The global precariat is on the move, with what Hardt and Negri call its “irrepressible desire for free movement” (Hardt & Negri 2000: 213). While exodus can indeed be seen as a powerful form of class struggle against the new imperial order, it is still a manifestly spontaneous, even unintentional, form of struggle. Mobility and migration are seen as a disruption of the disciplinary constraints under which workers labour. Certainly, labour is in movement in many diverse ways, and its management is seemingly beyond even the most stringent border controls of most capitalist states.

At a more prosaic level, migration can be seen as an integral part of labour market regulation in the era of globalization. Clearly, the economies of the once affluent North still depend critically on the availability of migrant labour. These workers are most often vulnerable, and many basic labour rights do not apply to them. As Harald Bauder points out, “[I]nternational migration is a regulatory labor market tool” (Bauder 2006: 4), allowing employers to drive down wages and lower labour standards through the introduction of a “cheap and flexible” migrant labour force. Is it that we are seeing the emergence of what Pierre Bourdieu has referred to as a “global reserve army of labour” (Bourdieu 2003 [1998]: 40)? If that is the case, it should be incumbent on trade union movements to respond with an inclusive policy towards migrant workers, and not through national protectionism, as has happened quite often in the past (Penninx & Roosblad 2000), even though this is sometimes forgotten.

This chapter does not seek to provide an overall analysis of migration in the current era. My focus here is simply on the interaction between labour migrants and the labour movements in the receiving countries. I begin with a unified theoretical and historical reconstruction of migration and the making of the working class that breaks with the traditional approach of considering migration and labour studies as separate domains.