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Book Review: International Migration: Prospects and Policies in

a Global Market Douglas S. Massey and J. Edward Taylor, editors
(Oxford University Press, 2004) Worlds in ....

Article in Review of Radical Political Economics · November 2009

DOI: 10.1177/0486613409350418

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 Book Reviews

International Migration, Prospects and Policies in a Global Market

Douglas S. Massey and J. Edward Taylor, editors (Oxford University Press, 2004)

Worlds in Motion. Understanding International Migration at the End of the

Millennium
Douglas S, Massey, Joaquin Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouchi, Adela Pellegrino
and J. Edward Taylor (Oxford University Press, 1998)
DOI: 10.1177/0486613409350418

The large two-volume project carried out under the leadership and coordination of
Douglas S. Massey and J. Edward Taylor has evolved for over a decade to approach the
study of migration from a global and interdisciplinary perspective. One of the most
salient conclusions, reached in both volumes, was that: “Emigration does not stem from
a lack of development, but from development itself, as nations are structurally trans-
formed through their incorporation into global regimes of trade and politics” (International
Migration: 378). Under Capitalism, migration runs parallel to trade. As a rule, labor
follows capital.
The project coordinated by Massey and Taylor is an important overview of the increased
importance of the migration phenomena during the recent phase of globalization. In fact,
globalization implies an acceleration and extension of the migration processes on a global
scale, induced by economic and political crises in many backward regions and larger social
differences among countries. One of the strengths of the two-volume work lies in its con-
sideration of every region of the world in their analysis. Thus, scholars and students of
migration from, say, Latin America, can learn from those in Asia, Africa, Europe, or the
United States; likewise, scholars from these regions can learn from the experiences in the
other areas of the world. Such perspective was granted from the conception of the project
through the participation of scholars from every region of the world. Yet, the broadness of
the scope had also its negative side, such as high degree of generalization and eclecticism.
In fact, in this reader’s view, its most salient limitation in this work was the eclectic theo-
retical approach of the study as a whole, given the various theoretical inclinations taken
by the different contributors. Some of them based their analysis on (or seem closer to) the
critical political economy views of modern capitalism (Massey, Hugo, Adepoju, Suhrke),
while others seem to rely on either the standard theory of neoclassical economics (Taylor,
Martin, Abella), or some brand of sociological approach of a particular aspect of migration
at a national or regional level (Maguid, Zhou, Sthal, Okólski, Batistella, Bedford, Fix,
Zimmermann, Joly, Spener). Hania Zlotnik, the one Mexican involved in the project, con-
centrated in providing a solid demographic description of global trends in population
growth, without offering a theoretical position.

Review of Radical Political Economics, Volume XX, No. X, Season XXXX, xx-xx
© 2009 Union for Radical Political Economics

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2     Review of Radical Political Economics / Season XXXX

The theoretical differences, however, tend to be minimized by two healthy mechanisms;

one was the use of significant empirical material in every chapter of the two books (which
can be interpreted by competing theoretical views); and second, by the effort to include a
chapter with an overview of those competing theories in each volume. The first mecha-
nism is welcome and useful, while the second seems to have a lesser value beyond offering
a miscellanea of the available theoretical interpretations. The authors barely try to pinpoint
the shortcomings of the different groups of interpretations, but essentially describe them
more or less thoroughly and chronologically. Modern studies of migration seem to resemble
those of psychology in one respect. Studies on psychology tend to rely on one or another
aspect of Sigmund Freud’s theories. In the case of modern capitalist migration, contempo-
rary scholars rely on one or another variation of Karl Marx’s theories, with the caveat of
not even recognizing this. From the long list of theories that the authors cite, the one which
gets closer to recognize its debt to Marxian tradition is the so-called World Systems theory.
Unlike Marx himself, who could hardly count on detailed data of the flows of migrants
in XIX century Britain or continental Europe, contemporary students of international
migration can make use of sets of data much closer to the order of magnitude of the flows
of peoples around the globe (though still not quite reliable). This richness of data is appar-
ent in both volumes under review. The advantage in the quality of disposable data has
tended to confirm, to a large degree, the predictions of the author of Capital in terms of the
trends and causes of labor migration (particularly in his masterpiece of historical research
encapsulated in chapter 23 of volume I: Illustration of the General Law of Accumulation of
Capital). The crucial category of industrial reserve army (IRA) of the unemployed, with
its notion of a necessary segmentation within its own group (fluctuating, latent, stuck
population and lumpenproletariat) and its regional or national influence on wages and the
labor market as a whole, has not lost a bit of its explanatory strength. If anything, today’s
major “correction” would be, perhaps, in the need to stress its global scope, its interna-
tional operation, given the increasingly global nature of today’s accumulation processes.
In Marx, capital (rather than labor) is the determining force behind migration. The
peculiarity of this approach is underlined in its emphasis on the simultaneous impact and
the operation of capital and state policies not only on the demand side of the labor market
(the employed) but also on the supply side (the unemployed). Marx used the formula les
dés son pipés (the dice are loaded) to refer to this condition. The industrial reserve army
(IRA) is at one and the same time a result and a condition for labor markets to operate. The
current rise in international migration underscores the international condition of today’s
labor markets. Yet, when the size of a particular national segment of IRA is overwhelming,
like in continental China today, foreign capital investments can take advantage of it in situ.
The purpose is the same locally or internationally: keep social standards and wages as low
as possible, so that profits do not fall.
Historically, the first great labor migration was forced and took hold of large segments
of Africa, giving birth to a vibrant slave trade during the late XVIII and early XIX centu-
ries, mostly to America. In turn, this was one of the structural factors behind the quick
leadership of the United States in the world economy (and the parallel backwardness of
Africa in this regard). Capitalist migration has shaped human experience for at least two
centuries. During the XIX century, voluntary migration, also in great numbers, moved largely
to America (the United States, Argentina, Canada), and Australia. The root of this move,
however, lay in the rural-urban migration and the formation of a “redundant” population for
 Book Reviews     3

