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The Imagination of a Borderless World and the Political Economy of Migration

  • Legal Theory & Practice Review
  • Abbr : LTPR
  • 2025, 13(3), pp.135~188
  • Publisher : The Korea Society for Legal Theory and Practice Inc.
  • Research Area : Social Science > Law
  • Received : August 3, 2025
  • Accepted : August 22, 2025
  • Published : August 31, 2025

Jongho Kim 1

1호서대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The economic development of individual countries and the economic activities of mankind are rapidly globalizing, but there is probably no one who accurately understands the whole picture. The argument of this article is based on the World Economic Outlook, “The Macroeconomic Effects of Global Migration.” The increase in immigration is one of the global policy trends of today that is gaining new meaning and becoming active, not only in the interests of receiving countries facing labor shortages, but also in combination with the improvement of the living standards of immigrants themselves and the economic development and advancement of sending countries. However, if we examine the essence of immigration coolly, it is believed that actors such as individuals, governments, sending agencies, and host country businesses act according to specific systems or procedures, and that power relations expressed in the form of a seller’s market/buyer’s market are established there. Based on this essential nature, this article deals with Western political theoretical research on temporary migrant labor and examines its goals and tasks. In addition, it presents the perspective of respecting migrant workers’ life plans as responding to the tasks of previous research and sketches out its policy design. When visiting a foreign country, anyone must cross the border, but she/he cannot find the border in remote sensing images. However, for immigrants crossing the border, the invisible line becomes a barrier beyond the line. Recently, even groups that advocate socialist ideology are criticizing the global society with an ideology that is mostly considered utopian idealism, wanting to promote self-sufficient economic zones. The issue of immigration is a controversial topic. When thinking about the concept of the International labor market, which is the subject of immigration analysis, the most helpful concept is the concept of a ‘transboundary labor market.’ This concept is characterized by focusing not primarily on the practices of individuals who cross borders as can be seen in discussions of transnationalism, but on the establishment of labor markets as complex institutional orders socially constructed through the process of commodification of labor, such as the outsourcing of some tasks to external labor markets, the creation of various regulations such as laws regulating such commodification, the responses of states and businesses that form competitive relationships among participants, and the construction of cognitive orientations and repertoires of behaviors of participants. What is important here is that the labor market across borders is not something that occurs naturally or exists everywhere in the world where there is a capitalist economy, but rather it is something that is established only when a conscious choice is put into practice based on individual and specific circumstances. In this case, the labor of immigrants becomes a common good such as a commodity, and since they are human beings themselves, a movement toward decommodification in the form of setting labor standards is also necessary. In addition, in order for labor to become an object of trade in the international labor market where immigrants participate, it is necessary for the labor engaged in it to be commodified by standardizing and extracting specific tasks. The argument of this paper is as follows: First, wanting to make money abroad is not a second-best option to settling down and living permanently in a job. It is in itself a product of subjective decision-making and should be considered equally as part of one’s life plan. Second, as long as earning money is considered as part of life planning, the relevant political communities (receiving and sending countries) should reorganize their policy systems so that immigrants can pursue that choice without difficulty. Many low-skilled workers have difficulty finding jobs in advanced countries on their own due to resource constraints such as foreign language skills, and it is also difficult for employers in advanced countries to find workers who meet the conditions required in foreign countries with different education and qualification systems.

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