Globalization and a Multilateral Framework for Migration
Prepared by Manolo Abella and presented by Kenichi Hirose
International Labour Organization - Manila
I am very pleased to be able to join you in this important conference and to speak to you on behalf of the ILO. My colleague, Manolo Abella, was scheduled to speak to you on Globalization and a Multilateral Framework for Migration. Unfortunately he had to give up this opportunity to be with you because his retirement from the ILO at the end of this year requires him to stay in Geneva this week.
The fact alone that a world conference on the subject of Filipino labor migration is being held already says volumes on how important this phenomenon has become. In 1977, Filipino workers were mainly recruited for construction work in Saudi Arabia, as doctors in Iran and to teach in elementary schools in Papua New Guinea. Today Filipino workers are all over the world – in almost a hundred countries, in all conceivable professions, and in numbers that no one had ever predicted. Indeed it is timely and appropriate to now pause, reflect and consider where it is leading to and how one might influence its future.
As you are all aware, the rise in the global mobility of Filipinos over the past three decades has been remarkable. Each year over the past decade the Philippine labor force has grown by 22 more workers for every one thousand workers already in our work force. The overseas labor market has been absorbing the equivalent of 14 out of those 22. In the aggregate that means over 800,000 workers departing each year from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport to find employment abroad. This is a very high rate of emigration comparable only, in aggregate terms, to the earlier flows of guest workers from Turkey to Germany and irregular migration from Mexico to the US, and in relative terms, to those experienced by small island countries which are naturally prone to losing people because of the strict limits that size imposes on opportunities for education and employment.
Driving Forces behind Growing Mobility of People
To forecast the future of labor migration, we need to understand the forces driving migration, not only the local conditions that can explain why many are leaving but also the larger forces outside that shape the structure of the global economy and that determine where more employment is created.
Since you, more than any one else, know the reasons why Filipinos migrate in large numbers, let me confine myself to those factors that determine the growth of the global market for migrant workers. To start with, it is important to recognize that more and more people are crossing national borders. Rising mobility is a global phenomenon. The ILO estimates that some 10 million workers cross borders each year in search of work. There is a simple mechanical reason for it. There are today simply many more borders than 50 years ago because the number of independent states has tripled. In some regions one literally has to cross a national border to visit one’s relatives or friends when countries were cut up into two or more independent nation states.
TABLE 1
Growth of World’s Migrant Population
(1965-2000, in millions)
The world’s population of migrants (those counted by censuses as being of foreign nationality or born abroad and living in the country for over a year) has been rising at a rate slightly faster than the growth of the total world population. If we put together all the migrants in one place, some 175 million by the last count, they will make up the world’s fifth largest country. However they still constitute just about 3 percent of the global population.
Migration to the North
Growth has of course been uneven from region to region. The number of migrants in the more developed nations rose from 48 to 110 million between 1980 and 2000. Those in the developing world increased in number from 52 to 65 million.
In the developed world, the number of those coming from developing countries grew significantly faster over the 1990s than those originating from other rich countries. This movement from the less to the more developed regions is the so-called South to North migration. The United States absorbed the bulk of the increase of the new migrants from developing countries. In the European Community they were heavily concentrated in four countries – France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.
South -South Movements
Wages need not differ very much to trigger large migration. Considerable migration for employment takes place between and among the less developed countries. For example, there have been large movements of workers from Haiti to the Dominican Republic, from Burkina Faso to Cote d’Ivoire, and from Egypt to Jordan. Closer to home we see large movements from Nepal to India, from Myanmar to Thailand, and from Indonesia to Malaysia. Of the estimated 85 million economically active migrants, in other words “workers,” the world over, some 28 million are in the developing regions.
What is happening in Asia? The ILO estimated that some 2 million Asian workers leave their countries every year to work in other countries within and outside the region under short-term employment contracts. The number of Asian contract workers going annually to the Gulf region had an earlier peak in 1992 at about 1.3 million, declined for a number of years after, but rose up again in the late 1990s. In the whole of East Asia the total migrant population reached 11 million in 2000.
TABLE 2
Foreign Workers in the Labor Force of Asian Countries Circa 2000 (In Millions)
Growing Problems with Irregular Forms of Migration
These days newspapers in Europe and also in Southeast Asia frequently have sad stories about migrants being caught trying to enter countries illegally. Clandestine migration probably accounts for 15 percent of all migration movements today.
The problem is difficult to solve. Despite the large investments of the US Government in securing its southern borders with Mexico, the yearly clandestine flows of migrants run into hundreds of thousands. The last US Census indicates that there may be as many as 4.5 million undocumented Mexican migrants in the US.
Total immigration into the European Union has averaged about 1.7 million a year, equivalent to only 0.4 percent of its total population. Of this yearly flow the Europol estimates that about half a million pass through illegal channels.
In Africa the trafficking of children for sexual exploitation and for work in agricultural plantations is a serious problem particularly in West and Central Africa. In Cote d’Ivoire, for example, some 15,000 boys from Mali were reported to be working in plantations. The same is true in Asia. In Thailand alone some 200,000 children were reported in 1999 to have been “trafficked” from neighboring Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam for purposes of cheap labor in construction, small factories, fishing and agriculture, sex work, and footwear industry.
