– Bianca Kyd-Rebenburg

Exclusionary migration policies are gaining traction internationally. In the UK, the US, Germany, and most other regions of the Global North, we see stronger shifts towards immigration policy characterised by borders and exclusion. Foundational to this are our understandings of nationals’ and non-nationals’ right to inclusion within a nation’s borders. Economic migrants are increasingly met with hostility and suspicion (Tendayi Achiume, 2019). This hostility is supported by ideology and violent structures of international labour migration. To critically engage with these structures, we must expose the prejudice of eurocentrism underlying economic theories of migration. This prejudice distorts the social science and distracts from historical contexts (Amin, 1988). Eurocentric justification relying on colonial logic of the states’ ethical right to the exclusion of migrants must be challenged (Tendayi Achiume, 2019).

It is not yet well known that popular understanding of international economic migration is based on the eurocentric discipline of migration theory in mainstream economics. In these theories, migration is seen primarily through the lens of economic utility and growth. In true economics fashion, labour is a resource most efficiently allocated by the market. As such, there is an (eurocentric) assumption in the discipline that wage disparities and better labour conditions in the Global North are an endogenous result of economic development, without recognizing historical contexts. Economists’ bias undermines any holistic understandings of why people from the Global South immigrate to the Global North. Why do migration patterns replicate colonial ties so closely? And why is internal anti-immigrant policy ineffective at reducing labour migration?

Mainstream Migration Theory

Neoclassical Migration Theory (NMT), foundational to theory and policy, consists of a macro-and micro-economic level. The macro level outlines elements of the labour market equilibrium, the balance of labour supply and demand across regions, as the driver for labour migration. Labour is scarce in some regions, therefore wages are high; labour is abundant in others, therefore wages are low. Labour moves from low wage to high wage until wage disparities are minimised, achieving the new equilibrium. Labour migration takes place because of wage disparities and without them, there would be no migration (Massey, 1993). On the micro-level, the theory outlines individuals’ labour decisions. Workers migrate wherever labour is scarce, so they can secure higher wages in return for their skills. This behavioural prediction is in line with neoclassical economics, based on rational decisions of individuals to maximise income and utility.

Although NMT has evolved from these basic neoclassical foundations, it remains the baseline of how migration is more generally understood. Changes to the theoretical framework have been incrementally adapted through the expansion of the concept of utility. In the face of criticism to mainstream migration theory, the conceptualisation of the migrants’ personal cost-benefit analysis has changed. NMT focuses on the individual, while the succeeding theories – New Economics of Labour Migration and the Livelihoods Approach – expand decision making to households and families. The object of decision-making evolves from wage maximisation, to wage maximisation and risk minimisation, all the way to diversification of risk to maximise resources. Mainstream migration theory, which is an expansion of NMT, frames international labour migration as the economic and social decision of individuals based on opportunity differentials, rooted in a labour market equilibrium, and abstracting from historical and social context (Massey, 1993). The dimensions arguably expand to a more holistic understanding of utility, but the individualistic premise remains. At no point do such theories address global power structures underpinning the ability of people to migrate. Social and political phenomena are removed from their historical context and understood purely through concepts of expanded utility (Fine, 2000). Revised approaches patch up shortcomings of economic theories and fail to address the power relations and historical legacies of migration (Cross, 2020). All categories of social and geographical motivations are sooner or later encompassed by utility, feeding into the ultimate cost-benefit analysis that underpins contemporary mainstream.

This economic individualism constructs not only a limited but profoundly Eurocentric theoretical framework of migration theory that justifies exclusion. The individual decision of a migrant and their effort to maximise utility is set up against the right of a country to deny that decision and exclude the individual. It facilitates an international structure that constructs exclusion as the default and only deviates from this in cases that prove high utility to benefit receiving countries. The theoretical foundation of methodological individualism and the justification of exclusion is thus fundamentally linked. A nation’s right to exclude an individual is constructed or justified through the economic premise of rational decision making. Scholar Tendayi Achiume (2019) emphasises a key reason why individualism shapes migration policy and allows exclusion. Nationals and non-nationals are not seen as political equals and therefore states have different obligations to them. This creates a hierarchy of second-class citizens in which migrants become valuable through their economic contribution.

The World Bank’s Match and Motive Matrix, published in 2023, acts as a framework for receiving countries to navigate costs, benefits and obligations of international migration. Receiving countries can classify whether migrants are of benefit to them through the alignment of migrants’ skills and attributes with the needs of destination countries (Do and Özden, 2023). This Matrix is a perfect illustration of the uneven power structure between an individual migrant and a receiving country. Costs of integration along with social and economic costs are measured against benefits of skills. ‘A strong match occurs, for example, when the labour market benefits of the migrant exceed the costs of integration, while a weak match arises when the costs outweigh the benefits.’ (ibid, p.26). Underlying this analysis, is the benefit an individual migrant can contribute to a receiving country in their production structure.

