Marxist theories
validity of Marx’s economic analysis.
of migration
Richard D. Vogel
Introduction
Marxist theories of migration examine the
relocation of people from one region or country
to another in response to the economic forces
at play in a specific historical context. These
theories are based on historical materialism,
a method of inquiry developed by Karl Marx
in his early work and applied rigorously to a
wide array of economic and political issues. In
his unrivaled intellectual biography of Karl
Marx, Isaiah Berlin observed, “He [Marx] did
not regard it as a new philosophical system so
much as a practical method of social and his­
torical analysis, and a basis for political strat­
egy” (1996: 89). Although Marx never published
a comprehensive exposition of historical materi­
alism, he summarized the basic principles quite
succinctly:
In the social production that men carry on they
enter into definite relations that are indispens­
able and independent of their will; these relations
of production correspond to a definite stage of
development of their material powers of produc­
tion. The sum total of these relations of pro­
duction constitutes the economic structure of
society – the real foundation on which rise
legal and political superstructures and to which
correspond definite forms of social conscious­
ness. The mode of production in material life
determines the general character of the social,
political, and spiritual processes of life. (Marx
1959: 43)
Marx’s masterwork of historical materialism is
his monumental, three­volume Capital: A Cri-
tique of Political Economy, first published in
1867 (Marx 1970). The fact that Capital was
republished and widely circulated in interna­
tional financial circles during the worldwide
The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, Edited by Immanuel Ness.
© 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm354
recession of 2007–9 testifies to the enduring
Berlin’s observation that the purpose of his­
torical materialism is also to provide “a basis
for political strategy” must be constantly kept
in mind when considering Marxist theories of
migration. Karl Marx was no neutral observer
of the exploitation of working people. Early in
his career he stated the ultimate goal of his
studies: “The philosophers have only inter­
preted the world in various ways; the point is
to change it” (Marx 1973: 123). His joint
authorship with Fredrick Engels of the Mani-
festo of the Communist Part, commissioned by
the Communist League in London and pub­
lished a few weeks before the Paris revolution
of 1848, leaves no doubt about the political
position of Marx (and Engels) on the conflict
between capital and labor in modern society
(Marx & Engels 1969).
In the same vein of social criticism, Marxist
theories of migration, pioneered by Marx and
Engels in the 19th century (1953) and devel­
oped by Gorz (1970), Marshall (1973), Castells
(1975), and Nikolinakos (1975), focus on the
exploitative and disruptive aspects of human
migration in the modern world. Neo­Marxist
world system theories that relate the contem­
porary trends of human migration to the
mega­trends of globalization are based on the
work of Wallerstein (1974). World­system
migration theorists, who explore the connec­
tions between international labor migration
and world markets, include Petras (1981) and
Portes and Walton (1981).
A note on precapitalist migration
The main focus of Marxist theories of migra­
tion is labor migration under capitalism since
it has become the dominant form of produc­
tion in the modern world. Precapitalist migra­
tion is seen as a social response to invasion and
displacement by a hostile population, demo­
graphic pressure, changes in the means of
2 marxist theories of migration
production or terms of landownership, or to
environmental factors such as drought or soil
depletion. Such precapitalist migration is of
historical, but not urgent political interest.
While Marxists acknowledge that “The history
of all hitherto existing society is the history of
class struggles” (Marx & Engels 1969), it is the
penetration of capitalism into traditional soci­
eties and the conversion of the majority of the
population into alienated wage laborers subject
to labor migration that is the subject of most
Marxist theories of migration.
Economic forces driving migration
Three key theses of Marxist analysis – the labor
theory of value, the inverse relationship between
profit and wages in the capitalist mode of pro­
duction, and the necessity of reserve service
and production workforces in capitalist econo­
mies – identify the essential aspects of produc­
tion that drive migration policy in capitalist
countries.
The labor theory of value
The labor theory of value locates the creation of
economic value in human labor. This pivotal
Marxist thesis stands in stark contrast to the
neoclassical market theory of value that asserts
that, regardless of the amount of labor needed
to produce a product or service, value is solely
a function of supply and demand. According
to the labor theory of value, the accumulation
of capital depends directly on the exploitation
of labor.