Declining and Ageing Populations
From 2001 to 2002 the population of the European Union rose by a mere 0.36 percent to 378.5 million, a gain of an extra 1,340,000 people. More than three quarters of the increase however did not come from the natural increase of populations but from new immigrants. In the 10 nations that joined the European Union in the middle of this year, the overall population fell last year by 0.18 percent to 74.5 million due to falling birth rates and emigration. The member states of the European Union and most other rich countries are faced with the certain prospect of a long term change in how their populations will look in the future. There are two important reasons behind the shift:
- One is because they are not producing enough children to replace the parents which means slow population growth, and
- Because of longer lives which mean populations become older.
The two combined means a world where those working will have more and more dependent people to take care of. Demographers refer to this as a rise in “dependency ratio,” a rough measure of how many are working compared to those who do not in a society. The dependency ratio in Western Europe will increase from levels of slightly less than 1 for every 2 workers at present to 4 for every 5 workers in four decades. These demographic trends are expected to have far-reaching effects on European societies and economies.
The UN has been studying the long-term decline in fertility and the looming demographic deficit in the rich countries and concluded that much more immigration than present levels will be needed if serious labor shortages are to be avoided. For the big 4 EU countries – France, Germany, Italy and the UK – which account for two-thirds of the EU population and 88 percent of its immigrants, immigration levels will have to triple from 237,000 a year to 677,000 a year if their 1995 populations are to remain constant given current fertility rates.
In Europe, an ever increasing share of the population will be inactive due to old age. The proportion of those older than 65 years of age will rise from the present 16.4 percent to 30.3 percent by 2050. This has important implications on employment, economic growth, the demand for health care services, pensions or the social transfer systems, and the need for other social support services. In countries with ageing populations there will be an ever-increasing burden on a decreasing share of the population who will need to work and produce the goods and services needed by all. Today’s 4 to 5 workers who are supporting each older person will be whittled down to about 2 by the year 2050.
While immigration is not going to solve the ageing problem, there is no longer any doubt that it will be an important element of any strategy for attenuating its effects, maintaining productivity levels, and continuing the present level of social security.
These scenarios will be repeated in other countries close by. Japan is a fast ageing society with a labor force that is already on the decline, and the same is true of the Republic of Korea. In this region fertility rates have fallen sharply and quickly and it will be interesting to see how countries will adjust, particularly through migration, to the demographic changes. Japan has already taken the step of admitting a few hundred Filipino nurses, a big departure from earlier policy. The country will sooner or later want care givers for the old. Robots will help but simply cannot replace humans when it comes to health care.
TABLE 3
Declining Number of Workers Per Non-Workers in
Population Global Economy and Migration
I do not wish to suggest that demography alone will drive countries to want more immigrants. Immigration is a very complex political and social issue for many countries. It is not inconceivable that some countries would want to have less people to enjoy previously congested spaces. It has happened before that the countries lost many millions of their people due to disease like the black plague or due to wars, and they survived and did well later.
There are however some other important developments that are likely to contribute to growing mobility across borders. One is the rapid pace of technological developments which lead to early obsolescence of many skills and the demand for new ones. We have been seeing this development in the case of computers and the communications revolution. A few years ago we saw many thousands of Indian computer engineers going to the US because Bill Gates succeeded in convincing Congress to open up to high skilled immigrants to maintain US competitive position in the computer industry.
Another is the growth of global production systems. In theory this should reduce migration since jobs are brought to countries with cheap labor, but in practice it does not always work out that way. For example, Taiwan is an important hub for global production, not because it has a surplus of national workers but because it is stable, is well governed, has excellent infrastructure, and supplements native work force with an increasing number of migrant workers. Mauritius is a small developing country near the southern Africa coast. It has been very successful as a garment manufacturing centre thanks largely to the employment of many thousands of contract workers from China and India. As capital moves around the world searching for sites for global production, migration tends to follow to supplement native work forces.
And a third factor is the growing informalization of work. Unlike in the earlier decades when many were employed in regular jobs in industry, today more and more employment involves being engaged in irregular often part-time work. Industrial or manufacturing employment has been on the decline in the rich countries, while services sector has grown. This sector includes highly qualified work, but also many types of work that native workers have vacated and are leaving to migrant workers to perform.
Conditions of Migrant Workers and Protection of Their Rights
What does the rising mobility of workers across borders mean in terms of their conditions and protection of their rights?
Migrants are always at the mercy of sovereignty. Although many states are now parties to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, many continue to exercise discretion in the treatment of aliens or foreign nationals within their territories.
Whether a migrant’s human rights are protected depend to a large extent on their immigrant status. Those who have permanent resident status stand the best chance of having their rights upheld, while temporary workers and especially irregular workers are in a much more vulnerable position. This is the reason why the growth of clandestine or irregular migration is a source of great concern. Increasing populations of migrant workers are in a vulnerable position because of their immigration status.
