Unit 2

Unit 2: Theories and Continuation of Migration
• 2.1 Functionalist-Structuralist Paradigms of Social theory

• 2.2 the Functionalist theory
• 2.3 the Structuralist theory
• 2.4 the Continuation of migration
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2.1 Functionalist-Structuralist Paradigms of
Social theory
• The Functionalist-Structuralist paradigms are one-sided and limited to
explain fully to migration processes.
• Functionalist social theory tends to see society as a system or an aggregate
of interdependent parts with a tendency towards equilibrium.
• People are expected to move from low-income to high-income areas
• Migration is a function of spatial disequilibria
• Migration decisions based on rational cost-benefit analysis, optimization strategy of
individuals or families
• Functionalist approaches:
• downplay the role of the state and structural constraints such as networks and other
institutions particularly in the absence of wage differentials;
• largely ignore non-economic migration and typically fails to explain development-
driven increases in migration

2.1 Functionalist-Structuralist Paradigms of
Social theory
• Sutructuralits (Historical-Structuralist) put too much emphasis on political
and economic structures as causes of international migration.
• Stress the inherently exploitative and disequilibrium nature of the economic power
shaping global capitalism.
• Social, economic, cultural, and political structures constrain and direct behaviors of
individuals in ways that reinforce disequilibria.
• Economic & political power is unequally distributed, and that cultural belief and social
practices tend to reproduce such structural inequalities.
• Argue that international labor migration is primarily driven by pull factors
• The drawback is their deterministic, top-down nature leaves little room for
Human Agency. (i.e. migrants are passive pawns)
• Little room to accommodate the diversity of migration
• Failed to explain why people consider migrating and working abroad even if they
know they are being exploited (then succeed in improving their livelihoods
significantly)

2.2 Functionalist Theory
• 2.2.1 Neo-classical migration economics: Macro and Micro theory
• 2.2.2 Human capital theory and migration selectivity
• 2.2.3 New Economics theory of migration

2.2.1 Neo-classical Migration Economics: Macro
& Micro Theory
• Neoclassical economics focuses on
• differentials in wages and employment conditions between countries, and
migration costs
• Generally conceives of movement as an individual decision for
income maximization.
• Individuals act to maximize income.
• Neoclassical Migration economics has two parts:
• Macro theory
• Micro theory

Neoclassical economics: Macro theory
• It was originally developed to explain labor migration in the process
of economic development (e.g. Lewis, 1954; Harris and Todaro, 1970)
• It assumes international migration, like the internal migration, is caused by
geographic differences in SS and DD of labor.
• Countries with large endowment of labor relative to capital have a low market wage.
• Countries with limited endowment of labor relative capital are characterized by a high
market wage.
• The differential in wage causes workers move from low wage country to high
wage country.
• Flow of investment in capital from capital-rich to capital-poor countries
• The relative scarcity of capital in poor countries yields a high rate of return by
international standards.
• Movement of capital includes human capital

Neoclassical economics: Macro theory
• The simplistic explanations offered by neoclassical macroeconomic
contain several implicit propositions and assumptions:
1. The international migration of workers is caused by differences in wage.
2. The elimination of wage differential will end movement of labor, and
migration will not occur in the absence of such differentials.
3. International flow of human capital - highly skilled workers - respond to
difference in the rate of return to capital, yielding a distinct pattern of
migration that may be opposite that of unskilled workers.
4. Labor markets are the primary mechanisms by which international flow of
labor are included; other kinds of markets don’t have important effects on
international migration.
5. The way governments control migration flows is to regulate or influence
labor markets in sending and/or receiving countries.