The fact that capital’s demand for labor is
elastic is central to understanding immigration
policies in capitalist nations. During periods
of economic expansion, the demand for labor
increases and stimulates internal labor migra­
tion to industrial centers and free trade zones
and international labor migration to industri­
alizing countries. During periods of stagnation
and economic contraction, the demand for
labor decreases, creating unemployment and,
in the case of international migrants, some­
times triggering repatriation (including both
voluntary returns to countries of origin and
forced deportations from host countries). The
economic boom in the United States during
the 1990s that stimulated massive (and largely
undocumented) migration, primarily from
Mexico but also from other countries in the
global South, and the economic downturn that
began in 2001 and accelerated during the
recession of 2007–9, which spurred the largest
deportation of undocumented migrants in
history, offers a contemporary example of
how the economy drives immigration policy
through elastic labor demand in capitalist
countries.
The inverse relationship between profit
and wages
The inverse relationship between profit and
wages in the capitalist mode of production –
the fact that the profits from production
increase in the same proportion that the share
of wages decreases and vice versa – also drives
official and informal immigration policy in
capitalist countries. Immigrant labor, espe­
cially impoverished migrants from less devel­
oped nations, can be employed at significantly
lower wages than established citizen­workers
in developed countries. Undocumented mig­
rant workers, lacking effective legal protection,
can be hired for even less. Historically, the
accumulation of capital has been directly
linked to the exploitation of immigrant labor
in the modern world (Zinn 2003).
The reserve service and production
workforce
The existence of a reserve service and produc-
tion workforce, a class of workers who can
be employed at below­average wages during
periods of economic expansion and summarily
discharged without serious political conse­
quences during periods of contraction, is an
essential element of all capitalist economies.
The utilization of the reserve workforce under­
mines the position of regularly employed work­
ers vis­à­vis capital and depresses general wage
levels. Historically, women, children, internal
migrants from rural or economically depressed
areas of a country, native ethnic and cultural
minorities, and immigrant populations have
constituted the majority of reserve service and

production workforces. In many developed
countries of the global North, undocumented
migrants from the global South comprise the
core of the reserve labor force.
These three fundamental economic forces
of capitalist production are readily observable
in all of the mass migrations of workers and
their families since the dawn of the Industrial
Revolution. The various emerging strategies
of managed migration represent the latest
attempts by the developed countries of the
global North to maintain their economic
hegemony in the 21st century.
Managed migration
The emerging strategy of managed migration
in conjunction with the well­established strat­
egy of offshoring manufacturing and service
industries from the developed nations to
exploit cheap labor in developing countries are
the two major strategies of neoliberal globali­
zation to hold down labor costs and maintain
high levels of capital accumulation.
The paradigm of managed migration
The paradigm of managed migration com­
bines controlling the flow of actively recruited
labor migrants from the global South while
minimizing the economic and political liabili­
ties of migration in the receiving countries.
This is the underlying strategy of existing
employment­based immigration policies. Cur­
rent programs range from renewable, semi­
permanent visa programs for high­skilled
migrant workers to temporary, short­term visa
programs for semi­ and unskilled labor. The
goal of managed migration programs is to
provide the optimum number of reserve workers
to insure capital accumulation in the labor­
receiving countries while avoiding the social
and political liabilities of utilizing citizen­
workers or granting permanent residency or
citizenship to migrant workers. Emerging man­
aged migration strategies envision national plans
sanctioned, administered, and enforced by central
governments (Papadementriou et al. 2009).
Although the movement toward managed
migration was initiated by individual devel­
marxist theories of migration 3
oped nations, the International Organization
for Migration (IOM), the World Bank, and the
World Trade Organization (WTO) are actively
seeking ways to promote managed global labor
migration to the extent that these agencies have
accommodated other free­trade practices of
transnational capitalism (IOM/World Bank/
WTO 2004).
According to Marxist analysis, the impact
of managed migration policies will be to
undermine the position of the working classes
in both labor­importing and labor­exporting
nations and to exacerbate the mega­trend of
growing global and national inequality that
characterizes the modern world.
