Transnational Migration as a Small Windo on the Diminished Autonomy of the Modern Democratic State

The presence of large semi-settled foreign populations in Western societies is at once a symptom of and an exacerbating factor in the problematic governance of these states. Domestic and international constraints preclude the reversal of most of the unforeseen and undesirable social, economic, and political consequences that have flowed from the narrowly conceived, short-sighted policies that gave rise to the migrants' presence. The nature of the state in the host societies and the political structures and policy processes that characterize their governments account for the miasma in most of them. The nature of the less modern, less democratic state that typifies the countries of origin contributes to their present and even greater prospective policy binds and the problematic life conditions of many of the migrants. While it is expedient for each of the three classes of actors—receiving states, sending states, and migrants—to nurture the myth of return, learning to live with the resulting indeterminacy presents great challenges to all and may require, in particular, rethinking what modern democratic states are about.