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In this episode, Immanuel Ness joins us for a discussion on migration as economic imperialism. We begin the conversation looking at the causes of migration—both intentional, structural parts of the global capitalist economy and also as certain consequences of this economic system, things like wars, sanctions, and ecological devastation. Immanuel then discusses the various ways in which migration is a function of imperialism, dispelling the myth among Western economists and the development industrial complex that migration actually benefits workers and helps to develop their countries of origins, but that migration in fact leads to underdevelopment of origin states, a dependency of Global South countries on the West, and heightened global inequality. We talk about the attack on immigrants in the United States and analyze the Trump administration's war on immigrants from a dialectical materialist perspective before ending the conversation discussing what a rational, humane system of labor migration might look like.
Immanuel Ness is Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York (CUNY), Brooklyn, School of Humanities and Social Sciences and author of Migration as Economic Imperialism: How International Labour Mobility Undermines Economic Development in Poor Countries.
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Intermission music: "Unfair" by Bliss
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