移民，劳动力市场和雇佣关系 Immigration, Labour Markets and Employment Relations: Problems and Prospects
Abstract
In this review essay, I argue that immigration presents employment researcherswith a promising strategic research site because it raises a number of theoreticallysignificant problems with mainstream economic approaches to labour andlabour markets. Despite the tendency to view economic migrants as homoeconomicus personified, I argue that immigration brings the institutionalnature of labour markets into sharp relief as it exposes, among other things, theinfluence of the state, processes of labour market segmentation, and the role oftrade union policy and practice. Having identified a number of empirical anomaliesthat contradict neoclassical economic theory, I proceed to sketch out threeareas where a more institutionally oriented approach should prove more fruitful.
1. Introduction
International migration, whether voluntary or involuntary, has become oneof the most prominent and controversial issues of the twenty-first century.Much of its prominence may be attributed to the current wave of internationalmigration that has been building steadily over the past few decades. In1960, for instance, there were approximately 75 million people living outsidetheir usual country of residence; by 2005 this figure had more than doubledto 191 million.1 At the same time, the number of countries that host asignificant number of migrants has also increased: in 1960 some 30 countrieshosted more than half a million immigrants each; by 2005 this too haddoubled to 64 countries (UN 2006: 1–2). However, even increases of thismagnitude cannot account for the controversy generated by the internationalmovement of people when compared with that of products, ideas or evenfirms. Immigration, it seems, stirs age-old fears about outsiders or strangers, who, all too often, are blamed for society’s ills. Among other things, immigrantsapparently take jobs, scrounge welfare benefits, launch crime waves,and import ideas and practices that undermine the very fabric of society (e.g.Littlejohn 2003; Phillips 2003).Similar claims were made about earlier waves of immigration to Britainand the United States during the nineteenth century, but these appear to havebeen forgotten, possibly because the predicted fears never quite materialized(see e.g. Bennett 1988; Curtis 1971). Unlike those earlier waves of migration,the advent of the European Union and its common market for labour andgoods has compounded these fears by fuelling the belief that member-stateshave lost the right to control their borders.
In particular, the eastern expansionof the European Union has generated a substantial East–West flow ofmigrants which, when combined with the recent accession of Romania andBulgaria and the potential entry of Turkey, has turned migration into anissue central to the future of Europe, if not the central issue (Favell andHansen 2002: 581).As an academic subject, immigration closely resembles industrial relationsin that much of the research has been influenced by the policy concerns andevents associated with so-called social problems (Portes 1995: 2). Like otherapplied subjects, both have attracted the attention of scholars from across thesocial sciences and have generated a voluminous body of literature.
Content
1. Introduction
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