the needs of capital in Europe (the operation of capital in the supply side of the labor mar-
ket), one of the concomitant aspects of capital accumulation. Marx’s contemporary analy-
sis of the case of Ireland, England, and the United States as an interrelated chain of
migration showed the connection between rural-urban migration and international migra-
tion. This connection is still alive in today’s India, Africa, Latin America, and Asia, as the
two volumes demonstrate.
Marx was conscious of the extensive variations of forms in which the IRA operated,
influencing the relative position of supply and demand in closer or distanced labor mar-
kets. It was he who expressed that the IRA could take every possible form, but within the
same logical structure: rise of capital accumulation, rise in the size of the IRA, impact on
lowering the level of wages. Marx established a logical connection between the whole
structure of the “army of occupied” and that of the IRA. That is why he stressed the rela-
tionship of the lower segments of the occupied and the upper layers of the unemployed and
the larger segments of the IRA as a whole. The argument is very much like Michael Piore’s
proposal of a segmented labor market theory. Similarly, many of the apparently “new” argu-
ments mentioned in the theoretical synthesis can be easily incorporated into natural exten-
sions of the Marxian explanation of capital-induced labor migration.
I do not by any means want to suggest that migration trends between the XIX and XXI
centuries have not changed. In a way, everything has changed. Several countries have
reversed their own historical patterns of emigration to become sites of immigration (Ireland,
Spain, and continental Europe as a whole). The developed world has essentially stopped
providing rural migrants. The model of predominantly male, mostly unskilled, long-term
one-way migrants has given way to all forms of collective- and individual-based patterns
of migration, including individual females and infant migrants. On the other hand, a rela-
tively new market of highly skilled labor has been established from backward into devel-
oped countries: the so-called brain drain, particularly damaging to African nations. Many
peculiarities of this sort are ably accounted for in the material of these two books, including
a study of recruiters (Abella), the return migration (Battisella), refugees (Okólski, Joly-
Suhurke, Adepoju), remittances (Taylor), and state enforcement of restrictive policies for
migration (Bean-Spencer, Withol de Wanden). Thus, it is certainly worthwhile to get exposed
in a global way to these new trends.
The importance of the research carried out by the team responsible for the two books
is also evident in their more recent work. For those who might be interested in following
the tracks of some of the individual contributors, it might be helpful to mention them with
some detail.
For the preparation of the first volume, a group of six specialists was formed and a
meeting held in December 1991, under the name of “South-North Migration Committee.”
This committee was responsible of the first book edited by Massey and was formed by
Joaquín Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouchi, Adela Pellegrino, and J. Edward Taylor,
besides Massey. Worlds in Motion was written among these scholars in a collaborative way,
which implied a constant cross-disciplinary and cross-national participation. The second
volume (International Migration), edited six years later, had a much larger list of partici-
pants and included 20 chapters. The participants were: Hania Zlotnik (Mexico), Marek
Okólcski (Poland), Aderanti Adepoju (Nigeria), Alicia Maguid (Argentina), Philip L.
Martin (United States), Min Zhou China (United States), Charkes Sthal (United States),
Manolo I. Abella and Graziano Battistella (Italy), Richard Bedford (United States), Guillerina
4     Review of Radical Political Economics / Season XXXX

