ABSTRACT

Although relatively small in total volume in comparison to global patterns of internal rural-to-urban migration, the growing significance of international mobility of people in today’s globalizing order warrants a deeper, exhaustive examination. The globalization of labor might be said to accompany the globalization of capital, but the two are not so simply tied, nor are their patterns of circulation mutually determined by each other (Daly 2003; Sassen 1988). Global capital and global labor are, however, increasingly mobile factors of production. Both have become more volatile and more unpredictable in their patterns as globalization has strengthened its hold. Their global relationships as well as their national relationships are fraught with sovereignty contradictions, cross-border complications, and conflictual situations (Linard 1998; Schindlmayr 2003). In addition, while global trade and commerce have experienced greater “freedom to move” in this post1980s era of globalization, global migration by comparison is less free, and (somewhat counter-intuitively) less regulated (Keely 2002).