*{M I G R A T I O N  A N D  G L O B A L I S A T I O N
The new slaves
July 1998

PREFACE
Globalisation has led to unprecedented levels of migration. The ILO estimates there are
more than 42 million migrant workers worldwide. An accurate estimate is difficult to arrive at,
however, and the ILO figure does not take into account the millions of illegal migrants. Nor
should the scale of international migration allow us to forget the internal movements within
countries, for which figures are rarely recorded. China alone has 80 million internal
economic migrants.

How are these migrant flows organised? What are the main motives, how have they
developed? It is the aim of this study to answer these questions, as it seeks to unravel the
complex ties between migration and globalisation.
As the circulation of goods and capital accelerates, the circulation of the workforce increases
apace. With the accent on maximum flexibility, labour is a commodity like any other. The
availability of millions of workers, as a result of growing pauperisation, meets the employers
demand for a mobile and highly flexible workforce.
The great majority of these migrants are low-skilled or unskilled workers. Women now make
up a growing proportion of migrant workers. There are nearly half a million Sri Lankan
women emigrants in the Middle East, and 12 women for every man among the inter-Asian
migrants from the Philippines.
The increasing flow of women economic migrants is also less predictable and harder for the
State to control. There is a tendency, notes the study, towards more temporary migration,
with repeated movements which provide rich pickings for the recruitment and placement
agencies. In Asia for example, such agencies manage about 80 per cent of migration to the
Gulf States. The agencies are also used by those who wish to migrate permanently, but
illegally. Some of these enterprises are organised. Others amount to one or two smugglers.
Many flirt with illegality, and rely on the complicity of civil servants to ensure impunity, with all
the abuses which that implies. There are countless cases of illegal migrants crammed into
the hold of a boat, or abandoned by the roadside, promised jobs that don’t exist (or turn out
to be a life of prostitution), of exorbitant prices that leave the migrants in debt and forced into
illegality, of confiscated passports… ”But with no visa and no money, many potential migrants
have no choice but to turn to these modern-day slave traders.”

There is also a heavy personal price to pay for migration. “Qualitatively, the material
constraints linked to emigration often lead to a break-up of family life, which is felt
particularly acutely when it is the woman who leaves”, explains journalist André Linard, who
wrote the report. For the country of origin, it represents a loss of human and financial
resources. But it also represents a not inconsiderable source of currency entering the
country, and a painless way of reducing unemployment statistics. Sometimes the money
sent home by migrants to their families constitutes the country’s primary source of income,
as in El Salvador for example. In other countries, such as Cuba, emigration helps relieve the
social tensions created by unemployment and the lack of future prospects.
Aware of these potential advantages, many countries are competing fiercely on the migrant
labour market, all to the benefit of the employers, but to the detriment of the workers, who
are traded like mere commodities.

In the host countries the migrant workers are the perfect scapegoats, as was dramatically
demonstrated by the recent Asian crisis which led to hundreds of thousands of migrants
abruptly being sent home like unwanted goods to their own country. Although several
studies show that migrants contribute more to their host country than they cost them, host
country nationals frequently accuse them of “stealing the bread from their mouths” and treat
them like second class citizens - with the same obligations but not the same rights as
national citizens, particularly in terms of social security. The ICFTU study points to the
contradiction between the economic motives that favour migration and the cultural and
political rejection faced by all too many migrants.

Low paid jobs, difficult working conditions, discrimination of all kinds… in both North and
South, migration is frequently synonymous with exploitation, particularly for the most
vulnerable groups. Domestic workers are a case in point, made all the more vulnerable by
their isolation, their direct dependence and their constant presence at the workplace. Many
cases of extreme exploitation have recently made the headlines. From the networks of deaf
and dumb Mexicans in New York to the maids in the Persian Gulf, via the clothing
sweatshops in the Parisian suburbs, the dramatic stories relayed in the press have shown
how illegality leads to even greater exploitation.

