Convicts and coolies : rethinking indentured labour in the nineteenth century

This article seeks to shift the frame of analysis within which discussions of Indian indentured migration take place. It argues that colonial discourses and practices of indenture are best understood not with regard to the common historiographical framework of whether it was 'a new system of slavery', but in the context of colonial innovations in incarceration and confinement. The article shows how Indian experiences of and knowledge about transportation overseas to penal settlements informed in important ways both their own understandings and representations of migration and the colonial practices associated with the recruitment of indentured labour. In detailing the connections between two supposedly different labour regimes, it thus brings a further layer of complexity to debates around their supposed distinctions

No. 27: Migration and Development in Contemporary Mauritius

Mauritius is a society descended of involuntary and voluntary migrants. After two-and-a-half centuries of settlement as a plantation colony and by the time of its independence from colonial rule in 1968 the island nation’s population had grown to seemingly insupportable levels. But having faced the afflictions of overpopulation, social division and economic despair (and sizeable emigration) at the dawn of its independence, it took just a decade and-a-half for despondency to fade and for Mauritius to begin resembling a tropical idyll of sorts. Though poverty persisted as the small island successfully transformed its economy from colonial plantation to mostly industrial (light manufacturing) and service (tourism and financial services) activity, rapid economic growth became a normal condition and living standards improved markedly under conditions of parliamentary democracy. If the threat of overpopulation had initially hung over the fledgling republic, the subsequent period of prodigious economic growth saw a vast expansion of formal employment and a decimation of unemployment. During this growth spurt the Mauritian economy resumed its reliance on contractual labour migrants from abroad. Contemporary Mauritius enjoys a reputation of developmental success and it is frequently held up as a model to be emulated by other aspiring developers. While the last quarter of a century of this success coincides with a phase of systematic and unabated contractual labour migration, the Mauritian government has more recently embarked on further migration schemes, on the one hand to attract highly qualified and ‘high net worth’ individuals to the country and on the other hand to encourage circulatory out-migration. Both the decades-old system of contractual labour migration and these more recent movements are closely aligned with the country’s development trajectory, providing a test of widely-held assumptions about the relationship between migration and development. Focusing mainly on international labour migration, and viewing it within the context of a global division of labour, this policy brief provides an account of migration and development in contemporary Mauritius. The first part deals with conceptions of the migration and development relationship, the second introduces current patterns of migration into and out of Mauritius, the third examines labour migration to Mauritius, and the final part offers some conceptual and policy-related generalisations arising from the study of the migration-development relationship in Mauritius. Concentrating on the period 2005 to 2010 and focusing especially on the migration of clothing and textile factory workers, the study relies primarily on official statistics and media reports for its empirical content and it draws also from published and organisational sources

International Migration and the Role of Institutions

We study the determinants of international migration with special attention to the role of institutional factors other than economic and demographic fundamentals. We evaluate the impact of political institutions and of those institutions specifically targeted at attracting migrants. For a dataset on 19th century migration, we find that economic and demographic differentials play a major role, but that the quality of institutions also matter. We produce evidence that both political and migration institutions represent significant factors of attraction, even after controlling for their potential endogeneity through a set of instruments exploiting colonial history and the institutions inherited from the past.International Migration, Institutions, Democracy, Migration Policy, Colonial History

Brainy Africans to Fortress Europe: For Money or Colonial Vestiges?

