The Tower Center for Political Studies at SMU maintains an office in the Centennial Center allowing us to link research activities of Tower Center faculty, fellows, and associates in Dallas (the heartland) with scholars, institutes, and think tanks in Washington and around the world. The Tower Center supports research and teaching in three areas: (1) international and comparative political economy, including trade, migration, and finance; (2) foreign policy, national security, and defense; and (3) American political development with an emphasis on policy, institutions, and process. Seyom Brown, Tower Chair in National Security and Director of Studies in the Tower Center, runs the national security program. Brown is conducting research for his two current book projects—an updated edition of The Faces of Power (Columbia University Press) and a new book entitled The Higher Realism (Paradigm Publishers), which advocates a shift in foreign policy after the 2008 election. Dennis Ippolito, McElvaney Professor of Political Science at SMU, leads the Tower Center program on American politics. His recent publications include Why Budgets Matter (Penn State) and he is working on a book entitled Welfare Shift, examining the past growth and projected future of federal social welfare programs and the federal budget.
My recent work focuses on migration and world politics, drawing attention to what I call the “emerging migration state” (Hollifield Reference Hollifield, Portes and DeWind2007). To understand the impact of international migration on world politics we must know how sending and receiving states shape and control migration for strategic gains. Since 1945 immigration in the advanced industrial democracies has been increasing (Cornelius et al. Reference Cornelius, Martin and Hollifield2004). The rise in immigration is a function of market forces and kinship networks, which reduce the transactions costs of moving. These economic and sociological forces are the necessary conditions for migration to occur; but the sufficient conditions are legal and political, and it is critical to put “the state” at the center of the study of international migration (Hollifield Reference Hollifield, Brettell and Hollifield2008). The OECD states, with highly developed industrial and service-based economies, reap enormous economic gains from migration—new sources of human capital and manpower, more flexible labor markets, lower levels of inflation in periods of high growth. But to get the benefits of migration, these states must be willing to accept certain costs—principally short-term social and political instability and the fiscal burden of concentrated immigrant populations (Borjas Reference Borjas1999). Liberal states also must wrestle with the issue of rights (legal status) for migrants (Hollifield et al. Reference Hollifield, Hunt and Tichenor2008).
Migration has important costs and benefits for less developed countries. International trade is a well-established determinant for income and growth. In addition to the classic gains from trade for all partners, international economic relations often provide access to technological know-how and thus give less developed countries (LDCs) a chance to reduce the development gap at a faster pace. The impact of international migration on the welfare of both source and recipient countries is a more recent phenomenon, and few studies have been done that look at how sending states use migration for strategic gains (see, however, Hatton and Williamson Reference Hatton and Williamson2005; Sadiq Reference Sadiq2005). Recipient countries benefit, inter alia, from the availability of the immigrant workers, both skilled and unskilled. Source countries benefit, inter alia, from the remittances sent back home by migrant workers, an increasingly important source of foreign exchange. While international trade and migration are often looked at in isolated terms of their impact on development, my recent work (Hollifield et al. Reference Hollifield, Orrenius and Osang2007) looks at their individual and joint role for growth and development, using evidence from Mexico, Turkey, and the Philippines. The goals of my current project, The Emerging Migration State and International Political Economy: History, Theory, and Policy with Thomas Osang (Cambridge University Press), are threefold: (1) Understand the historical relationship between migration, trade, and development, and how sending and receiving states shape and strategically control international migration. (2) How can democratic states regulate migration, in the face of economic forces that push them toward greater openness, while security concerns and powerful political forces push them toward closure? Democratic states are trapped in a “liberal” paradox—in order to maintain a competitive advantage, governments must stay open to trade, investment, and migration, but unlike goods, capital, and services, the movement of people involves greater risks (Hollifield Reference Hollifield1992). (3) Can migration be defined as an international public good in a way that will allow sending and receiving states to overcome coordination problems and build an international migration regime (Hollifield et al. Reference Hollifield, Orrenius and Osang2007)?
In the more liberal (OECD) states, rights are the key to regulating migration, as states strive to fulfill three key functions: maintaining security, building trade and investment regimes, and regulating migration. In the LDCs, migration raises many of the same security concerns, with sometimes severe repercussions for social and political stability, but with important economic payoffs. The garrison state was linked with the trading state in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen the emergence of the migration state, where regulation of international migration is as important as providing for the security of the state and the population's economic well being.
