“Whose story is it anyway? Accounting for Migration”
Gloria Agyemang* and Cheryl R. Lehman
*Correspondence:
Gloria Agyemang
School of Management
Royal Holloway, University of London
Egham
TW20 0EX
Email: Gloria.Agyemang@rhul.ac.uk
Cheryl R. Lehman
Department of Accounting, Taxation,
And Legal Studies in Business
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY 11549
Email: Cheryl.R.Lehman@Hofstra.edu
Early working draft. Please do not quote.
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“Whose story is it anyway? Accounting for Migration”
ABSTRACT
Creating visibilities and breaking silences are powerful legacies of critical
accounting research. This paper argues that critical accounting researchers should
contribute to migration debates by unmasking myths of migration discourse,
categorization, and measurements to examine the socioeconomic impacts of
migration policies and conventional modeling and theories. Accounting inevitably
takes sides in migration debates and thus reflectiveness is crucial: in particular
recognizing the subjectivity and flaws in all measuring systems: “measuring”
restricts what is meant, denies structural repressions, and erases that which we
haven’t “seen” or “identified”. De Haas (2011) advocates a conceptual framework of
migration based on the aspirations and capabilities of migrants as a way of
understanding current international migration issues. We complement this
framework by suggesting that these aspirations and capabilities can be found in the
accounts that migrants tell: their narratives and stories, one of which we present in
this work. Not all stories are written, promoted, told, and published: history is a
partial and selective narrative, reflecting the beliefs and ideas of dominant socioeconomic groups, privileging some views, silencing others. By presenting one
narrative, we contribute to the tradition of oral history in accounting, which seeks to
democratize knowledge of the past and present, record the experiences of those
hidden, and to give voice to previously marginalized groups.
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“Whose story is it anyway? Accounting for Migration”
Introduction
Critical accounting’s aversion to “agency theory” – a la Jensen and Meckling – is well
grounded and well founded yet we resurrect the concept here in an essentially
transformed context. Migration research and accounting, both with theoretical and
practical dilemmas would benefit, we believe, from expanded viewing of agency-aspersonal. In adopting notions of agency we are not backpedaling to defunct
atomistic economic theorizing. Rather, we open the discussion to a more humane
approach to migration debates, particularly in an accounting language of “costs” and
“benefits” where quantification based on rational expectations reigns supreme.
Something is rotten in this state of affairs (a la Shakespeare) where simplistic
conceptualizations of migration as numbers and statistics without conscientious
attention to theories and assumptions regarding the lives of those being measured.
What we wish to capture in this exploratory and preliminary work is the possibility
of a new language for migration studies in the accounting discipline, complex as this
may be.
Our theoretical framework and expansion borrows significantly from the work of de
Haas, who suggests “the fragmented insights from different disciplinary theories can
be integrated in one framework through conceptualizing virtually all forms of
migration [first] as a function of capabilities and aspirations”(Hein de Haas, 2011).
Human capabilities refer to the ability for humans to lead lives that they value and
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to make choices that enhance this (Sen, 1997), whilst aspirations relate to what
people desire. Nussbaum also describes this capabilities approach in her book:
Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (2000). Structural
entitlements to women are the unequal economic, social and political circumstances
they navigate, yet nothing is inherently un-able about women; they triumph over
daunting obstacles and social inequities, rendering them as people “with a dignity
that deserve respect from laws and institutions” (Nussbaum, 2000, p. 2). One such
woman asserts, “We not only want a piece of the pie; we also want to choose the
flavor and to know how to make it ourselves”(p. x), and so too are the stories of
migrants: aware of their inherent agency, their quest for choices, freedom, and
sustenance, they are similarly limited by structure and ideology. Our interest is to
view migration within a lens of agency, and later in the work we provide one
narrative story as an illustration, with all the complexities this would be expected to
entail.
Second, we employ de Haas’ integration as it increases conceptual clarity: “it
distinguishes the preponderant role of states in migration processes from the
hypothetically more marginal role of specific immigration and emigration policies.
Subsequently, it hypothesizes four different (spatial, categorical, inter-temporal,
reverse flow) ‘substitution effects’ which can partly explain why polices fail to meet
their objectives” (Hein de Haas, 2011, p. 1; discussed further in Section 2). This
proposed framework enables the expanding and integrating of micro and macro
concepts and structural constraints and individual quests, impacting on the
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movement of people. We examine some of the theorization that has taken place in
migration literature more recently, with the aim of this paper to further migration
studies in critical accounting: it will be exploratory, eclectic, worthy of revision, and
improved by supportive critiques and interdisciplinary perspectives. It borrows
from previous exploratory works and thus continues the objective of setting in
motion new research and necessarily focuses on only a piece of the range of
possibilities.
