Migration

Caroline Nagel, Department of Geography, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, United States
Paul Boyle, Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
This article is a revision of the previous edition article by P. Boyle, volume 6, pp 96–107, © 2009 Elsevier Ltd.

Glossary
Agency The capacity of people to exercise their will, individually or collectively, to alter their circumstances toward some
desired end.
Diaspora A community that spans multiple locales and maintains a degree of cohesiveness across time and space through
intermarriage, common cultural practices, and “myths of return.”
Caring occupations Jobs involving the giving of care and assistance to dependent populations, especially children and the
elderly. Such jobs are increasingly filled by migrant women in many parts of the world.
Emigration The act of moving away from one’s place of origin to settle in another country.
Hometown associations (HTAs) Immigrant organizations that raise funds for development and philanthropic projects in
cities or towns of origin.
Immigration The movement of people into a country, usually for the purpose of long-term or permanent settlement.
Indentured labor A labor system in which a worker is bound by a fixed-term contract to an employer.
Migration corridor A common route or passage between two countries. This term is usually applied to large-scale,
unidirectional, or bidirectional migration flows across borders.
Migration industry The complex of public- and private-sector recruitment and placement agencies in sending and receiving
states that facilitate, channel, regulate, and, in some cases, profit from labor migration.
Push–pull theory A conceptual framework describing migration as a function of forces of attraction and repulsion in sending
and receiving societies.
Remittances Earnings transferred by migrant workers to places of origin.
Social capital The monetary and social value generated by community networks and relationships. In the migration literature,
social capital refers to relationships of trust and reciprocity that facilitate migrant entrepreneurship.
Transnationalism An integrated social field created through continuous, multidirectional, cross-border flows of people,
information, commodities, and money.

Migration seems to be everywhere in the news, dominating headlines especially in the world’s wealthiest countries. In the spring and
summer of 2016, for instance, around a million refugees from the Syrian civil war made their way to Europe, prompting gestures of
welcome, but also raising doubts about the future of the European Union and its system of open borders. During this same period
tens of thousands of Central Americans, including many unaccompanied minors, headed to the US border on the tops of railcars or
on foot, escaping growing violence and gang activity in their countries. In the summer of 2018, the administration of US President
Donald Trump set off a political firestorm when it implemented a zero-tolerance policy at the border involving the separation of
migrant children from their parents. The summer of 2018 also saw tens of thousands of migrants detained, deported, or killed as
they crossed desert and sea in search of a better life in Europe and the Middle East. For many people in the Global North, images of
people crowded atop trains and rickety rafts indicate a demographic crisis that threatens to overwhelm affluent societies. There are
too many people in the world, it seems, and governments have lost the ability to control their own territorial borders.
Such arguments seem less commonsensical when one considers that only around 3.3% of the world’s people live outside their
country of birth. We might reasonably ask why so few people are on the move given the vast inequalities of wealth and security that
exist in the world. One answer to this question is that nation-states, contrary to current political rhetoric, do have enormous capacity
to control their borders and to make movement across space difficult, dangerous, and costly. The explosive growth of a migrant
smuggling industry speaks to this capacity, as does the proliferation of migrant detention facilities and quasi-permanent refugee
camps. Indeed, wealthy states today increasingly extend their authority beyond their territorial frontiers, exchanging development
aid for their poorer neighbors’ cooperation in clamping down on migration. Thus, while many African migrants perish in the Medi-
terranean, many others are intercepted before they reach the coast and are dumped in the desert by border patrol agents trained and
financed by the European Union.
The rhetoric and imagery surrounding migration, in short, provide an incomplete understanding of why people move or stay put
and the circumstances that shape human mobility. Understanding the full gamut of migrationsdrefugee flows, human trafficking,
skilled migration flows, intracorporate transfers, unauthorized immigration, overseas contract labor, family reunification, and so
ondrequires consideration of shifting labor market dynamics, gender ideologies, familial relationships, development and aid
programs, as well as border management policies. It is only in recognizing the interactions between these social forces across

International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2nd edition, Volume 9 https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102295-5.10287-2 81

82 Migration

time and space that we can come to grips with human mobility and immobility in the contemporary global system. Like many
processes associated with globalization, human migration is neither uniform nor homogenous. Rather, it is characterized by social
and geographical specificity, and it produces as many differences and disparities as it erases.

