The presence of large semi-settled foreign populations in Western societies is at once a symptom of and an exacerbating factor in the problematic governance of these states. Domestic and international constraints preclude the reversal of most of the unforeseen and undesirable social, economic, and political consequences that have flowed from the narrowly conceived, short-sighted policies that gave rise to the migrants' presence. The nature of the state in the host societies and the political structures and policy processes that characterize their governments account for the miasma in most of them. The nature of the less modern, less democratic state that typifies the countries of origin contributes to their present and even greater prospective policy binds and the problematic life conditions of many of the migrants. While it is expedient for each of the three classes of actors—receiving states, sending states, and migrants—to nurture the myth of return, learning to live with the resulting indeterminacy presents great challenges to all and may require, in particular, rethinking what modern democratic states are about.
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References
1.
Some of these are identified in Barbara Schmitter Heisler and Martin O. Heisler, “Transnational Migration and the Modern Democratic State: Familiar Problems in New Form or a New Problem?” ibid., nn. 1, 8.
2.
some articles in Rosemarie Rogers, ed., Guests Come to Stay: The Effects of European Labor Migration on Sending and Receiving Countries (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985).
3.
3. Three limitations preclude a balanced and comprehensive treatment here of the import for sending countries of the extended sojourn of large numbers of their nationals: the relative dearth of empirical and analytic scholarships on these nations; the great variety of social, economic, and political conditions and processes that makes useful generalizations across them elusive; and the volatility of politics in several sending countries—both in terms of comprehensive regime changes and governmental and policy flux—during the past 10 to 15 years.
4.
4. These are, if what may appear to some to be involuted language can be overlooked for the moment, constraints on government emanating from the state.
5.
5. This is somewhat at odds with conventional usage but it does help to distinguish between the more visible operations of the agencies and personnel of government and the deeper structures in which, in the words of Benjamin and Duvall, “the enduring structure of governance and rule in society” are embedded. See Roger Benjamin and Raymond Duvall, “The Capitalist State in Context,” in The Democratic State, ed. Roger Benjamin and Stephen L. Elkin (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985), pp. 19-57, esp. pp. 23-27. By the governmental level I have in mind that at which, in Benjamin and Duvall's language, “the structure of the state apparatus” actually operates on a day-to-day basis, or what they might term the state as actor. See also the discussion in n. 17 of the present article.
6.
For a neo-Marxist perspective, see Ian Gough, The Political Economy of the Welfare State (London: Macmillan, 1979).
7.
7. This closed character is explicated in Gary P. Freeman, “Migration and the Political Economy.”
8.
8. See ibid.
9.
9. Other contributors to this issue of The Annals have described the dynamics that brought about this development. See, for example, Rogers, “Transnational Nexus of Migration.”
10.
10. The first phrase is used by Benjamin and Duvall to denote the broadest, most inclusive conception of the state—one they deem too broad for their theoretical purposes. The second is, as indicated in n. 5 of the present article, the most inclusive conception they find theoretically and empirically useful. Benjamin and Duvall, “Capitalist State in Context,” esp. pp. 27-28.
11.
See also Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1976), chap. 6.
12.
12. Arguably, some of the economic growth that lasted until the mid-1970s derived from the productivity of foreign workers.
13.
13. During the last 10 years all mature welfare states in Europe have had one or more significant changes of government that represented substantial departures from established patterns. Most of their successors undertook fairly stringent austerity programs, attempting to curb the growth of public expenditures and, in some cases, to roll them back. See, for instance, Robert Kuttner, “The Erosion of the Welfare State,”Transatlantic Perspectives, 12:8-10 (Sept. 1984). But little or no progress has been made.
14.
14. There are many scholarly treatments of this problem. One of the earliest and still most useful is in Richard Rose and Guy Peters, Can Government Go Bankrupt? (New York: Basic Books, 1978). The bankruptcy that concerns Rose and Peters is political rather than financial, and thus their theme relates directly to the argument here.
15.
Arnold Heertje , Margaret Allen, and Harry Cohen, The Black Economy: How It Works, Who It Works for, and What It Costs (London: Pan Books, 1982).
16.
