Political Economy Of Migration Research Articles

Theorising the ‘migration fix’: workerisation and exclusion in the European border regime

ABSTRACT The contemporary European border regime is shaped by an apparently paradoxical set of developments: while the securitisation of borders and the violent exclusion of displaced people intensifies, the demand for foreign workers is rapidly growing, driven by severe labour shortages across European economies. In this article, we develop the concept of the migration fix to study how different economic and political logics interact at the heart of European bordering and generate a range of new policies and practices. We theorise this concept drawing from the critical literature on racial capitalism, border studies and the political economy of migration, to understand how border regimes operate within broader logics of capitalist development and function as temporary and unstable fixes between different interests and tendencies, sustaining nativist political projects while creating opportunities for the exploitation of migrant labour. We develop this concept in relation to contemporary EU and member state policies in Germany, Italy and Greece, showing how a set of migration and border policies seek to reconcile business pressures for greater labour migration with the further securitisation of bordering, through the negotiation of partnerships with neighbouring countries and the drive towards what we term the workerisation of asylum seekers and refugees.

The Political Economy of Migration

In this review of Immanuel Ness's Migration as Economic Imperialism, Torkil Lauesen illuminates the links between the migration of labor to theories of equal exchange, which have traditionally focused on international trade. These connections, Lauesen writes, relate to transfer of labor power from the periphery to the core, and the concomitant exploitation of vulnerable workers from the Global South.

Political Economy of Migration in the India–Bangladesh Borderlands: Identity, Labour and Affect in the Former Chhit Mahals in Cooch Behar

Political Economy of Migration in the India–Bangladesh Borderlands: Identity, Labour and Affect in the Former Chhit Mahals in Cooch Behar

Gig work as migrant work: The platformization of migration infrastructure

With markets concentrating predominantly in and around large cities, gig platforms across the globe seem to depend as much on the cheap labor of migrants and minorities as on investment capital and permissive governments. Accordingly, we argue that there is an urgent need to center migrant experiences and the role of migrant labor in gig economy research, in order to generate a better understanding of how gig work offers certain opportunities and challenges to migrants with a variety of backgrounds and skill levels. To fill this research gap, this article examines why migrant workers in Berlin, Amsterdam, and New York take up platform labor and how they incorporate it into their everyday lives and migration trajectories. Additionally, it considers the extent to which gig platforms are emerging as actors in the political economy of migration, as a result of how they absorb migrant labor and mediate migrant mobilities. We move beyond the existing parameters of gig economy research by engaging with two strands of literature on migration and migrant labor that, we feel, are particularly useful for framing our analysis: the autonomy of migration approach and the migration infrastructures perspective. Combining these conceptual lenses enables us not only to critically situate migrant gig workers’ experiences but also to identify a broader development: the platformization of low-wage labor markets that are an integral component of migration infrastructures.

Editorial: New conversations in development studies

Editorial: New conversations in development studies

The Political Economy of Migration and Integration: Effects of Immigrants on the Economy in Turkey

The increase of trade wars, a shifting economy, and the multi-country interests of radical right parties keep international migration on the global agenda. Following the Syrian civil war, Turkey, which implemented an open-door policy toward Syrian refugees, is one of the most affected countries. This study uses macroeconomic indicators to empirically examine the impact of Syrian inflow on the Turkish economy. An econometric analysis, namely Engle–Granger cointegration, has been performed to investigate its effects on inflation, economic growth, and the unemployment rate for 2012–2020. The results indicate that Syrian migration into Turkey has a positive contribution to economic growth by influencing the demand for goods. This article also shows that, in the short-term, Syrian inflow leads to a rise in inflation and unemployment in Turkey. However, migration can turn out to be a positive influence on the economy, depending on how quickly accepted refugees find jobs and are integrated into the Turkish labor market. Hence, it is strongly recommended that Turkey should provide vocational education, language training, and regional support for Syrians of working-age, and also manage qualified and unskilled Syrian human resources. Moreover, bureaucratic obstacles and processes, as much as possible, should be removed for Syrian entrepreneurs and workers.

