Resumen:
Contemporary migration studies tend to consider this phenomenon as
an independent variable excised from the context of global capitalism.
Research approaches are mostly descriptive and schematic and often split
by disciplines, all of which limits the understanding of migration and any
opportunities we might have to influence it. Political economy provides
an analytical alternative with which to engage this subject, addressing it
from the historical, structural and strategic viewpoints. This approach
constitutes a source of critical thinking through which the complex reality
of contemporary capitalism and the role of international migration can be
understood and transformed. This chapter proposes political economy as
an alternative theoretical and methodological tool with which to uncover
the nature and elements of contemporary migration.