Our choice of approach is well captured in the following quote from another
researcher, “The claim to originality of this article is, among others, hinged upon the
introduction of a framework borrowed from political economy into the in-depth
analysis... There are, arguably, some excellent reasons not to do this. One of the
more convincing arguments to overcome is that employing a combination of
theoretical insights … is stretching the idea of the added value of interdisciplinary
research too far. As Schoenberger (2001, p. 367) notes, disciplines ‘are bound up
with epistemological commitments’. She has a point. Certainly, one of the
advantages of staying within disciplinary boundaries is a sense of belonging, and ‘by
sharing theoretical and methodological preferences, and focusing on a small set of
phenomena, a community of scholars can readily understand what each other is
saying’ (Szostak, 2007: 8). Yet, while risking ‘rejection’ and ‘loneliness’,
interdisciplinary research of this kind also has the potential to ‘shift epistemic
domains’ and establish new insights by leaving the well-trodden path (Rhoten and
Pfirman, 2007: 58)” (Anonymous, 2011, p. 5).
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The paper comprises five sections. It proceeds in section 2 with a discussion of
critical accountings legacies in exposing accounting myths, arguing that current
migration theories and debates also require such exposure. It explains de Haas’
(2011) theoretical framework of aspirations and capabilities that offers a way of
critiquing key migration theories. In section 3 the importance of storytelling and
oral history as methods used in critical accounting research to bring silent voices
into debates is discussed as a way that the aspirations and capabilities of migrants
may be captured to provide a richer and fuller account of migration. Section 4
provides an example of a migrant’s story showing all the aspirations and
capabilities, as well as the fears, sacrifices, calculative and on-calculative costs that
underpin the account. In section 5 we conclude by inviting critical accounting
researchers to continue their tradition of giving voice to marginalized people by
exposing the hidden accounts of migrants.
Section 2: Accounting Precedents and Migration Theories
We know accounting provides reports, participates in classifications, and is a
justifying calculative practice. Accounting creates visibility and calculability, and by
privileging certain practices it silences others. Much in the critical accounting
research illustrates accounting’s myths and myopia, exploring different ways of
knowing, and challenging convention accounting -- in which social, economic, and
political spheres are perceived as unconnected (e.g., Armstrong, 2002; Arnold, 1999;
Broadbent and Laughlin, 2003; Cooper and Neu, 2006; Dillard and Reynolds, 2008;
Ezzamel and Willmott, 1998; Knights and Collinson, 1987; Lehman and Okcabol,
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2005; Merino et. al., 2010; Mitchell et. al. 2001; Miller, 1990; Neu et. al., 2009; Oakes
and Young, 2008; Parker, 2008; Power, 2009: Saravanamuthu, 2008; Sikka, 2000;
Vollmers, 2003; Young 2006). Accounting research, practice, education, and theory
intersect with political and social issues and with this enlightened view the meaning
and message of accounting can be constructed in purposeful ways toward greater
social justice.
The discourse creating aspect of the accounting profession, with no one history or
truth, and accounting’s active re-invention of itself is of particular concern for
critical accounting research. Accounting objectivity is routinely used by the
profession as an assertion of its legitimacy and ethical high ground. “But we know
better. Its factual basis is suspect, its myth making legendary… These ambiguities …
suggest an academic responsibility for shaping [accounting]” (Lehman, 2012, p.
258). Thus accounting practice is a contested terrain in its role as a social force.
Accounting’s “perspective” on degradation to the environment, the use of “the
bottom line” as a measure of corporate performance, and accounting fraud, crime,
etc. are part of a broad social fabric: including issues of economic crises, race and
class. Accounting forms part of the social states of ideological persuasion,
contrasting the conventional and expedient view of accounting as a passive data
provider, dedicated to unbiased reporting. Rather, accounting contributes to
cultural and political life and recognizing accounting’s participation in creating
social cohesion and allegiances -- economically and militarily -- has been among the
contributions of critical researchers. Chwastiak’s (2009) research on accountability,
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and access to life-needs in the Iraq war suggest, “Auditing does not necessarily
contribute to improved transparency or enhanced democracy… information may be
transfigured or rendered invisible” (Chwastiak, 2009, p. 6). Similarly Dillard’s work
(2003) regarding IBM and the Holocaust challenges accounting’s use of “technique”
while obfuscating human effects. These works are innovative recasting of
accounting’s consequences.
Accounting does not deliver the "true nature” of what prevails and is never neutral
in issues of social justice. The diversity of conflicting social interests invested in
accounting suggests it inevitably takes sides in such conflicts and thus critical
research plumbs the numbers to be informed, socially reflective, and critically selfconsciousness. How disturbing that reality has been constructed to generate a belief
in corporate enterprises, the business community, and the accounting profession as
portraying objectivity, integrity, and fairness in a world that flaunts under
capitalism many of these characteristics and obscures that reality.
Artificial dichotomies upon which traditional accounting is based are rejected in
critical accounting research. Economic versus social; private versus public; legal
versus moral; nature versus nurture; and theory versus activism are among them.
