MIGRATION

Migration

Migration

Introduction

In the past 30 years, migration has emerged with greater strength throughout the world. In the traditional host societies such as Australia, Canada and the U.S., the volume of immigration has grown and its composition has shifted from the historically dominant source Europe to Asia, Africa and Latin America. In Europe, meanwhile, countries that for centuries had sent migrants became suddenly immigrants in host societies. After 1945, virtually all Western European countries began to attract a significant number of foreign workers. While emigration was initially absorbed from the southern European states in the late sixties were the majority they come from developing countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

Most of the world's developed countries have become multi-ethnic societies, and those who have not yet reached such a character is moving decisively in this direction. The emergence of international migration as a basic structural feature of almost all industrialized states testifies to the strength and consistency of the underlying forces. Still, the theoretical basis for understanding these forces is rather weak. The recent "boom" has caught unprepared migration to both citizens and leaders and demographers and popular thinking when dealing with international migration remains stuck on the concepts, models and assumptions of the nineteenth century (Berstein, 2008, p22).

Currently there is no single coherent theory of international migration, but only a fragmented set of theories that have been developed in isolation from each other and sometimes but not always segmented by the limits of each discipline. The patterns and trends in immigration, however, suggest that a full understanding of international migration processes can not be based on the tools of one discipline, or focus on a single level of analysis. On the contrary, complex and multifaceted nature requires a sophisticated theory that incorporates a variety of assumptions, levels and perspectives (Campbell 2000, p48).

The purpose of this paper is to explain and integrate the major contemporary theories of international migration. We begin by examining the models for the initiation of the international movement and then consider the theories that account for why the international flows have persisted across space and time. Before priori favor one theory over any other, we seek to understand each model in its own terms to illuminate key issues and assumptions. Only after considering each theory separately compare and contrast the different conceptual frameworks to reveal the logical inconsistencies and areas of substantive disagreement. Assuming this exercise, we aim to provide the basis for evaluating the models empirically, and provide a foundation from which to build a comprehensive and accurate theory of international migration in the twentieth century.

The beginnings of international migration

It has proposed a wide range of theoretical models to explain why the beginnings of international migration, and though each is ultimately explain the same thing, using postures, concepts and frameworks are radically different. A "neoclassical economic approach" about differences in wages and working conditions between states, as well as migration costs, these movements generally conceived as ...