Recruitment Abuses
Recruitment is another source of concern. Although private agencies have an important role in matching supply and demand in complex labor markets they can also create serious problems —especially for unskilled migrants with lower standards of education who have less access to accurate information. In ILO’s recent International Migration Survey to which 95 countries responded, 23 countries reported recruitment malpractices. Common among them are soliciting applications for and demanding fees for non-existent jobs; withholding or giving false information on the nature of jobs and conditions of employment, and charging fees well above the maximum allowed by regulations or the actual cost of recruitment.
Child Labor and Trafficking
There are still large numbers of migrant children working, particularly in temporary or seasonal work in agriculture, especially where schooling or childcare is unavailable or unaffordable. The most exposed child laborers are those who live away from their parents after they have been trafficked. The primary reason for trafficking is sexual exploitation. This happens in many countries, though it is especially prevalent in the Mekong sub-region of Southeast Asia. Children can also be trafficked for many other kinds of employment. In Benin, for example more than 49,000 rural children have been trafficked, mainly to Côte d’Ivoire, chiefly to work on plantations or to work as domestic servants.
Forced Labor
Many thousands of migrant workers are still contracted each year for work under conditions that approximate slavery. Workers who cannot change their employer may find themselves working under conditions equivalent to forced labor. As you know very well the problem affects many domestic workers. Their passports are taken by their employers, they are made to work without break or days off, are not allowed to leave the house sometimes for many months, and not a few have been made to suffer physical and sexual violence.
ILO Plan of Action on Migrant Workers
In our International Labor Conference last June migrant workers was the major item on the agenda. The Conference adopted a resolution calling for a comprehensive Action Plan on Migrant Workers. Such a Plan of Action would include the adoption of a “non-binding multilateral framework for a rights-based approach to migration,” the promotion of Conventions, strengthening capacities, social dialogue, monitoring of labor market developments and migration flows, and establishment of platforms for multilateral dialogue on labor migration.
The ILO Plan of Action called for the development over the next 17 months, of a multilateral framework for managing labor migration. The multilateral framework being envisaged would contain the best practices on how to manage recruitment, admissions, employment, treatment, integration or return. These policy guidelines, based on rights, hopefully will help countries to develop their own migration policies- policies that have broad public acceptance because they have been the subject of social dialogue, are based on realistic assessment of labor market needs, are transparent, coherent and seen to be beneficial for all.
Why is this so important to the ILO? Because today there are 86 million migrant workers worldwide. Many suffer from exploitation and discrimination. But the effective protection of their rights depends, not only on having international standards, but in having effective management of migration.
The resolution was the product of over two and a half weeks of debate and difficult negotiations at the Committee on Migrant Workers, and finally adopted by consensus by the tripartite delegations from ILO’s 177 member states. There was an expectation that it would have a profound impact on improving the conditions of migrants and on the global governance of labor migration. This is because the resolution represented the collective voice of governments, workers and employers’ organizations, because it went beyond a general declaration of a desire to right wrongs, and because it was backed up by a long established multilateral institution that had the constitutional mechanism, structure, and processes for follow-up and implementation.
The drafters of the resolution wanted an instrument that would involve all the means of action available to the organization aside from standards setting- including the establishment of platforms for multilateral dialogue on migration, technical cooperation to enhance national capacities for managing migration, promotion of “best” practices, advisory services, research and training.
The Action Plan has a number of elements including an expanded role for tripartism and social dialogue, capacity building and normative activities but at its centre is what it calls a “non-binding multilateral framework for a rights-based approach to migration.” The framework is to comprise international guidelines based on best practices in the following areas:
- Expanding avenues for regular labor migration having regard to labor market needs and demographic trends;
- Promoting managed migration for employment and addressing such aspects as admission procedures, flows, social security, family reunification possibilities, integration policy and return;
- Supervision of recruitment and contracting of migrant workers;
- Preventing smuggling and trafficking of persons, and preventing and combating irregular labor migration;
- Promoting decent work and protecting the human rights of all migrant workers; and promoting awareness of those rights;
- Promoting measures to ensure that all migrant workers benefit from the provisions of all relevant international labor standards;
- Improving labor inspection and creation of channels for migrant workers to lodge complaints and seek remedy without intimidation;
- Reducing the cost of remittance transfers and promoting the productive investment of remittances;
- Ensuring that all migrant workers are covered by national legislation and applicable social laws;
- Encouraging return and reintegration into the country of origin and transfer of capital and technology by migrants;
- Guidelines for ethical recruitment and mutually beneficial approaches to ensure adequate supply of health and education personnel that serve the needs of both sending and receiving countries;
- Reducing the specific risks for men and women migrant workers in certain occupations and sectors with particular emphasis on dirty, demeaning and dangerous jobs, and on women in domestic service and the informal economy;
- Promoting social integration and inclusion, reducing discrimination and combating racism and xenophobia;
- Facilitating the portability of social security entitlements; and
- Promoting recognition and accreditation of migrant worker’s skills and qualifications.
Concluding Remarks
A fair deal for men and women migrant workers in the global economy requires a broad strategy and a commitment by the ILO and its constituents to make decent work a reality for all workers. The Action Plan just launched by the ILO envisages such broad strategy which should engage all parties in the reform of international and national policies for the benefit of all. |