Neoclassical economics: Micro theory
• Corresponding to macroeconomic model is a microeconomic model of
individual choice (e.g. Sjaastad, 1962; Todaro, 1969, 1976, 1989)
• The micro model assumes, individual rational actors decide to migrate
because cost-benefit calculation leads them to expect a positive net
return, usually monetary
• International migration is conceptualized as a form of investment in human capital
• People choose to move to where they can be most productive, given their skills.
• Conditions before they can capture higher wages they must undertake some
investments which include
• material costs of travelling;
• cost of maintenance while moving and looking for work;
• the effort involved in learning to a new language and culture;
• the difficulty experienced in adapting to new labor market;
• the psychological costs of cutting old ties and forging new ones

Neoclassical economics: Micro theory
• Potential migrants estimate costs and benefits where expected net
returns are greater over some time horizon.
• observed earnings corresponding to individual’s skills multiplied by the
probability of obtaining a job at the destination.
• The rational actor migrates if ER(0) is positive

• The net expected return leads to several conclusions:
1. International movement stems from international differentials in both
employment rates and earnings
2. Individual human capital (i.e. education, experience, training, language
skills) increase the likelihood of international movement

Neoclassical Economics: Micro theory
• The net expected return leads to several conclusions:
3. Individual characteristics, social conditions, or technologies that lower migration
costs and increase the net return to migration, hence increase probability of
international migration
4. Individuals within the same country can display very different tendencies to
migrate
5. Aggregate migration flows between countries are simple sums of individual moves
6. International migration doesn’t occur in the absence of differences in earnings
7. Size of the difference in expected returns determines the size of international flow
of migrant
8. Migration decisions stem from disequilibria between labor markets.
9. If conditions in receiving countries are psychologically unattractive to perspective
migrants, migration may be negative
10. Governments control immigration primarily through policies that affect expected
earnings.
2.2.2 Human Capital Theory and Migration
Selectivity
• Human Capital theory is about humans increasing productivity and
efficiency through a greater focus on education and training.
• In the human capital theory, migration is considered as an investment in
the human agent.
• Complementary investments in the human agent are probably as important or more
important than the migration process itself.
• Human capital theory predicts that
• migration will flow from areas of relatively poor earnings to places of where
opportunities are better.
• as migration costs rises, the flow of migrants will fall
• Lack of education appears to a deterrent to long-distance migration
• Acquiring information on opportunities elsewhere can be difficult (costly)
• Cost of transportation to move and come back, and the psychic cost increases with distance.
2.2.2 Human Capital Theory and Migration
Selectivity
• Migration is highly selective in the sense that it is not an activity
which all people are equally likely engaged.
• According to the human capital theory, mobility is much higher
among the young and the better-educated
• The peak of mobility is ages of 20-24 years for two reasons:
• The younger one have the grater the potential returns from any human capital
investment.
• Larger part of the costs of migration are psychological one, the losses associated with
giving up friends, community ties, and the benefits of knowing one’s way. These loses are
comparatively small.
• One cost of migration is ascertaining where opportunities are and how good
they likely to be.
• College graduates relatively easy to find out about job opportunities in distant places.

2.2.3 New Economics Theory of Migration
• The key insight in new economics of migration is migration decisions
are not made by isolated individual actors, but by larger units of
related people – typically families or households.
• It considers conditions in a variety of markets not just labor market.
• People act collectively to:
• maximize expected income,
• minimize risks, and
• loosen constraints associated with varieties of market failures (credit, capital
and insurance markets)
• Households are in position to control risks to their economic well-
being by diversifying the allocation of household resources, such as
family labor.
• The key proposition is that income is not a homogenous good, as
assumed by neoclassical economics.
• The source of income really matters, households invest scarce resources to
activities that provide access to new income sources, even if the activities
don’t necessarily increase total income.
• It also questions the assumption that income has a constant effect on utility
for an actor across socioeconomic settings
• The proposition is that households send workers abroad not to improve income in
absolute terms but also to increase income relative to other households.
• The NELM theory lead to a very different set of policy prescriptions
1. Families, households or other culturally defined units of production and
consumption are the appropriate units of analysis
2. A wage differential is not a necessary condition for international migration
3. International migration and local employment or local production are not
mutually exclusive possibilities.
• The theory lead to a very different set of policy prescriptions
4. International migration doesn’t necessarily stop when wage differentials
have been eliminated across national boundaries.
5. Same expected income will not have same effect on the probability of
migration for HHs located at different points in the income distribution.
6. Governments can influence migration routes not only through policies that
influence labor market, but also through insurance markets, capital
markets
7. Government polices and economic changes that shape income distribution
will change the relative deprivation and then alter the incentive to migrate.
8. Government policies and economic changes that affect the distribution of
income will influence international migration.