Figure 1. Match and Motive Matrix (Do and Özden, 2023)

The report claims that labour migration is necessary for all countries to meet their labour shortages (Do and Özden, 2023). It legitimises the North’s way to assess the utility value of migrants from the Global South, and abstracts countries and individuals from their historical and political context (Blaney, 2020) to misleadingly neutralise the matrix. This methodological abstraction is not only insufficient but also harmful, as it holds significant policy implications. It prioritises economic utility and frames migrants as workers in a cost-benefit analysis, positioning them as second-class citizens that are by default excluded and exposed to exploitation and criminalisation. The assertion of receiving countries’ rights to exclusion are based on this framing of encounters between Global South peoples and Global North nation-states (Tendayi Achiume, 2019). This speaks to individualism through economic ideologies’ impact on international migration.

Colonizers like the UK have long relied on internal and foreign cheap labour to fill certain positions in the value chain. Frameworks such as the Match and Motive Matrix support this need as they clear paths for countries to evaluate what migration incentives would be needed to meet their labour needs, while there is little recognition of the systemic reproduction of the underlying neo-colonial structures. What is missing in this framework is the fact that labour migration is deeply embedded in the capitalist mode of production and plays an important role in managing labour supply (Cross, 2020). Cheap labour is the engine of neoliberal capitalism, especially via outsourcing and dismantling of labour protection since the 1980s (Delgado Wise, 2014).

The Expansion of Irregularity

Through the presented framework, migrants’ decision to move is individualised, yet their labour is systematically exploited. The same logic that justifies exclusion, also facilitates exploitation. ‘Illegal’ or ‘irregular’ immigrants are particularly treated as excludable political strangers (Tendayi Achiume, 2019). Yet irregularity is not a self-producing phenomenon but is rather facilitated by states. Countries like the USA and the UK continue to expand the boundaries of irregularity. Eurocentric and exploitative views on labour migration facilitate large levels of irregularity under which cheap labour can be endlessly exploited. The state does not only allow labour exploitation through lack of regulation but also actively facilitates it by expanding irregularity. In the UK, restriction of labour mobility is directly shaped by ties between Britain and its former colonies. Åhlberg’s work (2022) on migration illustrates the growing parameters of irregularity, encompassing several migrants, even those whose status was previously secure. She emphasizes how irregularity works in favour of capitalist accumulation. Irregular migrants are subject to major labour exploitation due to a lack of social protection and the power imbalance between employer and employee. Employers can capitalise on vulnerabilities of migrant workers and keep their labour costs low (Åhlberg, 2022). Risk of labour exploitation is particularly prevalent when under an insecure migration status and working in low-paid jobs (Boelman, 2023). In addition, there is a serious risk of falling into a ‘hostile environment’, a series of measures that aim at making it difficult or even unbearable for undocumented migrants to live in the UK. This includes barriers to accessing housing, healthcare, and bank accounts (Boelman, 2023). Significant increases in the number of people classified as irregular, have led to heightened labour exploitation (Åhlberg, 2022). Cross (2020) suggests that the rise of labour exploitation is a function of capitalist accumulation. The making of irregularity facilitates and justifies exploitation under the colonial logic of excluding migrants. 

Decolonising Labour Migration

Economic migration theory needs to decolonise and shift towards alternative understandings of labour mobility. The discipline must reorganise focus from economic utility towards balancing power structures based on historical legacies (Cross, 2020). Addressing eurocentric bias brings us closer to recognising the underlying logic that justifies global exploitation. The labour exploitation that continues between Global North and Global South countries must be acknowledged. Labour conditions including wages of the Global North are not endogenous to these countries. To recognise Global South countries’ contribution to prosperity in the Global North would mean to recognise the countries’ people as equally deserving of its benefits and therefore to migrate with the right to inclusion (Tendayi Achiume, 2019). This challenges the role of methodological individualism by explicating the historical enduring of hierachical and exploitative structures. Interdisciplinary insights from sociology and political economy that incorporate perspectives that allow for an understanding of historical legacies of exploitation should be spotlit. Theoretical frameworks must be reframed.

More attention should be focused on radical reimaginings of migration following framings such as those proposed by Zolberg (1989) and Tendayi Achiume (2019). They are historically embedded in power relations and initiate a radical reordering of priorities. Such critical scholars play a crucial role in challenging mainstream migration theory that sustain the unjust systems of exclusion dominating current political narratives. Zolberg (1989) proposes migration as a global system of equal liberties where disparities exist, yet everyone holds equal liberties to mobility. There is a collective obligation to provide entry and enable the right to exist. (Zolberg, 1989) Tendayi Achiume’s understanding of neo-colonial structures leads her to reject frameworks of economic migration that insist on exclusion and instead positions people as co-sovereign with equal right to inclusion and self-determination.

