Migration I: Surplus, economies, value

This report situates migration within the global economy. Whereas migration scholars once framed analyses in terms of privatization and the migration-industrial complex, subsequent analyses have approached the role of migration within the global economy in more varied and nuanced ways. I develop a perspective through the lenses of surplus populations and spatial fixes towards a more expansive approach centered on understanding the value of migration. Three key areas are surveyed in which geographers are examining how value is generated: the value of migrant labor, the value of migrant infrastructure, and the geopolitical value of migration. As numbers of migrants increase, protections for forced migrants become ever more tenuous, and the economic impacts of border enforcement strategies continue to grow, this is an important moment to reconsider migration within the global economy.