How can migrant workers be defended? The ICFTU study lists the existing legal instruments,
but stresses that they are rarely enforced, if at all. That is why the trade unions, who believe
migrant workers should be treated like any other worker, with exactly the same rights, are
pressing at the national and international level for the application of these legal instruments.
At the same time they try to assist the migrants on the spot. Whether in the United States,
with Mexican seasonal agricultural workers, or in Belgium, the Netherlands or Italy with
mainly North African migrant workers, trade unions have frequently taken action to assist
migrant workers.

At every level, the trade unions’ principal objective is clear: to organise solidarity. In the age
of the international market, the balance of power is also international, and industrial relations
are no exception. The business community has understood that for a long time, and the
trade unions are striving to organise solidarity on a far more international basis with all those
pursuing the same objectives. Their aim is to ensure that the boom in the international
labour market does not turn against those most concerned, the migrant workers. The study
comes at a perfect time for ensuring a better understanding of the migratory process,
particularly given that the gap between rich and poor continues to grow, not only between
North and South, but between the regions of the South.


Individuals or whole communities have always been on the move, long before national
borders were invented. The reasons were manifold: conflict and war, natural phenomena,
too many people for too few resources… people have moved to such an extent that virtually
no one group can claim to have historically “pure” roots.
Today, population groups and, above all, individuals, continue to move across or within
national borders. They may do so for political reasons (war, conflict, threats… ), to escape
natural disasters (drought, cyclones… ) or for economic motives (jobs, the chance to make a
living).

So what’s new? The economy has “globalised”, and migration has intensified: the free
circulation of capital and goods has been accompanied by the more or less free circulation of
persons (despite much resistance). Furthermore, it is the first time 1 that labour has
migrated in such large numbers to meet the demand of potential employers; it is a sign that
the labour force is considered as a commodity like any other.
International migration and globalisation are linked, therefore, but the relationship is not
necessarily straightforward. It is the different aspects of this socio-economic relationship
that this study sets out to examine, from the workers’ perspective.2 The conclusions do not
all lead in the same direction. For example, while it is true that globalisation has intensified
the migration of labour, it has also fostered a reaction of rejection based on a fear of
competition. There is clearly a time-lag between the inevitability of migration in a liberalised
economy and the cultural and political acceptance of the situation. Migration is a multifaceted
phenomenon.

INTRODUCTION}
What happened in Malaysia at the beginning of 1998 is very revealing: on January 2, the
government announced the expulsion of one million migrant workers, in reaction to the job
losses resulting from the “financial crisis”3 in Asia. The country was not the only one to
announce such measures: Thailand and even South Korea did the same. By mid-February,
Bangkok had already repatriated 30,000 illegal, mostly Burmese, foreigners in three months.
In Asia, three million migrants are under threat of repatriation owing to the financial crisis
which began mid-1997. On February 4, however, Malaysia did a u-turn, announcing that it
was ending its policy of expulsion. Tens of millions of illegal migrants (70 per cent from
Indonesia) promptly tried to enter the country, forcing the authorities to declare a state of
emergency, open the camps, and repatriate them in their thousands.

Why did Malaysia have a change of heart? Was it simply because the International Labour
Organisation (ILO) asked it to stave off the social impact of the crisis? Unlikely. Was it
because Malaysian employers feared losing cheap labour, even though the tide of public
opinion could be turning against foreigners? Was it because the President of the World Bank
asked it to? Was it because it didn’t want to destabilise its big neighbour Indonesia through
mass repatriation?

This u-turn illustrates the contradictions between the economic reasoning that leads to the
search for cheap labour, wherever it comes from, the tendency to blame a country’s
problems on foreigners, and the individual motives of the emigrant seeking work. It shows
that migrant workers are accepted only because they serve company interests. The more
companies internationalise (in their shareholdings, their markets, the origin of their inputs),
the more widely they recruit. The cost of labour takes precedence over nationality. Within
limits.

*partie=titre THE FREE CIRCULATION OF PERSONS BECOMES THE LOGICAL COROLLARY TO THAT OF
GOODS AND CAPITAL *partie=nil 
There is migration and migration. Although prompted by economic motives, the Europeans
who migrated to America in the XIX century set out to settle and populate the country.
Today’s migrants, on the contrary, usually intend to return home (even if they don’t always
do so). Recent migratory flows have consisted of people seeking work. It is because they
bring their labour with them that these men and women are accepted, even invited.
Are current migratory movements “the human counterpart to the acceleration of the
movement goods and capital, as labour flexibility becomes the rule in every country?” asks
Pierre Guengant4.