Jasso (United States), Catherine Withold de Wenden (France), Danièle Joly (France), Astri
Suhrke (Norway), Martin Baldwin-Edwards (United States), Michael Fix (United States),
Wendy Zimmermann (United States), Frank D. Bean (United States), David A. Spener
(United States), all of them well known in the field. In addition, three of the earlier col-
laborators continued to write for the second volume (Hugo, from Australia and Taylor and
Massey, from the United States). Overall, 26 researchers participated in the second vol-
ume, 14 men and 8 women. A significant majority were trained in some of the top U.S,
universities, regardless of countries of origin, and a significant minority is directly in charge
of institutes or research groups devoted to the study of migration.
Massey, who is at Princeton University, and Taylor, who is at the University of California,
have published extensively since their International Migration co-edited volume. Massey
and Jorge Durand published Clandestinos: Migración México Estados Unidos en los albores
del siglo XXI (2003), with a theoretical chapter following the pattern set by Worlds in
Motion. Clandestinos was, in fact, an immediate follow up of Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican
Immigration in an era of Economic Integration (2002), written by Massey, Durand, and Nolan
Malone. These books have had a large impact on the numerous studies of Mexican-U.S. migra-
tion in recent years. Massey also collaborated with sociologist Guillermina Jasso in a recent
text: “From illegal to legal: Estimating previous illegal experience among new legal immi-
grants,” still not published. Taylor, Martin, and Abella published Managing Labor Migration in
the 21st Century, edited by Yale in 2005. The three authors occupy important posts, the first two
at the University of California and Abella for many years at the International Labor Organization
(ILO), and currently at Oxford.
Several contributors to the project led by Massey have risen in their academic careers.
Zlotnik is now director of the Population Division of the United Nations and has promoted
a significant amount of demographic research from there. Adepoju is the head of Human
Resources Development in Lagos, Nigeria; Bean is the director of the Center of Research
on Immigration and Population at the University of California at Irvine. Bean has been
coeditor of a number of works in the past few years, including America´s Newcomers and
the Dynamics of Diversity (2003). Hugo has continued a life-long career in the study of
Australian population and migration history from the University of Adelaide. One of his
recent publications is the article “An Australian Diaspora?” (2006). Okólski, Maguid and
Bedford have continued to publish academic articles on Poland, Argentina, and New
Zealand’s historical patterns (and changed old patterns) of migration. The rest of the lot
are also busy in their own particular fields of expertise, interacting from time to time with
someone else from the group at large. Themes such as refugee policies and human rights
(Suhrke, Joly, Withol de Wenden); identity (Zhou, Adepoju, Jasso, Bedford), and security
(Fix, Zimmermann, Spener) have continued to be part of their research program.
In conclusion, the journey of Worlds in Motion and International Migration has been a
productive one and continues to offer valuable research results, if mostly within the frame-
work of the description and diagnosis based on facts associated with the phenomenon of
global migration. Given the group’s presence in numerous policy-oriented institutes, the
study was urged to present ideas and suggestions on policy. As can be expected, most of the
ideas on policy in the two-volume project tend to be the radical versions of the institutions
headed by some members of the group, and in turn these tend to promote some form of
reconciliation (or co-responsibility) between the interests of the receiving and the sending
nations. Rights of migrants as workers and citizens are demanded, reasonable use and fair
 Book Reviews     5

financial treatment to remittances, and other measures of this sort are mentioned, but little
else: “policymakers should recognize immigration as a natural part of global economic
integration and work multilaterally to manage it more effectively” (International Migration:
387). The idea is to promote a sort of World Trade Organization for migration manage-
ment. Thus, little attention is put on the responsibility of capital movements (foreign and
national investment) -- not “countries”-- as determinants for labor mobility. Individual
migrant laborers are seen as the ones benefited by higher wages (in relation to their home-
countries), and better opportunities for social improvement. Given this notion, no compen-
sation for capital benefits are considered in policy discussions, and no return taxes in
connection to those gains. The point is crucial, since migration-induced gains to capital
(lower wages and lower social standards for a larger portion of the society), end up financed
by migrants themselves. Finally, it should be pointed out that migrants’ voices (organized
or not) are hardly heard in policy discussions within this two-volume effort.

Marcos T. Aguila
UAM-Xochimilco

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