Critiques of Marxist theories of
migration
Because of the radical political orientation of
Marxist theories of migration, they have his­
torically been subjected to extensive critiques
by both neoliberal and mainstream academic
economists. While some critics concede that
the Marxist approach accounts for short­term
correlations between the periodic expansions
and contractions of capitalist economies and
immigration policies (including the informal
policy of utilizing illegal migrant labor), most
detractors focus on five general points of criti­
cism against Marxist theories of migration
(Meyers 2000). These criticisms need to be
answered.
Capital accumulation and
immigration policy
The first criticism questions the Marxist asser­
tion of a long­term relationship between
capital accumulation and immigration policy
designed to provide reserve service and pro­
duction workforces. This criticism blatantly
ignores the meteoric rise of labor immigration
(including the establishment of various formal
temporary worker programs and the expan­
sion of undocumented migrant populations in
capitalist countries) that has been a major
trend under neoliberal globalization during
the past three decades. At the beginning of the
21st century, an estimated 11 to 12 million
4 marxist theories of migration
undocumented migrants (mostly Mexican citi­
zens) lived and worked in the USA, and several
million travailleurs sans papiers (undocu­
mented workers) from North Africa were
employed in France, the second largest host
nation of undocumented migrants.
Questioning economic causation
The second criticism is that the economic
focus of the Marxist approach to migration is
too focused on economic causation to allow
these theories to explain refugee or other polit­
ically driven immigration policies. This criti­
cism is simply unwarranted. Marxist analysis
of any immigration trend or other event is
never the product of the mechanical applica­
tion of a unified grand theory. Based on his­
torical materialism, Marxist theory can account
for political as well as economic aspects of
migration. A sterling example of this is Marx’s
devastating critique of England’s forced Irish
emigration policies and their consequences in
the 19th century (Marx & Engels 1953).
Ethnic dimensions of immigration
The third criticism of Marxist theories of migra­
tion is that they are too narrow to explain the
ethnic dimensions of immigration. This point of
criticism is invalid for the same reasons as the
second. The ethnic aspects of immigration are
usually so specific to individual countries and
their unique histories that historical materialism,
with its emphasis on concrete conditions and
events as opposed to abstract theory, offers the
best available method of analysis.
Wartime migration
The fourth criticism, that Marxist theories of
migration generally do not account for migra­
tion policies during wartime, is simply incor­
rect. Even the most apolitical analysis of
the bilateral Bracero Agreement between the
United States and Mexico during World War II
to supply Mexican farm workers to replace the
Americans who were being drafted, and
the subsequent mass deportations under the
US government’s Operation Wetback in the
postwar period, demonstrate the validity of
the Marxist approach to understanding migra­
tion during times of war.
Labor migration in socialist countries
The last general criticism of Marxist theories
of migration is that they focus exclusively
on capitalist nations and fail to account for
labor migration in socialist countries. Although
a historical materialist analysis of migration
in the former Soviet Union and the Eastern
European bloc countries would be instructive,
the rapid collapse of these socialist states
and lack of reliable data from their previous
administrations render this point of criticism
moot. In the case of China, though nominally
a socialist nation, the economy is clearly
run under policies of state capitalism with
exploitative and disruptive labor migration
patterns that resemble those of any developing
capitalist economy. The lack of current or his­
torical data from China precludes any defini­
tive analysis.
Conclusion
Migration in the context of globalization is
an extremely complex phenomenon. Marxists
try to understand the mega­trends of the
modern world, including mass migration, in
terms of the economic drivers uncovered
through the rigorous application of historical
materialism.
Marxist analysis of migration is not objec­
tive, nor does it pretend to be – it focuses
relentlessly on the exploitative and disruptive
aspects of migration, always seeking bases for
political strategies to promote social justice
for the working classes of all countries.
SEE ALSO: Balkans, global migration, ethnic
conflict, and class struggle; Guest workers, 1970s to
present; Labor migration and worker organization,
global North and global South; Reserve army of
labor and migration; World systems analysis
References and further reading
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