This would mean they are just another component of the new world economic order. Or, he
asks “are they not simply the reflection of a world dominated by job insecurity and rapid
change in the production process, in other words the reflection of a ‘new economic
disorder’?”.

Order or disorder, migration today is very different from what it was barely 30 years ago: to
begin with it is more scattered and varied; flows are far less structured and organised and
finally - as a logical consequence - public policy and the bodies that control migration have
been overtaken by events. In parallel to the volatility of capital, which crosses borders with
few controls, “international migratory flows have not only increased in quantity, they have
also become highly volatile and unpredictable” sums up the World Bank in a Discussion
Paper.5

In recent decades, Asia, Africa and the Arab world have become the principal points of
departure for migrants, while the traditional countries of emigration, with the exception of
Mexico, now play a minor role. Most migration takes place between the countries of the
South. The ORSTOM estimates that there are 40 million international migrants in black
Africa, including 6 million refugees.6

International migration has reached unprecedented proportions: between 1970 and 1990, an
average of 6 million people changed countries each year, reaching a peak of 14.9 million in
1989. According to the United Nations department7 set up to deal with the issue, there are
now nearly 130 million migrants, about 15 million of whom are refugees listed by the HCR.
It is difficult to obtain reliable figures however, owing to illegal migration on the one hand,
and the difficulty of defining what a migrant is on the other.
The table below, published by the ILO, puts the number of people working abroad at 42
million. It also shows that in the countries of the Middle East (the only countries where the
number of workers is lower than that of the number of family members accompanying them)
the majority are individual migrants.

“Unskilled, and often uneducated, workers(… ) represent the biggest numerical mass… ”8
Women now account for a growing proportion of migrants. Nearly half a million Sri Lanka
women have emigrated to the Middle East, while there are 12 women to every one man
among the inter-Asian migrants from the Philippines.

The scale of international migration should not divert attention from the level of displacement
within a country, which is rarely recorded. In China alone, according to the official Xinhua
agency, there are 80 million internal economic migrants.
Migration nowadays is of course made that much easier by better transport, but the link isn’t
automatic. It is connected to an element inherent in the dominant model of the development
process, which accentuates the mobility of persons and their access to other countries and
cultures, breaking “traditional” ties.

The theoretical debate is by no means over. Some specialists believe that the increase in
international trade discourages migration: by transferring production, you avoid the transfer
of labour.

But that theory is challenged. It implies that the host country is able to restrict legal
immigration, reduce illegal migration, and actively support foreign direct investment in
migrant-sending countries.9 All these conditions are difficult to meet for States whose
influence has been curtailed by globalisation. It also ignores the fact that many of the tasks
immigrants are employed to perform cannot be transferred to another location because they
are local by nature: cleaning, public transport, personal services… Which is why it is more
accurate to look upon the volatility of capital and labour as complementary.

*partie=titre THE GLOBALISATION OF LABOUR, TREATED AS A COMMODITY, IS INCREASING MIGRATION *partie=nil 
When people speak of globalisation they are usually thinking of capital speculation, the
concentration of decision-making in the hands of a few major financial companies and the
free circulation of services and capital.

However, the notion of factors of production includes another element, rarely mentioned in
such discussions: labour. “Globalisation is often reduced to its commercial dimension” writes
Claude Pottier in Le Monde. “But what we are seeing today is not so much the intensification
of international trade as the increase in the international mobility of the factors of
production.”

Curiously, regional markets, supposedly the precursors of the vast “single world market”
have reacted very differently to this new situation. The European Common Market, which
became the Community, then the Union, very quickly integrated the principle of the free
(internal) circulation of persons. By contrast, the North American Free Trade Agreement
maintains strict controls over migration from Mexico to the United States (see box).
But socio-economic reality often goes beyond the limits the law tries to set it. Today, the city
with the second largest Mexican population after Mexico city is Los Angeles. The Lisbon
Group, led by Riccardo Petrella, distinguishes three stages for understanding how
globalisation influences migratory flows: internationalisation, multinationalisation and
globalisation11. The first is measured according to the intensity of foreign trade and
population movements, the statistics for which enable the public authorities to ensure
supervision and guidance. When it comes to internationalisation, the public authorities “can
control population movements and can legislate on questions of citizenship, closing or
opening borders as they see fit”. (p54).

