Immigration is when the State imports people into a country.
Imperialism creates migration.
Migration is displaced,' free', labour forced to seek work elsewhere because of underdevelopment of the local economy.
Globalization is the corporate face of Imperialism in the 21st Century.
Immigration is the States ability to import labour to add to the 'army of underemployed/unemployed', for the purposes of taxing them.
Migrant labour will displace our jobs/migrants do the jobs our (insert country here) workers won't goes the arguement.
In reality just like immigrants brought in by the State, migrant workers will find low paid jobs in sweat shop economies of the black market. Jobs that indigenous workers do not have access to normally. In other words there exists a 'free' or black market in labour.
Nannies are one of the legal forms of chattel slavery that the State sanctions and has been a large source of labour migration into Canada that functions similarly to the black market operations such as sewing sweat shops.
Where migrant labour and immigrant labour meet is in the black market; the underground economy as Finacial Post editor Diane Francis calls it. That is the world of unregulated labour, labour that is not covered by government labour laws.
Farm workers were not covered by provincial employment standards acts in the but UFCW won the right to unionize them in a Supreme Court ruling.
This is a significant step forward for undocumented, temporary workers as well as documented imported temporary workers. It also bodes well for temporary construction workers imported into Alberta. Unfortunately management goons associated with labour contractors can easily replace real unions as 'workers representatives' in Alberta. Again showing the coorespondence between the 'legal' economy and the 'underground economy'.
This can be sub contracted trades work, taxi cab driving, janitorial companies, delivery services, fast food joints, small craft businesses; tailoring, shoemakers, etc. A large number of the service industries that business writers and neo-con apologist term; the new service economy.
There was an interesting liberaltarian perspective on migration published at Vive le Canada. Interesting because Vive is part of the nationalist Canadian left. The article is from a right wing libertarian site. For a Left Libertarian perspective on immigration reform in the U.S. see;the view from below . And actually we all agree, that migration is not problematic however contradictory its economic function is.
Condradictory because it exposes the developmental weakness of decadent capitalism. This is the crux of Negri and Hardts theory of Empire and its contradiction; the Multitude. The multitude is free labour, migration, rather than immigration. It is not yet a negation of globalized capitalism, since as a class the 'multitude'; the migratory proletariat have not yet become self concious. Yet.
The spontaneous demonstrations, the growing mass rallies in the US over the last ten days against their jingoist racist security laws over undocumented workers shows that the 'multitude is beocming class conscious. labour is leading the fight for migrants rights in the U.S. as it did with the IWW at the begining of last century when migration and immigration swelled in North America.
This shows that the movement that Negri and Hardt call the multitude, comes from rural underdeveloped economies, not yet industrialized enough to become economic Tigers.
I don't say countries, because much of the exodus North from Latin America and Africa is by peasants farmers displaced by corporate agribusiness, and water privateers. In effect it is provincial movement from countries, whose national capital is export business rather than the creation of regional market based capitalism. Sustainable capitalism in the world economy. Another contradicition. To be sustainable the market has to be small and based on the village cooperatives.
These cooperatives are destroyed and displaced by global investment capital, aiming for production for export, secondary production for export, and IMF funding for imports.
The destruction of nomadic and traditional farming results in famines which then impact the traditional geographical economies. Actual village cooperatives have survived the current ten year drought in some areas of Africa by the development of local economies, such as maize production from farming to its grinding into meal. Because they have taken care of the land which is the basis of their production.
The nomadic cattle herders, have been the ones to suffer the worst effects of the drought creating a landless multitude swarming to the capitols of Central Africa to end up dying enmasse. Those that survive move towards work, survival.
The entire Middle East is made up of masses of imported workers. The Arab republics of oil could not function without them. In the case of Kuwait for instance the entire indigenous population are property owners, a small wealthy population who consume and act as managers. The real working class, is imported. This then is one aspect of the global market state.
The migration of workers from the hinterlands to the metropols is as old as capitalism, since the mechanization of production, production that begins with agriculture. Capitalism developed out of agriculture, and its displacement historically is of peasants, through enclosure, forcing them to become a new industrial proletariat.
Migration is the result of the underdevelopment of local sustainable economies, the destruction of those economies, in order to colonize the people as consumers rather than producers.
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