Here today, gone tomorrow: 1 in 30 people are on the move
Megatrends | Part 9.1 | Nomading
After thousands of years invested in staying put, humanity is once again on the move. Its resettlement — whether temporary or permanent — is dramatically altering our world on every level.
While I resonate with each of the ten megatrends I have identified, Nomading is more deeply personal than others because it has given me the world at the price of truly belonging in it.
To understand this megatrend, let’s consider the facts, the causes, and — through the stories of how I’ve experienced “othering” — the meaning of a global population that is increasingly nomadic. In honor of some of the most recently nomadic peoples, I chose this painting of an Arabian horse I did years ago.
Image credit: Elena Bondareva (watercolor, ink).
On the Megatrends series
I have earned an international reputation for leveraging global trends to create positive transformation. Having (1) introduced this concept and (2) set the stage through earlier posts, I now guide you on a 360-degree tour of today’s change landscape!
Having covered Gluttony, Abstraction, Permeability, Collective power, Cacophony, and Obsolescence Pandemic, our tour continues to Nomading, the first of the four trends fueled by those six. All these trends are part of the roadmap for regenerative transformation that is Change-maker’s Handbook (2023).
See if you might read/listen actively. Consider these questions:
How does this trend manifest in your world? Society at large? Your family, community, or team(s)? Your investors or donors? The people your purpose calls you to serve?
Importantly, how does it play out in you? In your own motivations or struggles?
What shifts in what is possible, acceptable, or both underpin this trend?
Who — brands, politicians, non-profits — ride this trend? Do they succeed or fail? Why?
What does this trend make possible that was impossible before?
With 1 in 30 an international migrant, are we a nomadic species once again?
According to the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM), one in 30 people are international migrants today. The proportion of the global population that is living in a country other than where they were born has been growing steadily, with 281 million (3.6% of the global population) in 2020 compared to 152 million in 1990, which itself was three times the estimated number in 1970.[1]
Even if just twice as many people (a conservative global generalization) move within their country of origin, one in fifteen of us is trying to thrive within a land, laws, and norms other than what we know.
Why are people on the move?
Key drivers for voluntary international migration are career opportunities, military and diplomatic deployments, education, and retirement.
The number of students studying abroad has also been growing over the past decades, hitting 6.4 million people in 2021.[2] The United States alone hosted over 1.1 million of them in 2023/24 academic year.[3] Keen to escape family dramas and a higher education system collapsing into corruption, I left both my family and my home in Moscow, Russia at fifteen for an education in the US; an education that opened to me the doors to the world.
The overall trend of people retiring abroad is also definitely on the rise, with as many as 1.5 million retirees globally living outside their home countries. This includes approximate a half-million Americans (50,000-60,000 retire abroad every year), drawn by a lower cost of living, a more comfortable lifestyle, and better weather. A number increased by more than a half in the eight years leading up to 2024.
Decentralization of white-collar work is a telling example of a simmering trend brought to a boil by the COVID-19 pandemic. Supported by immediate and momentous advances in technology, there is not a single major employer on the globe who has not considered how to accommodate a remote or hybrid workforce. Millions of workers have moved to wherever they prefer to live, driving an exodus out of major metropolitan centers that is rivaled in significance if not in numbers by the rise of suburbia across some parts of the world (including the US) in the 1950s and 1980s. In response, countless hesitant corporations have abandoned or renegotiated leases, and many a business district is trying to reimagine itself as an alluring mix of residential, lifestyle, and retail.
Half of those on the move are forcibly so
UNHCR reports that unlike me, nearly a half of all international migrants are “forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations and events seriously disturbing the public order.”[4] That is one in every 69 people, or 1.5 per cent of the entire world's population. This is nearly double the one in 125 people who were displaced a decade ago. Moreover, this number has grown every year for the past twelve.
While it should go without saying, let me spell out that many of the forcibly displaced people can’t lay claim to anything but the clothes on their backs before they stand next to you or me in line for checkout or a bus. Wherever they appear, one in 69 of us doesn’t arrive with a carload of necessities, favorite foods, or inspirational posters to pad their landing. To see their humanity over their otherness — that falls squarely on the other 68 of us.
What does it mean if 1 in 30 are international migrants?
Having moved countries eight times — 12 city moves in total — I’ve lived this trend my whole life.
Nomading is increasing our exposure to other cultures. I bet more people in more places have sampled Ethiopian cuisine or have a good friend born in another country. There is also no doubt that this trend is accelerating cross-pollination of ideas: “the country of origin” is an obsolete concept today.
Nomading also means that at least one in 30 people globally feels like a fish out of water.