References

Tendayi Achiume, E. (2019) Migration As Decolonization. (Vol.71). Stanford Law Review 1509, UCLA School of Law, Public Law Research Paper 19(5), 1509-1974.

Åhlberg, M. and Granada, L. (2022) The making of irregular migration:

Post-Brexit immigration policy and risk of labour exploitation, Journal of Poverty and

Social Justice, 30(2): 120–140, DOI: 10.1332/175982721X16492615015710

Amin, S. (1988) “The Construction of Eurocentric Culture” In Eurocentrism, 2^nd edition. New York: Monthly Review Press, 165-188.

Boelman, V., Radicati, A., Clayton, A., De Groot, S., & Fisher, O. (2023). Rights and Risks:

Migrant labour exploitation in London [Research Report]. Focus on Labour Exploitation.

Cross, H. (2020). Migration Beyond Capitalism (Vol. 1). Polity Press.

Delgado Wise, R. (2015). Migration and Labour under Neoliberal Globalization. In

Migration, Precarity, and Global Governance (Vol. 1). Oxford University Press.

Ellis, F. (2003). A Livelihoods Approach to Migration and Poverty Reduction.

Commissioned by the Department for International Development.

Fine, B. (2000). Economics Imperialism and Intellectual Progress: The Present as

History of Economic Thought? History of Economics Review, 32(1), 10–35.

Massey, D. S., Arango, J., Hugo, G., Kouaouci, A., Pellegrino, A., & Taylor, E. (1993).

Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal. Population and

Development Review, 19(3), 431–466.

Do, Q.T., & Özden, Ç. (2023) World Development Report 2023 and the Match and Motive

Matrix. World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2023/12/11/global-migration-in-the-21st-century-navigating-the-impact-of-climate-change-conflict-and-demographic-shifts

Sassen, S. (1988). Mobility of Labour and Capital (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press.

Zolberg, A. R. (1989). The Next Waves: Migration Theory for a Changing World.

International Migration Review, 23(3), 403–430.

– Anonymous

“There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another… [the historian] regards it as his task to brush history against the grain.” Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History (Thesis VII). 

This quote frames the approach to teaching and learning in my Geopolitics course. The term “documents” is given a wide interpretation to include what is covered by the concepts of critical geopolitics. Documents of civilization are those associated with the oppressive practices of the Global North. When those concepts of critical geopolitics are used to brush history against the grain, those documents also expose the barbarism of the Global North vis a vis the Global South, significantly through colonialism and imperialism. The imperative to brush history against the grain includes an accurate depiction of the history of the marginalized and oppressed of the Global South, referring to counter narratives that challenge mainstream narratives and representations. This imperative is operationalized through the application of these concepts that include geopolitical architectures, identities, and objects. Brushing history against the grain by applying these concepts to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and apartheid structures and practices in Palestine are used as examples to illustrate how to decolonize the curriculum.  

Decolonizing the curriculum also requires a critical examination of how various approaches to geopolitics and legacy/corporate media representations of geopolitical phenomena occur. My course focuses on media representations and draws out the implications of Global North methods of framing. Geopolitics is usually associate with Great Powers struggle and different theoretical approaches will frame this struggle in different ways. Framing geopolitics in this manner tends to marginalize those who are not in the great power camps. Even worse, those outside of those camps are subordinated to empire were their value lies only with the resources that are coveted by Global North countries and corporations. This can include generating consensus for wars against various Global South nations, something that Chomsky and Herman (1988) articulated decades ago. In justifying imperialist wars of aggression, Orientalist tropes abound, as will be discussed below. To decolonize the curriculum, these themes are addressed in the course using critical concepts.  

Brushing history against the grain first requires centering the experiences of the marginalized and oppressed, which initially requires addressing legacy/corporate media representations. In the case of Palestine, the prevailing, mainstream narrative is that the war on Gaza began after the events of October 7^th occurred, effectively erasing the previous 75 years of the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Zionist settler colonial project. I introduce students to the importance of context by having them read Ilan Pappe’s Why Israel Wants to Erase Context and History in the War on Gaza and an interview with Rashid Khalidi. It is worth noting that both historians recognize Zionism as a settler colonial movement and frame their discussions as such. They begin the process of brushing history against the grain by addressing the implications of erasure of Palestinian history and challenging the Islamophobic tropes that perpetuate anti-Palestinian racism. For students who are not well initiated, paring these two historians, one a Jewish Israeli and the other a Palestinian, helps to reframe this issue as an anti-colonial one rather than through the ahistorical lens of an intractable religious conflict (i.e., Muslim versus Jew).        