Defining Migration

Migration in the most basic sense refers to the movement of people from one location to another. We typically use the terms “immi-
gration” and “immigrant” when referring to inward migrations, and “emigration” and “emigrant” (or “émigré”) when referring to
outward migrations, in a context of territorially bounded nation-states. But defining migration is not as simple as it might first
appear. To begin, we need to distinguish migration, which implies permanency and relatively long distances, from “residential
mobility,” which is usually conceived as housing relocation within a metropolitan area, and from the temporary mobilities asso-
ciated with tourism, pilgrimages, and religious missions. Of course, what we mean by “long” or “short,” “temporary” or “perma-
nent,” can vary and may reflect the ways governments collect and classify data as much as theoretically guided principles.
Increasingly, scholars have questioned whether migrations should be labeled as long or short, permanent or temporary, given
that human mobility is seldom a singular, discrete event. For many migrants, mobility is a back-and-forth or multistep process,
with individuals migrating multiple times at various distances over the life-course and/or returning “home,” whether by choice
or compulsion, with more-or-less frequency. Such complexities cast doubt on static conceptions of origins and destinations.
Since the early 1990s, some scholars have adopted a new vocabulary to capture the indeterminacy of migration flows. This
vocabulary, centered on the term “transnationalism,” conveys the idea that migration is more like a fluid network that operates
across administrative and territorial boundaries than a single stream flowing in one direction from sending society to “receiving
society.” Some scholars of transnationalism have even replaced the word migrant with “transmigrant” to convey that people partic-
ipate continuously in multidirectional, cross-border flowsdnot only through physical relocation but also through the Internet, cell
phones, and international money-transfer systems. Other scholars have revived the ancient Greek term “diaspora” to describe
communities that span multiple locales and maintain a degree of cohesiveness across time and space through intermarriage,
common cultural practices, and “myths of return.” More recently, scholars have begun to use the term “translocal” in place of trans-
national, so as not to privilege the nation-state as the main point of reference in analyzing human mobility and connectedness.
These insights are a welcome addition to migration studies, but they need to be used carefully in recognition that for some,
migration is, in fact, a definitive break from a community of origin. For some, as well, connections with “homeland” can be a polit-
ical liability, and demonstration of allegiance to the destination country a requirement for survival. Consider, for example, the so-
called “Dreamers”dpeople who were brought to the United States as children by their undocumented parents and who are now
seeking legal status and a path to citizenship. Dreamer activists often emphasize that they have virtually no connection to their
parents’ countrydthat they are, in every respect, Americans. Indeed, they are often at pains to show themselves to be more virtuous
than “regular” Americans, highlighting their academic achievements, their civic activities, and their work ethic. Clearly, the social
and territorial boundaries of the nation-state continue to exert a power over the lives and identities of mobile people that cannot
be ignored.
Another key distinction in the migration literature is between voluntary and involuntary migrations. This broad categorization
distinguishes between those who make well-planned decisions to move elsewhere by their own volition, whether for economic
gain, family reunification, or adventure, and those who are forced to leave home. A clear example of forced migration is the trans-
atlantic slave trade that operated from the 17th through the 19th centuries, and that transported an estimated 25 million people
from Africa to plantations in the Americas. Today, our understandings of involuntary migration tend to revolve around those dis-
placed by violent conflict in the Global South. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there were an
estimated 25 million people residing outside of their country of origin due to war and conflict at the end of 2017, and a further
40 million people displaced within their own countries.
But as with other migration terminology, even the seemingly clear-cut distinction between voluntary and involuntary migration is
more complicated than it first appears. Take, for instance, the thousands of young women from South and Southeast Asia who under-
take training to work as nurses overseas. The decision to migrate in such cases is ostensibly “free,” with many potential migrants
attracted by the prospect of higher wages and better opportunities overseas, not to mention the personal independence and status
that come with a professional career abroad. But the voluntary nature of these migrations is compromised at every stage in the migra-
tion process, beginning with the economic and family pressures that lead young women to seek and accept labor contracts overseas.
Once they arrive in destination countries, these women may face varying restrictions on their physical mobility and career progression.
Sometimes they arrive in debt and are required to repay costs to a labor contractor before pocketing wages. They will most likely be
excluded from citizenship in the destination country and thus from access to civil, political, and social rights.
The distinction between voluntary and involuntary migration can also be muddled by political rhetoric and state practice. Such
has been the case with asylum seekersdthose seeking formal refugee status in another country. The concept of a refugee is enshrined
in international law and refers to those who have a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality,
or political opinion.” Those fleeing to refugee camps in a neighboring country are recognized, prima facie, as refugees by humani-
tarian organizations. But those who wish to be recognized as refugees by a third country (3.1 million people in 2017) must be vetted
and approved by that country’s immigration officials, who may not be receptive to migrants’ claims of direct persecution. Some
politicians and media outlets accuse asylum seekersdeven those from obvious conflict zonesdof being voluntary, “economic
 Migration 83

migrants” who are using an asylum claim to gain access to employment. In a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, destination countries
have made the asylum process so onerous and risky that even those likely to qualify for refugee status forego the process and become
unauthorized migrants.
In short, the terminology used to describe and define migration and migrants is not entirely straightforward. Terms like perma-
nent and temporary, voluntary and involuntary, become meaningful in specific contexts and are subject to qualification and debate.
Migrations may be shaped by individual decision-making, but those decisions are always shaped and constrained by institutional
policies, family relationships, gender norms, and racial dynamics operating across time and space.

