and the southeast of england on wednesday. much more cloud around, a bit of rain and drizzle at times, although it does become drier later. but it's across the rest of the uk that we've got the fine weather this time, and it should be a fair bit of sunshine too. not that warm, perhaps making 20 degrees at best in scotland and northern ireland. a little bit warmer across england and wales. but it is turning cooler because we're seeing atlantic air coming our way, and that's going to bring with it some rain. the next weather system arriving overnight and moving down into the uk on thursday. some stronger winds with that rain in scotland and northern ireland. it's moving more slowly southwards now, so it's going to be later in the day that we get some sunshine in the northwest. may well stay dry through the midlands, east anglia and the southeast, and actually quite warm here, temperatures 26 degrees or so. but it is cooling down a touch for scotland and northern ireland. that rain does eventually move southwards overnight. it may take a little while to clear away from southeastern most parts of england on friday, but otherwise following that,

we've got some sunshine, blustery wind in the northwest will blow in some more showers into parts of scotland, where temperatures are still only 17 or 18 degrees, further south, 23 or 24.

now on bbc news, it is hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. migration is a hot and contentious issue right across the world. amid the cacophony of voices demanding tighter immigration controls, more secure borders and the mass deportation of unauthorised incomers, it's worth considering how current migration trends fit into the broader sweep of human history. south african—born economist ian goldin has done just that in an effort to reframe this migration debate in terms of the past and the future. is migration a drag or a driver of progress?

ian goldin, welcome to hardtalk. it's a pleasure to be with you, stephen. it's great to have you here. now, in your book, the shortest history of migration, you have a pretty simple core message, which begins with the thought we are, all of us, migrants. now, i understand that in sort of evolutionary terms, but why does that matter to today's debate about migration? it matters because i think we need to appreciate that without migration, there would be no human civilisation, and that it continues to be as relevant as in the past, and will be even more so in the future. we need migrants. we need to appreciate them. of course, we need to manage migration more effectively, but we need to recognise not only that we're all mixed up

ourselves in our origins, but that our societies require migration in order to thrive. in your short history of migration, you go back 300,000 years to the beginnings of movement, of what we now know as the earliest humans across east africa into north africa. and you then catalogue all sorts of different movements right across the world, even as the shape of the world changed. it's all fascinating, but is it really relevant, given that the world we live in today, with its, what, 8 billion people, is so very different from the world that you're describing in your deep history? i feel it's very relevant because unless we understand our past, we can't understand our present or future. and it's relevant because we need to understand how different places have managed migration in the past, why people have migrated, why they continue to migrate, and also get an understanding if things are worse now. in other words, are there many more migrants than there were in the past? and the answer, of course, which i show in the book by this historical

analysis, is no. about 3% of the world's population have always migrated as far as we have the records. it's also that... but in absolute terms, 3%... of course, 3% of 8 billion... ..of 8 billion is a lot more than... absolutely. ..3% of half a billion. yes, but as a share of our societies, it's not greater than it is in many places. no, but isn't the absolute, astonishing rise of the number of humans on the planet relevant here? because when you talk about the pre—industrial movements of peoples over centuries and millennia, what in essence you're often talking about is people moving into empty lands or nearly empty lands. well, in this world of ours, there are very few empty lands left. so, on the most crude and basic premise, migration going forward cannot be like the migrations of the past. well, i'd contest that people were moving after we'd peopled the planet, which was, you know, maybe 10, 20,000 years ago.

people were no longer moving into empty lands. when the colonists and imperialists went to the americas, native americans were living there. they killed most of them, but they were certainly living there. and perhaps that's my other point about whether, indeed, a history of migration is relevant to the discussion of migration today, because in the past, of course, migrations did involve mass violence, the genocidal extinction of peoples in many different places, things that in our contemporary society right across the world are... i was going to say unacceptable, but if they ever happen, raise the most enormous international concern. absolutely, and one of the things i show is that migration is not always good. i mean, slavery is perhaps the most obvious example of that, but so too the mass movement of refugees. but to get back to your point about why it's relevant, when we look at the numbers today, let's say 16% of the uk or the us economy are migrants, what we can see is that these aren't, in the long sweep of history,

