The Political Economy of Migration
 

Torkil Lauese

Patterns of migrations have shifted during the history of capitalism through the changing international divisions of labour. Poverty and the longing for a better life have driven immigration in a polarised world-system. This process has been facilitated by the development of transportation and communication, and hampered by the existence of borders. It has drawn in peasants, skilled and unskilled workers, and a brain drain of educated experts, all with the purpose of optimising capital accumulation. The modern growth of international labour migration coincided with the emergence of neoliberalism in the mid-1970s and the globalisation of production.

As Immanuel Ness writes in his new book, Migration as Economic Imperialism, with the emergence of the United States as the indisputable dominant economic and military world power…capitalist development strategists began to shift their focus to low-wage southern labour, precisely as the northern economies were shifting from manufacturing to service industries. Thus international labour migration expanded dramatically in the 1990s to reduce shortages in the Global North of low-wage workers willing to work in tedious jobs in agriculture, construction, urban services, manufacturing and home care.

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