Economics of Migration

Julius Issac

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136228131
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1998. This is Volume III of eleven in the Economics and Society series. Written in 1947, the main object of this study is to examine the causes and effects of the great international migrations which have taken place during the last hundred years.

Economics of Migration

Chapter I

The Scope of the Inquiry

1.   Migration as Distinct from Other Mass Movements

In the course of history mass movements of peoples have occurred in various forms. These are usually classified as:

Invasion,

Conquest,

Colonization,

Migration.

Invasion has been defined as the thrust of a primitive and virile people from its own territory into that of a more highly developed State. It involves the whole or a large proportion of the invading people, and is achieved by their physical superiority in numbers or in the use of force. The wandering of the peoples which led to the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages, fits well into this definition; so do other movements of peoples which took place during the Middle Ages, e.g. the invasion of the Huns and Magyars into Europe and of Tartar tribes into Asia Minor. Such movements continue for generations before the masses become definitely settled.

In the case of conquest a well-developed State attacks less advanced peoples and incorporates the conquered territory into its own political system. Conquest is not always accompanied by large-scale permanent transfer of nationals of the conquering country to the conquered territory. Under the Roman Empire, for example, conquests were followed by only a slight flow of Roman settlers and traders into the new provinces; Spain’s conquest of Mexico and Peru brought European migration on any scale to these countries only much later.¹ On the other hand the territorial changes which resulted from wars during the nineteenth century set in train population movements of considerable volume.

Two main types of colonization are usually distinguished: the exploitation colony and the settlement colony. Colonization of the latter type occurs “when a well-established, progressive and vigorous State sends out bodies of citizens, officially as a rule, to settle in certain specified localities. The regions chosen are newly discovered or thinly settled countries, where the native inhabitants are so few, or on such an inferior stage of culture, that they offer slight resistance to the entrance of the colonists.”²

Colonies for exploitation, also, owe their existence to the initiative of the State or its substitutes. Their establishment involves only the transfer of a relatively small number of business men, administrators, and soldiers from the mother-country. Such colonies have been developed mainly in tropical and subtropical regions where climatic conditions do not favour the settlement of white colonists. The import of slaves, and later of indentured labourers, provided the necessary labour supply for colonizing sparsely populated regions.

In the twentieth century the distinction between population movements in the form of colonization and of migration has lost much of its significance. Many colonies have evolved into independent or semi-independent States. Moreover the principle of exploitation is being replaced to an increasing extent by that of trusteeship. Colonization, in its present-day form, is either concerned with the settlement of native populations or may be regarded as a special case of migration.

2.   Definition of Migration

Migration, as distinguished from invasion and conquest, may be either forced or free. Forced migration may take many forms, such as: slave trading, the sale of serfs, the deportation of undesirable aliens or nationals and of convicts. Three categories of forced migration account for the vast movements of civilians which have occurred in recent years:

A.   REFUGEES

In the years before the Second World War these were mainly people who had to leave their home country because of political, racial, or religious persecution. Escape from the foreign invader is the dominant motive of the war-time refugee.

B.   MODERN SLAVE LABOUR;

an institution produced by the Second World War. Millions of civilians from all parts of Nazi-occupied Europe were transported to Germany and forced to work for German war industry and agriculture. It is still uncertain to what extent “reversed” slave labour will be called for as part of the reparation terms imposed on the Axis powers. Slave Labourers and War-Refugees, pending their repatriation are regarded as Displaced Persons.

C.   POPULATION TRANSFERS

The first large-scale population transfer in modern times was that between Greece and Turkey and Bulgaria in 1923.³ An agreement between the Italian and German Governments in 1939 made provision for the compulsory transfer from South Tyrol to Germany of all German nationals and of those Italians of German origin who were not prepared to become “full-fledged” Italians. This agreement, owing to war-time difficulties, was only partly implemented. Germany concluded similar arrangements before the outbreak of the 1939 war with the Governments of Estonia and Latvia. The alleged object of these measures was “the establishment of a new order of ethnographic conditions—that is, a resettlement of nationalities which would ultimately result in the fixing of better dividing lines than in the past”.⁴ The Germans carried out this repatriation policy during the war on a very large scale; the expulsion of the new settlers followed immediately on Germany’s defeat. The idea of using population transfers as a means to secure a lasting peace has been accepted by a number of the United Nations, in particular by Poland, Czechoslovakia and the U.S.S.R., and far-reaching population redistributions have taken place after Germany’s surrender. The economic consequences which such changes are bound to produce will not be discussed in this book.

Our inquiry will deal mainly with certain economic and social aspects of the migration of free individuals—that form of migratory movement which became a determining factor in moulding the social structure of the Western World during the century between the Napoleonic Wars and the first World War. If we exclude forced migration as belonging to a different category, migration may be defined as the movement of free individuals with the intention of effecting a lasting change in residence. This definition needs elucidation and qualification.

Migration, so defined, has a twofold aspect; it covers both emigration and immigration. An emigrant is a person who leaves his abode with a view to giving up his old residence; the immigrant takes up a new residence with a view to becoming settled there. Emigration and immigration are not merely the same act seen from different points of view; they are two different phenomena. Emigration may occur without subsequent immigration; an emigrant who has given up his old residence may not be willing or allowed to become settled elsewhere. But such cases of incomplete migration are only exceptions, and in the normal course of affairs migration consists of emigration and immigration.

Our definition postulates that the migrant has the status of a free man; hence the slave, the deported convict, or the refugee cannot be regarded as emigrants. But the freed slave, the released convict and the refugee obtain the status of immigrants as soon as they are allowed to settle in the receiving country.

