International migration remains the orphan child of globalization. Rapid development from the last quarter of the twentieth century has resulted in a world more unequal than ever before. Mobility of people needs to be understood as the natural corollary to international trade and capital. Sustaining global economic growth rates and progressing towards an equitable global order will be predicated substantially on the free movement of people. Transnational economic migration will be the next frontier of globalization.
There is urgent need to move to a rule-based, binding set of principles that would require states to willingly cede some degree of their sovereignty on matters of economic migration to a multilateral process. Failure to do so will likely generate conflict of an order that can jeopardize the very basis of a modern, progressive and democratic future for all. This book tells an interesting story—of development as seen from the lens of mobility—of how important migration has been, is, and will increasingly be for human development.
