“When facts change, then I change my mind.” So said the great economist JM Keynes. It should be the guiding principle for every scientist and scholar. Now, some readers will recall several blogs we have made on immigration ( LSS June/July ’22;Nov ’22). We still think we were right to raise this issue. Because it seems to be of neuralgic importance. But we ascribed the basic cause to the movement of people from poor economies to richer ones. We have now seen good evidence that this belief, although not entirely wrong, is so simple as to be almost misleading. And we are now going to present you with that evidence, so you can judge for yourselves.
Of course immigration does indeed flow from poorer societies to richer ones, But not from the absolute dirt-poor countries. The bulk of immigration comes from middle income countries. According Hein de Haas. a Professor of Sociology who writes in the Guardian, anyway. [1] And why do they do it? To fill jobs in short contract, essentially unregulated labour markets in the host countries. The second link, from Nature Briefings, should allow you to drill down more into Professor Haas’ work (we hope the link works!) It’s called Prejudice Colours our View on Immigration, a title that says much:
Many of us have opinions about immigration, but most of us don’t fully understand it, suggests sociologist Hein de Haas in his impressively wide-ranging book How Migration Really Works. By busting myths that surround human mobility, de Haas provides a welcome corrective to common misconceptions, writes reviewer and migration scholar Alan Gamlen. “But with migration patterns shifting as the world rocks in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s unclear for how long his conclusions will hold true,” writes Gamlen.Nature | 7 min read
There’s a lot of humility to go around for all of us here, not just LSS. Like, even when you think you have the answer, it may turn out to be only part of it. That sudden sweeping generalisations can be utterly wrong. Yet there remains one small observation in which we were right, You get very little immigration from richer countries(e.g. Switzerland, Denmark) to poorer ones(e.g UK) And we still think that, in there somewhere. lies the answer to all this angst.
#migration #immigration #emigration #inequality #economics
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