Abstract
Dominant social theories have rarely placed migration at the center of our understanding of society and social change. Classical theories in the Western tradition have been more preoccupied with the impact of economic and political revolutions on social change, stratification and class conflict, and have paid far less attention to other important aspects of society. Contemporary theories have expanded the theoretical gaze to include a much wider set of issues, from racial and gender divisions to warfare and the environment. In an era of globalization, we argue that such a marginalization of the migrant, and the failure to better integrate both internal and external migration into a more nuanced interpretation of social change, is a significant shortcoming. By examining some of the key elements linked to such human movement in Europe, North America and China -- in the light of five recent studies in this field -- we argue that migration is a vital factor in changing the world as we know it and consequently a central concern for social theory. This is a review essay on:
Richard Alba and Nancy Foner. Strangers No More: Immigration and the Challenges of Integration in North America and Western Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.
Louis DeSipio and Rodolfo de la Garza. US Immigration in the Twenty-First Century: Making Americans, Remaking America. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2015.
Adrian Favell. Immigration, Integration and Mobility: New Agendas in Migration Studies. Colchester: ECPR Press, 2015.
Zhongshan Yue. Social Integration of Rural-Urban Migrants in China: Current Status, Determinants and Consequences. Singapore: World Scientific Publishers, 2015.
Robyn R Iredale and Fei Guo. Handbook of Chinese Migration: Identity and Wellbeing. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015.
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Notes
Perhaps the big exception to this statement is the work of the Chicago School of Sociology that did produce at least one classic study involving international migration of which W.I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918) was the most influential; while in earlier thought Ibn Khaldun’s Muquaddimah (1377) is another classic volume that places migration as a central explanatory variable in his analysis.
For a variety of other reactions to Alba and Foner’s work see the symposium in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 39 No. 13 October 2016: 2315–2369.
The most recent actions by the Trump administration appear somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, the President signed an executive order in April 2017 that could reduce the supply of entry-level foreign workers for the technology industry by cutting the number of H1-B visas. On the other hand, it was reported that family members were in China offering investors visas if they agreed to spend at least half a million dollars in real estate ventures in New Jersey – the so-called “golden visas”. (Boston Globe, 4–23-17; The Guardian, 5–7-17). Both of these policies are defended as providing more jobs for “Americans”.
According to the Missing Migrants Report of the more than 350.000 migrants entering Europe via the Mediterranean, some 4715 known deaths were recorded by June 2016 (IOM Report 6–12-16).
See, for example, the statement by Janine Dahinden in her plea for the “de-migranticization’ of research on migration and integration, praising Kalir’s (2013) work on Chinese internal and external migration, where “for the hypermobile individual…. being away from the village was not really different whether one was somewhere else in China or in Israel” (2016: 2216). However, we do not necessary share her downplaying the role of nationalism in migration studies.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank David Swartz for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay.
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Luo, X., Stone, J. “Bringing the migrant back in”: mobility, conflict, and social change in contemporary society. Theor Soc 46, 249–259 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-017-9292-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-017-9292-4