Issues and Challenges in the Recruitment and Selection of ...

“Pressure for migration – legal and illegal – is an unavoidable feature of theemerging world order to which all societies and states must respond”.(NESC, 2006b)One consequence of this is that migration itself has also assumed a globalcharacter, as more countries are affected by population movements. Castle andMiller (1998) identified a number of characteristics of global migration that havealso been evident in Ireland over the past number of years including the following:• The differentiation of migration whereby most countries experiencedifferent types of migration including economic migration, refugee-basedmigration etc;• The feminisation of migration, as women come to play a major role inlabour migration in all regions;• The politicisation of migration as reflected in domestic politics,international arrangements etc.The centrality of globalisation in understanding and explaining migratoryprocesses has also resulted in a move away from ‘push-pull’ theories of migrationtowards models which focus on an array of forces and processes that impacton the decision to migrate. Push-pull theories of migration, developed withinneo-classical economic equilibrium theory, emphasise the individual decisionto migrate, based on a rational comparison of the relative costs and benefits ofremaining in the area of origin or moving to various alternative destinations.While push-pull models continue to dominate both media and state discourseson migration (Loyal and Staunton, 2001), there is an emerging consensus in theliterature that the emphasis on individual rational choice in explaining migrationis severely limited on both a theoretical and empirical level. Instead, internationalresearch has identified a wide range of factors that influence both the decisionto immigrate and the destination (Krings, 2007). These include factors at the levelof the migrant populations, including information, cultural capital and socialcapital and in this context the importance of family in influencing the decisionto migrate, the target destination and the duration of stay has been highlighted.Other factors that influence migration exist at the political and institutional levelincluding international relations, political economy, and the role of the state infacilitating movements.This type of analysis applies mainly to economic migrants, who constitutethe vast majority of immigrants to Ireland (Ruhs, 2005), but the very differentcircumstances of refugees must be noted. Whereas economic migrants aremotivated by economic challenges in their country of origin and perceivedopportunities in the country of destination, refugees seek to escape conflict and9