Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 196
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-4422-5496-1 • Hardback • July 2016 • $128.00 • (£98.00)
978-1-4422-5497-8 • Paperback • July 2016 • $44.00 • (£35.00)
978-1-4422-5498-5 • eBook • July 2016 • $41.50 • (£35.00)
Eliot Dickinson is professor of politics at Western Oregon University.
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: The Onset of a Borderless World
Chapter 2: Historical-Structural Origins of Global Migration
Chapter 3: The Global South
Chapter 4: The Global North
Chapter 5: The Coming Transformation
Notes
Recommended Readings
Index
About the Author
Eliot Dickinson, in vivid imagery taken from the stories of migrants with their hands forced by globalization processes, tells a story of our migratory times that began half a millennium ago and continues today. The reasons for past and modern migrations are thoroughly explained, leading to the inescapable conclusion that the world today has a choice to make. We can reject the reasons behind historical cyclical migratory patterns and the migrants who are a part of them and pay the price of failed states and peoples, or we can encourage through public policy the myriad contributions to global peace and prosperity that the overwhelming majority of migrants wish to make in their new lands. This book is a must-read for social scientists and concerned students alike.
— Ross E. Burkhart, Boise State University
The most important product of globalization isn’t money or goods, but people. In Globalization & Migration, Eliot Dickinson shows that although human migration is as old as the human race, modern migration is produced by displacement—by economic inequality, climate change and the conflicts that result from them. This is an enormous contribution. Dickinson explains clearly that building walls or detention centers cannot stop migration. Instead, he makes a powerfully written argument for social justice, the antidote to anti-immigrant hysteria. It should be read by all of us who care.
— David Bacon, author of The Right to Stay Home
Examines a variety of timely topics—from war refugees, terrorism, population growth, and political asylum law to human rights, immigrant integration, ethnic conflict, and the challenge of border control—that are likely to remain on the global political agenda for the foreseeable future.
Examines the fates of hundreds of millions of migrants who are currently living outside their countries of origin. Focuses on the lives of real people whose experiences are part of a larger human story that affects us all. This is why migration has been called “the most intimate form of globalization.”
Sheds light on the fact that millions of international migrants have been impoverished and dislocated by neoliberal economic policies that include a push toward privatization, deregulation, trade liberalization and tax cuts for the rich.
Emphasizes the fact that the number of asylum seekers, refugees and internally displaced people in the world has reached 60 million, the highest number since the end of World War II.
Argues that globalization causes migration, and migration contributes to the intensification of socio-economic and political relations across borders.
Offers a scathing critique of war and the vast military industrial complex, which is used to protect the global market and the interests of the capitalist class, yet inevitably results in humanitarian disasters, displaced populations, and refugee flows.
Asserts that rapacious capitalism, gluttonous consumerism, and ruinous wars have brought the environment to a breaking point, where climate change and extreme weather are not only displacing people but also threatening the planet with global ecological collapse.
Argues that environmental destruction poses a serious, long-term threat that is likely to have an increasing impact on global migration. In straightforward terms, the main problem is that capitalism and the global environment are on a collision course. If globalization continues on its present path, large swaths of the earth will no longer be habitable and the number of environmental migrants will likely reach into the hundreds of millions.
Provides an opportunity to contemplate a number of larger questions about globalization and migration: Can economic globalization be reined in before it uproots and dislodges even more people than it already has? Is it possible to effectively control large-scale migration in an age of intensifying global interdependence, interconnectedness, ethnic conflict, and climate change? Are open borders a realistic scenario?
Offers a concluding future vision of globalization in which we take the necessary steps to control runaway capitalism and militarism, and start caring for the planet and all of its inhabitants.