Recap of the main theories
• Both the Neoclassical and new economics theories lead to divergent

conclusions about the origin and nature of international migration,
but are essentially micro-level decisions.
• What differs is the units.
• Assumption to make the decision (individual or household),
• The entity being maximized or minimized (income or risk),
• Assumption about the socioeconomic context of decision making (complete
or missing markets),
• The extent to which the migration decision is socially contextualized (whether
income is measured in absolute terms or relative to some reference group)

2.3 Structuralist Theory
• 2.3.1 World systems, neo-Marxist dependency theory
• 2.3.2 Dual/segmented labor market theory
• 2.3.3 Neo-liberal globalization and new international divisions of
labor

2.3.1 World Systems, neo-Marxist Dependency Theory
• A variety of sociological theorists has linked the origins of migration to
the structure of the world market that has developed and expanded
since the 16th century.
• The penetration of capitalist economic relations into peripheral, non-capitalist
societies creates that prone to migrate abroad.
• The World Systems Theory sees migration as a natural outgrowth of
disruptions and dislocations that inevitable to occur in the process of
capitalist development.
• Land, raw materials, and labor within peripheral regions come under the
influence and control of markets, migration flows are inevitably generated.
• The dominant capitalist powers constitute the ‘core’ upon which the
poor countries in the ‘periphery’ were entirely dependent through
asymmetric ties
• Trade, capital penetration and migration.
World Systems Theory
• The World Systems Theory argues international migration follows
the political and economic organization of an expanding global
market, a view that yields six hypothesis
1. International migration is a natural consequence of capitalist market
formation in the developing world
2. The international flow of labor follows the international flow of goods and
capital, but in the opposite direction
3. International migration is especially linked between past colonial powers
and their former colonies
4. Since international migration stems from the globalization of the market
economy, the way for governments to influence immigration rates is by
regulating the overseas investment activities of corporations and
controlling international flows of capital and goods.

Neo-Marxist Dependency Theory
• The neo-Marxist dependency theory argues migration is self-
perpetuation, reproducing inequality through the mechanisms of
cumulative causation.
• Sees international migration as part of
• the global geographic division of labor and
• the historical process of subordinate incorporation of the underdeveloped
world into the major capitalist economies.
• The geographic division of labor dislocates people of poor countries
from their traditional way of life; either
• They have to migrate to urban areas within their countries, or
• Involved in international migration in search of the means of survival.

2.3.2 Dual/Segmented Labor Market Theory
• The basic assumption of dual labor market theory stems from the
intrinsic labor demands of modern industrial societies.
• Piore (1979) argues international migration is caused by permanent demand
for immigrant labor that is inherent to the economic structure of developed
nations.
• Immigration is not caused by push factors in sending countries (low wages or
high unemployment), but caused by pull factors in receiving countries (a
chronic and unavoidable need for foreign workers).
• This built-in demand for immigrant labor stems from four inherent factors
i. Structural inflation
ii. Motivational problems
iii. Economic dualism
iv. The demography of labor supply

