To think, in the final analysis, moving millions of people around the globe is not the optimal answer.

[StrawberryTeaLeaf]

We should be better by now at tackling the reasons people flee en masse? As a world-wide civilization. We've had enough practice at war and famine and genocide.

I'm just perusing the articles and the debates and the op-eds and the -bloody irritating-- memes again this morning and thinking there are just more refugees than there should be because there just shouldn't be the NEED for millions of people to move at once.

Trying to make things better in situ claim land is the cause of most strife over millennia and migration has fuelled most development and civilisation.
But the logistics and scale now are worrying.

A post-colonial approach shouldn't be about claiming land should it? Why can't the popular support for refugees put at least a little pressure on gov'ts to protect the rights of peaceful people to stay in their homes unmolested if that is their choice. I know that is simplistic, (and I know I sound like PollyAnna and it doesn't actually work like that) but it's a reasonable starting principle, isn't it? It just seems not to happen much.

But leaving aside the most complicated example (Syria/IS/Middle Eeas);

COLLECTIVELY, we don't HAVE an excuse, globally, for what is happening in Africa, still.

Or for global warming.

Or for a dozen other issues it is within our abilities to make better efforts to tackle.

I need more coffee.

A reduction of global inequality would be needed to avoid mass movement to richer nations.

You should probably have said "a bigger reduction." A recent article somewhere (The Economist?) said the reason we are seeing so much migration now is that people have just become wealthy enough to attempt to move. Previously people couldn't afford plane tickets/smuggler fees. You need a much bigger increase from absolute poverty to kill the desire to move.

Strawberry I agree.
But your 'little pressure on gov'ts to protect the rights of peaceful people to stay in their homes unmolested if that is their choice.' is inevitably seen as interference when done by governments and sedition when it's minority communities.
The highlighted bit could be used to describe the right to not educate girls, bear arms, circumcise children...

I agree with OP's general view. If asylum seekers are small in number then we should be accommodating. When they become large in number then someone should declare that their homeland is a failed state and step in to take control.
The trouble is who is 'someone', at what level do we step in, who does the stepping in, who decides the new regime? etc etc
Also, it has to be a long-term thing. We stepped into Afghanisatan and as soon as we stepped out they went back to their old ways. Intervention should be there for generations to change mindsets and succeed?

On a brighter note, it could be a self-fulfilling prophesy. If a dictator knows that external forces are likely to step in will he moderate his behaviour?

There's not a simple corrolation between quality of life and foreign engagement (invasion, diaspora, cultural or political influence etc.)
Guess where this photo was taken.

is inevitably seen as interference when done by governments and sedition when it's minority communities

More so when it's done by Western gov'ts?

Guess where this photo was taken.

Iran?

Aww thanks Strawberry
It was taken in Afghanistan 60 years ago, in a period when they were dependent on foreign aid from the west and Russia. More than a generation of Afghani women worked, studied and raised families in relative peace and by our standards enlightenment. I struggle to join the dots to life there now.

Wow.

There's been so much toing and froing in Afghanistan. It's a fabulous/terrible example of a whole country used as pawn/football for decades.

A rule of thumb seems to be that if change comes from within it benefits all (or most) cf The Netherlands and Australia. Stone Age to first world in 200 years, unless you're Aboriginal.