Hansen: How the OPEC oil crisis caused mass migration

Interesting thesis but Hansen overly captured by his narrative as migration has existing for centuries as has elite exploitation of labour:

…By destroying economic growth and reconfiguring the global economy and geopolitics, the OPEC oil crisis set in motion processes that resulted in more than 100 million unexpected, and unwanted, labour migrants. Entire wage-debased sectors – meat processing, agriculture, construction, retail, textiles and garments, and domestic labour – are wholly dependent on badly paid, poorly treated low-skilled migrants. And oil-driven wars – the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iran-Iraq War, and the two U.S. attacks on Iraq – generated about 15 million refugees. The world is awash in immigrants driven by war, drawn by work and destined to desire our insatiable consumer wants.

There is little evidence that anything will change. The dependence of multiple sectors, of middle-class affluence, and of economies as diverse as those of Germany, Thailand, the United States and Korea on low-skilled migrant labour suggests that, in the absence of a fundamental reform of how low-skilled work is valued and paid, such migration will continue. “Mass immigration,” is not, as economist Sir Paul Collier claims, “a temporary response to an ugly phase in which prosperity has not yet globalized.” Rather, large-scale, low-skilled, badly paid and ill-treated migrants are a structural feature of global capitalism and global politics. They, and the exploitation they suffer, are here to stay.

Source: How the OPEC oil crisis caused mass migration