Abstract
This article will attempt to define the basic framework of international labor migration in the modern world capitalist system.
Criticizing the conventional assumption (i.e. the push-pull theory), I shall support the globalist's theory that today's international labor migration is caused by the emergence of a borderless economy. Direct foreign investment by advanced countries accounts not only for export-oriented industrialization in the Third World, but also the conditions for the formation of potential emigrants to the post-industrial economies of advanced countries.
However, the globalist's framework fails to explain the autonomous dynamism of the 'peripheral' and the 'semi-peripheral' regions and peoples. That is why I would also like todiscuss the active role played by (semi-) peripheral ethnic groups and states in the process of international labor migration. In particular, special attention should be paid to ethnic groups as 'transnational' actors of labor migration within the borderless world.