The concept of geopolitical architectures refers to how state and non-state actors access, manage, and regulate the intersections of territories and flows establishing boundaries and borders between inside and outside, citizen and alien, and domestic and international. This also involves the international order, institutions, conventions, and laws (Dodds, 2019) . Key to the understanding of geopolitical architectures is the concept of sovereignty, which includes the ability to exercise effective sovereignty (and its recognition by other states and non-state actors) and its legal implications in the international realm. This concept helps to put into context the historical antecedents of October 7^th.  A Zionist contention is that because Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2006, Gaza was not occupied before October 7^th, 2023. Since Gaza was not occupied, the Palestinian attack occurred because Palestinians are inherently antisemitic, or what Pappe (in the article included above) calls the Nazification of Palestinians that renders them the eternal enemy of the Jewish people. However, Gaza has been under an Israeli military blockade since 2007. Blockades effectively negate the sovereignty of the country or territory that is under a blockade: as such, it is Israel, and not Palestinians, who exercise effective sovereignty. The Gaza strip has been under siege since the disengagement with Israel having control over who and what enters and exist Gaza thus allowing Israel to impose its will on the Palestinians in Gaza. Geopolitical architectures also include Israel’s blockade related policies: Head Ride of the Water, a policy of collective punishment in which the amount of calories entering Gaza are sufficient to put Palestinians on a diet, but not make them die of hunger; and Mowing the grass, in which Israel periodically kills Palestinians and destroys civilian infrastructure in an attempt to ensure that no viable resistance is able to operate. The blockade has been devastating to Gaza’s economy, a situation made worse by Israel’s frequent bombings of Gaza that degrade an already weakened civilian infrastructure. In short, Palestinians do not have sovereign control of Gaza, a situation that is revealed by brushing history against the grain using the concept of geopolitical architectures. 

The concept of geopolitical identity refers both to the construction and representation of certain identities, especially as these identities articulate differences between self and others. This can include framing the other as good, evil, or indifferent, as this framing occurs in media representations, speeches by political leaders, etc., constituting an emotional affect on the receiving audience (Dodds, 2019). It is through the concept of geopolitical identity that the structure and content of Orientalism is most usefully employed. The narrative that the October 7^th attack was unprovoked, or that the war started on October 7^th, fuels an ahistorical narrative that depicts Palestinians using the most horrible Orientalist tropes – blood thirsty terrorists whose inherent antisemitism leads them to commit crimes against Jewish people instead of seeking a peaceful solution. This narrative depicts good and innocent Israeli victims against barbaric and evil Palestinians. A particularly egregious example is the development and use of atrocity propaganda perpetuated by various Western media sources. The atrocities that they claim were committed by the Palestinian resistance on October 7^th have little to no basis in fact but were, nevertheless, perpetuated by a compliant Western corporate media. The use of atrocity propaganda plays on the well-established Orientalist tropes noted above and prepares a Western audience for the genocidal atrocities committed against Palestinians in Gaza by Israel by providing pre-emptive justifications. Brushing history against the grain using the concept of geopolitical identities involves the historical explanation of Palestinians as displaced and a largely ethnically cleansed population, many of whom live under apartheid conditions. In this sense, Palestinians, who are struggling for their freedom and right to self-determination, are the victims of the Zionist colonial project and its imperialist backers in the Global North.  

Both critical concepts can be coupled with the concept of geopolitical objects, which refers to objects that have geopolitical relevance (Dodds, 2019). The apartheid wall Israel has constructed in the Palestinian West Bank is an example, providing an entry point to examine other features of Israel’s colonial control over Palestinian lives. As indicated by several reputable international human rights organizations and Noura Erakat’s (2019) meticulous articulation and documentation of Israel’s apartheid practices from an international law perspective, apartheid is not simply a West Bank Phenomena but entails the entirety of Palestinian existence insofar as Israel attempts to exert colonial control over Palestinians. As a geopolitical architecture, apartheid refers to physical segregation and “legalized” control of Palestinians. The apartheid wall controls the movements of Palestinians, separating them from the Jewish only colonies illegally constructed in the West Bank by the Israeli state and Messianic settler movement. Apartheid is based on and constructs geopolitical identities, designating those who are considered to be fully human from those who are not allowed to exercise their human rights. It is an instantiation of the colonial, apartheid practices descriptive of Zionist colonization, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In this sense, the apartheid wall is a material instantiation and enforcer of these geopolitical identities.      

The concepts and ideas that have been incorporated into my teaching have been well received by the students, who have responded with enthusiasm. Today’s students are suspicious of legacy and corporate media and sometimes lack the intellectual and critical tools to interrogate what they see and hear. This module provides them with the tools as well as the opportunity to practice using them to examine and better grasp issues of geopolitical significance.    

Chomsky, N. and Herman, E.S. (1988) Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books. 

Dodds, K. (2023) Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction. 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  

Erakat, N. (2019) Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press