Abstract
Migration research is fresher than the phenomenon itself. This is because migration phenomenon received delayed attention from researchers, academia, policy makers and international communities. This resulted in deficiencies in unified-but-suitable migration research methods for different geopolitical locales. Migration specific methodologies for research has not yet emerged in a unified manner, therefore, a void in knowledge persists resulting in the growing dilemmas in conducting research in conditions wherein, through and from migrants move over. In founding our texts for the book, we refer to the landmark literature, and dominant theories that have shaped the book. One of the very first explanatory approaches to both internal and international migration focused on individual decision-making. For several scholars, decisions to migrate can only be understood in a global context. In developing countries, debate on the economic effects of migration has taken a radically different turn. Researchers tend to link between migration and development in the origin and destination regions. We turn the problem around by considering the links between emigrants and sending regions via the notion of remittances, a key vector of the impact of migration in developing countries.
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Notes
- 1.
The cultural group that would later become the Gypsies led a semi-nomadic life in India, and has been tentatively identified as the Dom, which has been recorded as far back as the sixth century. The Dom performed various specialized jobs such as basket-making, scavenging, metal-working and entertainment, traveling a circuit through several small villages each year. This is not a unique phenomenon; the Irish Travellers, although completely unrelated genetically to the Gypsies , fulfill the same functions. Indian caste beliefs of the time may have been the original model for the strict purity and pollution ideology of the present Gypsies , modified over time through contact with other cultures. This semi-nomadic life allowed the Dom the opportunity to easily flee when battles threatened the area in which they lived, and apparently did so three times during the Middle Ages. The European Gypsies are perhaps the original refugees from Mahmud of Ghanzi’s wars, for all sixty Romani dialects contain Armenian words, suggesting that they passed through Armenia in the early eleventh century on the way into the Byzantine Empire . The impetus to continue on and enter Byzantine Anatolia was most likely provided by the Seljuk Turks attacked Armenia during the eleventh century and spurred the Gypsies onward (Folse 1995).
- 2.
Relative deprivation construct has been extensively used in social psychology , sociology, and other social sciences for more than half century. Relative deprivation refers to the discontent people feel when they compare their positions to those of other similarly situated and find out that they have less than their peers. Relative deprivation is the experience of being deprived of something to which one thinks he is entitled to (Walker and Smith 2001).
- 3.
The tragic deaths of 58 Chinese people, found in the back of a lorry , highlight the desperate situation facing asylum-seekers and refugees. The bodies of fifty -four men and four women were discovered in an airtight 18 metre-long container at the port of Dover. The driver of the Dutch-registered lorry had just made the crossing from Zeebrugge, Belgium, when his vehicle was pulled over for inspection by a customs official. Two men lay by the doors, gasping for breath. Behind them were 58 bodies lying sprawled between crates of tomatoes. It is likely that the 58 died of asphyxiation, although there is a possibility of carbon monoxide poisoning. It is believed that the 60 people had been trapped inside the container for more than 18 h. Electricity to the refrigeration unit had been turned off throughout the journey, during summer temperatures of up to 32C (90F) (WSWS 2000). More than 60 illegal immigrants , tried to enter South Korea by hiding themselves in an airtight fish cabin. During the voyage 26 of them were suffocated to death and their bodies were thrown into sea by South Korean human smugglers in an attempt to eliminate evidence of their crime. The rest 34 were under detention by police as soon as they landed on an island near the Yosu city. Now the case is under investigation (People’s Daily 2001).
- 4.
New York police searched for a Bangladeshi man believed to have jumped from a cargo ship traveling between France and the port of Newark , New Jersey . Another man who jumped with him was found and taken to a hospital. The men were part of the crew on the ship, called Manhattan Bridge that originated in France. Fishermen spotted one of the men on an island off the coast of Staten Island, which is New York’s City’s most southern borough , and the police harbor unit picked him up. “The other individual is still missing (International Herald Tribune 2007).
- 5.
One of the central propositions in the economic models of migration is that wage and income differentials between sending and receiving countries account for labour mobility and these differentials often determine the direction of international migration (Velazquez 2000).
- 6.
It is one of the patterns of social mobility. Vertical mobility, in contrast to horizontal mobility, involves moving from one social level to another. In migration perspective, moving from a lower wage or income country to a higher wage or income country is upward mobility.
- 7.
Informal networks were far from unique, however. Sociologists have come to understand informal networks as an important social resource because they direct the flow of information, power, and status in work organizations (Campbell et al. 1986) . For instance, informal networks help workers to obtain jobs, to advance up the corporate ladder , to gain skills, and to acquire legitimacy (Bridges and Villemez 1986; Podolny and Baron 1997). These benefits are not distributed equally, however.
- 8.
It has assumed that people are motivated by money and by the possibility of making a profit, and this has allowed it to construct formal, and often predictive , models of human behaviour. Sociologists and political scientists have tried to build theories around the idea that all action is fundamentally ‘rational’ in character and that people calculate the likely costs and benefits of any action before deciding what to do.
- 9.
This theory combines two economic school thoughts: Keynesian and neo-classic economics. While Keynesian looks at macroeconomic phenomena (e.g., unemployment), neo-classic economics looks at micro-phenomena (consumers and producers behavior). The bottom line of this theory is to explain how unemployment occurs as a result of rational choices made by the firm and household.
- 10.
The concept of labour market denotes the interaction between the supply (number of persons available for work) and the demand (number of jobs available) and the wage rate. The need to consider the short-term supply and demand for labour as well is complicated in labour market analysis; however their allocation among regions, occupations and industries is more complicated. There are institutions that influence and regulate the distribution of workers leading to the development of a number of different analyses of the labour market, among them the neoclassical analysis, the radical analysis and the institutional analysis, the latter two forming what has become known as the “segmented labour market” model (Statistics Canada 2008).
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Ullah, A.A., Haque, M.S. (2020). Underlying Methodological and Theoretical Aspects. In: The Migration Myth in Policy and Practice. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1754-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1754-9_2
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