Sonia Shah

If there's migrants, there's a crisis.

Well, it turns out it was exactly wrong.

And so I wanted to kind of investigate why is it that we automatically think of migration as a crisis?

And I think the idea of the healthy migrant effect really goes to the point Zeke was just making about innovation and diversity.

It takes a certain kind of person to make migration work effectively.

Migrants are not people who are kind of the richest of the rich, who have a lot of assets, who have titles, who have this kind of capital that they can't really take with them to new places.

They're also not the poorest of the poor.

They're people who have what's, you know, mobile capital.

They have things they can take with them.

They have skills, education, good health.

You know, these are the things that are portable that you can take with you and what make it possible.

for people to move because, of course, migration is disruptive.

It is very risky to actually accomplish it.

So the people who actually can do it have all of these qualities that contribute to the kinds of economic benefits that Zeke was just talking about.

And that really goes to how you get diversity and innovation in a society.

People move into new places.

They adapt to those places.

They maybe come up with ways of using the local food, new cuisines, new ways of thinking, new ways of housing themselves, new ways of doing technology, all these ways you adapt to a new place.

And then when they move, they bring some of that with them.

And that is kind of the insertion of diversity and innovation into new societies is the dispersal of this innovation that evolves as we adapt to new places.