Migration, Work and Citizenship in the New Global Order

Any consideration of global migration in relation to work and citizenship must necessarily be situated in the context of the Great Recession. A whole historical chapter – that of neoliberalism – has now closed and the future can only be deemed uncertain. Migrant workers were key players during this phase of the global system, supplying cheap and flexible labour inputs when required in the rich countries. Now, with the further sustainability of the neoliberal political and economic world order in question, what will be the role of migration in terms of work patterns and what modalities of political citizenship will develop? While informalization of the relations of production and the precarization of work were once assumed to be the exception, that is no longer the case.

As for citizenship this book posits a parallel development of precarious citizenship for migrants, made increasingly vulnerable by the global economic crisis. But we are also in an era of profound social transformation, in the context of which social counter-movements emerge, which may halt the disembedding of the market from social control and its corrosive impact.

This book was published as a special issue of Globalizations.

Ronaldo Munck is Head of Civic and Global Engagement at Dublin City University and visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Liverpool. He has written widely on international labour issues from a critically engaged perspective. Currently he is working on a major transnational project on the way trade unions have responded to the new migrant ‘precariat’. He is editor of an open access E-journal on migration in Ireland, www.translocations.ie.

Carl-Ulrik Schierup is professor and Director of REMESO at Linkoping University in Sweden. His major academic work focuses on migration and ethnic relations in the former Yugoslavia and its successor states, on ethnic conflict, and on issues of migration, nationality, ethnicity, multiculturalism, political participation, working life and social exclusion/inclusion in Scandinavia and the European Union.

Raul Delgado Wise is the Executive Secretary of the International Migration and Development Network, editor of Migracion y Desarrollo, and director of the Doctoral Program in Development Studies at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas. He has published eight books, edited five, and written more than 80 essays, including book chapters and refereed articles.