Racism and International Migration

Abstract

Castles and Kosack (1973) made a decisive break with the race relations paradigm that had, up to that time, dominated research in the field of labour migration. While most previous authors had adopted an immigrant-host society perspective, couched in terms of ethnic minority adaptation, integration and eventual assimilation, Castles and Kosack sketched out an alternative political economy approach that focussed on the place of labour migration within the changing international division of labour, successfully establishing a radical alternative to the broadly liberal consensus of the day. Some of the implications of their work can usefully be addressed in the context of an Anglo-Dutch comparison.