Book Launch: Randall Hansen: War, Work & Want: How the OPEC Oil Crisis caused Mass Migration & Revolution

October 27, 2023 | 5:00PM - 7:00PM
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Online & in-person
Munk School, Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (CERES), Harney Program

This event is over

This event took place in-person in the Campbell Conference Facility, Munk School, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto and online via Zoom.
War, Work & Want asks why global migration, which should have fallen after 1970, tripled over the next fifty years. Hansen argues that the OPEC oil crisis unleashed economic and geopolitical changes that led to over 100 million unexpected migrants. The quadrupling of oil prices permanently halved economic growth in the West, leading to a five-decade stagnation in wages. The middle classes responding by rebuilding their inflation-shattered standards of living on the back of cheap migration labor, leading to millions of low-skilled migrations – documented and undocumented. In the oil-rich Middle East and Russia, a sudden rush of oil money destabilized Iran, led to the fall of the Shah, and resulted in multiple military conflicts: the Iran-Iraq War, two Gulf Wars, and, in a more complicated way, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The result was tens of millions of refugees. The overall result was over 100 million unexpected – and unwanted – migrants.
Watch Book Launch Here
Sponsored by Munk School for Global Affairs & Public Policy, Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Canada Research Chair in Global Migration, the Department of Political Science and the R. F. Harney Programme in Ethnic, Immigration & Pluralism Studies
Munk School, Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (CERES), Harney Program
Olga Kesarchuk olga.kesarchuk@utoronto.ca

Speakers

Edward Schatz

Director, Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies

Randall Hansen

Canada Research Chair in Global Migration, Department of Political Science & Director, Global Migration Lab, Munk School

Lama Mourad

Assistant Professor, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carlton University

Phil Triadafilopoulos

Acting Director, Harney Program in Ethnic and Pluralism Studies, Munk School

Ryan Balot

Chair of the Department of Political Science