Economic reasons along with cultural affinities and the existence of networks have been the main determinants explaining migration flows between home and host countries. This paper reconsiders these approaches combined with the gravity model and empirically tests the hypothesis that ex-colonial links can still play an important role in the emigration decision. We employ a general linear mixed model, and apply it to the case of skilled, educated and talented Africans, who migrate to Fortress Europe over the period of 1990 to 2001. While we find some differences in the exodus of skilled Africans by sub-regions, the magnitude of the colonial vestige in Africa is a significant determinant of emigration flows. Overall, Portugal is preferred to the UK which is preferred more than Belgium, Germany and Italy. Brainy Africans are, however, indifferent between the UK, France and Spain as a destination country. Established immigrant networks and higher standards of living with job opportunities in the host country are also very important drivers of the emigration of brainy Africans to the European ex-colonial powers.skilled migration, Africa, colonization, networks, economic reasons

Health and place in historical perspective: medicine, ethnicity, and colonial identities

Introduction to special issue. This Special Issue includes articles first presented as papers at a two-day symposium held at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, in February 2011. The event was designed to highlight a large Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden-funded research project, and to showcase current scholarly work in the field of the colonial and postcolonial histories of medicine, with a focus on histories of insanity. We also included the themes of medical migration in New Zealand’s national history, the movement of medical ideas and personnel across empire, a close study of the uses of the term ‘neurasthenia’ in French-colonial Vietnam, and the relationship between place, plants, and health across South Asia and Australia in the nineteenth century

Brain drain in developing countries

Relying on an original data set on international migration by educational attainment for 1990 and 2000, we analyze the determinants of the brain drain from developing countries. We start from a simple decomposition of the brain drain in two multiplicative components, the degree of openess of sending countries (as measured by their average emigration rate) and the schooling gap (as measured by the relative education level of emigrants compared to natives). Using various regression models, we put forward the determinants of the components and explain cross-country differences in skilled migration. unsurprisingly, the brain drain is strong in small countries which are not too distant from the major OECD regions, which share colonial links with OECD countries and which send most of their migrants to host countries where quality-selective immigration programs exist. More interestingly, the brain drain increases with political instability and the degree of fractionalization at origin; it globally decreases with natives’human capital.International migration, Brain drain, Human capital, Developping countries

‘They Called Them Communists Then … What D'You Call ‘Em Now? … Insurgents?’. Narratives of British Military Expatriates in the Context of the New Imperialism

This paper addresses the question of the extent to which the colonial past provides material for contemporary actors' understanding of difference. The research from which the paper is drawn involved interview and ethnographic work in three largely white working-class estates in an English provincial city. For this paper we focus on ten life-history interviews with older participants who had spent some time abroad in the British military. Our analysis adopts a postcolonial framework because research participants' current constructions of an amorphous 'Other' (labelled variously as black people, immigrants, foreigners, asylum-seekers or Muslims) reveal strong continuities with discourses deployed by the same individuals to narrate their past experiences of living and working as either military expatriates or spouses during British colonial rule. Theoretically, the paper engages with the work of Frantz Fanon and Edward Said. In keeping with a postcolonial approach, we work against essentialised notions of identity based on 'race' or class. Although we establish continuity between white working-class military emigration in the past and contemporary racialised discourses, we argue that the latter are not class-specific, being as much the creations of the middle-class media and political elite

Labour mobility and diaspora: An overview of Solomon Islands’ historical regulatory experience, 1850s-2013

With less than 4,500 of its population of around 600,000 living overseas in 2013, the Solomon Islands ranks 138th in the world for diaspora formation. At these levels the scale of the diaspora as a proportion of population (0.8 percent) remains lower than it was in the early 20th century, when more than 5,000 Solomon islanders were compulsorily repatriated from Queensland under early Australian Commonwealth legislation. This working paper retraces and reframes the history of Solomon Islands labour mobility and diaspora formation since the 1850s, considering it in relation to the wider institutional and macro-regulatory machineries of three phases or regimes of economic, trade and mobility regulation. These regimes are referred to in this paper as: 1.liberal imperial, 2. national territorial and 3. International neoliberal. We argue that Solomon Islanders’ participation in labour mobility has been substantial under all three phases, but that international mobility and diaspora formation only developed significantly under the liberal imperial regime. Even then, however, its development proved precarious. The ways regional actors and governments acting within the different regimes have framed and segmented labour markets continue to powerfully shape mobility and diaspora outcomes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the situation to date for future economic development and security in Solomon Islands