Back to the Future: Immigration Research, Immigration Policy, and Globalization in the Twenty-first Century

Today's international migrant flows are connected to broader processes of economic integration that for the past half century have been shrinking the globe. Places that are linked to one another by flows of goods, capital, commodities, and information also tend to be linked by flows of people, in a process that many people today refer to as "globalization." This realization suggests a third way between the extremes of an open border and draconian restrictions on international movement. Rather than attempting to discourage immigration through unilateral actions, policy makers should recognize immigration as a natural part of global economic integration and work multilaterally to manage it. International migration should thus be brought under the aegis of broader multilateral agreements regulating trade and investment.