The political economy of migration: Pakistan, Britain, and the Middle East

Migration has brought about, and continues to be responsible for, some of the most momentous social, economic, and political changes in the contemporary world. Over the years, millions of people have moved from their rural homes in search of better paid work, usually in cities many thousands of miles away. Their movement has precipitated many dramatic changes, no less in the societies they left than in the ones they joined. It has also produced many new structures of inequality and exploitation. This paper explores the character of these developments in the case of one particular body of migrants - peasant farmers from Northern Pakistan who have migrated to Britain and the Middle East during the past three decades