ABSTRACT
The debate about the perceived permeability of national borders is indicative of the complex set of problems posed by migration at national and global levels. From a simple statistical point of view, the increase in human mobility may be gauged by a review of basic statistics about international migration flows. In 1910 ‘some thirty-three million of 1.7 billion in the world's population lived in countries as migrants. Figures collated in the year 2000 show that there were about 175 million of six billion people at some distance from their countries of origin’ (Benhabib and Resnik 2009: 1). Notably, these figures do not account for internally displaced people and domestic migrants within the same country. Despite this marked increase in the volume of international migration, such figures represent less than 4 per cent of the world's population. This relatively small figure is due to the fact that there are few significant émigré societies around the world that pursue an active immigration programme as the USA, Canada or Australia have done over the past few decades.
