Social Transformation and Human Mobility: Reflections on the Past, Present and Future of Migration

ABSTRACT

This article examines the development of international migration in the context of broader changes in global economic and political formations since the late 1940s. It also reflects on changing official policies and public attitudes to migration, as well as on the emergence of migration studies as a special interdisciplinary area of the social sciences. Four phases are discussed: 1. The period of concentration of investment in the old industrial areas of Western Europe up to the mid- 1960s , which led to attraction of mainly lower-skilled labour as ‘guestworkers’ or post-colonial migrants. Prejudice against newcomers was interpreted mainly in social-psychological terms as a ‘natural reaction’ against newcomers. 2. The beginnings of a new wave of globalisation in the 1970s and 1980s. Manufacturing employment in old core industrial areas fell, while new industrial economies (based largely on low pay and anti-union policies) burgeoned. Western European governments tried to send home the ‘guestworkers’. The failure of such policies led to the emergence of multicultural societies. At the same time, the growing economies of the Gulf oil states and some Asian ‘tigers’ pulled in millions of workers, bound by very strict and often discriminatory contracts. 3. From the late 1980s to the recession of 2008 the globalisation of investment and production reached new heights. Cheaper transport and the growth of new media supported the growth of international migration at all skill levels. Developed countries cut back on education costs by importing human capital from countries like India and China, while denying the need for low-skilled workers. Yet the lack of nationals willing to take such jobs fuels the growth of temporary contract migration and irregular movement. Increasingly, migrants have come to be seen as a threat to jobs for low-skilled nationals and as a danger to national security. 4. The article argues that a new phase in global change is emerging following the 2008 crisis, and examines possible trends and their meaning for human mobility in the 21st century.

KEYWORDS:

• International migration
• Guestworkers
• Contract workers
• Highly-skilled migration
• Migration studies
• Globalisation
• Social transformation
• Emergency migration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Stephen Castles is an Honorary Professor of Sociology at the University of Sydney. From 2006-9 he was the foundation director of the International Migration Institute (IMI) at the University of Oxford. He is a sociologist and political economist, and works on international migration dynamics, global governance, migration and development, and migration trends in Africa, Asia and Europe. Stephen Castles’ recent books include: The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World (Fifth Edition, with Hein de Haas and Mark Miller, Basingstoke, Palgrave-Macmillan, and New York, Guilford, 2014); and Migration, Citizenship and Identity: Selected Essays (Cheltenham UK and Northampton, Mass. USA, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017).

Notes

1. A refugee is defined by the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees as a person residing outside his or her country of nationality, who is unable or unwilling to return because of a ‘well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion’. Asylum seekers are people who have crossed an international border in search of protection, but whose claims for refugee status have not yet been decided.

2. A report published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) characterises the causes of human insecurity as ‘threats to socio-economic and political conditions, food, health, and environmental, community and personal safety’ (Jolly and Ray 2006).

3. Some analysts prefer the term crisis migration.