Super-exploitation of Adivasi Migrant Workers: The Political Economy of Migration from Southern Rajasthan to Gujarat

This article offers a political economy account of labour migration of Adivasi workers from southern Rajasthan to growth centres in Gujarat. It unpacks the structural forces that shape this labour mobility, which erupted only as recently as 30 years back. The article focuses on three industries that are key employers of migrant workers—construction, textile as well as small hotels and restaurants in the Gujarati cities of Ahmedabad and Surat. It presents evidence on labour market segmentation and resulting unequal wage distribution between migrants in this corridor by their social group. This is complemented by an extensive mapping of the informal practices that violate applicable legal provisions found in these industry segments. Through these, the article teases out the mechanisms by which the community undergoes what in Marxian terms are referred to as surplus extraction and super-exploitation. The article finds that Gujarat’s economy utilizes the historically low socio-economic position of Adivasis for capitalist accumulation, such that the community’s poverty and disadvantaged position is reproduced inter-generationally, instead of being interrupted by their employment in the growth centres of the state. JEL: O15, J61, N35

‘Bringing the state back in’: A political economy analysis of Portuguese immigration policy

Southern European states are recurrently represented as ‘safe havens’ for irregular immigration in face of powerless national governments. Drawing from an interdisciplinary approach combining the domestic politics approach and the political economy of migration, this investigation explores the effectiveness of the Portuguese policy towards labour and irregular inflows during the 1990s and the 2000s. Against the increasing exclusion of politics and national governments in immigration studies, this research focuses on the agency of the Portuguese state. This article associates the intensity of irregular inflows with the covert expansive approach towards immigration adopted by the Portuguese state, driven by economic objectives.

Nowhere to Run: A Review of the Political Economy of Migration, Identity and Xenophobic Violence in Zambia

Zambia is one of the Southern African countries that have not witnessed any serious bloody conflicts either in their post-independence eras or the periods hitherto. Consequently, the country has, over the years, provided refuge to many victims of ethnic and racial conflicts from other African countries, especially within the Sub-Saharan African region. However, Zambia faces the daunting challenge of sustaining interregional, interethnic and interracial harmony among its own indigenous groups and those identified as foreign immigrants. The April 2016 xenophobic looting of shops belonging to other African nationals by residents of Lusaka highlighted the intensification of ethnic and racial conflict in the country. Amid these identity conflicts, some commentators from different intellectual and other persuasions have tried to explain ethnic and racial identity problems in relation to primordial, constructive and instrumental theoretical underpinnings. This article goes further to draw a relationship between economic downturn and identity and xenophobic violence. The article draws arguments from a review of existing literature and empirical data.

Competition and solidarity: union members and immigration in Europe

This article addresses an understudied question in the comparative political economy of migration. How have trade unions shaped the attitudes of their members toward immigration? Unions are at the core of left-wing politics in most European countries, and support for immigration is usually a left-wing position. However, many of the core constituents of unions are those whose interests are most likely to be adversely affected by an increase in the supply of labour. The article shows that the pattern of European trade union leaders becoming supportive of open immigration policies has solidified over the past decade. It then provides evidence that this rhetoric has shaped the attitudes of union members and that the effect has become stronger over time. Finally, it shows that the effect is robust to the exclusion of countries where self-selection into unions on the basis of ideology is likely to be strongest.

International Migration as Criminal Behaviour: Shifting Responsibility to the Migrant in Mexico–US Border Crossings