These dualisms are fictitious and silence the needs of the most vulnerable. As
academics (or “public intellectuals” [Said, 1994]), it behooves us to re-write and reimagine the stories: to change them.
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Thus for this paper, we ask: what meaning, and to what detrimental effect, is
accounting’s discourse on the populous of “migrants”? Critical accounting has
always appreciated the limits of theoretical models and assumptions upon which
accounting is based while at the same time aware of the ubiquity and power of
numbers in policy debates. We see accounting technologies, language, calculative
practices and logic to be tools employed by governments to report, manage, control
and reform migration policies. So we ponder: how do the numbers, categories, and
discourses matter and influence migration debates and policies, and upon what
theories and assumptions are they based?
The field of migration studies is diverse and complex. Whilst some researchers
concentrate attempt to explain the factors that encourage the movement of people, others
attempt to explain linkages between migration and development, focussing on
inequalities deriving from globalisation. Other researchers attempt to explain the
challenges governments face as they seek to manage complex issues such as new
identities and communities created through the mobility of people. For example, tight
immigration policies develop to counter the fears that a country is “under siege” by an
unprecedented wave of new immigrants and states and governments develop policies
aimed at curbing and reducing immigration. Yet, there is evidence of these policies not
achieving their goals.
In contemplating failures of migration research, de Haas notes “it is important to
emphasize that the limited of capacity of research to answer … key questions is not
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exclusively linked to limitations of data and statistical models (which usually receive
the blame), but also to the rather weak theoretical foundations of ‘push-pull’ or
gravity models which are routinely, but uncritically, used for studying migration
determinants. For the very reason that they are often not grounded in migration
theory, they tend to ignore or fail to properly specify several theoretically important
migration determinants in receiving and, particularly, sending countries. Even with
ideal data, statistical analyses will not lead to compelling evidence if theoretically
relevant migration determinants are omitted in empirical models, or if models are
based on the short term or only focus on one particular migration flow (e.g. asylum
seekers” (p. 7).
The theoretically void ‘push-pull’ and gravity models are rooted in a functionalist
social theory, inclined to view society as a system of aggregate interdependent parts
tending toward equilibrium. This often dominant and narrow perspective suggests
people will move from low-income to high-income areas: migration is a function of
spatial disequilibria. This is a cornerstone assumption of so-called ‘push-pull’
models or gravity-based migration, as well as common-sensical and non-specialist
academic thinking about migration. The models categorize economic,
environmental, and demographic factors pushing migrants from places of origin,
luring them to destination places. This equilibrium type of thinking is hardly a
theory: inclined merely to provide ambiguous lists of factors at play in migration,
“push-pull models tend to be static and tend to portray migrants as ‘passive pawns’
lacking any agency (which can perhaps be defined as the ability of people to make
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independent choices – to act or not act in specific ways – and, crucially, to alter
structure) and fail to conceptualize migration as a process” (de Haas, 2011, p. 8).
Critically and importantly:
“People are not goods. Goods are passive. People are humans, who make
active decisions based on their subjective aspirations and preferences, so
their behaviour is not just a function of macro-level disequilibria, neither
does their behaviour necessarily decrease these disequilibria” (de Haas,
2011, p.17).
Applying the functional paradigm above to migration modeling, neo-classical
migration theory is likely its best-known and most sophisticated application,
explaining movement by geographical differences in the supply and demand for
labor at the macro level, and at the micro-level viewing migrants as individual,
rational and income-maximizing actors. Applicable to much of critical accounting’s
stance, it is invalid in its notions of individuals contemplating life decisions with
static cost-benefit calculations, assuming free choice, full access to information, and
an ability to incorporate structural factors as additional costs and risks individuals
face.
“It certainly does make sense to assume that structural constraints affect the
cost-benefit calculus and destination choice. However, the reduction of such
factors to individual costs and benefits makes such models inherently blind
to the very structural features of such factors, which can only be analyzed on
the group (family, community, society) level as they are embedded in and
reproduced by patterns of relations between people. Despite the
considerable merits of neo-classical approaches, their methodological
individualism largely inhibits them from capturing structural factors” (de
Haas p 10-11).
Rejecting the assumptions of conventional neo-classical models there are new
theories, seeking to explain migration as an active attempt – an act of agency – by
social groups to overcome structural constraints. An important methodological
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inference of these new theories is that market access, income inequality, relative
deprivation, and social security are important migration determinants, and need to
be included in empirical models if possible (de Haas, p. 10). Also familiar to critical
accounting research is the critique of functionalist social theorizing for failing to
explain structural power inequalities, social contradictions and the role of conflict in
social transformation. “Conflict theory” applied in migration research suggests that
social and economic systems reproduce and reinforce structural inequalities, thus
requiring a radical change in power structures, and that social transformation does
not come smoothly, but rather by “collective action enabled by rising consciousness
about one’s perceived oppression and one’s ability to overcome such oppression”
(de Haas, p. 11).
