Essays on Migration: part 2

Essays from a Sociology of Migration course. 1. Discuss the so-called “sedentary bias”. What do we mean by this term? What does it indicate to be a problem or not-a-problem?

In this essay I will discuss the term sedentary bias and its implications for migration discourse, research, and policies. I will define it and explain that it is problematic in that it disregards several facts such as that migration is not a recent phenomenon, but has been happening throughout history, that the developed nations rely on and benefit from migrant labour, and that migration is interdisciplinary and should be viewed as such, rather than separate from social, political, cultural, and economic processes. I will conclude that since the sedentary bias involves the dismissal of these important points, a biased viewpoint of migration is developed, which has the implication of influencing migration and settlement research and policies. The term sedentary bias is part of the discourse in which “migration is seen as harmful and dysfunctional (Castles, 2017, p. 5)”, and which implies that “the poor constitute a threat to prosperity and public order if they move, and should therefore stay at home” (Castles, 2017, p. 5). Sedentary bias entails that “development should take place in rural areas and that poor people should not move” (Castles, 2017, p. 83) and has the potential to block the “understanding of the significance of migration as a way of accessing opportunities, improving human rights and security, and developing sustainable livelihoods” (Castles, 2017, p. 83), by portraying it as entirely harmful and in need of policing. Such a viewpoint is narrow-minded in several ways, all of which, as I will show later in the essay, lead to a problematic perception of migration, which, in turn, influences migration and settlement research and policies in biased ways. Firstly, the sedentary bias viewpoint of migration disregards the fact that migration has been happening all throughout history, and instead considers it a recent phenomenon that must be controlled. As Castles writes, “historical perspectives show that migration has been a normal aspect of social life and especially of social change throughout history” (Castles, 2017, p. 5), and has merely been accelerated since the 16th century by the development of a global capitalist market, but in no way is a new occurrence. “Labour recruitment … goes back a long way” (Castles, 2017, p. 124) since “[c]apitalism has always needed ‘unfree labour’” (Castles, 2017, p. 124). The colonial period, too, involved widespread and varied migration which took “both the form of movement of administrators, traders and military personnel … and migration based on inequality and coercion: slaves, indentured workers etc.” (Castles, 2017, p. 6). Various kinds of migration, therefore, have been occurring throughout the world for many different reasons for centuries, and the discourse of it beginning recently and being problematic is not only wrong, but is harmful. By disregarding the fact that it has always happened, it is portrayed as a recent development that is harmful, and must therefore be stopped. Secondly, the sedentary bias view of migration disregards the fact that developed nations rely on migrant labour. The biased view dictates that migrant workers are not needed in the receiving countries and sees the migrants coming to developed nations for work opportunities as the only ones that profit from migration, but the receiving nations rely on these arrangements just as much. While the “[r]eturn flows of remittances, technology and ideas may, under certain circumstances, lead to positive changes in areas of origin” (Castles, 2017, p. 6) of working migrants, the receiving countries rely on and benefit from migrant labour immensely too. As Castles writes, the developed nations’ “[p]ost-industrial service economies needed a large number of low-skilled workers to service the elites” (Castles, 2017, p. 60), which the developed nations themselves could not provide due to falling fertility rates as well as to these nations’ young people rejecting low-skilled employment due to improved educational opportunities (Castles, 2017, p. 60). This labour demand was subsequently met by incoming working migrants, which shows that the developed nations rely on migration to occur, and the sedentary bias perception of migration is limited by disregarding this. Furthermore, developed nations’ citizens profit by employing migrant workers since prevailing neoliberal employment and global market practices characterized by free markets and deregulation have led to the loosening of developed nations’ employment legal controls. This has led to an increase in developed nations’ unofficial employment, temporary work, subcontracting, employment casualization, and the turning of wage-workers “into independent ‘contractors’, who have no guarantee of work, have to buy their own tools and equipment, and bear all the risks of accident, sickness, or lack of jobs” (Castles, 2017, p. 61). This entails an increase in employers’ control over their employees, unsafe working conditions, low wages, and accidents and abuse in the workplaces, all of which disproportionately affects migrant workers, since, as was mentioned earlier, they are more likely to be employed in such positions (Castles, 2017, p. 61). Employers of casual contractors benefit from employment casualization, because they are able to keep the money that would otherwise be used to improve working conditions and supply their workers with fair wages, and this system prevails because their migrant worker employees are less likely than locals to demand improvement in working conditions for fear of losing their jobs. Thus, the sedentary bias viewpoint on migration fails to recognize that developed nations benefit from migration in that they rely on migrant workers to meet the labour demands the local workers cannot meet, and in that their citizens who casually employ migrants make “profits obtained through poor wages and conditions for migrant workers (Castles, 2017, p. 102) that they would not make if they employed locals who would demand better treatment. The sedentary bias viewpoint on migration, therefore, constructs a falsely negative perception of migration.