The increasing criminalisation of immigration procedures has the effect of shifting responsibility from the state to the individual migrant for alleged “criminal” behaviour. This shift represents a form of disciplinary power as it is enacted over “deviant” populations who are unable to self-govern according to the tenets required in a system of global governmentality. In this article, I use Foucault's governmentality to examine the “responsibilisation” of undocumented migrants who are perceived as making a rational choice to cross the border. I argue that the criminalisation of immigration shifts the emphasis to individuals as rational actors who have rejected paths to legal immigration, choosing “illegal” immigration, which carries the connotation of criminal behaviour. This constructs a population of always already criminal subjects who are understood to disregard the rule of law. In this research I carry out a critical discourse analysis that looks at the performative conceptualisation of “illegal immigrants” and the production and reproduction of the understanding of migrants as criminals. I look at the example of Mexico–US border crossings from the perspective of a system of global governmentality and I posit that international undocumented migration is criminalised and migrants are “responsibilised”, which effectively controls the movement of peoples, contributing to a geopolitical discourse that represents population management at the global level. * I would like to thank Brent J. Steele for his valuable insight on the theory of governmentality as it pertains to this article. I would also like to thank Rob Topinka and Franziska Jung for their feedback on earlier versions of the article, and participants on the panel “Political Economy of Migration in Latin America” at the International Studies Association Annual Convention 2011 in Montreal for helpful insight on this work as a burgeoning research project.

Rethinking the Neoliberal Nexus of Education, Migration, and Institutions

The rise of neoliberalism and economic globalization is identified as a significant factor contributing to macroscale structural changes in the political economy of migration and education in Korea and Canada. In this paper the empirical focus of analysis is on how nation-states have played important roles in shaping the market conditions of the international education industry under the structural changes brought about by neoliberalization. I pay particular attention to how different public institutions have become actively engaged in profit-generating activities through promoting and selling Canadian education. In so doing, I reconsider the implications of neoliberalism for the political economy of migration and international education. Drawing upon empirical evidence collected from fieldwork in Seoul and Vancouver, this paper aims to explore the complexities and locally specific outcomes of neoliberal projects. In relation to the rise of international education, this paper adds to the burgeoning literature that acknowledges that taken-for-granted views on neoliberalism are problematic and further highlights the role of public institutions as active facilitators in the process of market expansion.

Trade, Employment and Horizontal Inequalities in New Order Indonesia

This article explores the extent to which trade might impact horizontal inequalities in Indonesia by focusing on a district-level cross-sectional analysis of the relationship between different export sectors and the extent of horizontal inequalities across three dimensions. Although the causal directionality is unclear, there is significant evidence of correlations between particular industries and particular dimensions of horizontal inequality. There is no single industry that is consistently correlated with horizontal inequalities across all dimensions, however; neither are the results consistent across urban and rural districts. The conclusion that we can draw from this is that although the export structure of the Indonesian economy does appear to have influenced horizontal inequalities this has largely been located within a very particular and localized political economy of migration and ethno-religious identities. It is not so much that trade has favoured particular groups bestowed with higher endowments of education or other resources.

Creating Politicized Spaces

Drawing on an ethnographic study of Afghan women in metropolitan Vancouver (2002—05), this article argues that it is necessary to recognize research participants as producers of context-specific knowledge. Afghan women, a disenfranchised population, deploy particular strategies to foreground two interrelated scripts—the political economy of migration and resettlement and the remaking of a world—that help to bridge the analytical divide between the political economy and human agency. Within this blurred space, the women bring forth three themes that speak to policy makers and stakeholders: social provision as entitlement, valorization of the women's multiple identities, and transnational networks that contain but also go beyond the unit of the nation-state. The article concludes by making a case for locally-informed policy and service provision to effect progressive change.

Beyond Instrumentalism: Interrogating the Micro-dynamic and Gendered and Social Impacts of Remittances in Senegal

Remittances have become orthodoxy in developing countries such as Senegal, prominently framed in development discourses, and premised on the assumptions that they are a pathway to poverty alleviation and household livelihood security. However, what eludes critical scrutiny are their micro-dynamic and gendered and social impacts in the context of a new wave of risky and deadly migration patterns in West Africa, stemming largely from the lure of an economic El Dorado in the peripheral centers of Western Europe.This article engages in the gender dimensions and externalities of remittances by contrasting the trans-local connections (geographical, social and economic) and, their complex interplay with the instrumental paradigm of remittances. It argues that the instrumental paradigm of remittances misconstrues or ignores entrenched structural, relational and gendered dynamics that mediate such transfers. Remittances intersect with power structures that potentially reinforce dependency and economic vulnerability. The article shows the need to recast conceptually and analytically migration, trans-local connectivity and remittances in a more dynamic framework that accounts for the political economy of migration and its trans-local intersections and dynamics. The complex web of socio-economic relations, added to the ambivalent structure of remittances, merit critical inquiry to ensure that remittances translate into positive and broader socio-economic change, rather than becoming a social trap or fossilized and maladaptive circuits of dependency and subordination at the local, community and household levels.

