Abstract
This book is about mobility of labor across national borders. It analyzes major epochs and episodes of cross-border labor mobility in world history—beginning from the ancient slavery to the modern-day slavery—focusing on the underlying economic and political dynamics that shaped such epochs and episodes, and does so from the vantage points of both theoretical underpinnings and empirical findings, from the perspectives of both workers and employers, as well as from the standpoints of labor-sending and -receiving countries. This introductory chapter provides a road-map of the book.
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- 2.
During the same period (1970–2017), the share of exports in global gross domestic product increased from 13.6 to 30 percent, and the share of exports increased from 13.7 to 28.5 percent. See World Bank National Accounts Data and OECD National Accounts Data Files. Available from: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ne.exp.gnfs.zs.
- 3.
Between 1980 and 2015, global foreign direct investment (FDI) flows increased from $854 billion to $1.76 trillion—more than a 32-fold increase over 35 years. For further details see Dowlah (2018, 23–25).
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Most surveys in developed countries routinely find more than 50 percent of native populations opposed to immigration. Such sentiments are on the rise throughout Europe—especially in countries with sizeable immigrant populations, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy. Such feelings have been galvanized since the massacre in Norway in 2011, the European refugee crisis of 2014–2016, and Brexit in the United Kingdom since 1917. In the United States, anti-immigrant feelings soared following the September 11 attack. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 has also often been attributed to rising anti-immigrant sentiments in the country. For further details see Bonafazi and Corraado (2008), Lynch and Simon (2003), Schain (2008), and Pew Research Center (2017).
- 5.
There is no specific timeline that separates the early modern era from the modern era. Most researchers however trace the beginning of the early modern era to Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the Americas in the 1490s, and the modern era to the Industrial Revolution or the American Revolution. For this study, the early modern era starts with Columbus’s discovery of the Americas, and the modern era in the 1800s when steam engines and other innovative technologies revolutionized transport and communication systems heralding the era of industrialization.
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Drescher (1987, 17) attributes this statement to the “political arithmetician’s bird’s eye survey of slavery with quantitative precision” by the English thinker Arthur Young (1741–1820), who branded all people in all of Asia, Africa, most of the Americas, and Southeastern Europe as slaves.
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The traditional form of slavery was officially abolished in the British Empire in 1833, in the French colonial empire in 1794, and in the United States in 1865. Serfdom was abolished in the Austrian Empire in 1781, in Denmark in 1788, and in Imperial Russia in 1861.
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Industrialization swept through Western countries during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—the United Kingdom achieved industrialization between 1783 and 1802, France between 1830 and 1860, Belgium between 1833 and 1860, the United States between 1843 and 1860, Germany between 1850 and 1873, and Sweden between 1868 and 1890. For further details see Rostow (1960).
- 11.
See https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2019/new-years-population.html, accessed on February 17, 2019.
- 12.
Net migration rate reflects the difference in number of immigrants and emigrants per 1000 of the population—a positive net immigration rate represents more people entering the country than leaving, while a negative rate represents more people leaving than entering.
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Dowlah, C. (2020). Introduction. In: Cross-Border Labor Mobility . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36506-6_1
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