Thirdly, the sedentary bias viewpoint of migration disregards the interdisciplinary nature of migration and that it must be considered within and connected to its context and, instead, oversimplifies and overgeneralizes it. This viewpoint considers migration either as entirely disconnected from its context, or else only recognizes economic factors as having an influence on it and overemphasizes those. As Castles writes, there is a “great complexity of migratory processes” (Castles, 2017, p. 11) and their context, “the links between migration and the other economic, social, political and cultural relationships at work in particular places at a particular historical juncture” (Castles, 2017, p. 11), is necessary to take into account when considering migration. Ignoring the facts that migration has been happening throughout history and is not a new phenomenon, that it is beneficial for the citizens of receiving countries who rely on migrant labour and benefit from informal employment of migrants, and that migration is interdisciplinary in nature, which is characteristic of the sedentary bias, results in a misinformed perception of migration. It is oversimplified, overgeneralized, and is seen as a harmful problem that needs to be solved. This misinformed perception of migration influences migration, settlement, and nonmigration policies in that policies reflect and respond to the public’s opinions (Ryniker, 2020), and, since, in the 1990s, much of the public saw migration as threatening and problematic due to the sedentary bias, rigorous policies were created to ensure that migrants’ and refugees’ entrance into nations was restricted. Access was restricted by changes to national legislation, the creation of temporary protection regimes for people fleeing war, non-arrival and diversion policies, and restrictive interpretation of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention (Castles, 2017, p. 299). Such behaviours and policies, influenced by the public’s sedentary bias, resulted in great hardships for migrants and refugees entering developed nations, and has created a system “designed to exclude and control asylum seekers from the South” (Castles, 2017, p. 300). In conclusion, the sedentary bias, which is the “public perception that migration is out of control” (Castles, 2017, p. 126) that is part of “a dominant political discourse [which] sees migration as a problem that needs to be ‘fixed’ by appropriate policies (Castles, 2017, p. 5) is harmful because it is misinformed and narrow minded, but results in migration, settlement, and nonmigration policies that put hardships on migrants and refugees. It is narrow minded and overgeneralized in several ways such as that it regards migration as a recent occurrence and ignores the fact that it has been happening all throughout history. Furthermore, it disregards the fact that receiving countries benefit from migrants taking on jobs that their own citizens are unwilling to take up and migrant employers benefit from migrants not demanding better pay or working conditions, whereas local workers would. Finally, the sedentary bias disregards the fact that migration is interdisciplinary and must be considered “as a part of complex and varied processes of societal change” (Castles, 2017, p. 6) and thus oversimplifies and overgeneralizes it. Since the sedentary bias is shared by and influences much of the public, and policies reflect the public’s opinions, the bias results in restrictive migration, settlement, and nonmigration policies. The sedentary bias thus plays an active role in attempts of preventing global migration and contributes to the discourse that portrays it as problematic, as well as to imposing hardships on migrants and refugees.

