By Ivan Restrepo on October 13, 2025
Migration is neither a recent phenomenon nor unique to a particular part of the world. foto: AFP
In February 1947, Eleanor Roosevelt, writer and activist, and wife of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945); Peng Chun Chang, Chinese scholar, philosopher, human rights activist, and diplomat; and Charles Habib Malik, Lebanese scholar, diplomat, and philosopher, began drafting what would become known a year later as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was adopted by the countries that were part of the nascent United Nations (UN). It was a response to the “acts of barbarism outrageous to the conscience of mankind” committed during World War II. The declaration was signed at the Chaillot Palace in Paris.
Today, that palace houses the Museum of Man, which serves to teach about the origins of humanity. It brings together more than 700,000 prehistoric objects, some 30,000 anthropological and biological objects, and 6,000 objects related to the use and transformation of nature. The material on immigration is particularly valuable, showing how human beings are not pure, how their origins lie in Africa, and how they migrated from there to the rest of the planet.
A very select part of this material was used to organize the exhibition A Human Odyssey. It narrates the journey of humanity through the millennia: from the poster for Charles Chaplin’s film The Immigrant to life jackets and a 54,000-year-old tooth. It also features a “migration globe” by Italian artist Pietro Ruffo, created for the exhibition.
For Aurélie Clemente Ruiz, director of the museum, the idea is that “in the face of debates on an increasingly topical political issue, it is urgent to reposition migration on a global scale and in the long term.” And to dismantle, with irrefutable facts and figures, clichés and prejudices surrounding immigrants of all eras and origins, “in order to reduce the often irrational attitudes associated with those who do not come from the same place of birth.”
To achieve this goal, the scientific committee in charge of the exhibition drew on anthropology, genetics, archaeology, demography, law, and geography, disciplines accompanied by figures and data on migrants, refugees, undocumented persons, expatriates, and illegal immigrants.
Through film clips, documents, and satirical cartoons, the exhibition begins with the “words of migration,” demonstrating how the perception of the “foreigner” is often the result of social and cultural constructs fueled by the imagination and fears inherent in each of us. Whether they are Polish, African, Mexican, Venezuelan, or Salvadoran, immigrants are stigmatized, accused of being lazy, dirty, criminals, and “thieves” of jobs in the country they arrive in, not the essential workers they turn out to be.
But as paleoanthropologist Christine Verna, one of the organizers of A Human Odyssey, points out, migration is neither recent nor exceptional to a particular place on the planet. They have existed since 300,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens marked the origin of humanity on the African continent.
The exhibition is inspired by an important manifesto published in 2018 by the National Museum of Natural History in France, which reaffirms that “all species migrate for different reasons, whether they are plants, animals, or humans.” And they are not a new phenomenon; they have always existed. They are part of our past, our present, and our future. Among living beings, they are essential for the survival of species. Migration is as natural as gravity.
Donald Trump thinks quite the opposite. A year ago, at a rally in Ohio, he claimed that migrants arriving in his country “eat people’s dogs, cats, and pets.” He then said in Pennsylvania that the arrival of migrants at the southern border of the United States is “an invasion of murderers and child predators… who come from all over the world, but also from Latin America. They are gang members, drug dealers, and thugs.”
If the tycoon visits Paris, it would be very useful for him to visit the Museum of Man. Perhaps there he would remember that his mother migrated from Scotland to the United States. And she was a domestic worker. European leaders and party leaders, enemies of those who migrate, especially from Africa and the Middle East, because of poverty and violence, should also visit it. The waters of the Mediterranean and the English Channel are littered with those who did not make it.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English