History: Theory International Migration Essay

Over the past 30 years immigrations has emerged as a major force throughout the world. In traditional immigrants receiving societies such as Australia, Canada, and US the volume of immigration has grown and its composition has shifted decisively away from Europe, the historical dominant source towards Asia, Africa and Latin America. The immigrants were initial drawn mainly from southern Europe, by the late 1960s, they mostly came from developing countries in Africa, Asia, to the Caribbean and the Middle East. There is a reciprocal relationship between migration and development. Migration is driven by economic development. Economic development in urban areas generates demand for labor, but economic development in rural areas makes many peasants redundant. As a result, a large number of peasent move to cities to work in the burgeoning manufacturing sectors. In the period from 1885 to 1914, 55 million international immigrants from Europe drive in the US. In North America case particularly, the reason for Mexican immigration seem obvious. The prevailing wisdom begins with the commonsense observation that US is a rich country and Mexico by comparison is not, a result of this stark income differential the standard of living is much higher, in north than south of the border. Even at current U.S minimum wage, a migrant working full time for year, would earn roughly three times the Mexican average income. As far as most people are concerned Mexican immigrants choose to come to U.S making just such cost benefits calculations. They believe that Mexicans rationally migrating to U.S are more than offset by a variety of benefits. Even discounting for the cost of moving, crossing the border, looking for work and adapting to foreign culture, the material wellbeing of most Mexicans is substantially improved by relocating the U.S and pursuing the work there, and each year hundreds of thousands of Mexicans seem to make precisely this decision. The fundamental problem is that current policies are based on rather narrow conceptualization of migration. The reality of contemporary immigration is considerably more complex than a simple calculi’s of costs and benefits. Several theories have been developed to treat international pattern of migration on their own terms, but these are variants or push-pull theory. The first theory is neo classical theory, according to this theory international migration stems from geographic differences in the supply of demand for labor. Nations with scarce labor supply and high demand will have high wages that pull immigrants in from nations with a surplus of labor. The resulting international differential causes workers from low wages countries to high wages countries. As a result of this movement the supply of labor falls and the wages rise in former while they do the opposite in latter leading at equilibrium, to an international wage differential reflecting the costs of international movement, pecuniary and psychic. Rational actors choose to migrate through a cost benefit calculation that leads them to expect positive net returns, usually monetary, from international movement. Early in their lives people invest in education to make their selves more productive and later reap benefits in the form of higher earnings. Migrants seek to go to the places where given their skills, they can be more productive and earn more money. Before they can reap this benefit however they must undertake certain investments. The material costs of travelling the cost of sustenance while moving and looking for work, the effort involved in learning a new language and cultures, the difficulty experience in adapting to a new labor market and the psychological burden of cutting old ties and forging new ones. According to this theory, migrants estimate the costs and benefits of moving to various international locations and then go to where ever the expected net returns are greatest. Under this theory migration should not occur in the

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