Why do people decide to leave their homeland? How can we understand the desire to migrate, and concomitantly, the decision to remain at home?

We answer these central questions by foregrounding human mobility and immobility. Even though millions of people leave their home countries every year, an overwhelming majority of people never migrate internationally.

Even though millions of people leave their home countries every year, an overwhelming majority of people never migrate internationally

In other words, most individuals either do not want to leave their home country, or they face constraints which prevent mobility. While the absolute number of migrants has increased over time, when expressed as a proportion of the global population, the size of the migrant population is relatively constant over time at around 3 percent. Global public opinion data illustrated in Figure 2.1 suggests that regardless of region, only a small minority of people express a desire to migrate internationally, and an even smaller group are actively preparing to move. While it may seem odd to highlight immobility in a book about the political economy of international migration, answering “Why do people leave?” requires recognizing that “why do people stay?” is an equally important question

Excerpted from The Ties that Bind: Immigration and the Global Political Economy, published by Cambridge University Press and Assessment ©2023