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