Migration Flows: Political Economy of Migration and the Empirical Challenges

Immigration barriers began being erected in the New World in the late 19th century. They were motivated by fears that the immigration of unskilled workers would increase inequality. Controlling for economic factors, there appears to have been little independent role for factors such as racism or xenophobia in driving the retreat from liberal migration policies. A statistical analysis of individual voter attitudes towards immigration in the late 20th century leads to somewhat different conclusions: nationalism is strongly associated with more hostile attitudes towards immigrants. Heckscher-Ohlin theory and the Borjas theory of immigrant self-selection also help explain individual voter attitudes.

Introduction

Much of the impetus for this special issue comes from an ongoing dialogue within Latin American Perspectives about the relation between and identity.' Since the end of the cold war there has been a marked decline in politics and the rise of political projects-both progressive and conservative-based on other shared and contrasting identities. Concern with social has been eclipsed by a fascination with identity and identity politics. Indeed, dimensions of collective identity such as ethnicity, nationality, and religion often provide strong senses of collectivity. This rise of identity politics and concern with the new social movements has caused many social scientists and political activists to conclude, rightly, that consciousness in itself has little potential to mobilize sustained progressive political projects (Salman, 1990). This disillusionment with social as a basis for political mobilization has led to a widespread abandonment of as a dimension of analysis and political strategizing. This reconfiguration of social theory and the political projects informed by it have been nurtured by the demography and political economy of migration, for migration tends to reshape and recombine identities in complex and contentious ways. Although identity politics now predominates in political arenas, a fundamental premise of this issue is that significant politicized identities are shaped and energized by dynamics. As we use it here, class has two meanings, each definable in terms of a triad of terms. The first of these triads-identities, borders, orders-is presented as an integrated theoretical paradigm by Albert, Jacobson, and Lapid (2001; see also Lapid, 2001). Employing their terms, the first of the two concepts of class is an identity associated with an occupational or economic group

The Political Economy of Migration in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

'Globalization', the geopolitical economy of migration and the 'spatial vent'

Despite a rapidly expanding literature in the last decade, the question of migration remains a neglected area of research in IPE, global political economy and political geography. In addressing this deficiency, this article seeks to contribute to the growing debate over the links between 'globalization', IPE and the geopolitical economy of migration. Rather than the more 'traditional' focus of IPE, I attempt to integrate different political21 economic scales of analysis (from the regional to the international). Drawing upon an analysis of North African (Maghrebin) migrant workers in the Paris automobile industry, I argue that, first, globalization needs to be placed in historical context in terms of the international/global political economy of migration. Second, I maintain the need to understand migration as a strategic issue within international political economy. Third, I argue that the national state is still relevant as a geopolitical economic 'lens' on the contemporary globalization of migration. And fourth, I suggest the presence of what I call a 'spatial vent'. This describes the forced and/or encouraged repatriation of migrant workers to partially diffuse threats to accumulation and legitimation generated by reconciling economic imper11130 atives (industrial and labour market restructuring) with the political, social and cultural priorities of the French state (French 'republicanism' and 'universalism'). The 'spatial vent' is considered to be one means of grasping the territoriality of capitalism.

'Life is only abroad, not here' the culture of emigration among Anglo-Indians in Madras

The permanent emigration to the West of perhaps half the Anglo‐Indian population since Independence has had profound consequences for those left behind in India. This article examines the situation of Anglo‐Indians in Madras city and finds that a large segment of the community (the ‘artisan class') has evolved a lifestyle and a mode of self‐definition which centres to an inordinate degree on going abroad, amounting to a culture of emigration. This article argues that to complement the focus on the political economy of migration, attention must also be paid to the local cultural consequences of large‐scale population flows.