have a degree, but even with this privilege, I live in constant low-grade anxiety.
15:07So if this is one of the best case scenarios for someone coming from a less privileged country,
15:12what happens to everyone else? What about people who don't speak the language or who flee war zones,
15:17or they don't have legal pathways, support systems or degrees? I think a very powerful example was told
15:24in the film Io Capitano, I, the captain. I don't, I watched it in Italian, so I don't know.
15:29It's based on a true story and it, uh, shows the, um,
15:34journey of two teenage boys from Senegal who tried to reach Europe or specifically Italy.
15:40Their journey involves human trafficking, desert crossings, violence, exploitation,
15:46violence, exploitation,
15:48violence, violence, and violence.
15:50It's based on a true story and it, uh, shows the, um, journey of two teenage boys from Senegal
15:54who tried to reach Europe or specifically Italy.
15:56Their journey involves human trafficking, desert crossings, violence, exploitation,
16:10prison-like detention camps in Libya. They're so young, but on the way they see death, they're in a
16:17constant survival mode. And it's honestly heartbreaking to, to watch and so sad to see how the system treats
16:23them as criminals when they're just two teenage boys trying to survive.
16:28I wouldn't want to spoil the film for you, but I would definitely recommend watching it.
16:32It's a powerful story. Apart from that there are so many other refugee stories that need to be told
16:37and need to be heard. So I will link some in the description below.
16:53And then on the other end of the spectrum, there are expats. They are often white, western,
17:00middle-class, and mobile. They move to Lisbon, Bali, Tbilisi. You can often see them with their laptops
17:08in cafes. They rent Airbnbs, post-travel plus productivity TikToks while driving up local prices.
17:18Often entire neighborhoods get gentrified while locals get priced out. On one hand, it's undeniable
17:24that they come with a lot of privileges. With the right citizenship that allows them to spend
17:31several months in the designated country without needing to apply for visa. With a degree and a job
17:37that allows them to earn enough money to live the life that they desire. With savings, which is also
17:44always a privilege and just a better perception in the eyes of the local authorities and the local
17:51people. On the other hand, even for them, things aren't always easy. The promise of remote freedom
17:57comes with a lot of throwbacks. They face several traps like digital nomad scams, targeting naive
18:03newcomers, financial instability, burnout, and alienation, and many other limitations.
18:10Here's the truth about moving abroad without romanticizing it. The truth is that making friends
18:14as an adult in a new city is hard, and even if you meet people you like, you'll feel lonely sometimes
18:18because when you're starting from scratch, it's easier to build one-on-one connections than a big
18:22friend group. The truth is that you'll be alone a lot of the time and be forced to learn how to enjoy
18:26your own company. However, just going back home feels difficult. For people that flee war zones, going
18:32back means possible death. For others, it may feel like failure or isolation. Speaking from my own
18:38experience, I often think, why don't I just return to Armenia? And maybe at some point I will. But for
18:44now, first of all, I don't feel like I belong there either. I don't speak Armenian well enough to work
18:50professionally, even though that can always be worked on. I don't relate to many of the cultural
18:55and societal norms that I find outdated. I've become foreign to my own homeland. But here in Germany, I'm not
19:02exactly welcomed either. I exist somewhere in between. I'm legal but limited, integrated but
19:09insecure. And always navigating what I'm allowed to do next, not what I want to do. So I stay because
19:17I've built something here, a small community of friends that I care about, a routine that I don't
19:23want to leave because of the potential, and because millions of others don't get the chance to try.
19:28Today, our cities are flooded with illegal aliens. Americans are being squeezed out of the labor
19:33force. In the recent elections across the world, there has been a surge in anti-migrant rhetoric.
19:40Even though a lot of parties technically target asylum seekers or undocumented migrants,
19:46the fear spills over all migrant groups, students, workers, researchers, families. Overall,
19:53the lines blur quite fast when politics are treated in such panic. Politicians start using painfully
20:01familiar messaging like they take our jobs, they abuse our welfare systems, they make our streets unsafe.
