This book responds to global tendencies toward increasingly restrictive border controls and populist movements targeting migrants for violence and exclusion. Informed by Marxist theory, it challenges standard narratives about immigration and problematises commonplace distinctions between ‘migrants’ and ‘workers’. Using Britain as a case study, the book examines how these categories have been constructed and mobilised within representations of a ‘migrant crisis’ and a ‘welfare crisis’ to facilitate capitalist exploitation. It uses ideas from grassroots activism to propose alternative understandings of the relationship between borders, migration and class that provide a basis for solidarity.

This volume is the first in a new Springer series to examine one of humanity’s most pressing concerns: global migration and its implications for development. As population mobility grows in an ever more crowded world, the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) has emerged as the most important global mechanism to deal with the urgent challenges it presents. This book explores fresh strategies proposed by the GFMD in its fourth year of operation in Mexico and beyond. Interrogating the relationship between migration and development, the papers advance the Global Forum’s aims of reducing poverty and empowering low-income families everywhere. In 2010, there were 214 million international migrants worldwide, nearly two and a half times the number in 1965. By 2050, international migration is likely to expand sharply in scale, reach and complexity, due to growing demographic disparities, environmental change, shifting global political and economic dynamics, technological innovations and social networks. Migration can bring substantial gains to families in less-developed countries, and mobile labor is an axiomatic feature of the global economy. Yet outward migration of skilled workers can seriously retard development at home, and exert pressure on wages in host nations. Balancing these and other conflicting concerns requires the substantive and expert discourse offered in this book. Contributors discuss, and propose concrete solutions to, vital issues such as the debilitating costs of cross-border labor recruitment and the provision of social and income protection for foreign contract workers. With suggestions on how to facilitate connections between transnational families, and gender- and family-sensitive immigration regimes, this book aims to foster collaborative intergovernmental links as well as partnerships between governments, civil society and international organizations. It shows how the GFMD can positively influence policy and institutional behavior while addressing wider systemic factors in protecting mobile workers.

The crossing of national state borders is one of the most-discussed issues of contemporary times and it poses many challenges for individual and collective identities. This concerns both short-distance mobility as well as long-distance migration. Choosing to move - or not - across international borders is a complex decision, involving both cognitive and emotional processes. This book tests the approach that three crucial thresholds need to be crossed before mobility occurs; the individual’s mindset about migrating, the choice of destination and perception of crossing borders to that location and the specific routes and spatial trajectories available to get there. Thus both borders and trajectories can act as thresholds to spatial moves. The threshold approach, with its focus on processes affecting whether, when and where to move, aims to understand the decision-making process in all its dimensions, in the hope that this will lead to a better understanding of the ways migrants conceive, perceive and undertake their transnational journeys. This book examines the three constitutive parts discerned in the cross-border mobility decision-making process: people, borders and trajectories and their interrelationships. Illustrated by a global range of case studies, it demonstrates that the relation between the three is not fixed but flexible and that decision-making contains aspects of belonging, instability, security and volatility affecting their mobility or immobility.

The focus and concern of Agrarian Change, Migration and Development is the problem of labour migraton. Veltmeyer and Wise explore the dynamics and development implications of the migration processes set in motion by the capitalist mode of production. The dynamics of these processes are both international -- in regard to the international or cross-border flows of labour migrants -- and internal to countries that have undergone, or are undergoing, a process of agrarian change and social transformation.Veltmeyer and Wise examine what they call the "migration-development nexus" from both a political economy and a sociological perspective, highlighting current trends, the global scale and the human dimension of the labour migration process, with particular reference to the increasing south-north flows of migrants who are forced to abandon their communities and ways of life by the globalizing forces of capitalist development.While it may appear that these migrants are free to choose to abandon their communities, and in many cases their families, in the search for greater economic opportunities and a better way of life, the authors show with devastating logic that the decisions made by so many migrants are rooted in the workings of the world capitalist system, which converts them into a pool of surplus labour to be pulled into and out of the system as required by capitalists in their endless search for private profit.

The growing scale of international migration has reshaped the debate on the social rights and social protection available to people outside their countries of origin. This book uses conceptual frameworks, policy analysis and empirical studies of migrants to explore international migrants' needs for and access to social protection across the world.

Migration presents a stark policy dilemma. Research repeatedly confirms that migrants, their families back home, and the countries that welcome them experience large economic and social gains. Easing immigration restrictions is one of the most effective tools for ending poverty and sharing prosperity across the globe. Yet, we see widespread opposition in destination countries, where migrants are depicted as the primary cause of many of their economic problems, from high unemployment to declining social services. Moving for Prosperity: Global Migration and Labor Markets addresses this dilemma. In addition to providing comprehensive data and empirical analysis of migration patterns and their impact, the report argues for a series of policies that work with, rather than against, labor market forces. Policy makers should aim to ease short-run dislocations and adjustment costs so that the substantial long-term benefits are shared more evenly. Only then can we avoid draconian migration restrictions that will hurt everybody. Moving for Prosperity aims to inform and stimulate policy debate, facilitate further research, and identify prominent knowledge gaps. It demonstrates why existing income gaps, demographic differences, and rapidly declining transportation costs mean that global mobility will continue to be a key feature of our lives for generations to come. Its audience includes anyone interested in one of the most controversial policy debates of our time.