exceptionally high. in the 18505 to 1900s, a much greater share of the us was immigrant. it's also the case in terms of outmigration. irish population is still lower today than it was in the 18505, 170 years ago. so we've seen these mass movements in the past in scale, in absolute numbers, as well as in relative shares, and it places, i think, today's numbers in perspective. the other thing i try and highlight in the book is the role that migrants contribute in their economies. are they good? are they bad? how do we better manage it? and i think that also brings a relevance from the past into the present. and we'll discuss that in some detail. just a point about yourself. unlike many of the political leaders we see around the world today, you are intrinsically positive and optimistic about both what migration means and what it can mean in the future. is that partly, do you think,

because of your personal story? because while you say all of us wouldn't exist without migration, you very literally, ian goldin, would not exist had your grandparents... absolutely. . . not been migrants. yes, i think it is deeply personal, and i say that in the foreword to the book. you know, my father's family escaped the pogroms in the baltics in the late 1900s. everyone that remained was killed. my mother's family escaped the ausch... ..the german occupation of vienna in 1938. everyone that remained was killed. and so it is deeply personal. and then i escaped apartheid south africa to be able to come to the uk, to be able to have a new life before i went back to work with, you know, fantastically with nelson mandela. that also made me realise how important it is. and the fact that i did go back and was able to contribute

after being out also made me realise how circular this process can be, how one can leave and go back and contribute from the things one's learnt abroad. mm. your history suggests that you're a truly international thinker. now you're based in the uk, and you'vejust seen a uk general election in which immigration has been a key topic. and for nigel farage and his reform party, it's been the topic upon which they've based a really very successful election campaign, winning14% of the vote from a standing start. there is clearly a deep concern about negative impacts of immigration in the country you now call home. do you understand why? yes, and i empathise with many people who do feel worried about the number of migrants. i think, firstly, there's been a great conflation of migration and refugees. when it comes to economic migrants or students, i think every country has the right to choose how many people it has, and it's absolutely right that people have a grown—up conversation about that.

when it comes to refugees, that's people in legitimate fear of their lives or persecution, i think there's international law and moraljudgment that should come into it, as well. but on economic migrants, we need to have a conversation in the uk about migration. but it is the case that in certain places, people are feeling the pinch. houses are unaffordable, public services, transport, and schooling, and other services are increasingly in scarce supply. and so people do feel that somehow, you know, migrants are taking their place. i think it's misguided because they're not seeing the contribution that migrants make to solving the problem. but i think it's absolutely fine to have the conversations. well, it's an important conversation to be very specific about. you say that there's clear evidence that the net impact of migration in the uk has been economically positive... yes. ..has helped growth. there are others, and i'm going to quote here matthew goodwin, who i'm sure you've had debates with in the past, cos he's a british academic

who is now very sceptical about immigration. he says that immigration to the uk has been dominated over the past 20 years by low—wage, low—skill people. he says that there is a myth of "migration benefits". but he says the reality is that it has exacerbated flat—lining growth and productivity. it's only served the interests of big business. well, there are maverick people like him that say that, but the big institutions that have done the analysis in the uk, including the treasury and associated institutions, as well as institutions like the 0ecd and the imf, reputable institutions, show the opposite. and this is the case both with the uk and the us, where it's very clear. very recently, for example, the imf came out with a report talking about the benefits of migration. it does benefit certain groups, but whole sectors would be deprived. we've seen what happened in the uk with agriculture when there weren't enough fruit

pickers and strawberry pickers. we've seen what's happening in the nhs with the shortage of nurses and doctors, we're seeing it in construction, and how it's led to increases in the cost of skilled labour. across the board, both skilled and unskilled, we're seeing it. and of course, the numbers in the uk aren't only about labour, it's the hong kong people... can i stop you just for a second? yeah. because you've just raised a point which is very close to my home, literally. you talk about the importance of bringing in migrant workers to do fruit picking, agricultural work. i'm from lincolnshire in the east of england. my nearest town to my home farm was boston. boston recently voted for a reform mp. thousands and thousands of mostly east european, low—wage migrant workers live in boston. it has over years generated tension and alienation with the local population. you talk about the big picture, net economic gain effect. many local people close to my home talk about cultural fragmentation, a lack of identity,

