Tides of Migration, Currents of History: The State, Economy, and the Transatlantic Movement of Labor in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (original) (raw)
Related papers
Two Centuries of International Migration
Handbook of the Economics of International Migration, 2015
Two Centuries of International Migration This is a draft chapter for B. R. Chiswick and P. W. Miller (eds.) Handbook on the Economics of International Migration. It provides an overview of trends and developments in international migration since the industrial revolution. We focus principally on long-distance migration to rich destination countries, the settler economies in the nineteenth century and later the OECD. The chapter describes the structure, direction and determinants of migration flows and the assimilation experience of migrants. It also examines the impact of migration on destination and source countries, and explores the political economy behind the evolution of immigration policy. We provide an historical context for current debates on immigration and immigration policy and we conclude by speculating on future trends.
Servitude, brain drain and human trafficking are some of the outcomes of human migration in the 20th century. After slavery and slave trade were abolished in the 19th century, forced labour and servitude evolved. In the 20th century started modern servitude, like the ‘guest workers’ in Europe and ‘force labour’ in Africa. Brain-drain and human trafficking followed from the middle of the 20th century. This paper focuses on the influence of immigration policies by examining some ideologies, such as: ‘diversity, selective, restrictive, exclusionary and closed doors policies’. It argues that immigration policies are designed to perpetuate the structure of inequality established through the institutions of slavery and colonialism. It discusses analytically the effect of western immigration policies on the composition and volume of migrant workers in destination countries of America, Europe and Asia. This paper further discusses the politics of global migration, employing the neo-Marxist historical structural model. It elicits the significance of immigration policies to the capitalist economies as its grand design to sustain economic inequality and the dependency of the periphery on the core. Thus, immigration policies in the advanced capitalist economies were used in the 20th century, as slavery was used in the past, to exploit Africa’s viable human resources.
A Comparative History of Transnational Migrations
This seminar provides an overview over the major scholarly trends in the burgeoning field of migration history since the emergence of the Chicago School of Sociology in the 1920s. It then proceeds to test different theoretical and methodological approaches on the basis of comparative case studies, focusing on long-distance migration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly in the Atlantic world and, to a lesser, extent, in Asia. Students will thus learn about the history of some of the best-known countries of mass immigration, such as the United States and Argentina, but also familiarize themselves with examples of other types of migration in other world regions, such as indentured laborers in South(east) Asia and the Caribbean. The ultimate aim is twofold: First, debate the extent to which migration in the period that we study should be analyzed as a single phenomenon at all; second, learn about the reasons for and the long-term consequences of migration for our contemporary world.
Causes and Consequences of the Mass Migration of the late 19th Century
Although human migration is often considered as a popular phenomenon, it is only relatively recently that it is carried out over long distances. 19th century is regarded as a period in which Europe experienced the first wave of globalization. This 19th century uniqueness can be questioned1 however, the unprecedented scale of this phenomenon is supported by various evidences. An increased flow in information and a relative opening of borders as well as decrease in costs of movement, all of them initiated in the 19th century, initiated a wave of migration of a remarkable level. Between 1920 and 1920 around 60 million of Europeans emigrated to the New World and emigration within Europe reached a comparable scope 2According to Binh Pok3, mass migration can be defined as the movement of large numbers of people from one geographical area to another.
The Age of Mass Migration: Economic and Institutional Determinants
2007
We study the determinants of 19th century mass migration with special attention to the role of institutional factors beside standard economic fundamentals. We find that economic forces associated with income and demographic differentials had a major role in the determination of this historical event, but that the quality of institutions also mattered. We evaluate separately the impact of political institutions
[2017] Mass Migrations across the World System's History
E-International Relations, 2017
Moving has been an essential human characteristic since the beginning of history. From the worldwide expansion of hominids departing from Africa 40.000 million years ago to the actual massive migrations of populations, humans have demonstrated that settling is as intrinsic to our nature as it is changing our residence. But this natural impulse has been limited since the establishment of states as the way societies are mainly organized. While it is true that Kingdoms and Empires had borders and their populations had certain ties to these political units (vassalage for instance), borders were not millimetrically delimited lines separating national spaces of sovereignty. With the establishment of states, individuals became nationals and crossing borders (either intra-national or international) was not 'moving' anymore, but migrating. International migration is the process when nationals of a state leave their social unit to enter in –a different social unit or according Abdelmalek Sayad it is the presence of non-nationals in the core of the nation (2004). A similar logic applies to internal migrations too, showing that migrating is a political act not just involving the individual but also states as it has to be with their first principle: controlling their territory. Since then, a complex debate (Massey et al., 1998; Johns and Mielants, 2011) has been introduced in the study of migrations: is migration a decision made by individuals or is it a phenomenon induced by a larger structure?? This article will try to contribute to this debate arguing that the phenomenon of migration is neither directly driven and controlled by states, nor a pure individual decision, but rather it is the consequence of the way the superstructure of global capitalism is articulated. By studying three historical cases representing three key periods of the world-system's development (the pre-industrial, the industrial and the post-industrial eras) it will be argued that global capitalism has been, and still is, the main driver of mass migrations. At the same time, it will be explained that even if individuals are subjected to this superstructure, migration is not an imposition (except in some cases of forced migration) or a pure rational choice, but it is the result of the migrant’s decisions (what it is called agency) taken in the restrictive frame of the global world-system.
contemporary migration studies tend to consider this phenomenon as an independent variable excised from the context of global capitalism. Research approaches are mostly descriptive and schematic and often split by disciplines, all of which limits the understanding of migration and any opportunities we might have to influence it. Political economy provides an analytical alternative with which to engage this subject, addressing it from the historical, structural and strategic viewpoints. this approach constitutes a source of critical thinking through which the complex reality of contemporary capitalism and the role of international migration can be understood and transformed. this chapter proposes political economy as an alternative theoretical and methodological tool with which to uncover the nature and elements of contemporary migration.
Some considerations about the link between economic development and migration
More than forty years after the publication of Zelinsky's article in the Geographical Review, the hypothesis of the mobility transition is still very much alive. 1 As it is frequently cited in migration related publications and is still an important part of the curriculum in geography departments all over the world, it is likely that the theory will be around for a while. Perhaps the greatest appeal of Zelinsky's theory of the mobility transition in past and present lies in the fact that it seems to fit well with an image of the nineteenth century that is still predominant: a century of rapid and large social and economic change. Many of these ideas stem from the work of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, but later scholars have also supported this notion, explicitly or implicitly. The idea of an economic take-off, as proposed in Walt Rostow seminal book, was adopted by many others after him, for instance in the important work of Dean and Cole. 2 In this particular view or paradigm, industrialization could be regarded as a 'dramatic culmination to a long-gathering process of change, rather as the cylinder may be charged with a head of steam quite quickly but only if the water has long been heating'. 3 The notion of a sudden societal transformation supports the still prevalent idea of the nineteenth century as a hinge point in social and economic change, and so indeed does Zelinsky's theory to a great extent.