Theorizing Migration

Migration clearly is a complex process, indicated by the difficulty involved just in defining and operationalizing the term. Scholars
nonetheless have, for more than a century, attempted to model migration flows and to generalize about the conditions and circum-
stances that induce people to leave one place for another. The impetus to theorize migration is the assumption that migration is an
aberrant phenomenondthat given the expense and risk involved in relocating, people will generally stay put unless compelled to
do otherwise.
Migration scholars usually credit geographer Ernst Georg Ravensteindwho was himself a German migrant to Britaindwith
undertaking the first systematic investigation of migration patterns. Ravenstein closely examined the 1871 and 1881 British
censuses, identifying geographical patterns of migration based on place-of-birth statistics and rates of population increase or decline
in particular geographical units. In a famous 1885 article published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Ravenstein proposed
several “laws of migration” based on his observationsdamong them, that most migrants move relatively short distances; that short-
distance migrations set into motion broader, step-by-step population shifts; that longer-distance migrants typically are destined for
larger centers of industry and commerce (indicating the pull of jobs and wages); that each main migration current produces a coun-
tercurrent; and perhaps surprisingly for Ravenstein’s contemporaries, that women are more migratory than men, though they tend
to move shorter distances.
Two years later in the same journal, Ravenstein confirmed the validity of his observations through an exhaustive statistical anal-
ysis of population data in Europe and North America. Many of his “laws” continue to ring true today. The “tyranny of distance,” for
instance, is evident in the fact that many major migration corridors connect neighboring countriesdmost notably Mexico and the
United States (the world’s single largest migration corridor), Bangladesh and India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Burkina Faso and
Cote d’Ivoire, and Zimbabwe and South Africa. Shorter-distance, internal migrationsdespecially from rural to urban areasdtypi-
cally outnumber longer-distance, cross-border migrations (though we should note that internal migrations can involve longer
distances than cross-border migrations). In China, for instance, the ratio of internal to international migrants since the late
1970s has been at least 20 to 1. In most cases, migrations, whether internal or international, flow from relatively poorer, rural places
(though usually not the poorest places) to relatively richer centers of commerce and industry, indicating the draw of higher wages
and better employment opportunities; often, we see smaller countercurrents to these major flows. Again, China is illustrative, with
the vast majority of internal migrants moving eastward to the booming “special economic zones” in coastal Guangdong Province,
but with a westward counterstream emerging as industry and people move inland from crowded and expensive coastal cities.
But in other respects, Ravenstein’s “laws” were specific to the time and place in which they were formulatedda time of relatively
high transportation costs but also relatively low levels of restriction on cross-border mobility. Writing in the 1960s, demographer
Everett Lee sought to refine and extend Ravenstein’s laws and to create a model capable of capturing a wider variety of possible
migration pathways. In a seminal 1966 article, Lee argued that migration was an outcome of myriad combinations of “push” factors
stimulating movement away from a point of origin and “pull” factors attracting potential movers to a given destination. Between
these push and pull factors, Lee postulated, one might find numerous intervening factorsdobstacles and opportunities that might
dampen or amplify one’s desire and ability to move. Lee did not reduce push and pull factors to economic forces, noting that people
might move or stay put for a variety of reasons, including emotional attachments to place, and that the propensity to move might be
shaped by an individual’s existing resources or his/her willingness to take risks.
Lee’s ideas have remained highly influential (his 1966 article has been cited nearly 5000 times), and the concept of migration
pushes and pulls has profoundly shaped the way academics, journalists, and politicians talk about migration. But his effort to
capture the multitude of factors and contexts that might lead an individual to migrate was largely subsumed in the 1970s and
1980s by neoclassical economic models. Neoclassical models focus on the ways individuals react to wage differentials, thereby cor-
recting geographical imbalances in labor supply and demand. Migration, from this perspective, is driven by individual rational
actors whose primary aim is to increase returns on their skills and labor (usually in the form of higher wages). Neoclassical
economic theories of migration strive for simplicity and elegance, using mathematical formulas to explain the actions of millions
of people. This approach, however, requires economists to make assumptions that can stretch credulitydfor instance, that migrants
have perfect knowledge of wage conditions, that they make decisions independently and autonomously, and that they are able to
move at will.
Economic theorists have been sensitive to criticism and have attempted to incorporate complicating factors into their models to
better explain “real-life” migration patterns. A notable example is the work of Michael Todaro in the 1970s, which sought to explain
high levels of rural-to-urban migration in African countries despite high levels of unemployment in urban labor markets. Why,
Todaro asked, would people undertake costly and risky moves given the high likelihood of unemployment or underemployment?
84 Migration

