In the globalized economy, labor migration has become of central importance. A key issue in the analysis of immigration is how the migrants fare in the economy in which they migrate, and how they assimilate towards the behavior of the natives. Using data from the United States, Canada, many European countries, Australia and New Zealand, the chapters study the developments of earnings, employment, unemployment, self-employment, occupational choices and educational attainment after migration. The book also investigates the role of language in labor market integration and examines the situation of illegal, legalized and unwilling migrants. Policy effects are also studied: Among those are the effects of selection criteria of labor market success and the effects immigrants have on the public sector budget of the receiving country. Hence, the book provides a broad picture of the performance of migrants.

Many low-income countries and development organizations are calling for greater liberalization of labor immigration policies in high-income countries. At the same time, human rights organizations and migrant rights advocates demand more equal rights for migrant workers. The Price of Rights shows why you cannot always have both. Examining labor immigration policies in over forty countries, as well as policy drivers in major migrant-receiving and migrant-sending states, Martin Ruhs finds that there are trade-offs in the policies of high-income countries between openness to admitting migrant workers and some of the rights granted to migrants after admission. Insisting on greater equality of rights for migrant workers can come at the price of more restrictive admission policies, especially for lower-skilled workers. Ruhs advocates the liberalization of international labor migration through temporary migration programs that protect a universal set of core rights and account for the interests of nation-states by restricting a few specific rights that create net costs for receiving countries. The Price of Rights analyzes how high-income countries restrict the rights of migrant workers as part of their labor immigration policies and discusses the implications for global debates about regulating labor migration and protecting migrants. It comprehensively looks at the tensions between human rights and citizenship rights, the agency and interests of migrants and states, and the determinants and ethics of labor immigration policy.

Throughout the industrialized world, international migrants serve as nannies, construction workers, gardeners and small-business entrepreneurs. Labor Movement suggests that the international migration of workers is necessary for the survival of industrialized economies. The book thus turns the conventional view of international migration on its head: it investigates how migration regulates labor markets, rather than labor markets shaping migration flows. Assuming a critical view of orthodox economic theory, the book illustrates how different legal, social and cultural strategies towards international migrants are deployed and coordinated within the wider neo-liberal project to render migrants and immigrants vulnerable, pushing them into performing distinct economic roles and into subordinate labor market situations. Drawing on social theories associated with Pierre Bourdieu and other prominent thinkers, Labor Movement suggests that migration regulates labor markets through processes of social distinction, cultural judgement and the strategic deployment of citizenship. European and North American case studies illustrate how the labor of international migrants is systematically devalued and how popular discourse legitimates the demotion of migrants to subordinate labor. Engaging with various immigrant groups in different cities, including South Asian immigrants in Vancouver, foreigners and Spätaussiedler in Berlin, and Mexican and Caribbean offshore workers in rural Ontario, the studies seek to unravel the complex web of regulatory labor market processes related to international migration. Recognizing and understanding these processes, Bauder argues, is an important step towards building effective activist strategies and for envisioning new roles for migrating workers and people. The book is a valuable resource to researchers and students in economics, ethnic and migration studies, geography, sociology, political science, and to frontline activists in Europe, North America and beyond.

One Way Ticket (1983) examines the ‘hidden armies’ of migrant women workers who have since the 1950s fulfilled a demand for low-skilled, low paid and insecure work in both the formal and informal economies of Western Europe. It presents a new focus for the examination of labour migration and of the specific character of female employment. It looks at the relationship between motherhood, waged work and ethnicity; the position of a second generation of black women workers; and the oppression and exploitation of migrant women by their male counterparts through the creation of ‘ethnic’ economies.

From 1940 to 1970, nearly four million black migrants left the American rural South to settle in the industrial cities of the North and West. Competition in the Promised Land provides a comprehensive account of the long-lasting effects of the influx of black workers on labor markets and urban space in receiving areas. Traditionally, the Great Black Migration has been lauded as a path to general black economic progress. Leah Boustan challenges this view, arguing instead that the migration produced winners and losers within the black community. Boustan shows that migrants themselves gained tremendously, more than doubling their earnings by moving North. But these new arrivals competed with existing black workers, limiting black–white wage convergence in Northern labor markets and slowing black economic growth. Furthermore, many white households responded to the black migration by relocating to the suburbs. White flight was motivated not only by neighborhood racial change but also by the desire on the part of white residents to avoid participating in the local public services and fiscal obligations of increasingly diverse cities. Employing historical census data and state-of-the-art econometric methods, Competition in the Promised Land revises our understanding of the Great Black Migration and its role in the transformation of American society.

Are immigrants squeezing Americans out of the work force? Or is competition wth foreign products imported by the United States an even greater danger to those employed in some industries? How do wages and unions fare in foreign-owned firms? And are the media's claims about the number of illegal immigrants misleading? Prompted by the growing internationalization of the U.S. labor market since the 1970s, contributors to Immigration, Trade, and the Labor Market provide an innovative and comprehensive analysis of the labor market impact of the international movements of people, goods, and capital. Their provocative findings are brought into perspective by studies of two other major immigrant-recipient countries, Canada and Australia. The differing experiences of each nation stress the degree to which labor market institutions and economic policies can condition the effect of immigration and trade on economic outcomes Contributors trace the flow of immigrants by comparing the labor market and migration behavior of individual immigrants, explore the effects of immigration on wages and employment by comparing the composition of the work force in local labor markets, and analyze the impact of trade on labor markets in different industries. A unique data set was developed especially for this study—ranging from an effort to link exports/imports with wages and employment in manufacturing industries, to a survey of illegal Mexican immigrants in the San Diego area—which will prove enormously valuable for future research.

The essays in this collection address issues significant to labor within regional, national and international contexts. Themes of the chapters will focus on managed labor migration; organizing in multi-ethnic and multi-national contexts; global economics and labor; global economics and inequality; gender and labor; racism and globalization; regional trade agreements and labor.

A timely analysis of Canadian temporary labour migration policies.

Laura Agustín presents an analysis of the position prostitutes occupy within the global economy.