ABSTRACT
As we approach the beginning of the twenty-first century we witness a new phase of mass population movements. There has been a rapid increase in migrations across the globe since the 1980s. These mass movements are taking place in all directions. The volume of migration has increased to Australia, North America and Western Europe. Similarly, large-scale population movements have taken place within and between countries of the ‘South’. More recently, events in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have provided impetus for mass movements of people. Some regions previously thought of as areas of emigration are now considered as areas of immigration. Economic inequalities within and between regions, expanding mobility of capital, people’s desire to pursue opportunities that might improve their life chances, political strife, wars, and famine are some of the factors that remain at the heart of the impetus behind these migrations. People on the move may be labour migrants (both ‘documented’ and ‘undocumented’), highly-qualified specialists, entrepreneurs, students, refugees and asylum seekers, or the household members of previous migrants. In 1990, the International Organisation for Migration estimated that there were over 80 million such ‘migrants’. Of these, approximately 30 million were said to be in ‘irregular situations’ and another 15 million were refugees or asylum seekers. By 1992, some estimates put the total number of migrants at 100 million, of whom 20 million were refugees and asylum seekers (Castles and Miller 1993). The notion of ‘economic migrant’ as referring primarily to labour migrants was always problematic, not least because it served to conceal the economic proclivities of those who were likely to be placed outside such a definition, for example industrialists or commercial entrepreneurs. However, these new migrations call this construct even more seriously into question, as global events increasingly render
untenable such distinctions as those held between the so called ‘political’ and ‘economic’ refugees.