Todaro hypothesized that the decision to undertake migration made sense only when viewed across a longer time horizon. While
aware of the likelihood of unemployment in cities, young people were also aware of a sharp decline in rural wages relative to urban
wages, due partly to government development policies favoring urban industry. Young people thus made the calculation that over
a 2- or 3-year period, the probability of finding relatively high-waged employment would increase. Todaro thus argued that it was
a combination of two key variablesdurban-rural wage differentials and the probability of securing a jobdthat would determine the
rate of rural-to-urban migration.
Other economic theorists began to shift attention from the individual to the family unit, bringing into focus the household
context in which migration decisions are made. Proponents of the “New Economics of Labor Migration” argued that the purpose
of migration is not simply to increase wages but to reduce risk by diversifying household income streams. With its focus on house-
hold strategies, this perspective draws attention not only to migration but to nonmigration, explaining the ways that contractual
obligations within families require some to migrate while constraining others from doing so. This interest in cooperative relation-
ships and the reduction of risk was mirrored in a growing body of literature in the 1980s and 1990s on “social capital”dthat is, the
social networks that reduce the costs and risks associated with migration. Social networks, scholars argue, are important conduits of
information for migrants, as well as sources of jobs, housing, and social support. As such, they greatly facilitate mobility, perpet-
uating migration even when labor-market conditions in destination sites become less favorable. Yet another body of literature
emerging at this time brought attention to the decision-making process by which migrants select one particular destination from
many possibilities. This “behavioralist” approach emphasizes that decision-making can be motivated more by perceptions of desir-
ability than by wage calculations. It remains a popular framework for studying amenity and lifestyle migrations among the relatively
affluent.
Collectively these diverse approaches (which we will label “mainstream”) have provided key insights into migration dynamics,
focusing attention not only on migrants’ wage calculations but also their perceptions, desires, preferences, and social relationships.
Yet, despite many advances, these approaches overall have remained woefully disconnected from the political and economic
contexts in which migrations take place. Rarely have they pondered why such glaring geographical and social variations exist in
the first place. Developing in parallel with mainstream approaches in the 1970s and 1980s, an alternative set of macro-level theories
focused more intently on the systemic or structural causes of migration. Some of these macro-level approaches, to be sure, did not
stray far from the theoretical tenets of neoclassical economics. Zelinsky’s “mobility transition” model, for instance, linked rates of
emigration (that is, outmigration) to the rate and scale of “modernization” in the sending state. Zelinsky postulated that countries
would experience an increase in migration as they moved (inevitably, it seems) from their preindustrial phase to their industrial-
ization phase. Then, in their final, postindustrial phase, labor supply and demand would achieve equilibrium and migration would
wane. This sequential logic, common to teleological development models in the 20th Century, continues to be influential in discus-
sions around the “migration-development nexus” in the Global South.
Other scholars, though, took a harder turn to neo-Marxist theory, linking migration to a deeper set of processesdcolonialism,
imperialism, and postcolonial development policiesdthrough which the wealthy, capitalist core continuously drains wealth and
resources from the periphery. Scholars adopting this approach have drawn attention to the unfair terms of global trade that
have brought massive levels of debt upon poor countries and that have led, subsequently, to the imposition of punitive “structural
adjustment policies” by international financial institutions. Not all postcolonial societies, to be sure, have experienced a downward
spiral of poverty and debt. In some cases, aggressive postcolonial development policies have been successful in spurring economic
growth and industrialization, creating new poles of economic power in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. But while some
have been lifted out of poverty, the overall impact of capitalist expansion since the late 20th Century has been widening disparities
of wealth within and between countries. Migration, this literature argues, cannot be understood apart from these dynamics.
Neo-Marxist approaches have given scholars a “big picture” perspective on migration, situating migration within a larger capi-
talist “world system” that continuously produces new geographies of poverty and wealth, investment and disinvestmentdfrom
export processing zones to “global cities,” and from shiny new business districts to vast slums. But while markedly different in
tone and tenor, political-economy approaches can seem just as deterministic and mechanistic as neoclassical economic models,
treating people less as agents than as hapless victims of economic forces. Feminist scholars have sought to rectify the determinism
that has characterized both mainstream and neo-Marxist approaches, in part by theorizing more explicitly the relationship between
“structure” and “agency” (i.e., the ability of individuals to act upon their intentions and desires). Feminist theorists view the indi-
vidual not as free or autonomous, but as enmeshed in a multitude of power relationships rooted in state institutions and the global
economy, as well as in local governing structures, families, and communities. This perspective explicitly rejects the notion of the
unencumbered, ostensibly gender-neutral (but implicitly male) migrant found in a great deal of mainstream migration scholarship.
Like the New Economics of Labor Migration, it highlights the social contexts, including households and family units, that shape
migrants’ decisions and experiences; but it sees these units not only as sites of cooperation, but also as sites of power and conflict.
Understanding migration, from this perspective, requires careful attention to hierarchies of gender, race, class, and age that operate
within and between sending and receiving contexts and that produce unique histories and geographies of mobility.
In the following section, we follow the lead of feminist scholars by bringing into focus the geographical specificity and social
selectivity of migration flows. As Ravenstein noted more than a century ago, human mobility is not randomly or evenly distributed;
rather, it takes place in corridors, or well-worn pathways, between specific places of origin and destination, and it involves specific
groups of people, distinguishable by age, gender, and resources (among other factors). There are many regularities across historical
and geographical contexts that allow us to predict how, for instance, wage differentials and changing transportation costs might
affect migration flows. But understanding the social and geographical structure of migration flows requires attention to more unique
 Migration 85

mechanisms that shape mobility in particular historical moments. Our discussion below, while sketched in broad strokes, encour-
ages readers to place human mobility at the intersection of multiple social, political, and economic relationships operating across
time and space.