2. What is transnationalism? How is it generated and maintained? What is involved? What sorts of institutions and technologies are important in understanding it? In this essay I will define transnationalism and show how it stems from and is connected to globalization. I will explain that globalization has generated a world in which transnationalism is common, as well as that it is maintained through this ongoing system, the advancements of travel and communication, and migrants staying connected to communities in their correlating sending countries through means such as social and economic remittances. I will also explore the ways in which transnationalism challenges the concepts of citizenship and belonging to a nation-state, and show in what ways the modern world, which is characterized by migration, is adapting to it and understanding it. Transnationalism is a phenomenon concerned with the interconnectedness of people across national boundaries. “The ease of movement and communication has made it possible for many people to live their lives across borders” (Ryniker, 2020), and this practice has become very common. As Castles writes, the term transnationalism dominated the migration discourse in the first decade of the 21st century (Castles, 2017, p. 335) because, though it has existed for a long time in the form of diasporas, the social and technological changes and development that globalization entails have recently made it become more pronounced and involve more people (Castles, 2017, p. 336), and, thus, the new term emerged. Transnational communities, which can be defined as “groups whose identity is not primarily based on attachment to a specific territory” (Castles, 2017, p. 383) are “based in two or more countries that engage in recurrent, enduring, and significant, cross-border activities, which may be economic, political, social, or cultural” (Castles, 2017, p. 339) result in increased global interconnectedness. As Castles writes, “such groups are the result of cross-border activities that link individuals, families, and local groups” (Castles, 2017, p. 339), and contribute to global interconnectedness. To understand how transnationalism is generated and maintained, it is important to consider transnationalism as part of globalization since both have been greatly facilitated by advancements in travel and communication, allowing people to maintain connections throughout the world. As Castles writes, “globalization is closely linked to changes in social structures and relationships, and to shifts in cultural values concerned with place, mobility, and belonging” (Castles, 2017, p. 338). The modern world is characterized by globalization and a capitalist global world market, involving “flows of capital, commodities, cultural products, and people” (Castles, 2017, p. 338), which facilitates the formulation of transnational communities in which people across national boundaries are connected. Such communities are the very result of “cross-border activities that link individuals, families and local groups” (Castles, 2017, p. 383). In the modern world, characterized by mobility (Ryniker, 2020), therefore, globalization and transnationalism go hand-in-hand. Transnationalism is thus generated by globalization and its entailed emergence of a capitalist global market, and advancements in travel and communication. Transnationalism is maintained on the macro level by the ongoing system of interconnectedness that globalization entails and on the micro level by migrants maintaining their links to their homeland and communities remaining there after moving away. Such links may involve economic and social remittances, the former referring to migrants sending the money earned in developed countries they migrated to back to their country of origin, and the latter referring to the circulation of “ideas, behaviours, identities and social capital that flow from receiving- to sending-country communities” (Castles, 2017, p. 215) facilitated by migrants and returnees. In the modern world, people migrate for various reasons, and, in many cases, migrants establish communities in various states and are able to maintain them due to advancements in travel and communication. For example, a university student may study abroad for the educational and networking opportunities that such an experience entails, will establish a community abroad, and maintain it upon returning home. Or else, a family in a developing country may send their eldest son to study and work in a developed country, and send portions of the earned money back to the sending country. Practices such as these, which are very common in the modern world characterized by mobility, facilitate the development of transnational communities. Transnationalism challenges the notion of belonging to a nation-state and the world defined by citizenships, and, thus, contributes to the transformation of social identities. As Castles writes, “[t]he growth of transnational communities makes it necessary to transform institutional frameworks to correspond with new forms of social identity” (Castles, 2017, p. 348), sine “[t]ransnational community belonging … replaces nation-state belonging as the main source of loyalty and solidarity” (Castles, 2017, p. 335-336). The concept of citizenship is gradually shifting as the modern world is becoming increasingly characterized by mobility and as transnational communities grow in numbers. Nation-states reflect this transition by revising their citizenship rules. For example, recently, “virtually all Western countries have changed their citizenship rules in response to immigration and settlement … [which] has meant a shift away from jus sanguinis (citizenship through descent), which tends to exclude immigrants and their descendants, and toward more inclusive forms of citizenship based on jus domicilii (citizenship on the basis of residence)” (Castles, 2017, p. 348). Furthermore, dual and multiple citizenship is becoming increasingly common to reflect the interconnectedness of the modern world.

