Abstract
Beyond Economic Migration offers readers a dozen chapters written from an array of interdisciplinary experts that explore how labor market and migration trends shape one another. The book covers the historical pathways of migration taken by various ethnoracial groups and the various obstacles to migrants’ incorporation into the labor market, including legal precarity, temporary visas, skill and credential devaluation, and ethnoracial prejudice.
The introduction and first chapter of the text detail key theoretical approaches to explain why economic migration occurs. The introduction explains several sociological approaches, including dual labor market theory (migrants perform the stigmatized but necessary labor in the secondary labor market in the destination country) and world systems theory (migration results from globalization, driving migrants from periphery countries to developed countries in search for work offering livable wages). The first chapter adds to these theoretical contributions by discussing how the “desirability” of migrants is shaped by the neoliberal logic and how AI and technology will engender “surveillance capitalism,” further shaping migrant labor.
Chapters two and three cover the migration and labor history of the two largest migrant groups in the United States since the passage of the Hart-Celler Act in 1965 — migrants from Latin America and Asia. Chapter two reviews the decades of economic migration from Latin America — characterized by lower skill, higher rates of poverty, and legal precarity — that reshaped the United States population and labor market. The author also covers the economic ramifications of the Great Recession that greatly disincentivized this migration trend to continue into the 2010s. This chapter also discusses the emergence of high-skilled migration from Latin America and the occurrences of skill devaluation and prejudice experienced. Chapter three follows by comparing and contrasting the migration and labor history of three east Asian ethnic groups: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean immigrants and their descendants. While all three ethnic groups migrated to the United States in search of work, varying policies in the United States and in the migrants’ country of origin shaped each migrant groups’ integration into the United States.
Chapters four through six inform readers about different visas and how they affect migrants’ ability to work, earnings for performed labor, and ability to transfer roles in the labor market. Chapter four provides a robust explanation of the current US visa policies, the types of visas available, the annual limits of each visa type, the constraints associated with each visa type, and how visa access varies by immigrant nationality. Chapters five and six highlight H1-B work visas for temporary skilled migrants. Chapter five covers earnings for these temporary migrants compared to other domestic workers and how earnings change when transition from temporary to permanent status. Chapter six compliments this by focusing on the precarity experienced by workers with temporary H1-B visas. Precarity results from the reliance on employers to maintain their visa status, the outsourcing and exploitation of body shop H1-B workers, and the exorbitantly lengthy wait periods many endure for permanent residency due to nationality quotas for green cards.
Chapter seven discusses international students’ difficulties transferring from student visas to work visas in the United States, causing many to return to their country of origin after graduating. Chapters eight and nine focus on the labor market outcomes of highly skilled African and female Pakistani migrants respectively. Chapter eight adopts a quantitative approach to analyze the association between education-occupation mismatch, field of study, nationality, and earnings, while chapter nine analyzes qualitative insights on the dual disadvantage of skilled female migrants through interviews with twenty skilled Pakistani migrants.
Finally, chapters ten and eleven explore transnationalism. Chapter ten delves into quintessential migration theories and scholars. The author outlines her argument that modern transnationalism differs from that of decades prior due to advancements in technology facilitating migrants to live their lives across multiple nations. The chapter details economic, political, and social transnationalism and argues that transnationalism transforms the country of origin, the destination country, and migrants themselves. While this chapter offers a phenomenal introduction to key players and concepts in the sociology of migration, it would serve readers more by appearing earlier in the text. Concluding with chapter eleven, the book zooms in specifically on economic transnationalism, using Bangladeshi migrants in LA as a case study. The chapter highlights the role of economic remittances to support family, engender upward mobility, and connect migrants to their roots in their country of origin.
Overall, this excellent collection of chapters will surely be of interest to scholars who study work and migration. The book excels at demonstrating the relationship between migration and the labor market, outlining key theoretical concepts, and sharing the migration and labor experiences of various different immigrant groups based on their mode of incorporation into the United States. Fledgling students and experienced scholars will all benefit from and enjoy this text.