In re-modeling, de Haas points out that the ‘big picture’ is missed by focusing on
short-term fluctuations on particular migration flows that do not take into account
the impact of policies on overall and long-term migration patterns and trends. What
he advocates is a use of multiple research methods, both quantitative and
qualitative, to analyse the effects of policy and to understand the drivers of
international migration. De Haas suggests employing a theoretical framework that
conceptualizes migration as a function of capabilities and aspirations.
Human capability refers to the ability of human beings to lead lives they have reason
to value, and to enhance the substantive choices they have (Sen 1997: 1959).
Employing this notion of capabilities creates analytical room to start incorporating
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notions of agency in migration theory. According to de Haas (2011),
“…culture, education and access and exposure to particular forms of
information are likely to have a huge impact on (1) people’s notions of the
good life and, hence, personal life aspirations; and (2) their awareness and
perception of opportunities elsewhere. If people do not aspire to other
lifestyles ‘elsewhere’, even if they seem ‘objectively’ or ‘materially’ better,
they will not translate this awareness into a desire to migrate.”(de Haas,
2011,page 21).
These concepts: the inter play of different structures on agency, the dialectics of
people’s choices upon structure, and the fluidity of transformations and processes,
provide us with a significantly nuanced and informed theoretical background. In
moving toward enhancing our understanding of the movement of people, we
recognize this often resides in the stories and experiences, which are the accounts,
migrants provide themselves.
One such creative approach within the accounting literature by Annisette and
Trivedi (2011) contributes to the interplay of logics underpinning the construction
of the “citizen-immigrant” and the construction of the “competent accountant” in
Canada. Providing the results of survey questionnaires to approximately 130 Indian
Chartered Accountants in Canada (CAIs), their research appraises the nature and
extent of skills devaluation experienced by CAIs in Canada’s Greater Toronto Area.
In addition to significant theoretical insights and extensive data, their work is
informed by in-depth interviews with 11 CAIs -- exposing in revealing quotes the
frustration, alienation and regret regarding their migration to Canada. One such
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quote is reiterated below, identified by Annisette and Trivedi as capturing the belief
and experiences of most CAI interviewees:
“Agreeing to the terms of fate or destiny…. I started working with a
temporary agency in night shifts…day time searching for better jobs… baby
sitting…. Cursing my decision of immigrating to Canada….I saw Engineers,
Doctors, Chartered Accountants and other esteemed professional around the
globe, sweeping the factory floors, lifting and sorting in our warehouses…and
trying to recreate their shattered dreams in this Promised Land” (Prasad
Nair 2006 testimony in Annisette and Trivedi, 2011, p. 21).
Annisette and Trivedi’s research illustrates that contemporary trends in the
international mobility of people have confound the various logics in the Canadian
environment where identities such as citizen, nation-state, and accountant are
socially constructed, identities whose boundaries are drawn and redrawn in flexible,
historically changing and sometimes ambiguous ways. They describe how “work” is
not about boundary, but a changing and fixing of boundaries by institutional
boundary-makers as part of the inherent tensions and contradictions at play and
transformed and affected by trends in the international mobilization of people (see
Annisette and Trivedi, 2011).
Although not a stated objective of the paper, Annisette and Trivedi (2011) illustrate
through the contextualized stories, the participants’ beliefs, capabilities and
aspirations impacting upon their decisions to move to Canada. The stories uncover
views of misrepresented promises, exclusionary tactics and unfulfilled optimism,
evaluations of choices and disappointments, strategies for responding to barriers
and prejudice, and thereby their work provides a nuanced explanation of migration
processes. Invariably, official documents and policies would have measured and
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reported on the numbers of chartered accountants that had successfully migrated to
Canada during the period in question. The stories that the migrants tell however
remain hidden from the official accounts and the migration discourses remain
incomplete as a result. A methodology that recognizes the potency of agency and
facilitates this type of accounting within migration studies may help other voices,
hitherto silent, to enter into debates.
Section 3: Whose story is it?
Stories are powerful, though their conceptual underpinnings are often hidden as the
storyteller often employs “emotionally compelling language and is allowed to speak
without interruption or critique” (Reiter, 1997, page 608). In Mightier than the
Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America, Reynolds (2011) documents
the influence of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book of a fictionalized character, Uncle
Tom’s Cabin (published in 1852). In its contribution to abolitionist aims and the end
of slavery in the US and abroad, President Lincoln was rumored to have remarked
upon meeting Stowe “so this is the little woman who wrote the book that started
this Great War!” (Referring to the US Civil War). Creating knowledge and changing
beliefs are of course possible, and through Stowe’s storytelling Reynolds claims, “No
book in American history molded public opinion more powerfully than Uncle Tom’s
Cabin” (2011; p. xi), a book second in sales only to the bible.