not really recognising the town they used to know. do you get that? yes, i think i do. and i think, you know, it's right that people voice their concerns. if you ask the farmers and the farmers union, they'll say, "we need workers." of course they need workers to pick their crops and do their harvests. so, as matthew goodwin says, it really serves big business, doesn't necessarily serve... not all farmers are... ..the more poor and disadvantaged local people. it serves all of us. when we go and want an operation in the nhs, a hip replacement, or we want something done, it's going to be migrants that do it very often. it's also going to be migrants that are going to generate the jobs and the income for the economy over the medium term. but the reason people are feeling anxious is because there's not enough affordable homes, there's not enough investment in public transport and in other areas. 0ne doesn't address the problem of migration by saying, "keep all the migrants out, "we're going to fix our problems." the problems will become worse.

right. in the course of writing this book over recent months, you must have looked at, for example, what's been happening in sweden, where there's been very serious concern about law and order, security, with some recently immigrant communities essentially seeming to be centres of crime and antisocial behaviour, to the point where a former prime minister of sweden, magdalena andersson, has said, "segregation of immigrant communities "from established local communities has created "parallel societies, with our resources "for policing and social services too weak to cope." i mean, you're positive, but don't you look at what's happening? i look at it all the time and i talk about it in the book! i mean, one has to look at the evidence and one has to get... i mean, i myself, am the victim of mass discrimination, you know, against people in the pogroms and in eastern europe and forced migration. i get it. but the way to address it, i believe...

and sweden has been remarkable in the past by being so welcoming, perhaps it welcomed too many people. there needs to be burden sharing, and there also needs to be very, very rigorous enforcement of policies of assimilation, teaching people languages. i don't believe in segregating people into ghettos and elsewhere. i believe in allowing refugees to work so they can contribute, they can pay rent and do other things. but i think we should also need to ensure that immigrants of all types abide by the laws of our country. if they break the laws, they shouldn't be allowed to be here, or they should be part of the criminal process. so i think we need a very rigorous bargain in which we accept that we need migrants, but we accept that they abide by the laws of the land. they pay tax, their employers pay tax, they're subject to minimum wage and they're subject to the rule of law. you're an academic and you're a think—tanker, but you do want to impact public policy making. i just wonder how depressed you are that you appear to be swimming

against a very powerful tide. i mean, one could talk about donald trump and his anti—immigrant, violently, almost violently anti—immigrant rhetoric in the united states, where he talks about immigration being tied to criminality, even terrorism. one could look at viktor 0rban in hungary, one could look at the polish government, the rise of the far right in a whole host of european countries. you don't appear to be winning the argument. no, it's one of the reasons i wrote the book, of course. that's why we write books, is to try and win arguments. but i think the tide of history is going to change things. and the discussions we're having today and the strongly anti—immigrant rhetoric is going to give way to a different discussion. that's because, if you look at the demographics and the decline of the number of people in the workforce, the increase in elderly people, and the needs of our economy, they are so dramatically in favour of having more migration. it's also the case that politicians are very good on rhetoric, but look what they actually do and one can get less depressed.

you know, this government that we've just seen being voted out in the uk promised brexit on the basis it would bring very low immigration, but what we've seen is record immigration numbers instead. so i think politicians are very good at rhetoric, including donald trump, but when it comes to implementing, they often don't do the same thing. and i think that's increasingly going to be the case, by the way, because we need the migrants. well, it's very interesting that you pinpoint this demographic crisis, which undoubtedly is afflicting many countries in the industrialised world with birth rates nowhere near so—called replacement rate, which means populations are declining, the number of elderly people and dependent people is clearly rising, and it is a huge structural problem. but the answer which politicians like mr 0rban in hungary come up with could be encapsulated in that word natalist. he basically says, i want to solve this problem not by bringing in immigrants, but by having more hungarian babies.

