Migration and mobility: The critical population issues of our time

We have come a long way since 1960 when the American sociologist, the late Dudley Kirk, called migration the “stepchild of demography”. In the intervening 45 years, that stepchild has become richly endowed indeed with, particularly since the late 1980s, a torrential outpouring of articles, books and research on the topic. Our empirical knowledge has certainly expanded greatly, but whether theoretical and conceptual understanding has seen equivalent refinement might be a matter of some debate. Unquestionably, today, migration has gained a much greater public awareness with government departments in countries in both the developed and the developing worlds, as well as several international organizations, moving the subject towards the top of the political and the policy agenda. Developing countries fear that the loss of their educated and skilled citizens will prejudice their chance of reaching higher levels of development. Developed countries need labour to do certain types of jobs but fear that importing labour will create both social stress at home and conflict with their development policy abroad by “poaching” the best and the brightest. International organizations try to work out how best to manage the flows in the interests of both countries of origin and countries of destination, as well as of the migrants themselves.