Immigration and Globalization

Across the world, people are on the move, not only as tourists but more for the permanent or temporary long term as immigrants and refugees, as international contract workers and international students. Jetliners have become more spacious with greater range, enabling all types of people to move around the world to reside away from their homeland. Increasingly, for many people, home itself has become a problematic concept. They have been and remain on the move, carrying not only their heavy bags of belongings but also their cultural, linguistic, and religious baggage and their aspirations to succeed in their new chosen country and to expand, even problematize, their cultural and occupational identities.

According to the 2013 World Migration Report of the International Organization of Migration, 214 million people were living outside their home country either permanently or for a temporary long-term period usually longer than 6 months. The Report states, “Throughout the history of...