In order to fully understand transnationalism, it is important to recognize “the end of the nationalist dream of the homogenous nation” (Castles, 2017, p. 385), and to rethink the concepts of citizenship, national identity, belonging, and assimilation, since belonging to a group is no longer tied solely to territorial borders, but transcends them. The formation of transnational communities, facilitated by travel and communication advancements, has allowed people across the world to stay connected “on the basis of origins, culture, language, and so on” (Castles, 2017, p. 387). Transnationalism thus challenges the institution of citizenship and creates global communities that are often unattached to land, but nevertheless connected. In conclusion, transnationalism stems from and must be understood in the context of globalization. Globalization has created a world of interconnectedness in which transnationalism and transnationalist communities could form. Transnationalism is facilitated and maintained by advancements in travel and communication, as well as by migrants’ personal decisions to stay connected to communities across the world and in their sending countries through general communication and social and economic remittances. Transnationalism and the formation of transnationalist communities challenges the institution of citizenship and the notion of belonging to a nation-state, since peoples’ bonds are no longer determined solely by connections to territorial boundaries. In the modern world which is characterized by mobility, globalization and advancements in travel and communication have paved the way for transnational communities to develop and for people to connect across territorial boundaries through shared symbols and values, contributing to global interconnectedness. 3. How has production in capitalism changed since the late 20th century? What impact has this had on migration? In this essay I will explore the ways in which production in capitalism has changed since the late 20th century, discuss the reasons for those changes, and explore the impacts of those changes on migration patterns. In order to understand the reasons behind some of those changes, I will first discuss the state of the world and its global market during the late 20th century, which, for the purposes of this essay, will be interpreted as the time period between 1970 and 1999 and will then explore production in capitalism in the 21st century. I will show that the period of 1970-1999 was characterized and heavily influenced by Neoliberal principles of market deregulation and an increase in the informalization and casualization of migrant labour and temporary labour schemes. This paved the way for 21st century capitalist production that entails various kinds of mobility, the growth of the informal economy and labour force segmentation and feminization, resulting in a precarious life for migrant workers, since they are vulnerable to exploitation in employment schemes involving cheap and informal labour. I will also discuss the 2008 global economic crisis and its impact on global production and migration patterns, showing that it contributed to a general change in attitudes toward migrants and a reduction in migration from developing countries to the developed ones. To explore the ways in which production in capitalism changed since the late 20th century, it is first important to understand the late 20th century itself. Since the 1970s, the world has seen the emergence of a global market characterized by Neoliberal principles of “open borders, free markets, a small state, and deregulation” (Castles, 2017, p. 59), legitimized by claims that a market based on such principles would lead to faster economic growth in developing countries. Faster economic growth in developing countries was, in the long run, expected to reduce inequality, and, subsequently, migration, which was considered in need of reducing and controlling. However, though the developed countries expected to only need specialized labour by the early 21st century, it turned out that the “post-industrial service economies needed a large number of low-skilled workers to service the elites” (Castles, 2017, p. 60). Local workers could not provide the needed labour due to falling fertility rates as well as to local young people rejecting low-skilled employment due to improved educational opportunities (Castles, 2017, p. 60). The governments of developed countries, along with the public that had a generally negative perception of migrants and migration, remained unwilling to admit the needed migrant workers permanently, however. Developed nations requiring migrant labour while simultaneously perceiving migrants as negative resulted in “new inflows of refugees, asylum seekers, highly skilled personnel, manual workers, and family members” (Castles, 2017, p. 400) who entered labour markets in large numbers and at all levels (Castles, 2017, p. 401), but often in forms of casual, irregular and temporary employment. Like this, 20th century’s principles of “[n]eoliberalism and economic deregulation … led to a burgeoning of informal work in formerly highly regulated labour markets” (Castles, 2017, p. 62). By the end of the 20th century and into the 21st century, “traditional industries were restructured, with most production jobs being moved to non-unionized ‘sunbelt’ states” (Castles, 2017, p. 64). An “hourglass economy” (Castles, 2017, p. 405) developed that was stratified on the basis of ethnicity (Castles, 2017, p. 64) and had “two polarized but mutually dependent labor markets: … a high-wage sector dominated by financial and informal services, corporate management, differentiated product design, and research and development; and a low-wage, precarious, and often informal sector, reliant on outsourced corporate activities and private sector providers, as well as on sweatshop manufacturing”, (Castles, 2017, p. 405) and mainly staffed by migrants. As well, large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers fleeing conflict-ridden societies in the early 21st century were being recognized for their potential contribution to the economy due to their ability to provide cheap and informal labour, so there was the discourse claiming that “conflict could open the way for progressive market-led reform and innovation” (Castles, 2017, p. 324). The informal economy grew and led to labour market segmentation, entailing that “[p]eople’s chances of getting jobs depend not only on their