The ‘migration-development’ nexus has emerged as an important area of both research and policy over the last ten years. However, most of the interest has focused on the potential that migration holds for poverty alleviation. Relatively little attention has been paid to the relationship between migration and inequality, particularly on inequality as a consequence of migration. This is unfortunate, given that inequality is emerging as an important area of inquiry within development studies. This edited collection explores the relationship between migration and inequality in Africa, Asia and Latin America by taking into account economic and social inequalities.
While the focus on inequality as opposed to poverty is in itself original, the book offers additional points of interest. First, it combines chapters on internal and international migration, thereby challenging the current focus in the migration literature that focuses almost exclusively on cross-border migration. Internal migration greatly outnumbers cross-border moves. Yet policy-makers as well as most studies focus on cross-border international migration. We are only just beginning to unravel the relationship between internal and cross-border migration. Second, the theme of inequality complements the existing focus in the migration-development nexus on issues of poverty. Third, the chapters focus on both economic and social inequalities, often combining an analysis of different types of inequalities. The book also covers governance and migrants’ rights; gender and intersectionality; and health.
The chapters in this edited volume make an original contribution to debates on the migration-development nexus as well as the literature on inequality, which often tends to focus on economic measurements of inequality at the expense of including a thorough analysis of social inequality.
Part I: Overview 1. Migration and Inequality: An introduction Tanja Bastia 2. Immigration and Global Inequality: A cross-national analysis Matthew Sanderson Part II: Governance and Migrants’ Rights 3. Resisting Inequality: The rise of global migrants rights activism Nicola Piper 4. International Labour Migration: Dynamics in Southeast Asia migration and inequality Amarjit Kaur Part III: Internal and Cross-Border Migration 5. Ghanaian Mobilities, Interstecting Inequalities and Transnational Activities Leander Kandilige 6. Migration, Urban Health and Inequality in Johannesburg Jo Vearey Part IV: Migration, Gender and Intersectionality 7. Migration as Protest? Negotiating gender, class and ethnicity in urban Bolivia Tanja Bastia 8. Mobility as Enabling Gender Equality? The case of international aid workers Anne-Meike Fechter 9. Migration, Health and Inequalities: Reflections on the experience of Latin American migrants in London Jasmine Gideon
Biography
Tanja Bastia is Lecturer in the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester, UK
'This is a timely contribution to an important and often neglected subject – the relationship between migration and inequality. There has been a major shift in attitudes towards migration over the last decade, driven by emerging evidence of the significance of migrant remittances both in monetary terms, and in terms of their reach through many parts of the developing world. Yet nagging doubts remain about whether these remittances genuinely reflect or facilitate a route out of poverty for poor people, or whether instead they contribute to increasing inequality, in which some are trapped or pushed into situations of increased disadvantage. This book tackles these concerns head on, and provides evidence from a range of geographical regions that inequality in its various forms – economic, social, gender, etc. - can be exacerbated by the process of migration. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the nexus between migration, development and poverty.' — Professor Richard Black, Professor of Human Geography, University of Sussex, UK
'An outstanding examination of the intersections of migration, class, gender and racialization, Migration and Inequality is an important contribution to migration studies. Tanja Bastia’s comprehensive introduction and the book’s well-written and far ranging articles advance existing analyses of the relationship between globalization and multiple forms of situated inequality. Assessing a range of inequalities within trajectories of development, contributors build on current critiques of the migration development nexus to ask whether, when, how, or if migration transforms "unequal social structures" or whether it only reproduces structures of inequality and hierarchy. Exploring both internal and international migration, so frequently part of migration histories but often addressed by different literatures and development policies, this is a book worth reading from cover to cover.' — Professor Nina Glick Schiller, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology and Founding Director, Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures, University of Manchester, UK
