The Human Cost of Migration? Case-Studies From Britain and China

Internal and international migration are often discussed in different intellectual and political spaces which obscures important common features. Internal (or domestic) migration, typically referring to movement from rural to urban areas, is frequently construed as an important mechanism—sometimes planned, although often not—that facilitates economic development, urbanisation and the more effective utilisation of the factors of production. Equally migration has regularly been blamed for escalating housing costs, causing over-crowding, and resulting in the development of slums and criminality.

International migration is simultaneously viewed as a cornerstone of global development, necessary according to the UN International Organization for Migration for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals 1, 3, 8,10, 13 and 16, while others portray it as ‘invasion’ and a mechanism of ‘civilizational erasure’.  While most international migration is economic and legal, governed by work permits and quotas and driven by demand for workers and people’s aspirations for career development and a better life, political attention tends to focus on illicit migration, asylum seekers and refugees.

Much political discourse is framed from the perspective of host communities establishing rules that limit the right of migrants to enter cities and countries and/or to enjoy services available to natives. Academic research has tended to be disproportionately quantitative focused on stocks, flows and spatial concentrations. Where the aspirations and experiences of migrants have been considered, often they have been dissected into variables that lose connection with the people whose experiences they index.

What has frequently been neglected is the story of the migrant experience told from the perspective of migrants themselves. The suspicion is that, examined through this lens, international and domestic migrants share many salient characteristics with respect to motivations, work experience, achievements, challenges, exploitation, humiliation and resilience. It is possible, too, that for some, the costs of migration outweigh the benefits.

Therefore, this thematic issue is structured as a natural experiment adopting a maximum difference design. Divided into two sections, the first will contain articles invited to focus on the experience of domestic migrants in China, the second section will comprise articles on the experience of international migrants into the United Kingdom. The editorial will present an analysis of the articles drawing attention to similarities and differences in the experiences of internal and international migrants. It will equally explore the trade-offs that migrants make when seeking to migrate and in accommodating to the place of destination and their success in ensuring that benefits of migration outweigh the costs.

Over the last 45 years, China has experienced the largest internal migration in history. This has transformed China from a mostly rural society to an urban one, facilitated unprecedented industrial and commercial growth and China’s emergence as the world’s second largest economy, and contributed to lifting 800 million people out of extreme poverty. There is evidence, though, that China’s economic success has been achieved in part by personal and familial sacrifices made rural-urban migrants that go largely unrecognised in public discourse.

Britain, its culture shaped over millennia by waves of inward migration, has nevertheless been transformed into a multicultural society since the 1950s, notably in the last 45 years. In 1951, the foreign-born population comprised 4.3 percent of the total. This proportion was still only 6.6 percent in 1981 but, by 2021, it had risen to 77 percent. In 1951, 99.9 percent of the population was white as was 96 percent in 1981. In marked contrast, by 2021/2 29.4 percent of the population was not white. Although migrants have been largely absorbed into Britian’s labour market, sometimes undertaking work shunned by the host population, migration has nevertheless become a toxic political issue. Internal migration intensity has declined over this period despite high mobility for certain age groups.

Research articles are invited dealing with the life experiences of (1) internal migrants and their families in China or (2) international migrants and their families into the United Kingdom. There are no constraints on the research methodologies employed provided that they seek to capture the lived experiences of migrants. Articles that discuss the challenges confronted by migrants and report on how migrants maximise the benefits accruing from migration are particularly welcome.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Social Inclusion is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

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