Migration is the Inevitable Outcome of Globalisation - Case Study Example

MIGRATION IS THE INEVITABLE OUTCOME OF GLOBALISATION Department 3 901 words 0 MIGRATION IS THE INEVITABLE OUTCOME OF GLOBALISATION Globalisation of the world economy has been changing both the nature as well as the volume of migration in the world. However, migration mostly involves the movement of people from less developed countries to more developed countries. Although the most significant driver to the changes in migration is the globalisation of the world economy, demographic evolutions in the countries receiving immigrants play a significant role. Waning fertility coupled with aging population force most of the countries industrially advanced to depend on immigrants for expansion in both labour force as well as population. However, the demand is mostly for the highly learned individuals rather than unskilled and semi skilled workers. Globalization produces opposing tendencies allowing highly skilled individuals to migrate while at the same time displacing the unskilled labourers in the traditional countries. 1.1 Necessity of Migration in Globalisation With the process of globalisation, countries and regions tend to increasingly, become interdependent as well as more integrated. However, the major effects of globalisation are in the manner countries and regions relate economically. Globalisation of the world economy entails four significant elements. The first one being the expansion of digital technology as well as communication that continues to change the nature, effectiveness and the organisation of each factor of production as well as distribution of goods and services. Digitalisation of technology has accelerated the pace of automating the production activities, which continues to reduce the demand for unskilled workers and increase that of highly skilled professionals. With the process of globalisation, corporate firms are capable of localising their economic activities in various countries or regions around the world with the aim of benefiting from the supply of labour and conditions of the market (Hatton & Jeffrey 2002)1. Concurrently, digitalization of the technology as well as transnational business structures and networks enables firms to be capable of localising their financial activities in metropolis centres. In other words, free trade that comes because of globalisation enables business organizations to widen their operations and expand their market due to the reduction in trade restrictions and the assimilation of the different economies into a single worldwide structure of liberated trade. Therefore, globalisation of the economy that prospers on advancement of digital technology facilitates the global growth of corporate firms by empowering them to optimize their activities as well as accumulation in the world market. The same effect of promoting dispersion of economic activities also shapes the movement of people since people will move to where companies are establishing themselves to get employment. Conclusively, expansion of business activities and deregulation of business activities means more migration of people (Czaika & Haas 2013)2. Secondly, the speedy expansion of the market and trade in the world prompts both national and regional economies to remove the trade restrictions by combining international trading regions to obtain a bigger market share in the world. The formation of the North America Free Trade Agreement, the European Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations among others all have the objective of promoting free trade amongst the nations in the given region. In addition, the formation of the World Trade Organisation in 1995 by the one hundred and twenty eight nations of the general agreement on trade and tariffs found commitment in the enhancement of free trade through the establishment of a common framework that all members must obey. Therefore, globalisation of the economy does not only expand the financial market but also expand a common structure of unrestricted trade whose goal is to incorporate peripheral areas to one system of global economy not hampered by national or regional boundaries. This in turn eases migration of people between nations or regions (Kahanec & Zimmermann 2008)3. Thirdly, the assimilation process also allows for easier flow of products, services, raw materials, capital as well as people across the boundaries of nations. The expansion of capitalism and globalisation of the economy promotes free movement of workers. The free movement of people sees connection with the idea of unregulated trade, in which investment, import, export, capital as well as information can move and carry out operations in a comparatively unregulated manner through a universal trading region or a lump of trading partners. Among the consequences of globalisation, is the softening of the national and regional boundaries by making international markets domestic and assimilating them in the production, supply, distribution as well as consumption processes. This implies that growth of the business market coupled with the assimilation of trade in the world will inevitably cause an increase in the mass of migration of humans (Kahanec & Zimmermann 2008). The observed increase in human migration is not just from less developed countries to more developed countries but also within assimilated business zones. A good example is that since the establishment of the European Union since 1999, it continued to insist on the principle of freedom of movement of people within the assimilated community of Europe. However, the earlier principle of opening labour markets of Europe to migrant labourers as well as their relatives extended to incorporate all classes of citizens coming from the European Union. To ease the movement of people inside the European member countries, the policy of joint recognition of the professional aptitude acquired more significance to enable qualified people to work in any given member country. The United States of America, Mexico and Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in the year 1994. The agreement had the same objective as the European Union of allowing their citizens to work in any of the member countries. For example, the United States came up with the TN visa that allows Canadian citizens who have received training in about sixty four professional classes to work freely in the United States on yearly basis but could be renewed as many times as the holder wishes. Therefore, globalisation of the economy eliminates most of the barriers that tend to discourage people from migrating allowing those with high professional capabilities to move from one nation to another to look for greener employment opportunities (Kahanec & Zimmermann 2008). In addition, because globalisation of the economy grows because of advancement in information technology, there is very stiff competition among the various players in the industry to advance their technology to maintain their growth in the future. New economy describes the inevitable outlook of the world business in which the countries that heavily venture in information technology have a better position of achieving economic growth through the accumulation of wealth. Consequently, globalisation of the economy has enhanced the demand for innovation in the production and provision of goods and services that in turn has increased the competition for skilled labour for corporate firms. In turn, the increased demand for skilled labour provokes migration of these skilled personnel from one country to another in search for better terms of employment (Olwig & Ninna 2003)4. The dwindling fertility coupled with aging populations in most developed countries continue to force these nations to depend on international migrants as a means of supplying labour and growing the population. The rate of fertility in a country and the degree of economic development usually pull in different direction. This means that those regions that are most developed have the lowest fertility rates while those that are least developed have the highest fertility rates. This means that there is going to be surplus population in the least developed countries and a deficiency in the most developed countries. To strike a balance in the population means that people have to migrate from the region where they are more to the region where the population is low because there is going to be more employment opportunities (Li 2008). Among the most developed countries such as Canada, the rate of fertility has been dwindling since the 1960s to an extent that these countries lack the natural capacity of replacing their populace. According to demographic experts, an overall fertility rate of less than 2.2 means that the country is not capable of replacing its population through natural means. In the year 2005, countries like the United States of America, New Zealand as well as Ireland had a lower fertility rate below 2.2 meaning that their populations cannot match the growing demand for labour due to expansion in business activities brought about by expanding market because of globalisation hence the need for migrants from other nations (Li 2008)5. Apart from dwindling fertility rate, the observable change in these developed countries is the aging population coupled by a reduction in the portion of population that is below fifteen years of age. The youth population continues to decline while the population of the elderly continues to increase. The populations of people who are above sixty-five years of age continue to dominate the population meaning that after some time the population of people who are within the profitable working bracket will be small. When this happens for a long period then the working population will finally be incapable of supporting the system of tax to fund the health program that relies on public revenue as well as the financial security program. Equally, there is going to be a significant increase in the cost of maintaining these programs since they have to serve an increasing number of consumers because of the growing population of the elderly people who mostly rely on these programs. For the country to escape from all these problems it has to resolve into allowing foreign immigrants to come into the country and fill these gaps. This also explains why migration in the modern world characterized by globalisation of the economy is inevitable. Every country in the modern world is a victim of one of the two effects. Either the country will be experiencing a surplus population necessitating the need for exporting its labour or it is experiencing a deficit necessitating the need of importing labour to correct the deficit (Li 2008). 1.2 The migration of south Asians to Britain The founding of trading centres in India by Britain and that of the British East India company in the 1600s led to the start of an everlasting political as well as cultural relations between the United Kingdom and the South Asian region, which constitutes countries like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. This started after the annexation of the region by the British in the middle portion of the nineteenth century where British rule continued until in the late 1947 following the partitioning of India and Pakistan (Parekh, Singh & Vertovec 2003). However, apart from those who travelled from the United Kingdom to the Indian region, to fill administrative posts and conduct business activities in the nineteenth century there were many students, scholars, politicians, seamen, soldiers and servants who were moving from India to Britain. The area around the docks of London saw many lascars from Indian, Pakistan as well as from Bangladesh. Having abandoned their ships, a portion of them established settlements and married the indigenous women while some continued working between India and Britain. Some of the Bangladesh community living in Hamlets in Britain originates from this oceangoing community (Parekh, Singh & Vertovec 2003)6. By the year 1932 the number of South Asians living in Britain had