Structural inflation
• Wages in advanced industrial societies not only reflect conditions of SS and
DD; they also confer status & prestige, social qualities that inhere to the
jobs.
• People believe that wages should reflect status and have rigid notions about the
correlation between occupation status and pay.
• Wage offered by employers are not entirely free to respond to changes in the SS
of workers.
• A variety of informal social expectations and formal institutional mechanisms
ensures that wages correspond to the hierarchies of prestige and status that
the people perceive and expect.
• Employers cannot simply raise wages to attract workers for unskilled jobs. This
would upset socially defined relationships between status and remuneration.
• The cost of employers of raising wages to attract low-level workers is typically
more than the cost of these workers’ wage alone;
• wage should increase along the job hierarchy, a problem known as structural inflation.
• Provide strong incentive to employers to seek easier and cheaper solutions,
such as importation of migrant workers who will accept low wages.
Motivation Problems
• Occupational hierarchies are also critical for the motivation of workers, as
people also work for the accumulation and maintenance of social status.
• Acute motivational problems arise at the bottom of the hierarchy as there is status
to be maintained and few venues for upward mobility.
• The problem is inescapable and structural because the bottom cannot be eliminated
from the labor market.
• Mechanization to eliminate the lowest and least desirable class of jobs will simply
create a new bottom tier composed of jobs that used to be just above the bottom
rung.
• Then employers need are workers who view bottom-level jobs simply as a means
of earning money, and for whom employment is reduced solely to income.
• For many reason immigrants satisfy this need, at least at the beginning of their career.
• Most migrants begin as target earners, seeking to earn for specific goal that will improve their
social well-being at home – building a house, paying for school, buying land, acquiring consumer
goods.
• Low wages abroad to be generous by the standard of the home community.

Economic Dualism
• Bifurcated labor markets come to characterize advance industrial
economies due the inherent duality between labor and capital.
• Capitalists seek out the stable, permanent portion of demand and
reserve it for the employment of equipment, whereas the variable
portion of demand is met by adding labor.
• Capital-intensive methods are used to meet basic demand
• Labor-intensive methods are reserved for seasonal, fluctuating component
• This dualism creates distinction among workers, leading to bifurcation of the
labor force.
• Workers in the capital-intensive primary sector get stable, skilled jobs,
require considerable knowledge and experience to perform
• Workers in the labor-intensive secondary sector get unstable, unskilled jobs,
may be laid off at any time with little or no cost to employer.
• This is less attractive to native workers, employers turn to immigrants.
The Demography of Labor Supply
• Historically women and teenagers tend to participate in secondary
sector.
• Women: to earn supplemental income for themselves or their families; they
were not primary bread winners and their social identity was sister, wife or
mother.
• Teenagers: moved in and out to gain extra money, to gain experience, and try
out different occupational roles.
• They don’t view dead-end jobs as problematic because they expect to get better jobs in
the future.
• They drive their social identities from their parents and families orientation.
• They view the work instrumentally as a means of earning spending money
• In the advanced societies, the two source of entry-level workers have
shrunk over time due to:
• the rise in female labor force participation; the rise in divorce rates;
• the decline of birth rate; and
• the extension of formal education
Recap: Dual/segmented labor market
• Although not inherently in conflict with neoclassical economics, dual
labor market does carry implications different from those emanating
from micro-level decision models:
1. International migration is largely demand-based and initiated by
recruitment by employers, agents or by governments on their behalf
2. International wage differentials are neither necessary nor a sufficient
condition for labor migration to occur.
3. Low-level wages in migrant receiving countries don’t respond to shortage
of labor SS; they held down by social and institutional mechanisms
4. Low-level wages may fall as a result of an increase in supply of immigrant
5. Governments unlikely to influence international migration through policies
that produce small changes;
• immigrants fill a demand for labor that is structurally built into modern post-industrial
economies and influencing this demand requires major changes in economic
organization.
2.3.3 Neo-liberal Globalization and New
International Divisions of Labor
• Neo-liberalism is defined as
• a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being
can be best advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and
skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private
property rights, free markets and free trade. The role of the state is to create
and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices.
• Neo-liberal globalization is
• a process characterized by intensified economic exchange of goods and
services, capital, labor and new technologies across national boarders.
• Foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, and increased fragmentation of
production and power shifts of in organization of industries across the glob.
• characterized by the growing influence of international organizations on
state and firm-level activities and creation of transnational civil society.
New International Divisions of Labor
• Profound transformations in worldwide production and trade were indeed
substantial and ongoing since 1970s.
• The classical international division of labor, underdeveloped countries were
considered as mere raw materials suppliers.
• In the present-day world economy, developing countries are increasingly
chosen sites of manufacturing industries producing goods that are
competitive in the world market.
• This can be designated as the ‘new international division of labor (NIDL)’ (i.e. an ongoing,
not completed, process).
• The NIDL consisted of the following stylized accounts of the process of
global restructuring.
a. Declining profitability in advanced countries (mainly due to rising wages),
transnational corporations (TNCs) started to relocate labor-intensive to, the then,
Third world countries (currently developing countries).
• This led to the industrial decline in the former countries in late 1970s and early 1980s.