16. To be sure, gray or black market employment is not restricted to immigrants. But for many and varied reasons, the temptation is greater for both workers and employers to use them in such ways, and the proportion of foreign workers is doubtlessly greater in most such labor markets.
17.
Benjamin and Elkin, eds., Democratic State. Not all of these authors' positions accord with those reflected in this article or, for that matter, with each other.
18.
18. A more extensive conceptual and analytic treatment, paralleling this discussion in important respects, is given in Benjamin and Duvall, “Capitalist State in Context.” Although the terminology and analytic categories used in the present article are somewhat idiosyncratic and differ from Benjamin and Duvall's, I am in general accord with their notion that of the many conceptions of the state current in the literature two are useful for comparative analytic and theoretical purposes: (1) “the structure of the state apparatus” and (2) “the state... as the enduring structure of governance and rule in society,” subsuming “the entire institutional-legal order,... the machinery and the means by which conflict is handled, society is ruled, and social relations are governed.” Ibid., pp. 23-26 and passim. I share these authors' view that these are two distinct but, depending on one's analytic purposes, equally useful conceptions for comparative analysis. In places, however, my notions diverge from theirs in nontrivial ways, and I do not follow here their differentiation of the contexts of the modern state. The influence of this essay of Benjamin and Duvall's will be more apparent in my future work than it is here.
19.
19. This last path lies close to and parallels some of the salient notions of autonomous action or policymaking developed in the recent literature on the state. Cf. Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State; Benjamin and Duvall, “Capitalist State in Context,” pp. 45-50.
20.
20. Switzerland is an exception to this generalization and Sweden may be partly so. More detailed and satisfactory explanations for these two cases can be found in the preceding articles in this issue of The Annals. From the perspective of this article, it is important to note that the Swiss state is far less extensively developed at the federal level—particularly as a welfare state—than are its counterparts in the other host countries. From the outset of labor in-migration, Swiss laws and agreements with sending countries provided foreign workers with less extensive privileges that might encourage them to remain, and men alone continued to constitute a larger proportion of migrants in Switzerland than elsewhere. Sweden, of course, has one of the most comprehensive and mature welfare states; but, as Rosemarie Rogers has stressed, its policies of encouraging integration and naturalization and its more liberal practice of extending social services, job tenure, and asylum—and the fact that a fairly large proportion of migrants are Finns who either have settled or are willing to settle—set it apart to some degree. See Rogers, “Transnational Nexus of Migration.”
21.
21. See Rogers, “Transnational Nexus of Migration.”
22.
Sabri Sayari, “Migration Policies of Sending Countries: Perspectives on the Turkish Experience,” ibid.
23.
23. See Rogers, “Transnational Nexus of Migration.”
24.
This issue of The Annals contains some of the few attempts to treat the transnational and international dimensions of migration from this perspective; a book in progress by James F. Hollifield promises more sustained treatment. Work in progress by the present writer addresses the consequences of security dependence for states and their governments in particular and for the convergence of domestic and external constraints in general.
25.
25. Examples include coping with competition between indigenous and foreign workers for scarce jobs, social discrimination against immigrants, or zealous efforts to repatriate foreigners.
26.
26. See Heisler and Heisler, “Transnational Migration and the Modern Democratic State.”
27.
27. For a brief and necessarily impressionistic discussion of this point for one country, see Stephen Adler, “Emigration and Development in Algeria: Doubts and Dilemmas,” in Guests Come to Stay, ed. Rogers, pp. 271-273.
28.
28. Thus, for instance, Moroccans and Turks in Europe are likely to be quite radical in comparison with the conservative regimes of their countries of origin, while Algerians, Spaniards, and Greeks are probably more conservative in the aggregate than the Socialist governments in power in their homelands.
29.
29. Adler, “Emigration and Development in Algeria.”
30.
30. It is largely to gain some measure of control over such economic activity that some sending countries have begun to work with the governments of host societies to direct the investments and economic activity of migrants into particular channels. The Netherlands and Germany have such arrangements with Turkey, for instance. Some of the most important sending countries, such as Turkey, Yugoslavia, and Algeria, expected foreign workers to obtain training abroad and, once home, to use their skills and savings to engage in economic activity to create jobs and spur particular types of development. While early returnees met these expectations, most recent returnees have not.
