Professional paper
Work migration: engine of development or continuous underdevelopment
Leon Berisha
Abstract
It is not unusual for discordance, or even conflicting opinions to exist in social sciences on many research subjects. If anything, a multitude of grounded perspectives and paradigms is beneficial and desirable when it comes to the research of social reality and individuals that constitute that reality. Thus, it is not unusual that there is a debate lasting for more than half a century about the migration-development nexus. If the debate on the relation of migration and development were a passenger, it would be one walking on a long and winding path. Throughout the long time that this debate lasts, prevailing opinions have been optimistic in the nineteen fifties, then pessimistic during the sixties and the seventies, and then again optimistic in the eighties. Recently, however, new perspectives that enable a more nuanced and precise view of the relationship between migration and development, as well as acknowledge the heterogeneity of causes and effects of migration have emerged. A third way has been conceptualized by synthesising insights from economics, development research and migration research that is able to recognize at the same time the weight of structural limitations as well as the importance of agency of individual actors.
This paper has a twofold purpose: firstly, to present a summary overview of a long lasting academic discussion, and secondly to offer a critical review and complement the understanding of the relationship between migration and development.
Keywords
agency; development; migration; migration pluralism; structure
Hrčak ID:
253242
URI
Publication date:
5.3.2021.
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