Beyond Push and Pull Factors

Each migrant rational human being choosing
optimum combination of wage rates, job
security, and costs of travel (human capital
approach series of investments in education,
skills, material cost of traveling, maintenance
while looking for work, learning new
language/culture, difficulty in experiencing
new labor market, psychological costs cutting
old ties, marginal analysis, weighing costs
and rewards).

Differentials on wages and employment
conditions between countries and on migrant
costs, individual decision to maximize
income. International movement does not
occur in absence of differences in
earnings/and or employment rates between
states. Migration occurs until expected
earnings have been equalized internationally.

Demand of Western European countries for
foreign migrant workers; if what counted
were wage differentials, then poorest would
want to move first, evidence from around
world doesn’t support this;

New Economic of Migration- migration
decisions are not made by isolated
individuals but by larger units of related
people-typically families or households,
people act collectively to maximize expected
income, and minimize risks and loosen
constraints associated with variety of market
failures, apart from those in the labor market.

While some families can be assigned
economic activities in the local economy,
others may be sent to work in foreign labor
markets where wages and employment
conditions are negatively/weakly correlated
with those in the local area. In event that
local conditions deteriorate, household can
rely on migrant remittances for support.

In developed states, risks to household
income are generally minimized through
private insurance markets or government
programs, but in developing states
institutional mechanisms for managing risk
are imperfect, absent, or inaccessible to poor
families, giving them incentives to diversify
risks through migration.

New economic theorists argue that
households send workers abroad not to
improve income in absolute terms, but also
to increase income relative to other
households, and reduce deprivation
compared with some reference group.
Market failures that constrain local income
opportunities for poor households may also
increase the attractiveness of migration as an
avenue for effecting gains in relative income.

Assumptions of new economic theory- wage
differentials is not a necessary condition for
IM to occur, households may have strong
incentives to diversity risks through
transnational movement even in the absence
of wage differentials. For example, if a
poor’s family incomes stays the same as
another families rises, they will experience
greater relative deprivation.

Intl Migration and local
employment/production are not mutually
exclusive possibilities, there are strong
incentives for households to engage in both
migration and local activities, an increase in
returns to local economic activities may
heighten the attractiveness of migration as a
means of overcoming capital and risk
constraints on investing in those activities.

Conclusion: International migration has little
to do with wage rates or employment
differentials between states; it follows from
the dynamics of market creation and the
structure of the global economy.
International migration not linked to
bifurcation of the labor market within
particular national economies, but to the
structure of the world market that has
developed since the [long] sixteenth century.

Driven by higher profits and greater wealth
owners and managers enter poor countries in
search of land, raw materials, labor, and new
consumer markets. In the past, market
penetration was assisted by colonial regimes
that administered poor regions for the benefit
of economic interests in colonizing societies.
Labor within peripheral regions come under
the influence and control of markets,
migration flows are inevitably generated.

Land- the substitution of cash crops for staples
undermines traditional social and economic relations
based on subsistence. And the use of modern
inputs(e.g. fertilizers, pesticides) produce high crop
yields at low unit prices, driving small, non-capitalist
farmers out of local markets. These forces help to
create a mobile labor force displaced from the land
with a weakened attached to local agrarian
communities. Raw materials- The offer of wages to
former peasants undermines traditional forms of
social and economic org based on systems of
reciprocity and fixed role relations and creates
incipient labor markets based on new conceptions of
individualism, private gain, and social change,
promoting geographic mobility of labor.

Labor- firms from intl states establish assembly
plants that take advantage of low wage rates,
within special export-processing zones created
by sympathetic governments. Demand for
factory workers strengthens local labor markets
while deteriorating traditional productive
relations. Feminization of workplace limits
opportunities for men. Foreign owned factories
undermine peasant economy by producing goods
that compete with locally made goods,
feminizing the workplace,

Women are socialized for industrial work and
modern consumption but without being able
to generate income capable of meeting those
needs. The result is the creation of a
population that is socially and economically
uprooted and prone to migration. Some
migrate to the cities, others are drawn abroad
since globalization creates material and
ideological links to the place where capital
originates.

Material Links- Because investment and
globalization are accompanied by the build-up of
a transportation and communication
infrastructure, the IM of labor generally follows
the international movement of goods and capital
Ideological links- Ties with colonial past, Indians
and Pakistanis learn English, take British-style
degrees; or w/out colonial past the influence of
economic penetration, Mexicans studying at U.S.
universities speak English, and follow American
consumer styles, reinforced by mass
communication , TV programming;

Global cities- Urban centers in which banking,
finance, administration, professional services,
and high-tech production are concentrated. In
the United States, global cities include NY,
Chicago, LA, and Miami. In Europe they include
London, Paris, Frankfurt, and Milan. Within these
global cities, a great deal of wealth and a highly
educated workforce are concentrated and strong
demand for unskilled labor(busboys, gardeners,
waiters, hotel workers, domestic servants)

At same time, shifting of heavy industrial
production overseas; the growth of high tech
manufacturing in electronics, computers, and
telecommunications; expansion of service sectors
like health and education create a bifurcated
labor market, with strong demands at the upper
and lower ends but not in the middle; IM is a
natural consequence of capitalist market
formation in the developing world; the
penetration of the global economy into
peripheral regions is the catalyst for international
movement