Multinationalisation is characterised by the relocation of resources, primarily capital and to a
lesser extent labour. National borders become easier and easier to cross.
As for globalisation, it is characterised by the weakening of the national public authorities. “It
is difficult to identify a precise territory (be it legal, economic, technological or other) for these
organisations [present throughout the world] even though they have a country of origin”
(p.69).

The three key words that characterise globalisation are liberalisation, privatisation and
deregulation, which apply equally to the movement of populations. States resist, trying to
defend that aspect of their sovereignty that consists of authorising or refusing access to their
territory. But they can do less and less about it.

*partie=titre MIGRATION, A GOOD DEAL *partie=nil 
“If wealth doesn’t come to you, then you must go where the wealth is”. Such could be the
motto of the migrant worker, but also the cause of their misfortune.

Analyses of what motivates migrants to leave their countries tend to concur. According to
Pierre George, “economic migration is usually prompted by a deterioration in living standards
in a population whose demographic growth has not been accompanied by a corresponding
growth in resources. It particularly concerns the least privileged social classes.”12 The
decisive factor, according to this analysis, is the situation in the country of departure, and
emigration is the response.

It overlaps with another analysis which places more emphasis on the demand for labour in
the country of destination. In the past, and in exceptional cases (South East Asia until mid-
1997 for example), this demand was the result of an imbalance between the supply of jobs
and the workforce available. In most cases, however, this analysis needs to be tempered by
other factors such as the refusal of a section of a host country’s workforce to perform certain
low-paid or unpleasant tasks.

“The dominant phenomenon today is the temporary emigration of unskilled workers from
under-developed or economically backward countries, who come to work in rapidly
expanding countries whose population, with the benefit of education and vocational training,
abandon manual labour for better paid jobs in industry, the services and administration”
says Pierre George. In Malaysia, for example, the construction sector is dependent on a
workforce that is 80 per cent foreign, the migrant workers taking the lowest paid jobs
despised by Malaysian nationals. Rather than improve working conditions, employers prefer
to use workers who, being poorer, are less likely to protest.

Whichever view is taken, migration has a healthy future, bearing in mind that the gap in
wealth and in population is steadily increasing, not only between North and South but also
between regions of the South. The Lisbon Group notes that population growth will be higher
in Asia and Africa than elsewhere over the next 20 years. It also notes that the world is
becoming polarised geographically and socially between rich and poor. Since 1965, the
share of wealth of the world’s poorest 20 per cent has fallen from 2.3 per cent to 1.4 per
cent, while that of the richest 20 per cent has risen from 75 to 85 per cent. The income gap
between the richest and poorest 20 per cent has doubled from 30 to 1 to 61 to 113. These
are documented figures, but less is known about the internal differences within countries or
regions. The US has 60 million poor, the European Union 52 million, the former USSR and
the Eastern bloc between 80 and 100 million. And there is nothing to indicate that this
polarisation process will change course in the next few years.

There will be many people tempted to opt for emigration, therefore. And while workers are
without question the victims, in being obliged to migrate just to survive, there are also
benefits for their families and their country of origin. Nor are they are not the only ones:
migration is a flourishing business.

*partie=titre For the smugglers *partie=nil 
Recent observation indicates a growth in the proportion of temporary migrants. Some are
seasonal workers returning regularly to the same place; this is generally the case for the
rural world. Others successively travel to other places, returning in between visits to their
own country. These repeated movements are a fruitful market for a booming business: the
recruitment and placement agencies. In Asia, for example, they handle about 80 per cent of
migration to the Arab states in the Persian Gulf. But migrants who aim to leave their country
permanently also go through these agencies, if they plan to enter a country illegally.
Some of these enterprises are organised: others amount to a couple of smugglers. Many
flirt with illegality and rely on the complicity of civil servants to ensure their impunity.
For the International Labour Organisation this activity falls within the domain of the private
employment agencies. ILO Convention 96 on private employment agencies dates from 1949,
and was revised in June 1997, although the revised version is not yet in force. The new text
obliges States to protect migrants placed in their territory by private employment agencies.
For the agencies, a code of good conduct is proposed, aimed principally at combating
trafficking.

