Your favorite superheroes are born within the chaos of humanity. They would not be heroes without the trouble villains perform. Many people do their best when they are faced with difficulties and that is how they can move on with their lives. The social, economic, political, and cultural aspects of society work together to create an inequality and thus boost migration. This explanation corresponds with the historical-structural theory of migration. Migration is a historical-structuralist phenomenon because of the inequality among geographic regions, inequality based on rurality and urbanity, class divisions, and migration policies.
The division that the modern world has between wealthy and poor countries is because of colonization. Colonization creates the division of which country take advantage of the resources of the other, which labels them as wealthy and poor countries. Castles, de Haas, and Miller stated that “historical-structural theory assumes that economic and political power is unequally distributed among wealthy and poor countries” (2014:32). The uneven distribution of economic and political power of poor countries creates the ambitions to migrate to the wealthy countries for a better life in terms of economic and political aspects. This migration not only benefits the individual who migrates but also the receiving country by making it wealthier which creates even more inequalities. Also, wealthy or core countries take advantage of the labor force of the poor or peripheral countries. Core countries know the status of these peripheral countries, so core countries try to bring individuals from the peripheral regions to work with wages that are a bit more than the wages they get in the peripheral regions. With this format of hiring individuals from peripheral countries, these individuals are unable to withdraw from these jobs because the core country provides them a little more resource than the peripheral country they were in before. Peripheral countries start depending on the core countries from an economical point of view (de Hass 2010). Therefore, dependency is one of the consequences colonization and enforces more inequality and more migration between core and peripheral regions.
Not only does migration occurs outside of national borders but also within the country itself. It does not imply that rural areas are considered poor areas, for they were once rich with agriculture and farming. However, with the start of Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, rural areas began to dim with the rise of factories and machinery in urban areas. Not everybody decides to leave their family in rural areas behind, most people travel from rural to urban for labor competition and provide another way of income to the family. According to Jones, rural areas “are decreasing as a consequence of the fact that most emigrants are rural, and remittances are thus bringing their incomes closer to those of urban dwellers” (1998:12). With the increase of income in rural families, it creates a conflict between the rural and urban areas in terms of incomes and labor competition. The conflict between these two areas creates more inequality because there is a division of income between the urbanity and rurality that is becoming closer and closer.
The inequality does not stop in countries and areas in a country but also within a community of people. When power and money are the means to become a superior being, wealthy elite classes and the poor working class emerge. In another work by de Haas, he argues, “for instance, in the poorest countries of Africa and Asia, legal migration opportunities to Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand are mainly the prerogative of elite groups” (2014:10). Migration in many poor countries is a privilege, you have to have an educational or rich background to do so. Nevertheless, people will always find ways to migrate whether legally or illegally to escape the difficult conditions – economic, political, social, or cultural – that families or individuals face because of this class division. Another example of this inequality of classes can be seen in the United States in 1882 with the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act where it prohibited the entry of Chinese laborers into the United States. This Act excluded those who came as students, diplomats, and merchants (U.S. Department of Justice 1984). With the pass of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, only people with money and those of higher status could migrate to the United States. This inequality of who was able to enter because of their class continued until the start of World War II but it did not stop the migration of Chinese migrants even if that meant irregular entry.
Similar to what the United States did to Chinese migrants, governments in different countries have tried to stop migration. Passing laws to prevent migration from a certain racial or social group will not completely halt migration. Castles et al. states that “such events have given rise to perceptions that threats to security of states are somehow linked to international migration” (2014:6). Countries undergo different types of crises at different times but when major migration is occurring, those crises are scapegoated to immigrants. The blame turns into fear that the same horrific event will happen again. The inequality of excluding a specific race or social group creates more migration in different ways. The migration creates more inequalities or more laws to restrict this. In addition, the idea of state sovereignty is brought up when talking about border control. Castles et al. mentions that “paradoxically, irregularity is often a result of tighter control measures, which have blocked earlier forms of spontaneous mobility” (2014:5). But the more you secure your land to prevent migrants from populate it, the more ways migrants will find to get in because of the inequalities they faced and because they believe that other places will provide them the needs and wants they are looking for.
Many people may think that migration is working under a functionalist theory. A functionalist theory means that society works together as interdependent parts towards equilibrium or balance. According to Jones, when individuals from rural families migrate to provide more income to their families, it is part of their economic growth and closes the income gap that rural and urban areas have (1998). However, when the income increases from rural areas, people from urban areas become conflicted with how the gap is getting closer and closer. They begin to see this as an inequality and unfair labor competition. The remittances to rural areas or poor countries do improve their economic status of such groups but then it creates the imbalance that wealthy or urban areas often have. To achieve this equilibrium, the neoclassical theory – a subsection of the functionalist phenomenon – argues that individuals make the decision to move “based on the rational evaluation of the benefits to be gained and the costs entailed in moving” (Wood 1982:301). According to the functionalist theory, migration occurs because there is economic, political, cultural, or social opportunities that the migrant and their family can take advantage of. These opportunities normally takes place in areas where the imbalance of labor and capital occur (Wood 1982) and thus, migrating will balance the equation. Nonetheless, when people migrate to places where the labor competition is weak, these immigrants start to take these jobs. Citizens of that country might see this influx of immigrants as a thread of “taking jobs away” from citizens.
Even though the scarcity of jobs in a certain area increases migration, it also starts the inequality where citizens are conscious that their reality is being invaded by human beings who have different ideals, physique, personalities, and beliefs. That is why the functionalist theory cannot successfully explain migration. People have different ways of thinking, to express themselves and their ideas, and different ways of interacting. Their reaction towards migration is going to be a negative one because it is taking away from what they are used to see and live. It is difficult to change the beliefs of someone who has been living up to those ideals for ages.
In this paper, historical-structural theory is applied to the differences that peripheral and core regions undergo as well as inequality in urban and rural areas, the class division, and immigration policies. The inequalities seen in the historical-structural theory are not stopped after migration rather they increase after migration happens. It is a cycle we will never escape because of the history we decided bear.