Stowe, from a prominent white family of preachers, writers, and activists, knew her
audience and their beliefs (a precursor to “the private is political”): she appealed to
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Christianity, domesticity and decency; she contrasted the cruelty of the slave
owners and the integrity of the slaves; she revealed the connectivity of families:
white and black, comedic and serious, literate and illiterate, foolish and wise.
Stowe’s work was not abstract but an intricate story of people with elaborate
connections: of fugitive slaves in the North and the terror separating families in the
Deep South. With characters, emotions, and dialogue, the point was unambiguous:
slavery was evil, as were the political and economic institutions sustaining it.
Stowe’s dramatic portrayal directly shaped political debates and public sentiment.
By the eve of the war, one Southerner noted that the novel “had given birth to a
horror against slavery in the Northern mind which all the politicians could never
have created” (in Reynolds, 2011, p xii). [ft. 1].
Giving voice and recognizing the agency of those in unequal positions of power has
precedents in oral history and accounting research. Hammond, Clayton and Arnold
(2009) acknowledge that the use of oral history “enables researchers to view events
from the perspective of marginalized people whose voices are typically silenced” (p.
705). Oral history is important for re-writing what has become known as “the
official story” providing accounts of the lived experiences of ordinary people and
their choices, reflections, motivations, and struggles.
Aware that our view of the world is inevitably socially constructed and that writing
a history, narrative, and story cannot be external to those who reveal and produce it,
we are more concerned with the limits of what appears as “the account”. Not all
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stories are written, promoted, told, and published: history is a partial and selective
narrative, reflecting the beliefs and ideas of dominant socio-economic groups,
privileging some views, silencing others.
“Mainstream accounting history tends to reflect the viewpoints of professional
associations and major accounting firms, to the exclusion of other perspectives and
other voices… Such selective memory can constitute a form of forgetting ... Oral
history provides a method of documenting the recollections of those who lived
through eventful times in order to preserve their memories and experiences, and to
broaden the lens through which we understand the past and interpret the present”
(Hammond et. al., 2011).
The tradition of oral history has a significant lineage in accounting, including the
works of Anderson-Gough et. al., 2005; Broadbent and Kirkham, 2008; Buckmaster,
2002; Carnegie and Walker, 2007; Cooper and Taylor, 2004; Dabrin and Lambert,
2008, 2010; Fearfull and Kamenou, 2006; Gallhofer, 1998; Hammond and Preston,
1992; Hammond and Sikka, 1996; Haynes, 2006, 2008; Kim, 2008; Kirkham, 1997;
Kirkham and Loft, 2001; Komori, 2008; and Walker, 2008. Recently Duff and
Ferguson (2011) use an oral history methodology to explore the intersection of
accounting employment and disability from the perspective of disabled accountants
themselves. This approach has the advantage of being able to capture “an increased
understanding and lifeline of the past and present” (Berg, 2007 p. 277, in Duff and
Ferguson, p. 81). Oral history “has democratized the study of the past by recording
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the experience of people who have been ‘hidden from history’ (Perks and Thomson,
1998, p. ix in Duff and Ferguson, p. 81). Accounting scholars have pursued oral
history to provide a record where no written record exists, recording views of those
otherwise left out of archives in order to “to give voice to the subordinated”
(Hammond and Sikka, 1996, p. 79). This is an essential objective: to give “‘voice’ to a
previously marginalised group” (Duff and Ferguson, p. 82).
In terms of the stories migrants tell, Harney (2011) similarly utilizes conversations
with African migrants in Naples, Italy to shed light on the absences and presences
and the hidden forms of accounting that these migrants engage in. Many migrants
live on the margins and work in the informal economy. It is through analysis of
personal stories of successes and failures that the richness and diversity of
migration accounts may be gleaned. Castles (2004) reminds us that:
“migrants are not just isolated individuals who react to market stimuli and
bureaucratic rules, but social beings who seek to achieve better outcomes for
themselves, their families and their communities through actively shaping
the migratory process” (Castles,2004, page 209).
Section 4: A Migrant’s Story
Given the perspectives we have gleaned so far, one of the more compelling ways to
“take account” of migration is the narrative of people’s lives. Financial statements,
risk forecasts, and annual reports may be ubiquitous but they are limiting,
restrictive, and subjective. Complete with charts, pictures, and letters from the
Board of Directors they provide particularly myopic accounts of people and
business, and we have illustrated the distorting nature of these images and
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appraisals. Similarly, official reports and documents about migration and the
movement of people, fail to shed light on what migration is really about and
“marginalizes social and cultural factors” amongst other factors (Papastergiades,
2000, page 33). To take a richer, fuller account of migration is to provide an account
of qualities of life, achievements, disappointments, and pathways. Telling one’s
story, one’s narrative, and one’s journey of migration is a powerful self-reflection for
rendering an account. We add to this stream of research by providing the following
tale of migration from two cities in two countries: from Antipolo, Philippines to San
Francisco, US.