New International Divisions of Labor
b. The developing countries provided TNCs with a huge potential reserve of
law-paid and disciplined workers.
c. In the process the developing countries has the tendency to establish
export-oriented ‘world market factories
• Via the combined with technological advancement in the means of communication and
transport, the increasing fragmentation of production process and the consequent
simplification of semi-skilled and unskilled labor
d. The industrialized ‘core’ and a dependent ‘periphery’ (i.e. supplier of raw
materials and staple foods) has been replaced by the NILD, with an
industrialized but still dependent on developing countries.
e. The First World oriented to service-based economy, which could not
absorb the resulting unemployed population.
• This seems to contradict with the impressive developmental record of the first
generation of the Asian Tigers (specially South Korea).
• In particular, the theory that put export-oriented industrialization based on extremely
low wages in labor-intensive industries is at the heart of the argument.
• South Korea’s industrial upgrading to include relatively complex, capital-intensive sectors
2.4 The Continuation of Migration
• 2.4.1 Transnational and Network Theory

• 2.4.2 Cumulative causation and Migration Systems theory
• 2.4.3 From Bridgeheads to Gatekeepers

2.4.1 Transnationalism and Network Theory
• Transnationalism: established in the 1990s, deals with the question
of ‘how’.
• The theory gives emphasis is not on migration in itself but on the cross-
boarder actions of migrants and their descendants.
• The key assumption is that migration can no longer be seen as one
dimensional journey.
• Many migrants continue to maintain strong ties with country of origin in
their new living environment.
• Whether in an economic, cultural or political sense
• The sending country can become increasingly involved in the “migrant
community” of the receiving country, set priorities and pursue its own
interests.

Transnationalism
• Concerns about the ways migrants’ lives are affected by sustained

connections with people and institutions in places of origin or elsewhere in
diaspora
• Family obligations and marriage patterns,
• Remittances
• Political engagements,
• Religious practices,
• Regular visits,
• media consumptions and so on
• It includes element of social network, social capital, embededness.

Network Theory
• Migrant networks are sets of interpersonal ties that connect migrants,
former migrants, and non-migrants in origin and destination areas
through ties of kinship, friendship, and shared community origin.
• Migrant networks increase the likelihood of international movement
because they lower the costs and risks of movement and increase the
expected net returns to migration.
• Network connections constitute a form of social capital that people can draw
upon to gain access to foreign employment
• Once the number of migrants reaches a critical threshold, the expansion of
networks reduces the costs and risks of movement,
• which causes the probability of migration to rise,
• which causes additional movement, which further expands the networks, and so on.
• Over time migratory behaviour spreads outward to encompass broader segments
of the sending society.
• This theory accepts the view of international migration as an individual or
household decision process.