Migration as a Socially Selective and Spatially Specific Process

Consistent with many migration theories, most of the world’s major migration corridors flow from lower-wage to higher-wage labor
markets; as well, many of them flow between proximate locationsdthat is, neighboring countries and regionsdreflecting the costs
and uncertainties associated with transportation. Yet we must look beyond wage differentials and geographical proximity to the
myriad social and political relationships that explain specific migration flows. Colonial and quasi-colonial relationships, for
instance, are of particular relevance in understanding migration patterns for the past three centuries. British imperialism, through
a combination of violence, economic domination, and racial ideologies, generated enormous migrations in the form of slavery and
indentured labor in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the time of abolition, in 1833, 800,000 black slaves were laboring on British
plantations in the Caribbean; in subsequent decades, more than 3 million Indian indentured laborers (mainly from the Uttar Pra-
desh region) were recruited for plantation labor in the Caribbean (e.g., British Honduras), the South Pacific (e.g., Fiji), Southeast
Asia (e.g., Malaya), and the Indian Ocean basin (e.g., Mauritius). British imperialism also involved large-scale white settlement in
Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, and Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), among other places. French impe-
rialism, similarly, saw the settlement of nearly a million Europeans in northern Algeria between 1830 and Algerian independence in
1962. Later in the 20th Century, colonial relationships facilitated labor migration from the Caribbean and South Asia to the British
metropole, and from Algeria to French mines and factories. Colonial relationships, as these examples suggest, can sustain migration
long after the end of formal empires through various mechanisms, including settlement and citizenship policies and cultural and
linguistic connections between former colonies and colonizers.
In the modern industrial era, labor agreements negotiated between countries have had a key role in initiating and sustaining
migrations. In the 1950s and 1960s, for instance, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium used bilateral labor agreements with
Turkey and Morocco (as well as Italy, Greece, and the former Yugoslavia) to recruit hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to
rebuild industries and infrastructure destroyed by World War II. Today a massive migration industry, composed of state labor
agencies and private-sector recruiters, facilitates flows of millions of workers within Asia and between Asian countries and the
Arab Gulf states. Labor migrations can also take place outside of officially sanctioned channels. Unauthorized migration systems,
much like authorized ones, involve a degree of orchestration between employers, migrants, and smugglers. Counterintuitively, state
agencies have a key role in creating systems of unauthorized migration by deliberately not enforcing their own labor and immigra-
tion laws (or by enforcing them just enough to ensure the exploitability of undocumented workers).
As these examples indicate, employer demands have a key role in driving labor migration. Employer demands, in turn, reflect
particular understandings of which workers are appropriate for which jobs. Labor markets, in this sense, are not neutral arenas
where a homogenous labor supply gets matched up with undifferentiated labor demand; rather, they are hierarchical systems
that reproduce social and geographical differences. Generally speaking, migrants fill labor demands in sectors shunned by native
workers, including agriculture, landscaping, construction, and domestic service (some migrants work in “skilled” occupationsdnot-
ably medicine and high-techdbut they tend to occupy less desirable, lower end, and relatively poorly paid positions in these
sectors). Employers develop preferences for migrant workersdsometimes from specific countries, regions, or racial groupsdwhom
they regard as harder working and as more willing, even innately suited, to do dirty, dangerous, and undesirable tasks. Employers
may complain about labor shortages and press for further migration (for instance, through seasonal labor visas), even when there
are relatively high levels of unemployment or underemployment among native-born workers. The ready availability of labor in
some sectors can incentivize employers to disinvest in skills, training, and capital equipment, further devaluing labor in those
sectors and generating more demand for migrants. Such has been the case with the US poultry- and meat-packing industry in recent
decades.
Contemporary labor migration to wealthy Arab Gulf countries exemplifies the ways social hierarchies and employer preferences
create demands for certain kinds of workers and shape the geography and social composition of migration flows. Gulf Arab states
recruit vast numbers of foreign workers, such that foreign nationals outnumber citizens in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE. On
the face of it, massive labor importation is a response to the enormous demand for workers in these rapidly developing economies,
and the small size of the native labor force. But there is more than labor supply and demand at work. While official unemployment
is very low in the Gulf states, so, too, is citizen participation in Gulf economies (especially in the private sector); Gulf states, in this
regard, have consciously designated their citizens not as producers, but as consumers of the fruits of oil wealth and inexpensive
imported labor. Migration flows to the Gulf are shaped by clear ethnic/racial preferences. In the 1970s, Egypt, Palestine, Yemen,
and other Arab states were major suppliers of labor for Gulf states. Arab countries continue to send workers to the Gulfdthere
were, for instance, nearly 3 million Egyptian nationals in Saudi Arabia in 2016. But there has been a marked shift to Asian workers,
whom Gulf employers view as more compliant and less politicized. A large majority of these migrant workers are males, but there is
a growing contingent of female workers employed in domestic labor and nursing. Demand for these female foreign workers reflects
multiple factors: rising incomes in Arab households; rigid gender divisions of labor that code “caring” occupations as “feminine”;
social restrictions on Gulf Arab women’s employment outside the home; and the devaluing of domestic labor as “migrant work.”
These patterns are not unique to the Gulf; rather, they represent a broader feminization of labor migration in recent decades.
86 Migration

