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By Root 1673 0

and fascinating hosts. They are Han Yi in Shenzhen, Fan Lixin in Chongqing, Amirul Rajiv in Dhaka, Mrinmayee Ranade in Mumbai, a good friend in Tehran, Belmin Soylemez in Istanbul, Dana Wiley in Nairobi, John Zagorski in Warsaw, Naomi Buck in Berlin, Genevieve Oger in Paris, Peter Sotirakis in Madrid, Benjamin Zeitlyn in East London, Ali Rocha in São Paulo, Katia Portillo-Vali in Los Angeles, and Julia Belluz in Toronto. My main researcher in London, Joanne Shurvell, has been persistent and inventive in her mastery of the British Library, the flight schedules of two dozen airlines, the contents of numerous databases, and the fast-changing vicissitudes of publishing. A number of other people have provided invaluable help with the research and conception of this book, including Craig Saunders, Marjan Farahbaksh, Celia Donnelly, Nahrain Al-Mousawi, Carl Wilson, Stephanie Nolen, Anna Olejarczyk, and Barbara Hui.

Years before I began researching this book in earnest, when I would bewilder people by talking vaguely of “a book about what’s happening in the outskirts,” one person who was always eager to listen, and often seemed to understand the project better than I did, was Michael Schellenberg, the associate publisher at Knopf Canada. He and his Random House Canada colleagues saw the potential of this project from the beginning and their efforts have turned it into something far larger and more comprehensive than I could have envisaged. I have also received exhaustive and engaging assistance throughout this book’s development from Andrew Miller at Pantheon Books, in New York, and extremely useful advice and information on the book’s European sections from Pieter Swinkels and Floor Oosting at De Bezige Bij, in Amsterdam. John Pearce, also an advocate of this book from the earliest stages, has been that rarest of figures, an agent willing to criticize; his quiet proddings and suggestions have encouraged me to give this book its title and its emphasis on international migration.

None of this would have been possible had I not enjoyed the fortune of working for a newspaper, the Globe and Mail, that sees such wide-angle explorations of global development trends as a crucial part of its mission. Foreign editor Stephen Northfield, editors-in-chief Edward Greenspon and John Stackhouse, and former Focus editor Cathrin Bradbury have all encouraged me to devote my time and their resources to the larger topics of migration, urbanization, and social mobility, to take the time I needed to write this book, and to use my newspaper column as a laboratory for the ideas and developments that seem poised to dominate the coming century. This book is in many ways a testament to the style of journalism and debate they have brought to the media.

And none of it would have been conceivable if not for the great privilege and pleasure of my lifelong partnership with Elizabeth Renzetti.