Migration and inequality: an introduction

Despite the fact that only about 3 per cent of the world’s population are considered migrants (UNDP 2009), migration, over recent years, has become a key development issue (de Haas 2012; Faist et al. 2011; Glick Schiller 2011). Debates about the so-called migration-development nexus have shifted from migration being seen as a ‘brain drain’ on valuable resources, to its holding potential for development, with migrants being key development actors (de Haas 2010; Faist 2008; Kunz 2008). Now discussed by government and civil society representatives at annual global meetings (Martin and Abella 2009; Piper 2009; Skeldon 2008), multi-lateral organisations such as the World Bank and the IMF are also increasingly interested in what migration has to offer for development (Kunz 2008; Ratha and Shaw 2007). At the same time, there is also an increasing interest in better understanding how globalisation affects inequality (Goldin and Reinert 2006; Held and Kaya 2007). There is some evidence to suggest that improved standards of living in large countries such as India and China have lifted millions of people out of poverty (Held and Kaya 2007), but others have argued that despite these improvements, globalisation has actually increased global inequality (Wade 2004). Debates range from whether inequality is important at all, to how it should be measured (Held and Kaya 2007). Economic and statistical perspectives dominate much of the latter, with largely technical debates about what should be measured and how. For others, inequality is an inevitable component of globalisation and neoliberal economic policies, and it is a key political issue (Pieterse 2002) that is not easily included in economic measurements and statistics. Furthermore, inequality is also emerging as an important area of inquiry within development studies (Greig et al. 2007). While migration is closely related to globalisation, and therefore also to in equality, most of the literature and policy interest on migration and development focuses on poverty rather than inequality. Today migration is seen as holding great potential for poverty alleviation, either in terms of the ﬁnancial remittances that migrants are able to send back to their countries or communities of origin, or in terms of technological and other skills transfer to so-called developing countries. Much of this debate is dominated by the concerns and interests of countries of the North, such as managing migration in a context of heightenedsecurity concerns (Castles and Delgado Wise 2008). This literature continues to be couched in binary assumptions, in which some countries are represented as developed while others are represented as underdeveloped and therefore in need of ‘development’ (Raghuram 2009). Perspectives from the South are largely absent from these discussions (Castles and Delgado Wise 2008). As others have observed, most of the debates on migration and development continue to be framed from a narrowly economistic point of view, with little attention given to social issues (Piper 2009a). With its focus on the relationship between migration and inequality, the aims of this volume are therefore twofold. First, it aims to rekindle an interest in the subject and bring this literature to bear in debates on migration and development, but with an expanded view of inequality – one that includes social inequality. As will be seen below, there has been a signiﬁcant amount of work on migration and inequality, but most of this research has been done from an economic point of view. While at certain levels of analysis it is inevitable to focus on economic measures of inequality, contributions to this volume aim to (i) show the relevance of social inequality; and (ii) discuss the importance of combining material and social measures of inequality. Second, when talking about social inequality, we are not only addressing social measures such as health or education, but also the question of whether migration holds the potential for disrupting unequal social structures. For example, the feminist literature on migration suggests that as women move from one area to another, they also embrace the potential to challenge patriarchal norms and therefore contribute to the construction of more equal societies (Bastia 2011; Pratt and Yeoh 2003). The same holds true for class-and castebased inequalities, whereby low-income and low-caste migrants leave their place of origin and thus begin to construct spaces where more equal and horizontal social relations can be established (Rogaly and Coppard 2003). However, most of the empirical evidence suggests, in fact, that migration also reproduces unequal structures of caste, gender and class.1 Some contributions to this volume therefore explore the extent to which migration holds the potential to disrupt unequal social structures and promote progressive social change, whether through individual and household migration projects (Bastia, Chapter 7) or through migrants becoming active in social movements (Piper, Chapter 3). By engaging critically with the literature on migration and inequality, contributions in this volume also draw attention to some migration processes that have thus far been little explored. For example, while internal migration has been extensively explored in demography and the literature on urbanisation, works on internal and cross-border migration remain largely separate, with only a few recent studies beginning to draw parallels and explore the relationship between internal and cross-border movements (DeWind and Holdaway 2008; King et al. 2008; Vullnetari 2012). Some of the contributions to this volume address both internal and cross-border migration (Kandilige, Vearey and Bastia, Chapters 5, 6 and 7) and as such, highlight the importance of not privileging international moves just because they happen to cross the borders of a nation-state. Othersdraw on the migration literature to focus on a (thus far) under-explored type of migrant: the aid worker (Fechter, Chapter 8). While the migration and development literature has focused on skilled workers (Lowell et al. 2002; Raghuram 2009), most of this work is framed in debates about the ‘brain drain’, i.e. skilled workers leaving ‘developing countries’ to work in higher income countries. Little attention has been paid to the opposite movement, of skilled workers moving from high-income to low-income countries (Raghuram 2009). Fechter’s chapter therefore explores the gendered and racialised migration experiences of aid workers working on (often) multiple development projects. Still other contributors focus on sectors that have been explored in the migration and development literature, such as the health sector, but do so from an innovative point of view. Gideon (Chapter 9), for example, moves away from addressing health as a resource loss – through brain drain – for developing countries; instead, she conceptualises health as a human right that migrants might not have direct access to.