Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2021
How do we think about migration? This question was the topic of the first installment of the 2019 Tanner Lectures on Human Values, given by the exiled Russian journalist Masha Gessen, at Harvard University. Gessen, who had reported on immigrants, began with a story of a Montenegro man whose family fled to the United States when he was five. Then they told a second story, then a third, followed by fifty-four more stories of individuals’ sorrows, despair, and dreams. Gessen's intent was to bring to life individual migrants, underscoring their diverse experiences. Individuality and complexity matter, because too often, people on the move are reduced to numbers in the news and in the eyes of governments.
1 Chen Yinke 陳寅恪, Chen Yinke Wei Jin nanbeichao shi jiangyan lu 陳寅恪魏晉南北朝史講演錄 [Lectures on Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern dynasties] (Anhui: Huangshan shushe, 1987); Tian, Xiaofei, Visionary Journeys: Travel Writings from Early Medieval and Nineteenth-Century China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011)Google Scholar.
2 Tan Qixiang 譚其驤, “Jin Yongjia sangluan hou zhi minzu qianxi” 晉永嘉喪亂後之民族遷徙 [The ethnic migration after the upheaval during the Yongjia era of the Jin], Yanjing xuebao 15 (1934).
3 Marks, Robert, China: An Environmental History, 2nd ed. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017)Google Scholar.
4 Coblin, W. South, “Migration History and Dialect Development in the Lower Yangtze Watershed,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 65, no. 3 (2002): 529–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Shi Nianhai, 史念海, “Shiliuguo shiqi ge geju bazhu de qianxi renkou: shangpian; xiapian” 十六國時期各割據霸主的遷徙人口: 上下篇 [The migrant populations in the various states during the period of the Sixteen Kingdoms], Zhongguao lishi dili luncong 3 (1992): 89–116; 4: 1–28; Misaki Yoshiaki 三崎良章, Goko Jūrokkoku: Chūgoku shijō no minzoku daiidō 五胡十六国–中国史上の民族大移動 [The five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms: The great ethnic migration in Chinese history] (Tokyo: Tōhō shoten, 2012).
6 Kuhn, Philip A., Chinese among Others: Emigration in Modern Times (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008)Google Scholar.
7 Chan, Shelly, Diaspora's Homeland: Modern China in the Age of Global Migration (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.