Welcome to In Conversation, the regular podcast of InCompus.

Go to Encompasshyphen Europe.com for free access to all our podcast to date.

This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Philip LeGrain.

Philip LeGrain is the author of a new book, Them and Us, How Immigrants

and Locals Can Thrive Together. Great to have you with me, Philip. Great to be with you, Paul.

Right. You've been a champion of this issue of immigration for many years. You've not been

entirely alone, but it's not exactly overpopulated terrain you wrote a book back in

2007 on immigration is this a kind of sequel to it or an updated version of that book

yeah you're right I wrote a book in 2007 called immigrants your country needs them

which was really successful at the time but 13 years on is out of date.

Things have moved on obviously politically

with the rise of populism, President Trump, Brexit,

the rise of the far right in Italy, the refugee crisis and so on.

Secondly, the academic researchers moved on.

I mean, the silver lining of all the political interest in migration

is that economists and other researchers have looked into it much more and

therefore we have much more evidence than when I wrote my first book.

And the third thing that's changed is that I've changed.

I mean I first wrote that book as a sort of interested outsider with a point of view that the debate was too negative,

but starting really from first principles and very little knowledge.

Now I've been involved in the immigration debate for 13 years.

I set up my own think tank called Open.

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