Labor Recruitment

Labor recruitment was a device used at certain periods in the expan- sion of the capitalist world economy to make certain target populations aware of the advantages of out-migration. The pull of the advanced economies, insufficient to provoke migrant flows at that time, is today more than enough to permit routine control of an “inexhaustible supply.” The changing character of “push and pull,” the obsolescence of labor recruitment, and the “spontaneous” origins of recent migrant flows are all consequences of the development over time of the interna- tional capitalist economy and of the shifting modes of incorporation of countries into it.16 These relational dynamics within a global order offer the most adequate macrohistorical explanation for the origins of inter- national migration.