Theories Of International Migration

BOĞAZİÇİ UNIVERSİTY

POLS 456 FINAL PAPER

“Theories of International Migration: Critical Reflections”

ERDEM SELVİN

2010302183

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INTRODUCTION
International migration is one of the most important and contentious debate in contemporary scholarly works. It is like almost every week, we are reading the sinking boats while carrying refugees and illegal immigrants at every corner of the world from magazines and newspapers. At first sight, one may think that the international migration should

The intervention of states, as in the example of Germany and Turkey bilateral agreement in 1961 upon the guest worker program, provides an extremely important explanation about general pattern of international migration. The local situations and policy decisions can be included in the category of state intervention. For example, the massive unemployment of Turkey in 1960s, the shortage of workers of Germany during the same period and the historical ties between Germany and Ottoman Empire which is transformed into the modern Republic of Turkey show the significance of state intervention and historical ties between countries in determining the pattern of international migration. However; these are the just introductory discussion which leads to the academic studies of international migration. Apart from the general explanation, we need to distinguish and specifically examine the theories of international migration to know the causes that start immigration and the factors that determine the patterns of

In terms of understanding the causes and factors, we need to consider his frameworks and thoughts about international migration. That is why, we need to have a close look at his arguments (Zolberg: 1981). He makes a clear distinction between classical international migration theories and the new ones. By doing so, he tries to emphasize the integration of political perspective into the migration studies. According to Zolberg, there are two international migration theories. The first one is micro-analytic theory. This perspective approaches to international migration from classical economic view. According to the theories driven by this perspective, wage differentiates between sending and receiving countries are the major reasons for people to migrate. However, by looking at the discussions as we do above like historical ties, state intervention etc. we can say that this perspective does not work efficiently in explaining other factor opening international migration. It excludes historical links and state interventions etc. Another critic is that when we look at the profile of people who are immigrating across countries, we see that it is not the poorest people moving around because of lack of resources to make this travel possible; for example, in terms of being able to afford tickets. On the contrary, it is the relatively better off people who are moving around. As a final critic, we have to