yes. and isn't that actually going to be a very powerful political argument? it is, but it's easier said than done. the attempts to change fertility rates, to increase the number of children that native women have, have been unsuccessful around the world. not entirely true. in poland, they've given huge subsidies to mothers. well, tiny, it can make a tiny difference, but the average cost — and there's a recent study on this for france — the average cost per baby is a million euro. you know, £800,000 per baby. so you can do what... you give big incentives, you can create nursery schools, and one should do these things, but it doesn't change the basics. china's abolished its one—child policy. it's made no difference to fertility rates at all. we see it in other countries, like south korea, that have no policies with much lower rates, and we're seeing it across europe. basically, it's about women with the right to choose, women having contraception, having jobs

and making other choices. i spoke to a japanese minister just the other day here on hardtalk, and when i put to him the fact thatjapan is surely going to have to change its policy, pretty strict control of immigration and work visas because of this demographic problem, which japan suffers from particularly... absolutely. ..he said to me, "look, there's an awful lot of other things happening — "artificial intelligence, robots, "you know, there are many different ways "in which technology is going to make japan work. "even if our population is reduced from 125 million "to, say, 80 million, we can still make it work." yes. i think it's no accident that japan's been at the frontier of technology for the last 50 years, because it's been at the frontier of the demographic transition, fertility decline. so they've been substituting technology for people for a long time. they are increasing their number of immigrants. it's just gone up quite dramatically. doubled in recent years, the number of immigrants into japan. so that's changing slowly.

technology can substitute for a lot of things, and it will, forjobs that are repetitive and rules—based that don't require dexterity or empathy. but you will not give your elderly parent or your small child to a machine for the foreseeable future. you will not have a massage by a machine. there are many, many increasing number ofjobs that people want in the advanced economies that will not be done by machines. and the question is — who's going to do them? so let's bring it back to migration, which your book is all about. migration in the future will surely have to be very different from in the past, where people essentially moved, uprooted for life. the assumption when they moved was that they were going to a new place to make a new life. maybe the future is going to be much more limited, controlled, job—specific migration. perhaps we could take the model of the arabian gulf, where huge numbers of people are invited in on short—term contracts, heavily monitored

and surveilled, and in essence, their rights are extraordinarily limited. is that going to be the future of migration? i think it is, it's already happening. we see in the gulf, as you've mentioned, 90% of the population are on that sort of contract in the united arab emirates and in other places. we're seeing it already with the visa systems. that's what visas are. that's what student visas are. big number of migrants or students, they come and they go. i mean, they maybe can work for a year or two afterwards, but then they go. we're seeing it on skilled visas in the uk. on skilled visas in the us. so i think increasingly we will have, and already do have, contract workers, and i think that's perfectly acceptable. we are making a bargain with people that they can come and work for a certain period, and they leave. there are questions about dependents, there are questions about family reunification, and, of course, refugees is a separate question, as well, but i think that is the future. if it's the future, it's a pretty bleak future, isn't it? again, you're the great optimist, but what you're really painting is a picture

of two—tier societies where you have sort of privileged local people with full rights, and then you have a class of worker migrants on very strictly controlled terms whose rights are not the same as the full—time local population. it might be depicted as a bleak picture, but it's also a very positive picture for people that are desperate for work from around the world. they're getting an opportunity to work, they're getting an opportunity to raise a lot of money, often they're sending it home in the form of remittances — it's the biggest, by far, source of income for many families and countries in the world — and then they go home and have a pension and live with their families again. it's not ideal. it'd be better for some of them, but many people don't want to go and live somewhere else. they want to earn an income and they want to return to their communities. so i think it's not ideal, but let's not allow the best to be the enemy of the good in terms of progress.

right. and it all presupposes an element of sort of global management and control of future human population movement, which, frankly, we don't see right now. but surely there is one factor that may undermine all of your hopes for this managed future of migration, and that is the climate emergency, global heating. yes. i'm just looking at figures here which say that up to, well, between 1 and 3 billion people could be displaced by the effects of global heating by the end of our current century. the number of people displaced by natural disasters and extreme weather in the last year was around 100 million. yes, 90% of people that escape natural disaster go to neighbouring countries. we already see that in the number of displaced people that are in, for example, iran, iraq, jordan, and elsewhere from the conflicts in their region and natural disasters. so people will move, they'll move as near as possible. they can't afford to move long distances. and in africa,

