Workers without Borders? Culture, Migration and the Political Limits to Globalization

40 Pages Posted: 27 Feb 2010

See all articles by Dr. Sanjay Jain

Dr. Sanjay Jain

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Sumon Majumdar

Queen's University - Department of Economics

Sharun Mukand

Tufts University - Department of Economics

Date Written: February 2010

Abstract

This paper examines the role of cultural factors in driving the politics and shape of migration policy. We show that there exists a broad political failure that results in inefficiently high barriers restricting the import of temporary foreign workers and also admitting an inefficiently large number of permanent migrants, but not enough to fill any labor shortage in the economy. We show that countries that are poor at cultural assimilation are better positioned to take advantage of short-term foreign worker programs than more culturally diverse and tolerant countries. A striking implication is that relaxing restrictions on the mobility of migrant workers across employers has the potential to raise host country welfare even though it increases migrant wages and lowers individual firm’s profits. We also demonstrate the existence of multiple equilibria: some countries have mostly temporary migration programs and see a low degree of cultural assimilation by the migrants, while other countries rely more on permanent migrants and see much more assimilation.

Keywords: international migration, political economy, culture, assimilation, temporary workers

JEL Classification: D72, F22, J61

Suggested Citation

Jain, Dr. Sanjay and Majumdar, Sumon and Mukand, Sharun, Workers without Borders? Culture, Migration and the Political Limits to Globalization (February 2010). CESifo Working Paper Series No. 2954, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1558871 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1558871

Dr. Sanjay Jain

affiliation not provided to SSRN ( email )

Sumon Majumdar

Queen's University - Department of Economics ( email )

99 University Avenue
Kingston K7L 3N6, Ontario
Canada

Sharun Mukand (Contact Author)

Tufts University - Department of Economics ( email )

Medford, MA 02155
United States
617-627-5476 (Phone)
617-627-3917 (Fax)

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