Nomading and social norms
To help the next generation understand what it is like, I had the honor of delivering a social studies class every year that our children were in middle school. I passed around matryoshka (aka nesting) dolls and traditional Russian scarves, brooches, etc., to great interest of my young audiences. The “aha” moments came when I asked, “What side of your hand do you squeeze had lotion onto?” and, “What side of the key — the flat of the jagged — is ‘up’?” Spoiler alert: while Americans put their lotion on the palm, Russians apply it to the back of the hand, and every lock I ever saw before leaving Russia demanded that the key be inserted flat side up.
Ineffectual, these details illustrate that there is more than one way to accomplish even the basics — or to be made to feel like you can’t master even that.
Nomading and language
Language may deliver another blow. I was fifteen — in my first year on the move — when I asked my Texan volleyball coach for a strawberry cocktail when she inquired where the team — packed into a van — wanted to stop after an important match. Her face made it clear that she heard something rather than my favorite and innocent McDonald’s treat. It was weeks before I figured out that it was my literal translation of the McDonald’s menu in Moscow that got me in trouble; that I should have asked for a milkshake.
By then, I was already at a loss about the constant, “Did you have fun at school today?” Not only is there no word for “fun” in Russian, but I did not understand what the concept had to do with school. The other commonplace, “What’s up?” confounded me altogether: not only did I have no plausible answer, but it did not seem required. The nonsensical greeting became my nemesis: to avoid it at the end of the day when kids crowded every public space outside the school, I snuck to the bus stop so close to the walls as to hide in their shadow.
One faux pas after another, I gradually stopped communicating and withdrew altogether, choosing not to be understood at all over being misunderstood in ways that I, as a non-native English speaker, had no way of mitigating at the time. I felt utterly isolated, a feeling deeply familiar to many migrants.
Even within the same language, room for misunderstandings abounds. I remember wishing to sink through the floor of the elevator on my first day with the Green Building Council of Australia while my new coworkers flippantly discussed thongs. Conditioned to American English, I was petrified that my new workplace discussed underwear so casually when they did nothing of the sort, rather considering seasonal trends in flip-flops.
The economics of Nomading
I would not do this section justice without mentioning the economics. Having both stood in bread lines and gone on a cruise, I appreciate how one’s baseline expectation of a day, a meal, a monthly income, or of accommodation can render us as divergent as if we came from different planets.
Most people don’t enjoy the spacious accommodation that even low-income Australians or Americans take for granted. Before I came along, my entire family — mom, dad, sister, and grandmother — lived in a single room of a three-room apartment where two more similarly crammed families shared a small kitchen and bathroom. And I mean it when I say “three-room” because “bedrooms” were not a notion. That may have been because we did not sleep on beds. Rather, as the overwhelming majority of the global population, each of us made our bed on a sofa at night and put all the bedding away every morning. The very idea of a room that’s occupied for no more than ten hours a day would have been preposterous. Is it any wonder that many migrants are willing and able to live together in tighter quarters?
One too many misplaced words, a worker accepting a lesser wage, and a few “wrong” applications of lotion, and we get the worldwide nationalist wave that includes Brexit (2020) and Trump’s elections (2016, 2024).
War: When loyalties split
Unsurprisingly, the number of people holding more than one citizenship — like me — has also been growing steadily. Having long advocated for global citizenships for those who have proven their allegiance to the greater good of all rather than a single nation, I find myself humbled by brand new ground wars (Middle East and Ukraine). The creed of a world made safer through interconnectedness (aka, that of the United Nations) does not stand much of a chance if we resume flat out killing each other, does it?
Knowing that countless people throughout history have found their loyalties split by geopolitical conflict, I can only hope that I am never called to choose.
Reflection
Now, let’s revisit the framing prompts to absorb and apply:
How does this trend manifest in your world? Society at large? Your family, community, or team(s)? Your investors or donors? The people your purpose calls you to serve?
Importantly, how does it play out in you? In your own motivations or struggles?
What shifts in what is possible, acceptable, or both underpin this trend?
Who — brands, politicians, non-profits — ride this trend? Do they succeed or fail? Why?
What does this trend make possible that was impossible before?
We would cherish any answers you are comfortable sharing!
[1] https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/msite/wmr-2024-interactive/. Accessed: January 3, 2025.
[2] The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS).
http://data.uis.unesco.org. Accessed: January 3, 2025.
[3] United States Hosts More Than 1.1 Million International Students at Higher Education Institutions, Reaching All-Time High. November 18, 2024. Institute of International Education. https://www.iie.org/news. Accessed: January 3, 2025.
[4] https://www.unhcr.org/us/global-trends. Accessed: January 3, 2025.