Crises of Migration within Crises of Capitalism

We are delighted to bring to you Tom Vickers’ insightful and detailed new contribution to this book series on Global Migration and Social Change.

The aim of the book series is to launch new interdisciplinary debates by showcasing migration and refugee studies scholarship that is both academically rich and innovative as well as engaged with public debates, policy and practice.

The idea for the series began during the 2016 ‘migration crisis’ that was unfolding in Europe in the wake of the Eurozone crisis and, not long before that, the global financial crisis. In this context we felt it timely to ask questions such as: how does the so-called migration crisis fit into the broader and longer-term unfolding structural pattern of global migration? How do the current flows to Europe interact with and alter flows of migrants and refugees in other regions? How are these interactions on the global scale mediated by the economics, politics and policies emanating from Europe? Are the current population movements in and around Europe, and the crises of cooperation surrounding them, fundamentally changing broader global patterns of people on the move?

The perception of crisis around migration has not subsided since then, but has intensified and moved to the centre of politics and economics across the US and Europe, and particularly in Britain, which is the focus of this book. It is more relevant than ever today to look at the role of migration within the broader political economy capitalism, and to highlight the connections between this system's endemic financial crises and its lessremarked- upon periodic migration crises.

In this book, Tom Vickers admirably addresses these kinds of broad, structural questions and provides a thoroughgoing analysis of the unfolding crises. At heart it is a powerful Marxist critique of the options facing Britain – one that is at times scathingly pessimistic, but never fails to provide thought-provoking insight.

Among its strengths is one of the most lucid and up-to-date summaries of Marxian views of migration – and of Marxist theory more generally – that a student of migration and border studies could hope to find today.