International Migration in the New Millennium

Global Movement and Settlement

Danièle Joly, Danièle Joly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351926744
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Aus- & Einwanderung

International migration is an issue of enduring interest and debate, as strong as ever in the 21st century. This in-depth, global examination proposes a balance sheet of international migration and highlights its consequences regarding migrant populations at the turn of the century. It draws together theoretical studies supported by empirical examples, and derives from quantitative as well as qualitative research. Assessing the major existing models within the theory of international migration, the contributors continue to examine a variety of key themes, including: increased flows of female migration; the meaning and relationship between identity, ethnicity and diaspora; return migration and the complex problem of reintegration. The volume also establishes a typology of refugees and examines the different domains of ethnicity and racism. A valuable volume for all those interested in migration, population settlement and transnational communities, it addresses all the major issues of international migration in the new millennium.

Part I
International Migration

Chapter 1
Theories of International Migration

Joaquin Arango

Introduction

Ever since the dawn of the age of mass migration, well over a century ago, scholars have endeavoured to provide general explanations for the phenomenon of human migration, more or less abstracted from its specific occurrence. Economics, sociology and geography have been the most propitious disciplinary grounds, but by no means the only ones. The end results of such efforts have been models, analytical frameworks, conceptual approaches, empirical generalisations, simple notions, and only seldom real theories. A number of these explanations were not originally conceived to explain migration, but rather born to explain other facets of human behaviour and then imported and adapted for the explanation of migration. Efforts at theory building have not been cumulative: the relatively short history of theorising about migration takes the form of a string of separate, generally unconnected theories, models or frameworks, rather than a cumulative sequence of contributions that build upon previous blocks.

If the success of such efforts had to be measured by their ability to erect a general theory of migration, if could be easily concluded that none has been successful. Indeed, there is no such thing as a general theory of migration. But it is highly doubtful that this could be a good yardstick, as the level of aggregation at which such an overarching and all-encompassing theory should operate would be so high as to render it useless for all practical purposes. Migration is too diverse and multifaceted to be explained by a single theory. Efforts at theory building should be rather evaluated by their potential to guide research and provide cogent hypotheses to be tested against empirical evidence, and by their contribution to a better understanding of specific facets, dimensions and processes of migration. From this vantage point, there can be no doubt that students of migration can count nowadays on a much richer reservoir of conceptual and theoretical approaches than ever before from which to draw upon. Yet, the overall palette of theoretical contributions still mixes light and shade.

The pages that follow aim to provide a succinct description and a critical evaluation of the major contemporary explanations of migration. A preliminary caveat is in order: the terms theory and explanation will be liberally construed all along, and extended to all sorts of conceptual and analytical approaches, although not to typologies. Without detracting from the epoch-making significance of a few outstanding forerunners – above all The Laws of Migration by Ernest-George Ravenstein (1885–89), the undisputed founding father of modern thinking about migration, and the seminal The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, by William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki (1918–20), probably the most impressive book ever written on the subject of migration – theory building in this realm is practically a matter of the second half of the twentieth century, and especially of its last third. Most contributions prior to the 1960s have nowadays only a historical, if not purely archeological, interest with the exception of a number of contributions to the vocabulary of migration.

This survey starts with the neoclassical explanation of migration, the first theory worthy of its name. Seen in retrospect, its appearance represented a true watershed in the short history of thinking about migration, which it presided over in the 1960s and 1970s. Special attention is bestowed upon its increasing difficulties to come to terms with the rapidly changing reality of international migration since the mid-1970s. An array of new or renovated theories and conceptual frameworks has flourished in the last quarter of the century with that aim, mirroring the increasing relevance socially and politically accorded to the phenomenon. After a critical evaluation of both contributions and shortcomings, some reasons will be put forward that may help to understand the relative weaknesses of theoretical thinking about migration, and some areas which deserve greater attention will be suggested.