In June 2011, Pulitzer Prize [footnote 2] winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas
provided an astonishingly revealing account of his status as an undocumented
immigrant in the very public domain of the New York Times Sunday magazine. Born
in Antipolo, Philippines, raised from age 12 in the United States, and subsequently a
journalist for The Washington Post and The Huffington Post, Vargas was unaware
until age 16 that his immigration status was invalid. Inspired to write his article and
disclose his “illegality” as a protest, he lamented the failure of the US Senate to pass
the “Dream Act”, a bill that would grant amnesty to people younger than 36 who
arrived in the United States as children, lived in the US for five years or more, and
currently attend college or serve in the military. Hoping to promote dialogue about
the United States' broken immigration system, he was willing to expose his status
and his story of struggle, painstaking work, and fear – to serve as an advocate. He
was quoted as saying "I’m an American; I just don’t have the right papers".
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The following is an excerpt of his story:
“My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant”
By Jose Antonio Vargas, June 22, 2011, NY Times Magazine
One August morning nearly two decades ago, my mother woke me and put me in a
cab. She handed me a jacket. “Baka malamig doon” were among the few words she
said. (“It might be cold there.”) When I arrived at the Philippines’ Ninoy Aquino
International Airport with her, my aunt and a family friend, I was introduced to a
man I’d never seen. They told me he was my uncle. He held my hand as I boarded
an airplane for the first time. It was 1993, and I was 12.
My mother wanted to give me a better life, so she sent me thousands of miles away
to live with her parents in America — my grandfather (Lolo in Tagalog) and
grandmother (Lola) in Mountain View, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area…
One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby D.M.V. office to get my
driver’s permit... But when I handed the clerk my green card as proof of U.S.
residency, she flipped it around, examining it. “This is fake,” she whispered. “Don’t
come back here again.”
Confused and scared, I pedaled home and confronted Lolo. I remember him sitting
in the garage, cutting coupons. I dropped my bike and ran over to him, showing him
the green card. “Peke ba ito?” I asked in Tagalog. (“Is this fake?”) My grandparents
were naturalized American citizens — he worked as a security guard, she as a food
server — and they had begun supporting my mother and me financially when I was
3, after my father’s wandering eye and inability to properly provide for us led to my
parents’ separation. Lolo was a proud man, and I saw the shame on his face as he
told me he purchased the card, along with other fake documents, for me. “Don’t
show it to other people,” he warned.
I decided then that I could never give anyone reason to doubt I was an American. I
convinced myself that if I worked enough, if I achieved enough, I would be
rewarded with citizenship. I felt I could earn it.
I’ve tried. Over the past 14 years, I’ve graduated from high school and college and
built a career as a journalist, interviewing some of the most famous people in the
country. On the surface, I’ve created a good life. I’ve lived the American dream.
But I am still an undocumented immigrant. And that means living a different kind
of reality. It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely
trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. It means keeping
my family photos in a shoebox rather than displaying them on shelves in my home,
so friends don’t ask about them. It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I
know are wrong and unlawful. And it has meant relying on a sort of 21st-century
underground railroad of supporters, people who took an interest in my future and
took risks for me.
Last year I read about four students who walked from Miami to Washington to
lobby for the Dream Act, a nearly decade-old immigration bill that would provide a
path to legal permanent residency for young people who have been educated in this
country. At the risk of deportation — the Obama administration has deported
almost 800,000 people in the last two years — they are speaking out. Their courage
has inspired me.
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There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.
We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for
your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write
news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I
think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country
doesn’t think of me as one of its own.
… From the moment I wrote my first article for the student paper, I convinced
myself that having my name in print — writing in English, interviewing Americans
— validated my presence here… After my encounter at the D.M.V. in 1997, I grew
more aware of anti-immigrant sentiments and stereotypes: they don’t want to
assimilate, they are a drain on society. They’re not talking about me, I would tell
myself. I have something to contribute.
…The “uncle” who brought me here turned out to be a coyote, not a relative, my
grandfather later explained. Lolo scraped together enough money — I eventually
learned it was $4,500, a huge sum for him — to pay him to smuggle me here under
a fake name and fake passport...
…[The] deceit never got easier. The more I did it, the more I felt like an impostor,
the more guilt I carried — and the more I worried that I would get caught. But I
kept doing it. I needed to live and survive on my own, and I decided this was the
way.
…While my classmates awaited their college acceptance letters, I hoped to get a
full-time job at The Mountain View Voice after graduation. It’s not that I didn’t
want to go to college, but I couldn’t apply for state and federal financial aid.
Without that, my family couldn’t afford to send me. …
Jim Strand, the venture capitalist who sponsored my scholarship, offered to pay for
an immigration lawyer.…But the meeting left me crushed. My only solution, the
lawyer said, was to go back to the Philippines and accept a 10-year ban before I
could apply to return legally.
If Rich was discouraged, he hid it well. “Put this problem on a shelf,” he told me.
“Compartmentalize it. Keep going.”
And I did.
