Many of us who talk about populations having to remain static where they are, enabling the people to stay where they are, have not understood how humanity actually evolved.

“Migration and movement have actually led us to what we are today. Well, maybe not a very good picture throughout, but migration is evolution. People have always mixed, people have moved on. Instead of preventing migration, preventing movement, we should be enabling them… People are for sure, and that is again linked to the connectivity we have today, in a state of movement, of constant movement. I mean, as we speak, there is at least one million people a week moving to a city somewhere in the world. We will be three billion people more in urban centres in 25 years from now.”

In our latest edition of The Call, Hedvig Morvai talked with the changemaker and switxboard founder Killian Kleinschmidt about the “new normal” we live in today, about networks,  invisible communities and hidden opportunities, why we need to enable and not prevent migration and under which conditions our world will be able to survive.

This text and video is published under the Creative Commons License: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. The name of the author/rights holder should be mentioned as followed. Author: Jovana Trifunović and Igor Bararon / tippingpoint.net. Cover picture: Filmstill from the Video “Migration is evolution” – The Call with Kilian Kleinschmidt. Illustration: © Norma Nardi

The Call

The COVID-19 pandemic shattered lives, put social contracts and international relations to test, disrupted economies. Governance systems, good and bad, are in distress. The better off are confined to home offices uncertain of their livelihoods. The less lucky face new heights of digital authoritarianism or sheer violence. The omnipresent media seem to be failing its watchdog function even in world’s oldest democracies. Already eroded, global democracy standards are yet to receive the full blow of pandemic’s political, social and economic consequences.

The video series The Call is an attempt to try to understand better the political, cultural and social implications of the pandemic by asking thinkers and doers from the ERSTE Foundation Community to weigh in with their thoughts and predictions.