Network Theory
• But argues that acts of migration at one point in time systematically alter the
context within which future migration decisions are made, greatly increasing the
likelihood that later decision makers will choose to migrate.
• The conceptualization of migration as a self-sustaining diffusion process
has implications and corollaries:
1. International migration tends to expand over time until network connections have
diffused so widely.
2. The size of the migratory flow between two countries is not strongly correlated to
wage differentials or employment rates.
3. As international migration becomes institutionalized through the formation and
elaboration of networks, it becomes progressively independent of the factors that
originally caused it, be it the structural or individual.
4. As networks expand and the costs and risks of migration fall, the flow becomes
less selective in socioeconomic terms and more representative of the sending
community or society.
5. Governments can expect to have great difficulty controlling flows once they have
begun.
2.4.2 Cumulative Causation and Migration
Systems Theory
• Cumulative causation, is out-migration progresses: a social infrastructure
arises and often develops a powerful momentum to yield a self-perpetuating
migration process.
• Pioneer migrants are inevitably linked to non-migrants in their home
communities through:
• networks of reciprocal obligation based on shared understandings of kinship and friendship,
• non-migrants draw upon network ties to facilitate departure, migration, entry, employment,
housing, and mobility at points of foreign destination, substantially reducing the costs and
risks of international movement.
• Once the number of network connections in an origin area reaches a critical
level, migration becomes self-perpetuating .
• This is because migration itself creates the social structure necessary to sustain it, especially
in rural areas where interpersonal networks are dense and social ties are strong (Flores-Yeffal
2012).
• The cumulative causation of migration through network expansion tends to be
much weaker or inoperative in urban settings (Fussell and Massey 2004).

Cumulative Causation
• The six socioeconomic factors that are potentially affected by migration in
this cumulative fashion:
1. the distribution of income: exacerbate income inequality and increase relative
sense of deprivation
2. the distribution of land: land is purchased by migrants abroad typically for its
prestige value or as a source of retirement income rather than as a productive
investment.
3. the organization of agrarian production: migrant households are more likely than
non-migrant families to use capital-intensive methods since they have access to
capital to finance these inputs.
4. the culture of migration: after migrating they acquire a stronger concept of social
mobility and a taste for consumer goods and styles of life that are difficult to attain
through local labor.
• Once someone has migrated, therefore, he or she is very likely to migrate again.
5. the regional distribution of human capital: sustained outmigration leads to the
depletion of human capital
6. the social meaning of work: certain class of jobs to be defined as stigmatizing and
viewed as culturally inappropriate for native workers.
• particular occupations become culturally labelled as "immigrant jobs" and native workers are
reluctant to fill them.
Migration Systems Theory
• Migration systems are primarily associated with the idea that once a
critical number of migrants have settled at the destination, then
• Migration becomes self-perpetuating, in particular the networks, to sustain
the process.
• The theory combines macro-, meso-, and micro-level factors to
produce more inclusive explanations.
• It is premised on the observation that most international migration
occurs within systems, or countries linked by
• Geographical,
• Economic,
• Colonial, or
• Other historic relations

Migration Systems Perspective
• Migration systems theory yields several interesting hypotheses and
propositions
1. Countries within a system need not be geographically close since flows
reflect political and economic relationships rather than physical ones
2. Multipolar systems are possible, whereby a set of dispersed core countries
receive immigrants from a set of overlapping sending nations.
3. Nations may belong to more than one migration system, but multiple
membership is more common among sending than receiving nations.
4. As political and economic conditions change, systems evolve, so that
stability does not imply a fixed structure


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Unit 2

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Unit 2: Theories and Continuation of Migration

• 2.1 Functionalist-Structuralist Paradigms of Social theory

Contact Email: tsegagi@gmail.com 28

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• The rational actor migrates if ER(0) is positive

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• Both the Neoclassical and new economics theories lead to divergent

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• 2.4.1 Transnational and Network Theory

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• Concerns about the ways migrants’ lives are affected by sustained

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