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

The Orthodoxy

Model Development Culture Capitalism

Problems with the Orthodoxy

The Georgist Rent Approach

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

Empirical Proof: The Irish Crisis

Denial of Land Rights:The Kampungs of Indonesia

Regional Migration

Border Cities: Rabat and Tapachula

The Potency of the Georgist Remedy

Georgism and the Others

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

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’