We have focused thus far on the role of destination actors (especially employers and governments) in initiating, sustaining, and
shaping the contours of migration flows. We must also give attention to the role of sending-society actors in these processes. In
recent decades, countries in the Global South have implemented economic development policies, often at the behest of interna-
tional institutions, that increase their citizens’ exposure to the global economy while reducing subsidies and social safety nets.
In some countries, these policies have spurred out-migration, as citizens seek economic security elsewhere. Governments, in
turn, have come to recognize their “overseas citizens” as a crucial economic resource and have therefore fostered a “migration
industry” of private-sector labor recruiters and job-training institutes. As well, labor-exporting states increasingly offer benefits
and protections to their citizens overseas and publicly praise émigré communities as heroes of the nation. The goal is to encourage
the repatriation of migrant earnings, which, it is hoped, will be reinvested in productive activities.
Migrants are not without agency in these processes, though “agency,” as feminist scholars argue, is not synonymous with
unimpeded free will. People do make choices and act upon their desires; but those desires and choices are shaped by material
opportunities and constraints, as well as by social norms and moral codes operating in families, communities, and national soci-
eties. Geographer Rachel Silvey’s groundbreaking research on young women migrants in Indonesia captures well this under-
standing of agency. While the Indonesian state since the 1960s has emphasized the role of women as mothers, wives, and
keepers of the domestic sphere, it has also encouraged their mobility, providing rationales, based on notions of familial respon-
sibility, for young women to migrate. Young women in the 1980s streamed out of rural villages into export processing zones,
forging social networks that provided social support and information about employers and wages. Starting in the 1990s, growing
numbers of married and unmarried Indonesian women, encouraged again by the state, began to take positions in the Gulf. These
women were motivated by the prospect of higher wages. They were motivated, as well, by a sense of duty to their families and by
desires to escape violent marriages, to visit faraway places, to go on pilgrimage, and to fulfill consumerist aspirations. Women’s
mobility, in other words, involved a coalescence of wage differentials, personal desires, gender ideologies, and state development
imperatives.

The Impacts of Migration on Sending and Receiving Societies

Migration, we have tried to show, emerges from complex interactions between labor markets, racial and gender ideologies, and state
policies. These intersections vary across time and space, producing migration patterns that are socially selective and geographically
specific. The selectivity of migration means that its impacts are uneven, affecting certain locales more than others. Migration
processes, for instance, can leave some regions relatively untouched, while emptying other regions of their young men and women,
profoundly altering familial relationships and local political dynamics. Likewise, certain cities, states, and provinces may draw
disproportionate numbers of migrants, creating new challenges for local schools, services, and housing markets but also producing
new cultures, norms, and political values. “Superdiverse” global cities like London, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Sydney can seem
increasingly divorced from the rural “heartland” of the nation-state, deepening existing social and political divisions.
Given the salience of labor-market processes in migration, it is not surprising that many debates in both sending and receiving
societies swirl around the impact of migration on wages, employment, and general well-being. On the sending side, many postco-
lonial societies after World War II viewed migration as detracting from national development by draining the labor and skills
needed to modernize economies. While countries like Morocco and Mexico arranged bilateral labor-export agreements in the
1950s and 1960s, postcolonial states in general typically tried to keep control over emigration and/or émigré communities;
however, as alluded to earlier, countries in the Global South since the 1980s have viewed migration less as an economic or political
problem than as a strategy for developmentda view reinforced by major international financial institutions. In recent years, many
sending countries have undertaken reforms of their banking and financial systems to encourage the remittance of funds into the
regulated banking system. The aim has been to increase the availability of credit for business enterprises and infrastructure projects
and, more generally, to reduce poverty levels, thereby reducing migration pressures.
Yet scholars disagree about whether remittances actually boost productive investment. Some argue that remittances mainly
support basic household consumption, rather than entrepreneurship. Others suggest that remittances encourage the construction
of ostentatious houses that inflate land costs in migrant-sending communities. Recent analyses tend to highlight the ambiguous
outcomes of remittance economies. For instance, many Mexican migrants in the United States have formed hometown associations
(HTAs) to better aid the communities they left behind and to channel investments into basic infrastructure. The federal and state
governments in Mexico have eagerly partnered with these HTAs on development projects, pledging matching funds for each migrant
dollar remitted. But because migrants tend to come from more economically dynamic parts of the country, remittances and match-
ing funds tend to go to municipalities that are not necessarily the most in need. As HTA leaders have built direct relationships with
state and federal politicians, they have bypassed local municipal authorities and civil-society groups, leading to the exclusion of
local people from decision-making processes. Meanwhile, basic problems of economic production, local markets, and food sover-
eignty remain unaddressed.
The impacts of migration on receiving societies are similarly ambiguous. Concerns about wage competition have long animated
anti-immigrant sentiment, as seen in violent riots against Chinese railroad workers in the Western United States in the 1880s;
however, the actual effects of immigration on wages, and on economies more generally, are debatable. Proponents of immigration
point to empirical evidence that immigration overall has positive effects on national economies, and that it does not reduce the
wages among native workers. But skeptics note that the use of immigrants to fill lower-level occupations has effectively closed
 Migration 87

