Historical-Structural Theories

Historical-Structural Theories

1. Historical-structural paradigms

   • Marx (1852):People make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past

2. Theories

   • Dependency theory and the development of under-development
     • Frank (1972): ‘Underdevelopment’ emerges via colonialism, Western hegemony and expanding world capitalism,
     • Migration a manifestation of this process of capitalist expansion
     • Migration ruins stable peasant societies, undermines economies and uproots populations
     • World Systems theory
       • Wallerstein (1974): the origin of origin of the ‘world system’ to the 16th century in Western Europe, expanding through colonisation and finally spanning across the globe
       • World system as a set of exploitative mechanisms which redistribute resources from the periphery to the core.
       • Capitalist penetration >> uprooting of peasant societies >> migration >> divergence instead of convergence
       • Nevins (2001)- Example of US-Mexico dependency relationship. Capital penetration into Mexico and other ‘dependent’ countries especially since the 1960s: the ‘maquiladoras’ and feminised labour.
       • Dual / Segmented labor market theory
         • Piore (1979): Income not critical variable when considering migrant behaviour and labour markets – rather, social context
         • Agency (and complicity) of workers in this system?
         • Immigrants fill a demand that is structurally built into modern, post-industrial economies. The demand for immigrant workers grows out of the structure of the economy >> key role of recruitment by employers and governments. Low-level wages in receiving countries do not rise in response as predicted by neoclassical theory; they are held down by social and institutional mechanisms.
         • Globalization
           • Sassen (2014) Trade and migration literature brought together • Focus on formation of transnational spaces for a range of (uneven) flows under financial capitalism • Correlation of growing FDI into poorer countries and migration from these to the US
           • Neo-marxist theories
             • Ferguson and McNally (2015): New ‘zones of precarity’ in late capitalism: ‘reconfigured spaces of capital, work, gender, race and social reproduction’ – inequality is racialised • Feminist focus on how domestic/household reproduction is incorporated into global capitalism – inequality is gendered.
               • SUMMARY: Migration as an outgrowth of imperialism, capitalist expansion and neoliberal globalisation which subjugate and uproot populations of poor countries and areas. In destination societies migration serves the interests of employers; but restrictive immigration policies also serve their interests by increasing labour without legal status

3. Critique

   • Historical assumptions (sometimes) that pre-modern societies were prosperous and egalitarian
     • Assumption of largely immobile peasant communities (‘sedentary bias’)
       • Tendency to depict migrants as passive pawns (victims) propelled around by global capitalist forces • Assumption that when migrants do act, they do so against own interests
         • Does not explain a lot of current scenarios such as : Inclusion in global capitalism can spur growth - Most migrants are not among the poorest - Human and economic development often leads to more migration
         • Robin Cohen (1987): Unfree or semi-free labour of various kinds and degrees – ‘new helots’ – has been central to colonialism and capitalist development
           • Regional political economy perspective allows him to identify how capitalism ‘combines labour of differing statuses
             • Focuses on structural patterns over motivations (vs. rational choice)
               • State at heart of structuring international division of labour: ‘obstacles’ (cf. Lee) are not a ‘black box’ – actively imposed by governments to control mobility (cf. Zolberg 2006)
           • The examples of slavery and indenture: shifting configurations of unfreedom