Contrary to Salmon Rushdie's belief that migration leads to "the creation of radically new types of human being: people who root themselves in ideas rather than places," Scott Russell Sanders, in Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World, expresses his opposition towards persistent migration. In the passage, Sanders questions the morality of continuous migration and also references past events that exhibit the detrimental effects of migration. Through juxtaposition, imagery, and other rhetorical devices Sanders incisively portrays his antonymous view of human movement.
Being that migratory people, "sailors, explorers, cowboys, prospectors," built human societies, most notably America, society is still in constant search of a "Promise Land." It is said, "uprooting brings tolerance" and "to be modern, enlightened, fully of our time is to be displaced." Sanders challenges these ideals and the notion that migratory peoples are superior to sedentary. Although travelers lack national ties, they do not lose their ideas, religion, or even their culture and are no less responsible for discrimination than those with a formal connection to a region. The rhetorical question in lines 40-42 criticizes the audience's ethics and humanity's ability to decimate a landscape and then simply move on without remorse. Through the assessment of ethos, the author presents pathos by also instilling guilt within the reader. Despite being absolved of "chauvinism," those who constantly journey to new lands have not lost their aptitude for insensitivity towards the areas in which they inhabit. .
Subsequently, with factual evidence, Sanders gives concrete examples of how migration can damage a region. He acknowledges that as people move around, they bring with them their same methods used in previous locales that may not be applicable to another. On that note, he expresses logos by referring to how "the Spaniards devastated Central and South America," "Colonists brought slavery with them to North America," and farmers caused "the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