they'll particularly move to the coastal economies. i think the numbers of billions are wild exaggerations, but there will be tens of millions, or maybe even more people being forced by rising oceans, by droughts, by famines to move, and they'll mainly go to other countries. it raises a very big question — do we or should we begin to classify climate refugees as refugees under the un convention? we don't yet, but that will be an issue for the future. final question, as we've discussed in this conversation right now, the world is full of politicians pledging to build ever—higherfences, stronger border fortifications, essentially believing that they can stop the inward flow of people. is your message to them that this notion, this belief that they can stop it is always going to be wrong? well, firstly, there's one counterexample to higher walls, and that's, of course,

the 30 countries of the schengen agreement of europe, where people can move freely between the countries of europe. within, but they're now focused on building higher walls around the schengen. absolutely. soft centre, strong outer wall. absolutely. but that shows what people do when they can move freely. and what we saw in the height of the financial crisis, the euro crisis and so on, is that very few people moved from impoverished communities where there was 50, 60% unemployment to high—employment places. so i think the fear of mass movement is, firstly, exaggerated. secondly, i think that we should manage migration. we need a bargain where we give migrants a more decent life, where we give them an option of work, but that we insist that they abide by our rules. and i think that bargain, where we allow more migrants and we manage them more effectively, is the way to go for the future, and i think it's what politicians should be talking about. ian goldin, thank you very much

forjoining me on hardtalk. it's been a great pleasure. thank you very much, ian. hello there. it's been a very dramatic start to the week, what with the thunder and lightning and the heat and humidity, and it was hottest across east anglia, the south east and lincolnshire. temperatures widely over 30 degrees. but it was in cambridge where we set the highest temperature of the year so far. those temperatures are ebbing away. we'll be turning cooler through the rest of the week, and whilst there'll be some sunshine at times, there'll also be some spells of rain. these are the temperatures early in the morning, still quite warm across southeastern areas, but elsewhere a more comfortable 10 or 11 degrees. and there is cloud and rain coming into western areas by the morning, and this rain will push

very slowly eastwards. moving away from northern ireland, we'll get some sunshine. we'll see the rain pushing eastwards across scotland, moving further into northern england, wales and the southwest. but across the midlands, lincolnshire, east anglia and the southeast, it's dry. a little bit hazy with the sunshine perhaps, especially in the afternoon, but very warm once again. temperatures 27 or 28 degrees. not as hot or as humid as it was on monday. but there is cooler air coming into the north west. it follows that weather front that's bringing the cloud and rain. that meanders down towards the southeast. it brings a very different look to the weather across the east midlands, lincolnshire, east anglia and the southeast of england on wednesday. much more cloud around, a bit of rain and drizzle at times, although it does become drier later. but it's across the rest of the uk that we've got the fine weather this time, and it should be a fair bit of sunshine too. not that warm, perhaps making 20 degrees at best in scotland and northern ireland. a little bit warmer across england and wales. but it is turning cooler because we're seeing atlantic air coming our way, and that's going to bring with it some rain.

the next weather system arriving overnight and moving down into the uk on thursday. some stronger winds with that rain in scotland and northern ireland. it's moving more slowly southwards now, so it's going to be later in the day that we get some sunshine in the northwest. may well stay dry through the midlands, east anglia and the southeast, and actually quite warm here, temperatures 26 degrees or so. but it is cooling down a touch for scotland and northern ireland. that rain does eventually move southwards overnight. it may take a little while to clear away from southeastern most parts of england on friday, but otherwise following that, we've got some sunshine, blustery wind in the northwest will blow in some more showers into parts of scotland, where temperatures are still only 17 or 18 degrees, further south, 23 or 24.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm steve lai. the headlines... ukraine says it now controls a thousand square kilometres of russian territory — vladimir putin vows to respond. donald trump is due to be interviewed on the social media site x, by its billionaire owner elon musk. greece sends in the military as devastating wildfires approach the suburbs of athens. and scientists discover a reservoir of water on mars — deep in the planet's rocky outer crust.

we start this hour with ukraine — where the government says its forces now control a thousand square kilometres of territory inside russia. the land has been over—run in the last week — following a surprise attack over the border into russia's kursk region. while officials in kyiv were cautious at first — they're now talking up the advances. moscow has been ordering evacuations in kursk, and in neighbouring belgorod. president putin has told his officials to act. 0ur russia editor steve rosenberg reports. a music video from the russian military, allegedly showing it targeting ukrainian troops who'd crossed the border. it's presented

like a blockbuster. in reality, this is a huge problem for russia.