Abstract
International migration has become a very topical issue among scholars and institutions worldwide; and the mainstream media, particularly in the Global North, have often described the current situation as a period of “unprecedented human mobility” or “mass migration crisis.” Franklin Obeng-Odoom agrees with the contention that there is a crisis of international migration due to several factors including widespread displacement, extreme violence and severe economic and political violence in many regions, but rejects the dominant treatise that global migration is beyond limits. In his book, he therefore sets out to explain the nature of international migration, why it occurs and its ramifications for the economy, society, and the environment.
The author identifies four major theoretical perspectives that have dominated attempts to understand the problem of global migration. These are centered on nativists concerns, assumption about the self-interest of migrants to seek a better life in wealthier countries, claims that dysfunctional states create an imperative for migration and finally, those that emphasize structural socioeconomic processes within the capitalist world system. These four perspectives, according to the author, represent the conservative, mainstream, humanist, and radical theoretical positions on migration, respectively.
Moving beyond these perspectives, Obeng-Odoom postulates a new theoretical perspective based on a combination of institutional economics and stratification economics. Institutional economics of migration considers the local, national, international, and global dimensions of international migration while stratification economics, according to the author, offers a perspective that is historical, holistic, pluralist, and transdisciplinary. Furthermore, the stratification economics approach to migration strongly emphasizes the importance of land, along with labor, capital, and the state in understanding international migration. His unique theoretical approach expands stratification economics in three ways, that is, by analyzing migration developments in both the Global North and South, developing relevant traditions of institutional economics, and particularly, emphasizing the role of land in producing and maintaining inequalities and stratification in income and wealth and serving as a means of control, discrimination, and privilege. His approach also considers issues such as class, caste, race, ethnicity, and gender in analyzing international migration. He argues forcefully for the need to consider land and property rights issues in understanding and addressing global migration, environmental degradation, and inequality. Besides the extensive use of literature in the field of migration and related disciplines, the author illustrates his cases through an examination of the lives of migrant farmers, street workers, refugees, international students, and other groups from diverse regions such as Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia.
The book is divided into 10 chapters. In chapters 1, 2, and 3, the author introduces the main problem as the “migration crisis” and explains why mainstream attempts at explaining global migration (from the conservative, neoliberal, and humanist perspectives) as well as Marxist approaches are problematic because they are theoretically inconsistent and without empirical evidence. Chapters 4–9 examine different aspects of global migration through which Obeng-Odoom exemplifies the strength of his novel, institutional, and stratification economics-based approach to analyzing and understanding international migration. He develops his approach by examining the circular and global factors that shape internal migration as well as intersectional issues such as gender, ethnicity, and race (Chapter 4). He also examines the causes of the 2008 global economic crisis and the current refugee crisis (Chapter 5), and the positive contributions of migrants to the host community in spite of the challenges that they face, such as discrimination and racism (Chapter 6). The interactions between Africans and Chinese migrants in Australia and the positive as well as negative impacts of such interactions are examined in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 analyzes in detail the study, living, and working experiences of international students in Australia and contends that the myriad of questions raised by international student migration can only be understood when analyzed from broad institutional, class, racial, and gendered perspectives. Chapter 9 details some of the problems faced by migrants in Australia including poor housing and precarious living conditions even as they continue to send remittances to their relatives at home. Chapter 10 summarizes the key arguments of the book.
Besides the author's arguments justifying the superiority of the institutional and stratification economics perspectives for studying international migration, his ability to provide detailed studies from diverse regions of the world remains the main strength of the book, even if his choice of study areas appears somewhat eclectic, making it difficult to comprehend how they fit together. Furthermore, (international) migration is a worldwide, complex, and dynamic phenomenon and no single theoretical perspective will be able to capture all the latent and expressed motives of migrants as well as the structural processes underlying migration decisions across the diverse regions of the world. Nevertheless, the book provides a fresh and challenging perspective to understanding the complexity of international migration and its associated problems. It is well written and a very good read for academics, advanced students of migration studies, sociology, political economy, global studies, and other specialists open to alternative perspectives on international migration and inequality.