Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
in search of a better life. Lower economic positions of
migrants in their host countries can lead to exploitation by
employers and others. The United Nations Convention
on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers
and Members of Their Families recognizes the precari-
ous position of migrant workers: they need to work and do
not want to be deported. The convention establishes stan-
dards of treatment for migrant workers. Fifty-eight states,
most of which are countries that send more migrants than
they receive, have ratifi ed or signed the convention. Even
though no member of the European Union and only 4 of
19 states in the G-20 states have signed it (the 20 largest
economies in the world including the European Union,
which primarily receive migrants), the convention's state-
ments on human traffi cking and the right of migrant
workers to equal wages are infl uencing the migration pol-
icies of some states.
eral researchers in the South whose research “raises
the issue of displacement of black workers by Mexican
migration—a topic hinted at by many studies but
addressed by few.” Issues of race and migrant status in
hiring can spill over into neighborhoods as they have
recently in Raleigh, North Carolina. In the last 10 years
confl icts have arisen over affordable housing between
the African Americans who lived in the neighborhoods
and Mexican migrants who moved into the neighbor-
hoods for the same affordable housing.
Geographer Paul Boyle also cites power relation-
ships based on money in the growing migration industry,
whereby migration fl ows are contractually arranged in
order to fi ll labor needs for particular economic sectors
throughout the world. Contractors give migrants advances
on their income, help them migrate to the new country or
region within a country, and then take migrants' wages in
order to pay for advances and other needs the contractor
supplies to the migrants.
Power Relationships
Gender, ethnicity, race, and money are all factors in the
decision to migrate. Power relationships already embed-
ded in society enable the fl ow of migrants around the
world. Employers who hire migrant workers often have
perceptions of what kinds of migrants would work best
for them.
Women in the Middle East hire Southeast Asian
women to work as domestic servants, housekeepers, and
nannies. Geographer Paul Boyle points out that by hir-
ing women from abroad, the female head of household
establishes a relationship in which the employee's “ethnic-
ity and citizenship status differentiates them from their
female employer and this infl uences the power relation-
ships that underpin the working arrangements.” In their
study of placement agencies that help people hire domes-
tic workers, Stiell and England found that in Toronto,
Canada, placement agencies portrayed certain ethnicities
according to scripted stereotypes. For instance, workers
from the Caribbean went from being portrayed as “docile,
jolly and good with children” to being depicted as “diffi -
cult, aggressive and selfi sh.” Soon after, employers sought
to hire women from the Philippines whom, at the time,
placement agencies portrayed as “'naturally' docile, sub-
servient, hard-working, good natured, domesticated, and
willing to endure long hours of housework and child-care
with little complaint.”
Race is also a factor in the hiring of migrant work-
ers. For example, carpet companies in Dalton, Georgia,
the carpet capital of the world, began hiring Mexican
workers after the 1986 passage of IRCA because they
saw them as hard workers who were loyal to one com-
pany. In the same time frame, North and South Carolina
also experienced surges in the Mexican migrant popula-
tion. Geographer Jamie Winders cites the work of sev-
Political Circumstances
Throughout history oppressive regimes have engendered
migration streams. Desperate migrants fl ed Vietnam by
the hundreds of thousands after the communists took
control of the country in 1975. In 1972 Uganda's dictator,
Idi Amin, expelled 50,000 Asians and Ugandans of Asian
descent from his country. The Cuban communist dicta-
torship expelled more than 125,000 Cubans in 1980 in the
“Mariel Boatlift.” Politically driven migration fl ows are
marked by both escape and expulsion.
Armed Confl ict and Civil War
The dreadful confl ict that engulfed the former Yugoslavia
during the 1990s drove as many as 3 million people from
their homes, mostly into western Europe. Many people
became permanent emigrants, unable to return home.
During the mid-1990s, a civil war engulfed Rwanda in
Equatorial Africa, a confl ict that pitted militant Hutu
against the minority Tutsi and “moderate” Hutu. The car-
nage claimed an estimated 800,000 to 1 million lives and
produced huge migration fl ows into neighboring Zaïre
(now Congo) and Tanzania. More than 2 million Rwandans
fl ed their homeland.
Environmental Conditions
A major example of migration induced by environmental
conditions is the movement of hundreds of thousands of
Irish citizens from Ireland to the New World during the
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