off entire sectors to native workers by undermining normal supply-and-demand pressures that would increase wages in less desir-
able jobs. Lower wages provide benefits to consumers by holding down the costs of goods and services, but such benefits accrue to
those who have the most consumer power, i.e., middle and upper-middle classes.
The social and cultural impacts of migration are just as contentious as its economic impacts, both in sending and receiving
contexts. While sending countries have aggressively promoted migration as a development strategy, they still grapple with the effects
of migration on families and gender norms, which they view as the essential building blocks of the nation. Academic research
suggests that migration does indeed have profound impacts on gender relations and family structures, forcing spouses, parents,
and children to negotiate new roles, responsibilities, and modes of intimacy and caregiving. While these new arrangements can rein-
force patriarchal relationships, they can also challenge or undermine patriarchal structures, leading to high divorce rates and to new
demands on the state for social and economic security. States are equally concerned with the social values, norms, and expectations
that migrants transfer to communities of origin along with their earnings and skills. These “social remittances” can be woven seam-
lessly into existing norms and values, but they can also have the effect of destabilizing or undermining dominant political
arrangements.
In receiving contexts, fears that immigrants’ cultural practices are undermining national identity have fueled right-wing populist
politics for many decades. In present-day Europe, cultural fears center on Muslim immigrant communities, which have grown
substantially in the wake of decolonization and post-War guest-worker programs. European societies had supposed, or hoped,
that foreign workers from Turkey, North Africa, and South Asia would return “home” when they were no longer needed. But
migrants did not leave. Rather, they established homes, sent for their family members, and created communities. In some cities,
they settled in older, densely built neighborhoods abandoned by white working-class families, creating immigrant-majority
districts, like Belgrave, in Leicester, England, and Marxloh, in Duisburg, Germany. In other contexts, governments funneled immi-
grants into isolated housing estates on urban peripheries. In both cases, the residential clustering of immigrant residents has come to
symbolize, for dominant groups, the unassimilability of migrantsdthat is, their inability or unwillingness to blend into the body
politic.
For some Europeans, the growing visibility of Muslim identities in public space has been treated as an assault on “secular” (or,
alternatively, “Judeo-Christian”) European culture. Associating Islam with terrorism, fanaticism, and the oppression of women,
some European politicians and their constituencies have mobilized to prevent the construction of mosques in neighborhoods
and to ban Islamic headscarves and face coverings in public space. To be sure, not all Europeans share this hostility toward Islam,
but there is a strong sentiment that Islam must be contained, domesticated, and made to conform with Western liberal values. In
recent years, similar sentiment has become more pronounced in the United States and Australia, where Muslims and Muslim
community institutions have been targeted by hate groups. Recently, the right-wing Trump Administration in the United States
has pleased its supporters by banning travelers from several Muslim-majority countries and by severely limiting the resettlement
of Syrian refugees.
While it is important to recognize the hostility that immigrants may face in destination societies, and the limitations imposed
upon them by legal and informal discrimination, it is equally important to recognize how immigrants make a place for them-
selves and negotiate their membership in places of settlement. Immigrants, while often marginalized and disempowered by
mainstream institutions and dominant groups, are not entirely passive. For centuries migrant communities have created and
participated in organizations to assist one another and to preserve communal ties and identities; at times, these organizations
have become interlocutors with local politicians, affording migrant groups some political voice with which to claim services
and resources. In recent decades, migrant groups have mobilized for civil rights and political power. Increasingly one finds exam-
ples of unauthorized migrants coming out of the shadows to demand legal protection and formal citizenship and to fight against
abuses in the workplace.
In some cases, migrants can become powerful political constituencies that gain recognition as valued members of the wider
community. Such as been the case in declining, deindustrializing cities in North America and Europe that have been revitalized
through immigrant and refugee settlement. In such places, immigrants feature prominently in new, localized narratives that link
revitalization with multicultural diversity. In large, prosperous, superdiverse cities like London, Sydney, and Toronto, immigrant
populations signify urban sophistication, vibrancy, and cosmopolitanism. In these cities, immigrant neighborhoods can become
tourist sites, with ethnic festivals and restaurants integrated into urban development strategies. Of course, even in these bastions
of multiculturalism, one does not need to dig too deeply to find strains of discontent with high levels of immigration, especially
where immigration becomes associated with rising rents and strains on public services.

