Rent Theory and The Global Migration Crisis
Franklin Obeng-OdoomSchool of Built Environment
University of Technology Sydney
Presentation in Oslo, 26.10.16
ISSC conference: ‘On the Move – Global migrations, challenges and responses’
Structure
1. The Orthodoxy
2. Challenging the Orthodoxy
3. The Georgist Perspective
4. The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born
Framework• Race, culture, and overpopulation are not the
causes of social problems.
• Rather, social problems arise from or are fundamentally shaped by a combination of the following:
(a) The private capture of socially created rent;
(b) The capture of wages by either public (through taxation) or private (exploitation) interests; and
(c) Social progress (e.g., technology and education) that accentuates ‘a’ and ‘b’.
Application to Migration
• Increasing rent arising, e.g., speculation, public investment + increasing taxes onwages make labour worse off, setting in motion forces of poverty (e.g., throughunemployment, hunger, disease, limited farmlands);
• Tenants may (a) downgrade/overcrowd (b) protest (c) migrate – or a, b, c atdifferent times;
• Landlords respond by (a) eviction (b) generating/supporting discourses that divertattention from the land/rent question (e.g., ‘resource curse’) (b) lobbying the stateto hold down protests;
• The state responds e.g., via (a) police force (b) strengthening the property rights oflandlords (e.g., through laws, public investment for private gain, PPP ‘affordablehousing’), and (c) assist migration (in which case some landlords may availthemselves of the opportunity to migrate and create similar rent relations in thedestination)
Proposed Solutions
• Common land values; not land. How? E.g. Land tax (including resource taxon mining TNCs, (at every scale))
• Protect the reward of labour individually and collectively. How? Abolishincome tax, make migrants – all labour – enjoy their reward
• Put the revenues from land tax to public uses, e.g., investment in publicservices for all
• Give migrants work, make them permanent, and make them and localscontribute to – and benefit from - the common wealth.
Expected Outcomes
• Less inequality, less conflict; less poverty….
• Flourishing economy, prosperous labour;
• Less migration,
• benign migration (when it happens) because of the protection of labour and support for both residents and migrants through increasing common wealth
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
• How does the current migration crisis relate to unequal access to land?
• In what ways can a focus on unequal access to land help us to explain the migration crisis?
• How is the Georgist approach different from and superior to the orthodoxy?
Photos
Links for Photos
http://media.tinmoi.vn/2012/07/17/50_7_1342517485_44_images948104_9.jpg
Rabat
http://www.trbimg.com/img-504fec6b/turbine/la-02798651.jpg-20120911/600
Tapachula
http://assets.geoexpro.com/uploads/127ef730-80fc-4761-a9db-dc2342d945da/footer_1440x700.jpg
Sekondi-Takoradi
http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/24024-unprecedented-case-filed-at-international-criminal-court-proposes-land-grabbing-in-cambodia-as-a-crime-against-humanity
http://www.farmlandgrab.org/uploads/images/photos/8024/original_Cambodia-land-grabs.jpg?1412705173
Cambodia
http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/7e893f6a3fdc4d8dbb51a1c0fc01863a/mali-ansongo-sahel-man-of-peul-tribe-herding-his-cows-aehh3h.jpg
Fulani
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=kampung+indonesia&biw=1280&bih=691&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwicz4qu0oTOAhUCFpQKHbQZBZMQ_AU
IBigB#imgrc=yvcoZus8Bs0OYM%3A
Kampung
https://www.stickyminds.com/sites/default/files/article/2015/evidence.jpg
Evidence