Douglas S. Massey. “Why Does Immigration Occur? A Theoretical Synthesis.”

a.       Divides immigration into four periods: mercantile period (1500-1800) dominated by European colonizers; industrial period (1800-1920) dominated by Europeans seeking new lives in the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand; period of limited migration (1920-1960) when restrictive laws, world wars, and economic depressions halted population movements; and the postindustrial period (1960s onward), when migration became globalized and migrants shifted from Europeans to people from the developing world

b.      THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION

                                                  i.      Neoclassical economics uses both macroeconomic and microeconomic models to explain the reasons for immigration

1.      Macroeconomic model says international migration is caused by geographic differences in the supply of and demand for labor; workers from countries with large populations but low wages will move to countries with small populations and high wages

2.      Microeconomic model says individual rational actors decide to migrate because a cost-benefit calculation leads them to expect a positive net return from migrating

                                                ii.      The “new economics of migration” says that migration decisions are made by actors within larger units of interrelated people (families, households, or entire communities) in which people act collectively to maximize income, minimize risks to income, maximize status, and overcome local market failures

                                              iii.      Segmented labor market theory says that international migration is caused by a permanent labor demand that is inherent in the economic structure of developed nations, and thus is caused by “pull” factors in the receiving countries rather than “push” factors from home countries

1.      Demand for inexpensive labor is due to receiving countries’ structural inflation (the need to keep wages low at the bottom levels of society), social constraints within occupational hierarchies (which benefit from workers at the lowest levels who view employment only as a means to an end), the duality of labor and capital (capital-intensive production is stable while labor-intensive production is fluctuating), and changing sociodemographic trends resulting in a limited supply of entry-level native workers (rise in divorce rates, decline in birth rate, female workforce engagement, and extension of formal education)

                                              iv.      World systems theory seeks to explain international migration as a structural consequence of the expansion of markets within a global political hierarchy composed of a “core,” “periphery,” and “semiperiphery”

1.      The penetration of capitalist economic relations into noncapitalist or precapitalist societies creates a mobile population prone to migrate, as capitalists consolidate landholding and mechanize production, reducing the jobs available

2.      Globalization, as firms from the core enter the periphery and semiperiphery for exploitation, creates material, military, and ideological links to the places where the capital originates

                                                v.      Social capital theory explains that having a migrant in one’s social network transforms that tie into a resource that can be used to gain access to foreign employment, so that each instance of migration creates social capital among the people to whom that migrant is connected, increasing their odds of migrating

1.      The first people to migrate have the highest costs to resettlement, as they have no social ties abroad they can draw on; after they have left, however, the costs are substantially lower for the friends and family left behind

                                              vi.      Cumulative causation argues that each act of migration makes additional movement progressively more likely

1.      This occurs through the expansion of networks, the distribution of income, the distribution of land, the organization of agriculture, culture, the regional distribution of human capital, the social meaning of work, and the structure of production

c.       A SYNTHETIC THEORETICAL ACCOUNT

                                                  i.      Because each of these theories explains a different aspect of migration flows, they can be synthesized into one grand theory of migration

1.      Neoclassical model says that migration from developing countries occurs as traditional livelihoods vanish, so people look for new ways to earn money on the national and international labor market

2.      However, international wage differentials are not the only factor motivating people to migrate; the new economic theory says that households struggling to cope with these changes use international migration as a means of overcoming local market failures

3.      In the wealthy countries, jobs in the secondary sector are shunned by native workers because of their low pay, poor stability, and few opportunities for advancement; segmented labor market theory says that this creates a structural demand for immigrant labor

4.      Links of transportation and communication, as well as politics and culture, make the international movement of people possible as core capitalist nations look for opportunities in the developing periphery and semi-periphery; these foreign entanglements create links and obligations that pave the way for migrants and refugees in the world systems theory

5.      Labor recruitment eventually becomes superfluous as immigration tends to continue through the growth of migrant networks according to social capital theory; the concentration of immigrants in certain destinations channels further immigrants into the same ethnic enclaves, facilitating their arrival and incorporation

6.      The spread of migratory behavior within sending communities sets off structural changes, shifting distributions of income and status and modifying local cultures in ways that promote additional international movement in a self-perpetuating cycle, according to the theory of cumulative causation

d.      MIGRATION THEORY RECONSIDERED

                                                  i.      World systems theory, segmented labor market theory, and neoclassical macroeconomic theory offer explanations for why developed countries attract immigrants

                                                ii.      Social capital theory and world systems theory explain how structural links emerge to connect areas of origin and destination

                                              iii.      Neoclassical economics and the new economics of labor migration deal with the motivations of the people who become international migrants

                                              iv.      The theory of cumulative causation describes how international migration promotes changes in personal motivations and origin, destination, and intervening structures to give immigration a self-perpetuating, dynamic character

                                                v.      This seemingly complete theoretical account neglects to consider the impact of the state and state policies in both sending and receiving countries, and their impact on both push and pull factors to migration