Conclusion

On the face of it, migration in the modern, globalized, industrial economy is a response to imbalances in wages and opportunities:
people see better opportunities elsewhere, so they go to places that offer the possibility of improved earnings and livelihoods. But
this commonsense explanation, while containing of grain of truth, cannot explain the specific patterns of mobility and immobility
that we see in the world today. Transportation costs have dramatically diminished in the past 200 years, and economies have
become integrated through global trade and commodity chains. Yet territorial borders, distance, and poverty continue to generate
a great a deal of friction between places. The poor, in other words, do not simply up and leave to rich countries. If they did, the
distribution of the world’s population would look quite a bit different than it does today. Still, a variety of factorsdstate labor
88 Migration

policies, employer recruitment strategies, deep historical relationships, and migrant networksdcan reduce friction on a selective
basis, allowing for the formation of migration corridors between specific origins and destinations. The specificity of these corridors,
and the key role of state actors and employers in producing them, belies the rhetoric of uncontrolled migrant “floods” or
“invasions.”
Unfortunately, that rhetoric persists; indeed, it seems to be gaining traction as nationalism reasserts itself in many parts of the
world. Today, in the United Statesdthe world’s single largest recipient of migrantsdchants of “build the wall” have become
a regular feature at presidential campaign rallies. By promoting the construction of a wall to keep out unwanted immigrants,
anti-immigrant activists refuse to recognize the ways the government and employers through a variety of meansdselective law
enforcement policies, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the “war on drugs,” to name a fewdhave been deeply impli-
cated in the formation of the migration corridor between the United States and Mexico. As well, these actors willfully ignore the
brutal effectiveness of existing technologies in rendering unauthorized border crossings riskier and deadlier. This kind of oversim-
plification is perhaps to be expected of demagogues. But scholars can also oversimplify migration, though usually not with the
intention of demonizing migrants. The identification of generalities is an important aim of academic research; we make sense
out of the world by searching for regular patterns and by generalizing about complex human behaviors. But scholars perhaps
too readily seek to “explain” migration with a handful of variables and to assess the “pros” and “cons” of migration in black-
and-white terms. Causation resides in myriad social relationships, institutional arrangements, and geographical sites. Outcomes,
therefore, vary a great deal across places and populations. As much as we strive to uncover general patterns and processes in the
study of migration, we are wise to expect divergence, ambiguity, and unevenness.

Further Reading

Bada, X., 2016. Collective remittances and development in rural Mexico: a View from Chicago’s Mexican hometown associations. Popul. Space Place 22, 343–355.
Basch, L., Schiller, N.G., Blanc, C.S., 2005. Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States. Routledge, London; New York.
Boyle, P., Halfacree, K., Robinson, V, 1998Boyle. Exploring Contemporary Migration. Routledge, Abingdon, New York.
Ehrkamp, P., 2006. “We Turks are no Germans”: assimilation discourses and the dialectical construction of identities in Germany. Environ. Plan. 38, 1673–1692.
Graham, E., Jordan, L.P., Yeoh, B.S., Lam, T., Asis, M., Su-Kamdi, 2012. Transnational families and the family nexus: perspectives of Indonesian and Filipino children left behind by
migrant parent (s). Environ. Plan. 44, 793–815.
King, R., 2012. Geography and migration studies: retrospect and prospect. Popul. Space Place 18, 134–153.
Kofman, E., Phizacklea, A., Raghuram, P., Sales, R., 2005. Gender and International Migration in Europe: Employment, Welfare and Politics. Routledge, London; New York.
Lawson, V.A., 1998. Hierarchical households and gendered migration in Latin America: feminist extensions to migration research. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 22, 39–53.
Lee, E.S., 1966. A theory of migration. Demography 3, 47–57.
Mavroudi, E., Nagel, C., 2016. Global Migration: Patterns, Processes, and Politics. Routledge, London; New York.
Ravenstein, E.G., 1889. The laws of migration. J. R. Stat. Soc. 52, 241–305.
Samers, M., 2003. Invisible capitalism: political economy and the regulation of undocumented immigration in France. Econ. Soc. 32, 555–583.
Silvey, R.M., 2000. Stigmatized spaces: gender and mobility under crisis in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Gend. Place Cult. 7, 143–161.
Skeldon, R., 2012. Migration transitions revisited: their continued relevance for the development of migration theory. Popul. Space Place 18, 154–166.
Waldinger, R., Lichter, M.I., 2003. How the Other Half Works: Immigration and the Social Organization of Labor. University of California Press, Berkeley; Los Angeles.
Zelinsky, W., 1971. The hypothesis of the mobility transition. Geogr. Rev. 219–249.