reached seven thousand people but the figure increased significantly after the end of the second world war in 1945 when both highly skilled and semi skilled workers from the South Asian region were moving to Britain in search for employment opportunities. The growth of many industries in Britain provided employment for these immigrants and by the year 1961, the male population had reached ten thousand. The commonwealth act in 1962 shaped the mode of migration and this saw many women and children joining the male population in Britain, which finally changed the appearance of the South Asian community in Britain. New business enterprises, cultural as well as religious associations and indigenous services evolved. In addition, in the early 1960s and 1970s there was massive migration of South Asians from the East African countries like Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania that upon gaining independence they came up with policies that gave native Africans priority over others which caused significant frustration to the Indian community (Peach 2006)7. The 2001 census in the United Kingdom showed that about four percent of the population comprised of the South Asian community. 1.3 European migration from postcolonial countries Europe remained as the most imperative origin of migrants throughout the world up to the middle of the 20th century. Immigration from other parts of the world began acquiring significance in the late 1950s where the process of decolonization moved together with immigration, mostly from the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands and finally Portugal. Many civil servants who had been serving the colonial government, as well as soldiers and settlers started emigrating from the former colonies back to their mother countries because of the end of colonial rule. The migration in some cases was part of an agreement between the newly established governments and the former colonial governments (Schmelz 2008). In addition, many of the natives of the former colonies were also migrating to the mother countries from Europe. Many South Asians, Caribbeans immigrated to the United Kingdom while Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Vietnamese as well as many people from West Africa were migrating to France. Migrations to the Netherlands mostly came from Surinam, Indonesia as well as the Netherlands Antilles. In the 1970s Mozambicans, Angolans and Cape Verdeans were arriving in large numbers in Portugal. Many of these immigrants were looking for both employment and educational opportunities. Others were running away from political aggressions as well as civil wars that raged their countries after independence. This led to the formation of new minority communities in their earlier colonial nations, which describe the current image of the European metropolitan areas. However, migration from the former German colonies remained very low. Mostly, colonial migration to Germany came because of education for people as well as employment. Initially, Africans worked as performers, artists as well as linguists and it was very difficult to acquire German citizenship. Many of the immigrants suffered heavily during the Nazi rule with some subjected to sterilization while others expelled to live in camps with some sustaining permanent damages (Schmelz 2008)8. There are differences in the manner these former colonial powers dealt with migration from their former colonies. Netherlands and France described as hybrid, accepted labourers both during the colonial and postcolonial times while Belgium developed strict regulations to control postcolonial migration. Belgium struggled to allow migration of people from the republic of Congo after gaining independence but employment opportunities in the 1960s in the country fall in the hands of the citizens of Turkey and Morocco. Belgium needed them to cater for the labour deficit in her industries. In the case of the United Kingdom, most of the labourers used to fill the labour gaps in her industries migrated from her former colonies with the majority of them coming from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the other South Asian nations colonized by Britain. In the modern European immigration nations like Spain and Portugal, immigrants from the former colonies receive high recognition. The majority of these immigrants emigrated in the 1980s from the former colonies in the Latin America like Brazil as well as from African countries. Mostly, the reasons for migration are to secure better employment opportunities or education (Schmelz 2008). 1.4 How arranged marriage has effected globalization of migration The origin of all migration activities in the world lie within the family matters. In most cases, the life of the family sees modification to align with worldwide practices. However, it is possible to approach changes in family life as well as household institutes through budget management, residential arrangements and multinational reproduction of culture. Long distance fatherhood and motherhood connecting rupturing families as well as homes dispersed geographically, in a universal feature that characterizes most of the current migration experience. Within these detached family establishments, regardless of the origins of culture, the global motherhood amongst the female emigrants re-arranges the relationships between the mother and the child and needs restructuring the real meaning of motherhood. Those re-arrangements cause significant anxieties and financial drivers as well as complicated discussions with the ones who provide care who have to replace the secluded parents (Vertovec 2004). In reality, wok shifting and travelling arrangements in the modern world requires that migrating parents have to exchange the periods of migration to make sure that as one parent travel the other one remains home to look after the children. The other challenge, defined as the worldwide care chain is when a woman from a developing country migrates to another country to look after children of other people