Disrupting Barriers: Automation, Migration, and Trade

• In Event: Poster Session: International Security III & Migration and Citizenship
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Migration and Citizenship

Abstract

Amid a globalized world where capital moves with ease from one country to the next, there has been a growing retrenchment and backlash against transnational human migration. Peters (2017) proposes that this dichotomy is in part the outcome of shifting preferences by firms. On the one hand, while firms in industrialized societies were once supportive of policies which opened borders to low-skilled labor, in recent years they have endorsed trade and capital liberalization over migration. However, the rise of figures like Donald Trump show that not only is migration under attack but also other forms of state linkages including trade. If Peters’ account of firms as significant actors behind liberalization policy is correct, what explains the apparent reversal in not just migration but also trade policies? I propose to focus on changes in technology which once enabled the outsourcing of labor, thus changing firms’ preferences from more pro-trade over pro-migrant. Is it possible that technological change now renders both migration and trade moot for their interests? Building on the works of Acemoglu and Restrepo (2018) I will explore if the labor-displacing technologies, which initially incentivized firms to support trade over migration, may in the long run disincentivize those same firms from supporting trade.

Author

• Eric Stein