The Neoclassical Explanation

In the course of the third quarter of the twentieth century, rapid and sustained economic growth, the increasing internationalisation of economic activity, decolonisation, and emergent processes of economic development in the Third World, all brought about an intensification of migration, both internal and international. Thinking about migration at that time tended to mirror both the overall climate of the period and the characteristics of migration flows. It is hardly surprising that the major contributions to migration theorising in this period should come from the realm of economics. The general primacy of economic motivations in migration had already been recognised by Ravenstein several decades before, when he wrote that:

bad or oppressive laws, heavy taxation, an unattractive climate, uncongenial social surroundings, and even compulsion (slave trade, transportation), all have produced and are still producing currents of migration, but none of these currents can compare in volume with that which arises from the desire inherent in most men to ‘better’ themselves in material respects

(Ravenstein 1889, p. 286).

Such a primacy was paramount in the third quarter of the century, after the hectic period of massive resettlement of displaced populations and accommodation to new borders that followed World War II.

The direct predecessor of the neoclassical theory, and probably the first instance of a truly theoretical explanation of migration, was W. Arthur Lewis’ model of ‘economic development with unlimited supply of labour’, an influential model of development in dual economies in which migration plays a pivotal role (Lewis, 1954). ‘Dual’ economies are economies in development, usually in post-colonial contexts, in which a modern sector, connected with the outside world, coexists with a traditional one which relies on subsistence agriculture for survival. When the modern sector expands, it draws labour from the traditional sector, where it is unlimited, in the sense that its marginal productivity equals zero. Lewis estimated that a ‘cliff’ of about 30 per cent was bound to exist between the wages of the two sectors, and that that differential would suffice for workers to move. For the advanced sector, having at its disposal an unlimited supply of migrant labour makes it possible to expand while keeping wages low, thus securing a high rate of profit. For the traditional sector, outmigration is the only way to get rid of surplus labour and to proceed in the production function towards higher capital-output ratios, and thus constitutes the precondition to embark in a process of development, out of economic backwardness. Therefore, in Lewis’s model, migration is a crucial mechanism of development for the economy as a whole, exploiting the potential of growth inherent in economic disparities, and both sectors, traditional and modern, sending and receiving, greatly benefit from it.

Even though Lewis placed himself in what was known at the time as ‘development economics’, his model contained in a nutshell the basic elements of the equilibrium models which would dominate the social sciences, and migration theorising within it, at least in the ensuing two decades. Yet, it was not primarily a theory of migration, but a model of development.

The first theory about migration, and probably the most influential so far, was the theory of migration that emanates from neoclassical economics, based on such familiar tenets as rational choice, utility maximisation, expected net returns, factor mobility and wage differentials. A paradigm so versatile, which has been applied to so many dimensions of human behaviour, and whose influence still spills over from economics to other social sciences, could hardly disregard migration, to which it seems to fit naturally.

Simple, elegant and akin to common sense, it has the advantage of combining a micro perspective of individual decision-making and a macro counterpart of structural determinants. At a macro level, it is a theory about the spatial redistribution of the factors of production responding to different relative prices (Ranis and Fei, 1961; Harris and Todaro, 1970; Todaro, 1976). Migration results from the uneven geographical distribution of labour and capital. In some countries, or regions, labour is scarce relative to capital, and its price – the wage level – is correspondingly high, while in other countries or regions the opposite obtains. As a result, workers tend to go from countries or regions where labour is abundant and wages low to labour-scarce countries where wages are high. In so doing, they contribute to the redistribution of the factors of production and to the equalisation of wages between countries in the long run, redressing original inequalities. It can be concluded, therefore, that in the neoclassical view, the origin of migration is to be sought in disparities in wage rates between countries, which in turn mirror income and welfare disparities. Migration will bring about the elimination of wage differentials, and this disappearance will in turn entail the cessation of migration.

The reasons why individuals respond to structural differences between countries or regions and engage in migration is explained by the micro version of neoclassical theory (Todaro, 1969, 1976). Migration is the result of individual decisions made by rational actors who seek to improve their well-being by moving to places where the reward of their labour will be higher than the one they get at home, in a measure sufficient to offset the tangible and intangible costs involved in the move. It is therefore an individual, spontaneous, and voluntary a...