While it may be useful to have such a Convention, there is scant chance of imposing it on
smugglers. There have been countless incidents involving illegal migrants, where they have
been left in the hold of a boat, abandoned on the side of the road, where they found the job
they were promised does not exist (or is in reality prostitution), where the price they have
had to pay is so exorbitant that they end up in debt and have to work illegally to repay it, or
their passport has been confiscated… such cases, reported in the press, only represent the
tip of the iceberg.

With no visa and little money, many prospective migrants have no choice but to turn to the
modern-day slave traders. In addition to the risks they run (including being sent back home
if caught) it could cost them US$ 3,000 to go from the Philippines to Kuwait, between US$
4,000 and US$6,000 from Bangladesh to Germany, and US$ 25,000 from China to the
United States. The illegal traffic in labour involves more than 6 million people every year,
duped and exploited by middlemen. In total, it earns the mafias that organise it some US$ 7
billion a year.

*partie=titre For the families*partie=nil 
There is no doubt that the money sent home by migrants is a welcome addition to their
income for the relatives who stayed in the country of origin. Indeed it is the main purpose of
temporary and/or individual migration. What many may not realise is that rural families from
countries in Central America, for example, often do their shopping in dollars. This apparent
advantage does have its downside however. P.Guengant15 points out that the increase in
migrants’ families’ purchasing power may prompt a demand for imported goods, which is
expensive for the country; may encourage people to give up local jobs where they consider
the pay too low; could lead to expenditure on prestige items, or could idealise emigration as
the only solution.

Qualitatively, the material constraints linked to emigration often lead to a breakdown in family
life. This is felt particularly acutely when it is the woman who leaves. The government of Sri
Lanka, from where 500,000 women, often married, often mothers, have emigrated, has even
decided to carry out a survey into the social and economic repercussions of this situation. It
is by no means certain, however, that the departure of men does not have an impact on
family life.

*partie=titre For the country of origin *partie=nil 
The emigration of workers to other countries has a dual effect, negative and positive, on the
country of departure.

On the one hand, it constitutes a loss of human and financial resources. It is a human loss
because of the individual decision to leave, which is always a wrench emotionally, and is
often taken by the more dynamic people on the job market; they could have put their
dynamism to work for the benefit of their own community had the possibility existed. Again
in the words of Pierre George “Migrants are individuals aged 15 to 35 who go to offer their
labour in expanding economies”.

The loss is also financial. Not to mention the “brain drain”17 which concerns a minority of
less representative workers, the emigrants who have benefited from higher education or
vocational training and whose departure represents a loss of the investment the country has
made in teaching them their skills.

On the other hand, there are undeniable gains for the country of departure. The advantage
is twofold. First of all it brings currency into the country. In El Salvador, the remesas
(remittances) , the money sent home by emigrants to their families, have become the
principal source of income, far ahead of coffee exports. The one million Sri Lankan
emigrants, two thirds of whom are in the Middle East, are thought to have sent some 830
million dollars back to the country in 1997. In Bangladesh too, emigration is one of the most
important sources of income (nearly 1.5 billion dollars in 1997). In one of the most extreme
cases, the remittances from migrant workers reached a high of 78 per cent of Yemen’s GNP
in 1980. It is also not uncommon for remittances to be 25-50 per cent of the value of
merchandise exports.18 And they amount to more than public development aid, which is
sometimes presented as a means of keeping migrants in their home country. Secondly, in
some cases (Cuba for example) emigration may help defuse a tense social situation created
by unemployment and the lack of future prospects.

Proof of this is the eagerness of some countries to encourage the emigration of their
unemployed workers. Vietnam, for example. 12,661 Vietnamese worked abroad in 1996,
and the government wants to increase this number. It has taken measures to liberalise the
recruitment agency sector and to train future emigrants.

