There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of discussion about what constitutes a human right; what is fundamental and what is ideal, and where to draw the line in between. This is good, as rights (or at least their wording) cannot be static - there will always be a circumstance that challenges our intentions and understanding. Asking, then, what is the most fundamental of fundamentals is an inherently impossible question. Some will say freedom of speech, others the right to shelter, many will advocate the right to equality before the law. Myself, I consider the right to mobility - to leave a place, to enter a place, to travel within and beyond borders - to be paramount.
I am the child of immigrants, themselves the products of a hundred years of drifting cultures, and most citizens of the Americas would say the same. Even indigenous peoples of the continent, of any continent, possess a rich history of migration, displacement, and expansion. We, as people and as organisms, cannot thrive without movement and change, always sidestepping stagnation. And as such, we have countless stories of our misadventures and achievements, our losses and our wonders.
What this project seeks is to share our stories of wandering, whether large or small or comic or tragic, to demonstrate that we are, at our heart, a Migrant Nation.
