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The New Nomads

How the Migration Revolution is Making the World a Better Place

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About The Book

We have lost the plot when it comes to migration. In our collective consciousness, the term 'migration' conjures up images of hordes of refugees fleeing 'their' country, escaping on rafts and coming to invade 'ours'. When we think of migration, we think of (largely unwanted) immigration and its ills.

We've got it all wrong.


Far from being abnormal, the act of going in search of a better life is at the core of the human experience. And now a new kind of nomad is emerging. What used to be a movement largely from east to west, south to north, developing to developed country is becoming more of a multilateral phenomenon with each passing day. Young people from everywhere are moving everywhere. Or rather, they are moving to where they expect to improve their lives and are turning the world into a beauty contest of cities and regions and companies vying to attract them. They are doing so because movement has become a key to their emancipation. After centuries of becoming sedentary, the future of humanity and the key to its enlightenment in the 21st century lies in re-embracing nomadism. Migration fosters the qualities that will allow our children to flourish and succeed. Our times require more migration, not less.

Part memoir, part generational manifesto, The New Nomad is both the chronicle of this revolution and a call to embrace it.

About The Author

Austrian-American born and raised in Paris, Felix Marquardt counts nine different nationalities in his own nuclear family. He is the founder and chair of Youthonomics, a think tank and data analytics social business focused on youth empowerment. Over the years, he has advised several heads of state, including most recently Emmanuel Macron. He used to run communications for the International Herald Tribune and is a regular contributor to CNN, the BBC, The New York Times, Guardian and Die Welt.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK (July 8, 2021)
  • Length: 320 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781471177392

Raves and Reviews

'Highly engaging… a must-read. Through his very personal lens, Marquardt forces you to think about the ethics and economics of one of the central issues of all times.'

– Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan

'On the Road meets Sapiens. Felix Marquardt makes you want to hit the road and embrace the whole wide world as a means to save it. The New Nomads is sure to become a cult book for my generation and the coming ones.'

– Joshua Wong, leader of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution

'An intelligent and insightful analysis of one of the great issues of our age, laced with some powerful real-life examples and culminating in a number of thought-provoking recommendations for change... A thoughtful and refreshingly optimistic take on one of most urgent and complex issues of our time.”

– Paul Polman, former CEO, Unilever

'A hymn of praise to the human spirit ever questing in search of the better and the just and the beautiful and the new. Let it never die. And it never will while the humanity of nomads like Felix Marquardt survives COVID19 and flourishes again thereafter.'

– Lord Adonis, former Secretary of State for Transport

'The New Nomads belongs not to the privileged but to the hungry: hungry for wisdom, hungry for adventure, hungry for life. Marquardt places travel, even migration, back in its ancient setting of mythic education: you leave the village to find the part of you that the village could not provide... His writing is filled with wit and challenge. It is a rare gift to be both raconteur and truth teller, and Felix Marquardt is both.'

– Martin Shaw, author of Smoke Hole: Looking to the Wild in the Time of the Spyglass

'Highly compelling... When I met him during his International Herald Tribune years, Felix Marquardt was already an irrepressible Jack of all trades with an uncanny ability to bring very different people together from all over human society and the world. The New Nomads is a profound, timely statement on the power of migration as an exponentially generative process.'

– Celso Amorim, former Brazilian Foreign Minister

'Felix Marquardt brings a rich experience of life, intelligence and empathy into this exploration of youth, migration, and even the implications of thermodynamics for the new nomads! The stories are compelling, revealing humanity behind faces masked by stereotypes.'

– Frank Wilczek, Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics, MIT, Nobel Prize 2004, author of Fundamentals

'Thought-provoking. Here is a book that breaks through conventional wisdom to show that localism and globalism can - and need to - work together.'

– Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University, author of Expulsions

'In the popular imagination, there are migrants, there are immigrants, and there are expats, all distinguished by race and economics. In this fresh and compelling book, Felix Marquardt blurs those lines, emphasising the humanity and fundamental curiosity of all of us who seek, wander and move.'

– Jill Filipovic, CNN / Washington Post Contributor, author of The H Spot

'Masterful! The New Nomads is a deeply poetic exploration of migration and its role in the human journey. The stories form a compelling tapestry: the path forward isn't left or right, neither about pinning all our hopes on technology nor forsaking it, but embracing what makes us all human.'

– Sigurlína Ingvarsdóttir, senior producer of Star Wars Battlefront & EA Sports FIFA

'We are regularly encouraged to put ourselves into other people’s shoes. Hardly anyone ever actually does. Felix invites us to do precisely this: to change shoes and keep walking, eyes wide open. And change shoes again, many times, as we wander... The New Nomads is truly a remarkable journey - one you shouldn’t miss!'

– Bertrand Badré, CEO, Blue Like an Orange; former Managing Director, World Bank

'Holding aloft the migrant as perhaps the most electrifying figure of our time, The New Nomads deeply moves me. Felix Marquardt’s profound exploration is no less than a political theology of migration.'

– Bayo Akomolafe, author of These Wilds Beyond our Fences

'As a refugee from the economic elites and a survivor of the great plague of addiction, Felix has a unique perspective on an immutable law of nature - nothing stays put for long... His stories and commentaries remind us that we all live under this law.'

– Tyson Yunkaporta, author of Sand Talk - How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

'Felix Marquardt set out to write a celebration of hyper-mobility, but something far more interesting happened along the way. He has given us a depiction of the complex patterns of migration in the early 21st century that is also a critique of the Davos elite.'

– Dougald Hine, co-author of Uncivilisation – The Dark Mountain Manifesto

'Felix Marquardt's The New Nomads provides a welcome and brilliantly written antidote to the nativism that continues to fester in our more privileged societies... As we follow Marquardt on this fascinating journey, we learn that, in his words, all migrations are a search for home.'

– Stan Cox, author of Any Way You Slice It and The Green New Deal and Beyond

'TNN is benign TNT. The New Nomads has that uncommon, rare ability to speak radically and deeply in a quiet, calm tone. It doesn’t shout or scare or turn the reader off. It’s also a story of the adventure of nomadism as well its power to connect us with one another.'

– Bill Vitek, Professor of Philosophy, Middlebury College; editor/co-author of The Virtues of Ignorance

'A work of deep hospitality, humanity, prophetic wisdom and of hope for our planet.'

– Father Brendan O’Rourke, Congregatio Sanctissimi Redemptoris

'Remarkable... The nomadism extolled by Felix Marquardt isn't only geographic: it is social, intellectual, political in the broader sense. It is an art of moving, of blurring borders, of changing one's mind, of never forgetting that the truth always has a foot in the opposing camp, of surprising others and even more oneself.'

– Emmanuel Carrere, author of The Adversary and Other Lives But Mine

'A well-written and highly enjoyable read. Felix sets out to challenge preconceptions... Readers may not agree with all the author's assertions but they will be obliged to stop and think.'

– Pauline Neville-Jones, former Minister of State for Security and Counter-terrorism

'This book needs to be read. Urgently. Run and get it, take it in and notice your worldview evolve... Marquardt's prose is eminently inclusive and accessible. It brings the reader in seamlessly, allowing us to grapple with difficult and complicated issues through real-life examples. The New Nomads debunks stereotypes and sheds light on the hidden complexities of our world, showing that the pervasive injustice of our day and age is in no small measure about mobility.'

– Anwar Ibrahim, former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia and current Leader of the Opposition

'In these times of cultural warfare, [Marquardt's] new nomads bring us back to our common shared humanity.'

– Marc Lambron, Academie Francaise

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