… I convinced myself all would be O.K. if I lived up to the qualities of a “citizen”:
hard work, self-reliance, love of my country.
... The anxiety was nearly paralyzing. I decided I had to tell one of the higher-ups
about my situation.
…In the five years that followed, I did my best to “do enough.” I was promoted to
staff writer, reported on video-game culture, wrote a series on Washington’s
H.I.V./AIDS epidemic and covered the role of technology and social media in the
2008 presidential race. I visited the White House, where I interviewed senior aides
and covered a state dinner — and gave the Secret Service the Social Security
number I obtained with false documents.
…In April 2008, I was part of a Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s
coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings a year earlier. Lolo died a year earlier, so it
was Lola who called me the day of the announcement. The first thing she said was,
“Anong mangyayari kung malaman ng mga tao?” What will happen if people find
out?
21
I couldn’t say anything. After we got off the phone, I rushed to the bathroom on the
fourth floor of the newsroom, sat down on the toilet and cried. …The more I
achieved, the more scared and depressed I became. I was proud of my work, but
there was always a cloud hanging over it, over me…
I’m done running. I’m exhausted. I don’t want that life anymore.
So I’ve decided to come forward, own up to what I’ve done, and tell my story to the
best of my recollection…
It’s been almost 18 years since I’ve seen my mother. Early on, I was mad at her for
putting me in this position, and then mad at myself for being angry and ungrateful.
By the time I got to college, we rarely spoke by phone. It became too painful; after
a while it was easier to just send money to help support her and my two halfsiblings. My sister, almost 2 years old when I left, is almost 20 now. I’ve never met
my 14-year-old brother. I would love to see them.
Not long ago, I called my mother. I wanted to fill the gaps in my memory about that
August morning so many years ago. We had never discussed it. Part of me wanted
to shove the memory aside, but to write this article and face the facts of my life, I
needed more details. Did I cry? Did she? Did we kiss goodbye?
My mother told me I was excited about meeting a stewardess, about getting on a
plane. She also reminded me of the one piece of advice she gave me for blending in:
If anyone asked why I was coming to America, I should say I was going to
Disneyland.
This story provides a nuanced account of a migrant’s journey. We would argue it
presents a fuller account than conventionally defined “costs” and “benefits” of
migration. Whereas traditionally defined costs include transaction costs:
purchasing fake documents, payments for smuggling, the cost of education, etc.,
Vargas’ narrative discloses social and non-calculative costs: guilt, separation,
sacrifice, and pain. Significant transacted financial benefits include remittances sent
abroad to family, migrant earned income in the US, and corresponding multiplier
effects: tax revenues, financial support to the economy and to public programs. Nonconventional benefits include: unexpectedly forged friendships, courage, human
decency, honor and principles. Vargas’ very personal rendering allows us to reimagine and infer macro-economic and societal costs and benefits. His use of
accounting language in his exposé -- citizenship has to be earned; migrants take
22
risks – implies the power of accounting to tell the story. Most importantly, we get a
sense of the aspirations and capabilities underpinning his mobility (de Haas, 2011).
Revealed and Silenced Stories
We have previously referred to oral histories as an account of marginalized voices
and here we note that the above story, filled with struggle and sacrifice, is also the
voice of a migrant now possessing a privileged position of influence and power. He
is able to narrate his story and has the economically and socially privileged position
to publically voice it. Yet the hidden stories are more prevalent and ubiquitous: they
are the intricate and demanding ones confronting researchers in migration studies.
The international division of labor’s twists and turns increasingly create conflicts,
challenges and complexities within the migrant community. There is no single
category, class, race, or people of “migrant” and often no published voice. Whilst
migration polices have encouraged the highly skilled to be mobile, low skilled
workers and people fleeing persecution are excluded, through restrictive laws.
The accounts of these people who end up as the illegal immigrants chased by border
controls, exploited by employers, and undocumented by governments (Shelley,
2007) are often not told.
Spivak confronts migration inconsistencies and variances in post colonialism’s
urban and rural flows, and the significant category of the “subaltern” in these
movements (Spivak, 1995, 1996). Boundaries themselves are an invention of
colonial discourses and thus it becomes ever more complex in describing the
unequal and powerless “migrant” (Dhawan, 2007). Moreover, there is a fatal
23
paradox in the notion of ‘migrant-as-subaltern’. Spivak observes the very definition
of the subaltern suggests immobility. While “the colonial continuity of the politics of
migration in the European context and the experiences of racism and discrimination
that are part and parcel of a migrant’s everyday life are urgent issues that need to be
scandalized” (Dhawan, 2007), we also recognize there is a multitude of those who
are cut off from all means and potential of mobility. To ignore the rural and
indigenous subaltern today is to continue the imperialist project, as they are
increasingly the targets of new globalization: forming the basis of exploitation in the
arenas of bio piracy, human genome engineering, the targets of super-exploitation
through credit baiting, pharmaceutical dumping, and population control. “When we
are talking about subaltern isolation we are not talking some fuzzy hegemonic
identity, we are talking about the abstract structures of civil society to which the
subaltern has no access” (Dhawan, 2007, quoting Spivak 2003). Denied all access
and disconnected from mobility they are persons deprived of public voice; yet their
human capacities and inner desires are compelling and undeniable.
