The story so far
Globalisation
How fast will the global economy grow
The story so far
What will shape the next 20 years?f
The story so far
Material originated: 2007/05/16
Material last updated: 2007/28/09
Summary:
People are on the move. Huge numbers have been flowing into the towns.To give some idea of the scale, cities contained 750 million people – nearly 30% of the world’s population – in 1950. Today the total is over three billion, with projected growth to five billion by 2030. By then, 60% of the world will live in cities.1'World Urbanization Prospects: The 2003 Revision', United Nations Population Division, 2004, http://www.un.org. Migration within countries is mostly responsible.
Much smaller in total, but still highly significant, has been the expansion of international migration, our focus. According to the UN, the number of international migrants leapt from 75 million in 1965, to 175 million in 2000 and to 191 million in 2005.
These were people living outside their country of birth or citizenship for 12 months or more.2Trends in Total Migration Stock: The 2005 Revision, New York: United Nations, 2006, p. 1. These numbers have been boosted by the 27 million or more people in the former Soviet Union who were counted as internal migrants in the 1980s, but became classified as international migrants after the break-up of the USSR. Though just 3.0% of the global population, they are equivalent in size to the fifth most populous country in the world.3''Global Estimates and Trends', http://www.iom.int (downloaded March 2007).
They include people with permission to work, their families, refugees (7% of the world's international migrants)4Trends in Total Migration Stock: The 2005 Revision, New York: United Nations, 2006, p. 2. and those who are unauthorised. Migration continues to polarise between people with high and low skills.
The nature of international migration has been changing – for example:5Figures in this section are taken from Trends in Total Migration Stock: The 2005 Revision, New York: United Nations, 2006, pp. 1-3.
Migration from the global South to the North has been growing fast. Fifty-seven percent of all migrants lived in less developed regions in 1960: in 2005 just 37% did so. Europe (64 million) had the largest number of immigrants in 2005, followed by Asia (53 million) and North American (44 million).
More countries now host a significant number of migrants. Between 1960 and 2005, countries with more than half a million immigrants more than doubled – from 30 to 64. With 38 million in 2005, the United States has the largest number.
Women migrants to the rich world have been increasing faster than men. In 2005, women comprised half of all international migrants, up from 47% in 1960. This growth was larger in the developed than developing world, where the proportion remained at 46%.
Women are generally concentrated in services and welfare. They only tend to be among the more skilled if migration policies are developed for their specific occupation, like nursing.6World Migration 2005, Geneva: International Organization for Migration, 2005, p. 15.
GLIMPSES at a glance
» GLIMPSES at a glance gives you an overview of the topics in GLIMPSES, with links to whole sections and individual paragraphs.
The expansion of the EU has begun to encourage the greater movement of people from Eastern Europe. Previously classed as international migrants, they now have automatic rights of entry to some EU states; other states will open their borders in the next few years.
Net migration to Britain from the eight countries that joined the EU in 2004 totalled up to half a million between May 2004 and September 2006. As many as half may have returned home by the end of that period.7David G. Blanchflower, Jumana Saleheen & Chris Shadforth, 'The Impact of the Recent Migration from Eastern Europe on the UK Economy', January 2007, pp. 3-11, http://www.bankofengland.co.uk.
Coming on top of migration from outside Europe, arrivals from poorer states within the EU are creating a British society that is 'super-diverse'.8Steven Vertovec, 'The emergence of super-diversity in Britain', Working Paper No. 25, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford, 2006.
The growth of short-term migration has been especially important. More people are moving temporarily, remaining for a while and then returning home.
They include a growing number of students who stay on in employment, before returning to their country of origin. Temporary migration by very skilled people has become highly significant.
A study of Polish immigrants in London found that many did not intend to remain permanently, unlike large numbers of Eastern European refugees after the Second World War. Almost a quarter were using their earnings to buy a property in Poland.
Rather than migration being linear (from Poland to London), many were in a circular movement from Poland to London and back again. Poles would come to London, visit home periodically and then return to Poland.
They would tell their friends at home about the opportunities and give them advice. When they settled back in Poland, a friend or relative would take their place.9John Eade, Stephen Drinkwater & Michael P. Garapich, 'Class & Ethnicity – Polish Migrants in London', Research Report for the ESRC, Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism, University of Surrey, http://www.surrey.ac.uk (accessed 15 March 2007). The study was undertaken in 2005-06.
GLIMPSES is supported by the Economic and Social Research Council.
Click » here for more about the Tomorrow Project's partnership with the ESRC.
Among care workers, there is a clear chain of migration. A nanny cares for the child of a rich country's family for two or three years. Back home, her children are looked after by a paid mother, whose own children are cared for by an aunt or the eldest daughter.
A 'globalisation of love' takes place. The rich family has maternal abundance – a full-time nanny, plus the biological mother when she returns from her job.
Children at the other end of the chain experience maternal deprivation. They don't see their mother for long periods, while family members have to do the extra work.10Nicola Yeates, 'Global care chains: a critical introduction', Global Migration Perspectives, 44, Global Commission on International Migration, 2005, p. 7.
Similar dynamics occur in other forms of care.
Remittances are now a major component of the global economy. The World Bank has produced astonishing figures. It estimates that migrants sent home officially more than $167 billion to their families in developing countries in 2005, approaching double the amount 5 years before.
This was more than twice the level of international aid. If you add in remittances through informal channels (such as relatives taking money home in cash), the total could be 50% higher.
Remittances have become the largest source of external capital in 36 developing countries.11Global Economic Prospects 2006: Economic Implications of Remittances and Migration, Washington: World Bank, 2006, pp. 86-89. Some 500 million people – 8% of the entire world population – receive remittances.12Kathleen Newland, 'A New Surge of Interest in Migration and Development', Migration Policy Institute, 1 February 2007, http://www.migrationinformation.org.
