Introduction

Abstract

The close interconnection between globalization and transnational population movements in the contemporary world on the one hand and, on the other, between international migrations and the multicultural nature of twenty-first-century societies makes the study of international migration a necessary component of our understanding of both macro- and micro-level societal processes. The enormous expansion of international migrations since the 1980s has been a constitutive component of accelerated globalization processes connecting different regions of the world through trade and labor exchange, international laws and organizations, and rapidly advancing transportation and communication technologies. Swelling international migrations and their consequences for both sender and receiver societies have prompted governments and international organizations to find ways to control these flows either by constraining them (receiver states) or by facilitating cross-border population movements (human rights organizations and many sender governments with vested interests in immigrants’ remittances and their economic investments at home). Increased public concern in most of the highly developed countries that receive the bulk of these international population flows with an influx of immigrants from remote regions of the world has been articulated in Samuel Huntington’s (1996) vision of a “clash of civilizations,” Peter Brimelow’s (1996) prediction of “immigration disaster,” and Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s (1992) fears concerning “Die grosse Wanderung” (The Great Migration).