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

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