human capital (i.e. their education and skills) but also on gender, race, ethnicity, origins and legal status” (Castles, 2017, p. 20). A migrant-dominated labour force vulnerable to discrimination, precariousness, and inequality was produced, and the initial goal of reducing inequality had the opposite effect, because, according to a World Bank economist, global inequality in the mid-2000s was the highest ever recorder (Castles, 2017, p. 60). Thus, “[t]he general picture in the early twenty-first century is that of a labor force stratified by ethnicity and gender” (Castles, 2017, p. 409) and a “strong trend toward the casualization of labor” (Castles, 2017, p. 409). The increase in the casualization, or the informalization of labour, which is “a redistribution of work from regulated sectors of the economy to new unregulated sectors of the underground or informal economy” (Castles, 2017, p. 62-63) , leads to migrants engaging in temporary and often precarious work opportunities. Production in capitalism in the 21st century, therefore, is characterized by increased mobility, informalized labour, and labour market segmentation, all of which sets up precarious working conditions in which migrants, who are more likely to be employed in such positions, are vulnerable to exploitation. Migration patterns reflect this change in production in that capitalism requires large reserves of workers, so, in the 21st century, there is widespread local as well as international mobility (Ryniker, 2020). Local mobility in countries to which labour is outsourced entails locals moving from rural areas to urban areas in pursuit of factory and sweat shop employment. People also move internationally to pursue work opportunities, and there have recently been massive movements of people from SouthEast Asia to the Middle East, as well as migration from Africa, Latin America, and Asia (Ryniker, 2020). These migration patterns reflect the informalization of employment in that people often move in pursuit of temporary employment, and may entail temporary or circular migration. Production in capitalism in the 21st century thus, created a “cheap, commodified, flexible, replaceable, and unfree labour force” (Castles, 2017, p. 416), which has contributed to the world becoming characterized by mobility, and has made short-term and circular migration common. An important aspect of 21st century production in capitalism is the strong trend of feminization of labour, which entails women increasingly entering the workforce. For example, as Castles writes, “[b]y 2002-2003, women made up 65-73 percent of labor migrants departing from the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka” (Castles, 2017, p. 235) and “[m]igrant women made up the bulk of the workforce in the new sweatshops” (Castles, 2017, p. 20). The feminization of labour affects migration in that, in the 21st century, women migrate locally and internationally to enter workforces in unprecedented numbers. An event that strongly affected the production in capitalism in the 21st century and, subsequently, migration patterns, was the 2008 economic crisis. The crisis was caused by a drying up of credit in the United States as property values increased, and led to a major recession that, since the U.S. is the world’s largest economy, greatly affected other countries. The recession hit the developing countries much harder than it did the U.S. due to decreased remittances, so migration from developing countries to developed countries was affected. Furthermore, the crisis contributed to developed countries’ locals’ attitudes toward migrants turning against them, and to the creation and implementation of various laws and regulations aimed at reducing migrants’ entries. Prior to this change of attitude, migration was beginning to be seen as positive for both developed and developing countries’ economies due to the “growing understanding of the potential economic contribution of emigrants” (Castles, 2017, p. 211), with national and international reports highlighting “the potential benefits of migration for development, laying special stress on the role of economic remittances in improving livelihoods, increasing demand and stimulating production” (Castles, 2017, p. 214). Since the 1980s, migrants were being “redefined as ‘heroes of development'” (Castles, 2017, p. 219) and seen as valuable contributors to economies, but the recession, which left many people in developed countries poor, homeless, and unemployed, reversed those attitudes toward those of hostility once again. Deportations increased, and many U.S. states implemented repercussions for employment of illegal immigrants, all to reduce the number of migrant workers in the country. Overall, the 2008 economic crisis posed great challenges to developing countries and led to a slowdown of Global South to Global North migration flows. (Ryniker, 2020) To sum up, production in capitalism has changed since the late 20th century in that the late 20th century, characterized by Neoliberal principles and market deregulation paved the way for increased labour informalization, growth of the informal economy, and labour force segmentation and feminization. This impacted migration patterns in that people migrated locally from rural to urban areas in pursuit of outsourced labour, and migrated to developed countries in which production was located. Such migration was often temporary or circular and entailed cheap and precarious employment. The 2008 global economic crisis led to a world-wide recession, which heavily impacted developing countries and resulted in decreased migration from them to developed ones, disproportionately impacting marginalized populations, which is a common theme in the 21st century capitalist production.

Works Cited

Castles, S. (2017). Migration, Citizenship and Identity: Selected Essays. Edward Elgar Pub. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788112376

Ryniker, D. (2020). MIGRATION AND ISSUES OF ETHNICITY. Personal Collection of D. Ryniker, UBC, Vancouver, BC.

Ryniker, D. (2020). MIGRATION AND GLOBALISATION. Personal Collection of D. Ryniker, UBC, Vancouver, BC.

Ryniker, D. (2020). SOCIOLOGY OF MIGRATION SOCIOLOGY 303. Personal Collection of D. Ryniker, UBC, Vancouver, BC.

Ryniker, D. (2020). MIGRATION AND HUMAN FREEDOM. Personal Collection of D. Ryniker, UBC, Vancouver, BC.

Ryniker, D. (2020). GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS OF 2008. Personal Collection of D. Ryniker, UBC, Vancouver, BC.