visible manifestation of political state in the last century having specific impact on population mobility has been border control, governments document, deny, and restrict movement across international boundaries, migration choices of individuals are very much constrained by preferences of states 'that send' and those ' that receive'...
legal/political frameworks regulating both exit out of origin countries and entry into destination countries have various rationales and produce intended as well as unintended outcomes, as a "receiver," u.s. has at times excluded persons solely on basis of numbers assumed to be upper limit beyond which neither economy nor society could absorb, more often, however, public officials have barred entry for demographic reasons such as national origin, race, education, job skills, and language fluency...
congress passed first prohibitive federal immigration policy in 1875 following supreme court ruling holding states to have no jurisdiction in such matters, previously, states had both recruited white euro-protestants and restricted their catholic counterparts, 1875 regulations denied entrance to the destitute, those engaged in *immoral* activities, and physically disabled, among targeted "undersirables" were prostitutes and chinese women, officials commonly equating latter with former, 1882 chinese exclusion act was first major restriction on immigration into u.s.and measure rooted in racism and xenophobia marking much of the nation's future immigration policy...
officially sanctioned race policies are neither neutral nor unchanging, they are continually reformulated through social, political, and cultural relationships, asian immigrants were most significant "other" after abolition of slavery...
stipulating acceptable entry numbers and limiting durations of stay, requiring certain educational, financial, and employment skill levels, and compelling people desiring entry to produce evidence of no criminal record do not seal border's "leaky" elements, rather, such measures make migration both "regular" (movement authorized by the state) and "irregular" (movement outside prevailing state sanction)...
"undocumented" immigration exists in dialectical relation to legal immigration, some people go to extraordinary lengths in their efforts to escape border patrols and immigration agents, they walk for hours or days over deserts and mountains, they brave hundreds and thousands of miles of ocean in small boats, they pay smugglers exorbitant fees to be crammed into the hulls of tanker ships, others take far less dangerous routes, they enter legally and stay beyond their period of authorization, they violate the terms of their legal entry...
international migrants depend upon intermediaries for information, motivation, and resources, for the affluent, corporate personnel offices may facilitate cross- border staff transfers by linking promotion opportunities to employee willingness to be personally mobile, for most others, informal family and friendship relations provide practical assistance to help find a job, and secure a place to live, 'migration channels' also include recruiters (both 'above' and 'under' ground) who have established relations with employers in another country...
unsurprisingly, there exists (as there does with economic and cultural capital) uneven and unequal distribution of social ties - higher the class position of the family, larger the number of social ties that can be mobilized for emigration, working class emigrants generally depend heavily on family and kinship ties, more affluent are able to activate diverse 'friendship' bonds...
inequalities created by capitalist penetration and capitalism's need for cheap labor are principal factors in present wave of international movement, to assume, however, that cross-border migration has only been a response to poverty would be incorrect, those who initially moved were likely to be economically and socially better off than those who stayed...
today, women comprise more than half of contemporary immigrants to u.s., return migration is lower because many more arrive with families in tow, their experiences convey story of both persistent underemployment and greater satisfaction with one's life... mh