while acquiring income to support her children and family in the country of origin. This woman will in turn need the service of another woman to take care of her children. This necessitates the development of new forms of managing and surviving the mixed incentives. These patterns entrap the anxiety of parents over the welfare of their children with the interest of enhancing their future (Griffiths 2014). The day-to-day routines of activities as well as practices inside global families have open significance in gender relationships. These families describe how culturally notions of gender work within constituted as well as diversified settings. In several inter-related ways, the role played by women in family, and hence day-to-day gender relationships, can be significantly be altering or liberating. This is especially in the case where it is the wife or daughter that has migrated to provide financial support for the family (Gardner 2002)9. 1.5 Migration before 1945 and after 1945 Migration after the Second World War in 1945 may be new in its nature but movement of people because of demographic expansion, changes in climate and growth of production activities as well as business activities has been there all the times. War, conquest, establishment of nations as well as the formation of states or empires all caused migration of people from one region to another. The act of enslaving and deporting people that occurred in the early years was a form of migration aimed at acquiring labour for production activities. The establishment of the European states and the subsequent colonization of the various parts of the world towards the end of the middle ages gave rise to a new structure to global migration. In many parts of Europe, migration was an important feature of the societal life since the 1650s and played a very significant role to the process of modernization of the continent as well as industrialization (Castles 2003)10. Neo classical theories view the capitalistic economy as one whose major characteristic is free market that includes free movement of labour where workers can meet each other freely and enjoy equal rights. However, in some cases there was forceful movement of workers from one region to another to cover the existed gaps in the respective regions. In the modern world, human trafficking that mostly involves women or children for sexual abuse is a form slavery that exists in many parts of the world (Baldwin 2008)11. Colonization of many parts of the world by European nations led to several forms of migration that included the movement of people out of Europe to the colonies. Europeans migrated either temporarily or permanently as soldiers, sailors, traders, farmers, priests as well as administrators. Such migrations played a very significant role in changing both the economic and cultural structures in Europe and the colonies. For example, sugar, cotton and coffee production by slave workers was very important to the political and economic strength of the United Kingdom and France, which were the most dominating powers in the 18th century. After colonialism, migration acquired a new face and kept on changing until today (Castles, Miller & Giuseppe 2005). 1.6 Conclusion Migration is a characteristic of both social as well as economic environment in the world despite the considerable variation in the profile of the migrating populations. These variations exist because of the various migration sources. In most cases, people migrate in search for employment or economic opportunities but there are migrations that occur because of family or humanitarian concerns. The economic and social impacts of migration for both the receiving and sending nation vary depending on the quality of the migrating population in terms of skills. Bibliography Baldwin-Edwards, Martin 2008, Towards a Theory of Illegal Migration: historical and structural components. Third World Quarterly 29(7), pp. 1449-1459. Castles, Stephen 2003, Towards a sociology of forced migration and social transformation, Sociology 37(1), pp. 13-34. Castles, Stephen, Mark J. Miller, & Giuseppe Ammendola 2005. The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World. New York: The Guilford Press.. Czaika, Mathias, & Hein de Haas 2013, The Globalisation of Migration. IMI Working Papers, WP-68. Retrieved from http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/pdfs/wp/wp-68-2013 Gardner, Katy & Ralph Grillo 2002, Transnational households and ritual: an overview, Global networks, 2(3), pp. 179-190. Griffiths, Melanie BE. 2014, Out of Time: The Temporal Uncertainties of Refused Asylum Seekers and Immigration Detainees, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 40(12). Hatton, Timothy J. & Jeffrey Williamson, G. 2002, What fundamentals drive world migration?. No. w9159, Washington DC: National Bureau of Economic Research. Kahanec, Martin, & Klaus Zimmermann F. 2008, Migration and globalization: challenges and perspectives for the research infrastructure, IZA discussion papers, No. 3890. Retrieved from http://ftp.iza.org/dp3890.pdf Li, Peter S. 2008, World migration in the age of globalization: Policy implications and challenges, New Zealand Population Review, 33(34), pp.1-22. Olwig, Karen Fog, & Ninna Nyberg Sorensen 2003, Work and migration: life and livelihoods in a globalizing world. NY: Routledge. Parekh, Bhikhu, Gurharpal Singh, & Steven Vertovec, eds. 2003, Culture and economy in the Indian diaspora. NY: Routledge. Peach, Ceri 2006, South Asian migration and settlement in Great Britain, 1951–2001, Contemporary South Asia, 15(2), pp. 133-146. Schmelz, Andrea 2008, Perspectives of a Cosmopolitan European Citizenship Education, Netzwerk Migration in Europe. Retrieved from http://migrationeducation.de/fileadmin/uploads/SchmelzPostcolonialMigration2009_07.pdf Vertovec, Steven 2004, Trends and impacts of migrant transnationalism, Centre on Migration, Policy & Society. Retrieved from https://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/files/Publications/working_papers/WP_2004/WP0403.pdf Read More