C

Chapter 9 

International Migration

  • The decision to emigrate is based on whether there is something to be gained
  • Asylum migration: international movement resulting from persecution and conflict
    • Refugees: persons who have been forced to flee their country because of a real threat of persecution or death
  • Any major sociopolitical outbreak will produce refugees and internally displaced people
  • Undocumented migrants: impossible to know how many there are
  • Temporary migration: for work
  • International migrants: people who change their country of abode
  • Citizens:
    • Returning migrants: return to their own country
  • Foreigners:
    • Returning ethnics: admitted by another country and become citizens almost immediately
    • Migrants with the right to free movement
    • Foreign students
    • Foreign trainees: admitted to acquiring particular skills through on-the-job training
    • Foreign retirees: beyond retirement age but won’t become a charge to the state
    • Settlers: have the right to stay indefinitely - permanent immigrants
    • Migrant workers:
    • Seasonal
    • Project-tied
    • Contract
    • Temporary
    • Established: can reside indefinitely in the country
    • Highly skilled: have a preferential treatment
    • Economic migration:
    • Business travellers
    • Immigrating investors
    • Asylum migration
    • Refugees
    • Persons admitted for humanitarian reasons
    • Asylum seekers: file the application for asylum
    • Persons granted temporary protected status: cannot return to their home country without putting their lives in danger
    • Persons granted stay of deportation
    • Irregular migrants: have not fully satisfied the requirements to enter a country
    • Migrants for family reunification: accompanying close relatives

Theories of International Migration

  • Migration systems: ongoing patterns of migratory exchange in which some countries and regions function as core immigration magnets and others as peripheral sending areas
  • Neoclassical economics: migration decisions are driven by differences in economic opportunities between sending and receiving countries
    • New economics perspective: migration could well continue even if wage differentials between countries were eliminated
  • Network theory: as the numbers of international migrants increase, so do the number of social networks in operation, creating strong synergetic forces that promote additional migration
  • Dual labour market theory: focuses on capitalist societies’ chronic need for foreign labour
  • World systems theory: international migration is the consequence of the expansion of the capitalist economy into the developing regions of the world

Important Factors

  • Transnationalism: the new tendency to retain multiple national identities
  • Diaspora: ethnic minorities that maintain strong sentimental and material links with their countries of origin while gradually adopting a new identification with the host society
  • Transnational communities: members live between nations and may not feel much allegiance to any one nation