The Tomorrow Bulletin
Click » here to see our latest Bulletin.
Alongside these flows of money are 'social remittances' – 'the ideas, behaviours, identities and social capital that migrants export to their home communities. They may include ideas about democracy, health, gender, equality, human rights and community organisation.'13Peggy Levitt & Ninna Nyberg Sorenson, 'The transnational turn in migration studies', Global Migration Perspectives, 6, Global Commission on International Migration, 2004, p. 8.
These social remittances can be a force for democracy and accountability. But they may also lead to greater materialism and individualism, which can undermine social cohesion.
Migrants often live in two interlinked worlds – they have a foot in their host country but another back home. It is not enough to adopt a nation state view and see migrants as people who either leave your country or arrive. Migration should be seen in the context of global connectedness.
Using improved communications, money and information flow constantly between immigrants and their families and friends at home – and so do people: a migrant may return home for Christmas or be visited by her brother.
Having a foot in different worlds helps migrants to see diversity as normal. As nurses, builders or waiters they learn to provide a service to people who are very different to them.
American-speaking Filipina nurses recruited to Britain's health service in 2002 were subjected to hours of Coronation Street, a TV soap, so that they could learn that when a patient said they wanted 'to spend a penny', they didn't mean money.14Robin Cohen, Migration and its Enemies, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006, p. 192.
People in host countries become more used to diversity, too. Subtly, this encourages a 'cosmopolitan' view that we are all part of a worldwide community, in which diversity is OK. Migration draws the world together.
Migration illustrates the tensions between globalisation and nation states. Globalisation involves the increasingly open flow of goods and capital, the ever expanding movement of people on holiday or doing business, and instant communication between individuals on different sides of the world.
As countries open up their borders, it is natural that more people should want to live and work abroad. Migrants, gangmasters, traffickers, many employers and states exporting migrants (and enjoying their remittances) now have a stake in migration.
We want to hear from you
Email your comments to GLIMPSES@btinternet.com.
On the other side are electorates and some politicians in host countries who want to close borders and make it harder for new arrivals to enter. They are worried about:
over-crowding;
threats to national identity;
fears that local people will lose their jobs.
The clash between these two sets of interests will determine the future course of international migration.
As the desire to limit migration has come head-to-head with the desire of millions to move, unauthorised immigration has thrived. Between 300,000 and 1 million illegal migrants enter the United States from Mexico each year. A possible 800,000 enter 'fortress' Europe.15Philippe Legrain, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, London: Little, Brown, 2006, pp. 32, 35. In recent years Australia, Denmark and many other host countries have tightened immigration controls to reassure voters.
But as a study of German immigration asked,
'How can one hope to control the approximately 66 million annual visitors, 20 million automobiles and 2 million heavy trucks that cross Bavaria's borders, thoroughly checking everyone's identity papers, without the border traffic coming to a complete standstill? Even forgery-resistant identity cards with biometric data are only a useful means of hindering unauthorised entry if potential fraud can be checked.'16Jorg Alt, 'Life in the world of shadows: the problem of illegal migration', Global Migration Perspectives, 41, Global Commission on International Migration, 2005, p. 12.
How will tensions over migration be resolved? Will ever more ingenious attempts be made to keep immigrants out? Or will 'managed migration' allow more people to move temporarily, provided they meet an economic need?
1 'World Urbanization Prospects: The 2003 Revision', United Nations Population Division, 2004, http://www.un.org.
2 Trends in Total Migration Stock: The 2005 Revision, New York: United Nations, 2006, p. 1. These numbers have been boosted by the 27 million or more people in the former Soviet Union who were counted as internal migrants in the 1980s, but became classified as international migrants after the break-up of the USSR.
3 ''Global Estimates and Trends', http://www.iom.int (downloaded March 2007).
4 Trends in Total Migration Stock: The 2005 Revision, New York: United Nations, 2006, p. 2.
5 Figures in this section are taken from Trends in Total Migration Stock: The 2005 Revision, New York: United Nations, 2006, pp. 1-3.
6 World Migration 2005, Geneva: International Organization for Migration, 2005, p. 15.
7 David G. Blanchflower, Jumana Saleheen & Chris Shadforth, 'The Impact of the Recent Migration from Eastern Europe on the UK Economy', January 2007, pp. 3-11, http://www.bankofengland.co.uk.
8 Steven Vertovec, 'The emergence of super-diversity in Britain', Working Paper No. 25, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford, 2006.
9 John Eade, Stephen Drinkwater & Michael P. Garapich, 'Class & Ethnicity – Polish Migrants in London', Research Report for the ESRC, Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism, University of Surrey, http://www.surrey.ac.uk (accessed 15 March 2007). The study was undertaken in 2005-06.
10 Nicola Yeates, 'Global care chains: a critical introduction', Global Migration Perspectives, 44, Global Commission on International Migration, 2005, p. 7.
11 Global Economic Prospects 2006: Economic Implications of Remittances and Migration, Washington: World Bank, 2006, pp. 86-89.
12 Kathleen Newland, 'A New Surge of Interest in Migration and Development', Migration Policy Institute, 1 February 2007, http://www.migrationinformation.org.
13 Peggy Levitt & Ninna Nyberg Sorenson, 'The transnational turn in migration studies', Global Migration Perspectives, 6, Global Commission on International Migration, 2004, p. 8.
14 Robin Cohen, Migration and its Enemies, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006, p. 192.
15 Philippe Legrain, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, London: Little, Brown, 2006, pp. 32, 35.
16 Jorg Alt, 'Life in the world of shadows: the problem of illegal migration', Global Migration Perspectives, 41, Global Commission on International Migration, 2005, p. 12.
© 2005 The Tomorrow Project