20:08These are textbook scapegoat tactics. They are often used when political systems are under pressure,
20:15whether from inflation, housing shortages, or insecure labor markets. It's much easier to blame the outsider
20:22than to confront structural issues. Sociologist René Girard wrote that societies often look for
20:29a sacrificial victim during moments of crisis, a scapegoat to symbolically absorb all the chaos.
20:37Migrants have long played that role. It's happening in Germany, with very clear examples from
20:43the election period at the beginning of 2025. It's happening in the US. Trump blamed Haitians,
20:50Muslims and Mexicans for crime and disease. The UK, under the Conservatives, rolled out a surreal
20:57deportation plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as if trauma can be outsourced. France cracked down on
21:04Algerian and sub-Saharan youth, fueling cycles of marginalization. And Italy, under right-wing
21:11leadership, routinely turns back boats fleeing Libyan hellscapes, knowing full well what waits behind.
21:18And it's a strategic move to use migration as a political tool. It's like an emotional shortcut
21:24to voter anger. It helps to temporarily conceal real issues like housing shortages, low wages,
21:31health crisis, inflation, and austerity. And this creates a never-ending cycle, because when migrants
21:38are scapegoated, they face marginalization. This leads to more surveillance and more criminalization.
21:45And facing marginalization and criminalization means that a lot of them often face rejection
21:51from employers and are isolated within the society, which drives them further into the tunnel of
22:00criminality, because that's the only option that they have left. They get stripped of context,
22:05humanity, and they just become statistics in the news headlines about crime or unemployment. It's a
22:11vicious cycle. Fear, scapegoating, marginalization, criminalization, social friction, and more fear.
22:19And guess who benefits from that chaos? Of course, the right-wing parties. And there's another point that
22:25I'd like to touch upon regarding the right-wing parties, and in this case, climate migration. The
22:30parties that scream the loudest about migrant invasions are often also the ones that block climate
22:37initiatives. Right-wing platforms typically center around two main things, anti-immigration stances,
22:43and weak or non-existent climate action. But these two positions are deeply interconnected when we look
22:49at it through the lens of climate justice and migration. What this means is the following. The less
22:57you do to stop climate change, the more the global climate crisis intensifies. The more people are
23:03displaced by floods, droughts, and famine. Then the more people are forced to migrate, and as a result,
23:10the more migration pressure your own country will face. Climate change is a huge driver of displacement,
23:16especially in the global south, where resources to adapt are often lacking. According to the IPCC,
23:23climate impacts will force tens of millions to leave their homes by mid-century. So here's a cruel twist.
23:30Governments that refuse climate action are actively fueling climate migration flows. And guess what?
23:36They will probably later use it as a political tool. It's like setting fire to the house and then
23:43building walls to keep out the people that are fleeing the flames. And this is incredibly convenient and
23:49even serendipitous for many political forces. Because guess what thrives in chaos and insecurity?
23:56Right. Right-wing populism. It usually gains momentum during economic downturns, rising insecurity,
24:04social fragmentation, and often it's all blamed on migrants and not the systems that created the
24:11conditions. And whether it's accidental or not, it's extremely detrimental to the humanity.
24:17Well, it's been a long video and to conclude all of this, I want to read the words of Gopal Dhaneni.
24:26Migration is an earth ride. Monarch butterflies don't migrate across the continent because it's fun.
24:32Species migrate because the conditions are no longer conducive to making home
24:37in place. And they will migrate to a place where the conditions are more conducive. We, as humans,
24:42also migrate like birds, like seeds, like wind. We do it for love, for safety, for security,
24:49for a better life. Migration is not a threat. It's a rhythm of life. The earth is but one country and
24:57mankind its citizens. So whether you're labeled as an expat, a refugee, a foreign student, a dreamer,
25:05you all belong here. Because the earth belongs to all of us. That's how I also found my identity,
25:10by the way. I'm just an Armenian girl that belongs to the earth. Just a little speck on this giant
25:17rock that is floating in space. And that's it for today. Thank you so much for watching. Let me know
25:24your thoughts in the comments below. Do you have a similar experience? And what do you think about
25:28migration? I know that some of the ideas that I shared can be considered radical or very idealistic,
25:34but it's all a starting point for discussion and improvement. So let's talk about it. And yeah,
25:40thank you so much for watching and see you in the next video. Bye!
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