What Are the Major Causes and Significance of International Migration in Global Society?

"What are the major causes and significance of international migration in global society?"

Formative Essay

F Y Miah

Dynamics of Change in International Relations

Formative Essay

"What are the major causes and significance of international migration in the global society?"

The Oxford dictionary defines the act of migrating as meaning: "to move to settle to a new area in order to find work."1 This seems to be presupposing that the primary motivation of migrants is employment. However, as I will go on to highlight, economic social and political factors in various combinations have always affected the various constant waves of migration throughout history2. I will look at how past and modern flows compare and their effects on global society.

There are two main issues around migration: firstly how states can control and regulate migration levels. States are after all sovereign and reserve the right to be able to choose who to allow in and out of its boundaries.

The second issue that has come about in the modern era is how to deal with the minority communities that migrants form within host states. This depends on the causes that it perceives the people migrated for and the political, social and economic circumstances of the receiving state itself. If the migrant community has strong links with its previous community in the home state still and actually works to affect political and social affairs over there, perhaps even using the power and protection of the host state, they are known as diasporas. They will be discussed further on.

Causes of migration can be divided initially into whether the migration was involuntary, or political due to war, natural disasters, ethnic, persecution, coercion or exploitation, or voluntary. State responses to involuntary migrants are under the ruling of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951. However, all an applicant state is obliged to do is to consider all applications for asylum, not grant them. There is though the clause which states that a host state cannot turn the asylum seeker back to their country of origin if there is evidence their life is in danger.

Voluntary migrants on the other hand have no such guarantee as their motives for migration are social or economic, not deemed to be necessary or they are illegal migrants. This definition of illegal depends on the circumstances of the host country and who they choose to allow in according to their laws or not. The mixing of political and economic though would seem to be more inevitable in future as society develops its more global aspect where international co-operation is becoming more and more necessary as the free market expands, bringing with it technological and communication advances that allow migrant communities to stay in touch with their home lands. It can be argued that this does not allow differences between the host community and the migrant community to close up3. This can lead to implications in the host lands foreign policy with the home land. For example Sikhs from the Punjab were granted leave to settle in the UK during a time when labour was needed in the. However the government could not have foreseen the future political situation where persecution of Sikhs in India would lead them to take Indian Sikhs so that they could flee from persecution and be with family in Britain.

Global migration began from regional migration with a colonial impetus to gain more land, jobs, raw materials for the rapidly industrialising Europe so many moved to the "new world" of America and Australia4. There was forced slave labour migration from the West African coast, replaced by indentured labour from other groups like the Chinese until that was banned too to be replaced by a new labour force from the Indian Sub-Continent5.

The post war economic slump in the 70's however led to host land policies which implicitly required the minimising of permanent settler migration opportunities though new areas sprang up in the Gulf and Israel for example. However the world still suffered from a deluge of refugees as conflict and fear of conflict increased significantly in places such as Vietnam and Palestine6.

Now I will look at how governments try and deal with their migrant minority populations. Firstly, migration has come to the fore of the international agenda for a number of reasons. In modern times, due to vastly improved advertising, transport and communication links, people are much more aware that there is another way of life out there and the rapid democratisation and promotion of meritocracy seems to dangle the opportunities beneath the noses of the world's poorest. However, as more people scramble to join the bandwagon, the more the host state and their people worry about diluting and lowering their own lifestyles as a consequence of this "burden" of migrants. To combat this negative social perception of this "flood" of migrants and refugees, despite the fact that the majority of refugees are absorbed by neighbouring third world countries, receiving states have moved towards a more conservative, nationalistic, and exclusivist trend and steadily tightened their migration laws without quite accounting for the now very mixed types of migrants, such as permanent from refugees7.

This could lead to the political and social isolation of old migrant minorities and possible strife. For example, in Fiji in 1987, there was a military coup to get rid of the elected government which happened to be made up of Indians who had become indentured citizens since around 19108. Global population is racing ahead, faster than the need for labour. Migrant working conditions vary between good due to rapid naturalisation by granting full citizenship, mainly in the states with the most restrictive migration policies, or complete denial of them, like the UAE where the migrant worker population can be up to 85%, to discourage the problems that a large migrant population who would want to bring their family over and so on would entail.

A number of problems could occur in a situation such as: unemployment, resentment in the local population against migrants, pressure on facilities such as hospitals and schools, remittances being sent home thus not helping the economy, or even slowing down structural development as cheap labour can lead to a labour intensive economy as