ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at questions of how agency and structure have been incorporated in various theories of migration by using the arrival of asylum seekers into Ireland as a case study. Its central purpose is to show to what extent Barnes's discussion of agency can help us to account for and understand such processes. The causes of migration are primarily related to structural factors the macro needs of the capitalist system for labour power: the movement of workers propelled by the dynamics of transnational capitalist economy, which simultaneously determines both the "push" and the "pull"'. Historical-structuralist approaches have in turn been criticized for paying scant attention to the socioeconomic factors that motivate individual actors. Reflecting the changing patterns of global migration which emerged particularly after the mid-1970s and again following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a stronger focus on refugees and asylum seekers as a specific modality of migration.