Section 5 Discussion and Conclusions
We have argued that taking a functionalist approach to the study of migration is
beset with problems. Economics and its numerical colleagues of accounting and
statistics do not tell the humane story of migration and only provide a partial
account. Consequently, as Papastergiades (2000) suggests “economic practices of
shifting labour-intensive production, and political barriers to immigration, will
neither totally direct nor block the flows of migration” (page 86).
24
If economic and social systems are suspect, what can quantification achieve? There
are no simple answers or easily recommended paths but instead a multiplicity of
ideas with consciousness and recognition of the politics involved. Advocating
accountability, critical research must unmask myths of migration discourse,
categorization, and measurements, and examine the socioeconomic impacts of
migration policies and conventional modeling and theories, as there are inevitable
links of accounting research and social justice.
Accounting’s silence regarding significant global consequences, such as
environmental degradation has been lamented: so too for accounting’s equivocation
regarding migration. Research and reports can provide information for
accountability, transparency, and advocacy. We recognize, however, there are
multifaceted humanitarian aims, conflicts, and contradictions, and the politics
behind the seemingly laudable goal of measuring the problem -- in order to identify
the best solutions – are contentious. How do we define “the problem”? Among the
dilemmas is that measuring restricts what is meant, can deny the significance of
underlying structural repressions, and erase that which we haven’t “seen” or
“identified”. We don’t disavow reports as unimportant – as they may lead to the
passing of important laws and protections – but we recognize their limitations and
imperfect interventions.
“It would also be naïve to assume that … indicators can capture all relevant
dimensions (e.g. the concepts of ‘power’, ‘exclusion’, ‘racism’, ‘discrimination’
or ‘migration policy’) … the ‘non-quantifiability’ of certain factors should not
be a reason to ignore them” (de Haas, 2011, p. 29-30).
25
Additional re-imagining needs to be done: “we don’t know how to talk about it in
moral sense but in economic terms” (Judt 2010, p. 34). Opportunity, safety,
creativity, education, and equality are fundamental human issues. Yet among the
justifications and rationalizing in the migrations report is: to enhance global
“competitiveness”, and to minimize the “colossal losses” to the economy. Such is the
discourse of our time.
We argue that critical accountants may contribute to migration debates, using
qualitative research methods and conducting in-depth interviews to trace and
expose the daily experiences of migrants’ lives. Our aim should be to tackle
questions such as, what are the experiences of different groups of migrants in their
new countries? What personal narratives do they recount? What economic activities
are they engaged in, how do they account for them, and how do they survive and
succeed in new economic environments? What are the aspirations and capabilities
that are drawn upon and utilised by migrants? Guided by the thoughtful reflections
of Adichie (2009) that there is “no single story”, we suggest that developing oral
histories of migration, alongside the technical accounting histories in order to
emphasize interrelationships provides one possible stream of such research. With
an abundance of narratives, images, hardships and triumphs to capture and record,
these stories need to be preserved and accounted for by the discipline providing
accounts and calculations of migration. Such a project would contribute to the genre
of Waring’s seminal work, If Women Counted (1988) disputing the UN’s exclusion of
26
“women’s work” and the resulting denial of access to political and economic power:
Waring’s insight in making the invisible visible. Presenting the different realities of
accounting’s technical practices versus the narratives of real lived experiences
would ensure that people are not written out of their own histories. These stories
would be contextualized within the political, social, and economic upheavals
surrounding migration policies, adding to the richness of the work, contributing to
our understanding of the world, and to the role of accounting practice within it.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The commanding influence of the book in opposing slavery does not deny the
numerous criticisms of the book including substantive stereotypes considered
disparaging and repugnant. Stowe’s writing and the political controversies of the
period cannot be elaborated here, but are acknowledged. The book is both flawed
and courageous and its generalized and problematic depictions have been justifiably
criticized. The plays stemming from the book varied tremendously in their
politics—some faithfully reflected Stowe's sentimentalized antislavery politics,
while others were even pro-slavery and many of the productions featured
demeaning racial caricatures. Although Stowe wrote of a serious, principled, and
wise black man, Uncle Tom, the minstrel musicals distorted much of the political
undertone of her writing, often portraying Tom as obsequious to whites and hence
the origins of the derogatory expression to “be an Uncle Tom”. Reynolds’ book
(2011) is an excellent historical assessment of these many contradictions and the
political controversies of the 19th and 20th century’s perspective on Stowe and Uncle
Tom’s Cabin.
[2] The Pulitzer Prize is a prestigious and coveted award in the US for achievements
in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition.
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