The emigrant may either take up his new residence in another region of the same State, or his movement may be from one State to another. The former is internal migration, the latter external migration. In everyday parlance the word “migration” is usually applied to internal migration alone. This does not correspond to the definition of the Oxford Dictionary or to the use of the word in most publications of the I.L.O. In agreement with the I.L.O.’s practice, we shall use the term “migration” to cover only external emigration and external immigration. Movements of people within the boundaries of a single State will be called “internal migration”. This distinction is not so clear-cut in practice as it may seem in theory, for the reason that the notion “State” has become a rather uncertain one. Political development, mainly during the last few generations, has brought into existence political entities which possess only some of the characteristics of independent States, and in various other respects are dependent on other States. Movements of population between a dependent and a dominating State, or between two equally dependent States, are borderline cases, which may be considered either as migration (i.e. external migration) or as internal migration.

The change of residence involved in modern migration is intended to be lasting. This excludes all travellers for business or pleasure. We should not, however, go so far as to exclude every change of residence which ends in another change of residence. As will be seen more clearly later, a considerable proportion of all migrants take up their new residence with a view to returning to their original country after achieving certain aims. This may take scores of years, as in the case of the settler who wants to return to his old country after having made enough money to live there in independence, or of the Chinese who returns only in order to die on Chinese soil. It may take only a few years, as with the student who returns after having learnt and practised his profession abroad.

Definitions are always relative to specific purposes. A general definition intended to cover all the different aspects of migration would appear in some cases to be incongruous. If, for example, we try to find correlations between the growth of a population and its rate of migration, we are more concerned with permanent immigrants and their offspring than with temporary immigrants who are not likely to make a permanent contribution to population growth. On the other hand those of the migrants who will probably not become permanent settlers are relevant to an investigation of the effect of migration on the balance of trade and the balance of payments. Discussion of the wages and unemployment problems must include the case of the alien seasonal worker and the frontier worker.

Other problems arise out of the demarcation between migration and internal migration. This distinction is somewhat meaningless in relation to those conditions which prevailed before the rise of the national State, and even under present conditions a uniform demarcation is of little use. For migration within the British Empire, considered with regard to most economic aspects, it is irrelevant whether the immigration country is a colony, a mandated territory, or a dominion, while for problems connected with the restriction of immigration this distinction becomes significant. In examining the effect of migration on capital disposal it is important whether the receiving and the sending countries have a common currency or not.

We shall therefore, when dealing with each particular problem, concentrate our attention on those types of migrants which are relevant to it.⁵

¹ See Chapter II, p. 16.

² H. P. Fairchild, Immigration, p. 19, New York, 1933.

³ See below, p. 105.

⁴ E. M. Kulischer, p. 17 ff, The Displacement of Populations in Europe, International Labour Office, Montreal, 1943, Series O. No. 8.

⁵ Various definitions used in migration statistics will be discussed in the Note appended to Chapter III.

Chapter II

The Historical Background

1. The Significance of Migratory Movements to the End of the Eighteenth Century

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century the conditions for large-scale migration did not exist. Economic development in earlier periods, therefore, was only to a small extent affected by migration; population movements mainly took the form of conquest, invasion, or colonization, or of borderline cases between colonization and migration, as already defined. To understand the present position, however, it is necessary to review the migratory movements of the past in the context of the conditions which gave rise to them, and to study their effects in the economic field.

A. ANTIQUITY

In antiquity the social structure was generally not favourable to free migration. Serfdom, bondage and slavery were institutions which permeated the whole of the ancient world. Nevertheless migrations as we have defined them were not uncommon at this stage. Migrations of priests, artisans, free agricultural labourers and mercenary soldiers occur in the ancient oriental monarchies and in archaic Greece.

i. The Greek city-state

The notion of the optimum size of population for the ideal city-state, as expressed by Aristotle, played an important part in determining the volume of Greek migration. The optimum number of inhabitants is that which allows of autarkeia, self-sufficiency. Ten thousand adult citizens are considered as the optimum number for a city-state; a smaller community is not equal to its tasks, and in a State whose members are too numerous the Greek constitution (politeia) cannot work adequately.

The polis is a community of free citizens: non-citizens and slaves do not count, though a suitable numerical relation between the free citizens and the other classes of the population is desirable.

There are various means of preventing over-population in the city-state. Birth-control by abortion was known, but it was more usual for children to be exposed¹ or to be sold as slaves. Another method of adjusting over-population was emigration. The form it took is a reflection of the Greek political system, centred in the notion of the city-state. The individual derived all his values from his community, to which he owed entire allegiance. This relation was not necessarily severed by emigration. The State established colonies overseas which, though autonomous and independent, were linked with the mother-state spiritually and by intensive mutual trade, a relation similar to that between Great Britain and the Dominions since the Statute of Westminster.

The period of the foundation of colonies in ancient Greece begins at the end of the second millennium B.C., perhaps even before the invasion of the Doric tribes. It was the continuation of a trade policy which the Phœnicians had successfully pursued earlier. The driving force behind Greek emigration...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Author’s Note
• Introduction
• Chapter I. The Scope of the Inquiry
• Chapter II. The Historical Background
• Chapter III. Factors Determining Volume and Direction of Migration
• Chapter IV. Migration as a Means of Adjusting a Disharmonious Distribution of Population
• Chapter V. The Control of Migration
• Chapter VI. The Effect of Migration
• Chapter VII. Migration, International Trade and International Capital Movements
• Bibliography
• Index