The Normative Concept of Labour Citizenship as a Determinant of the Global Value of Economic Migration

This paper outlines the development of the key studies on conceptions of labour, citizenship, and migration, which combine to lay the theoretical foundations of the contemporary global governance in economic migration. The initial concern of this study is to build upon traditional accounts of labour and citizenship in order to develop a link between industrial citizenship and migrant workers' mobility. Such approach aims at establishing the normative concept of industrial citizenship as a determinant of the social and economic value of human mobility for the purpose of work. This is intended to further the idea that cross-border labour can be not only a pathway to national citizenship for migrants, but also the avenue to the transnational evolution of citizenship in general. The variety of analytical treatments of the concept of labour, citizenship and migration span from ancient Greek philosophy through to the Scholastics and mercantilists, to the forerunners of the classical political economy, and finally to present labour economics, law and political science. Such an interdisciplinary approach challenges the traditional hypothesis of labour as a basic analytical category in which the worker is increasingly invisible, and where the price of labour is regulated through the market in a manner similar to other factors of production