The same applies to Sri Lanka, which hopes to increase emigration by 20 per cent.
Thailand, which imports labour from Burma, Cambodia, Laos, etc., sends workers abroad
(Malaysia… ) and it is trying to increase their number this year, despite the crisis. Elsewhere,
in Guatemala for example, economists stress that the young should be taught English as
“they will constitute our principal export product”.

Inevitably, any labour exporting country will find itself competing on a limited market. China
stresses the low wages its potential emigrants are prepared to accept in order to encourage
other countries to take them, while Sri Lanka emphasises the skills of its workers, and
Thailand boasts of the “good quality” of its people, who “work hard, agree to negotiate, and
are tireless”. Enterprises and employers are all too happy to reap the benefits of such
competition.

*partie=titre The host country *partie=nil 
The recent trend of blaming migrants for rising unemployment in the host countries ignores
the advantages they gained from immigration.

After the Second World War, the industrialised countries systematically recruited migrants.
Belgium for example signed agreements with Italy and Morocco. As for the United States,
they signed an agreement with Mexico in 1942 called the Bracero Programme (bracero Sp.
labourer) aimed at alleviating the shortage of labour in the US. Up to half a million Mexicans
per year entered the United States legally under this programme. Today, even if this
shortage is over the advantages for the host countries persist, thanks to the presence of a
population of consumers. More than ten years ago, a study in Germany showed that
sending immigrants home would result in more jobs lost than gained for country nationals,
owing to the fact that migrants are also consumers (albeit on a small scale), require housing
and healthcare (however poor), send their children to school.

Furthermore, it is not certain that national workers would be prepared to occupy the jobs left
vacant by foreigners; at least not under the same bad conditions.19 Which may explain
Malaysia’s u-turn: when the expulsion measures were announced, the opposition asked
whether Malaysian nationals would agree to take on the migrants jobs, or whether some
sectors would find themselves short of workers.

A supply of cheap labour is an advantage for enterprises, while at the same time it affects
the competitiveness of national products, demography (in a country where the local
population is ageing) and some macro-economic indicators. Hence the headline from the
Swiss press agency InfoSud: “Panic spreads across health, hotel and building sectors,
where contribution of foreign workforce is essential”. The story behind the headline was that
following the threat to restrict the number of family members joining migrant workers, the
Federation of Immigrant Associations in Switzerland predicted that half a million migrants
would leave. Furthermore, “Industrialised countries whose natural rate of growth is now
close to zero are wondering whether it would not be in their interests to hold on to part of
their immigrant population, at least the most adaptable members, despite the effects of the
crisis on the labour market and the risk that it could lead to the creation of ‘ghettos’”, writes
Pierre George.

*partie=titre MIGRANTS, VICTIMS OF EXPLOITATION *partie=nil 
“Migrants are usually employed in the least skilled or the most unpleasant tasks(… )They
earn less than their indigenous counterparts for the same work. They are the victims of
frequent discrimination when it comes to hiring, promotion, social security and job security.
When the employment market contracts, immigrants are the first to lose their jobs.”22
Migrants are the victims of many forms of discrimination and exploitation. Some highly
publicised cases such as that of the young Filipino maid Sarah Balabagan have drawn
attention to domestic work, the most common occupation for the many Asian women who
emigrate to the Middle East. Other stories of exploitation that have made the headlines
include that of the deaf and dumb Mexican workers in New York, of the maids shut away in
embassies, or the textile sweatshops hidden in the heart of big Western cities.

What emerges from these dramatic cases is that some categories of migrants are more at
risk than others, in the countries of both North and South. Maids, because of their isolation,
their dependency, and their constant presence at the work place. Illegal migrants who are
often transported and housed in inhuman conditions, and are unable to defend themselves
against employer abuse for fear of expulsion.

Temporary workers too. Anxious to put money aside from their earnings to send home to
their families, and to appear successful when they return home, they live a hand-to-mouth
existence in the host country. Temporary immigration is reassuring for the receiving
countries, which appreciate the flexibility of this mobile workforce. It also leads to abuse of
these workers who are obliged to accept low wages, bad working conditions and
accommodation, face the risk of accident.

“Normal” jobs in industry, commerce or the service sector are not above criticism either.
Speaking about immigrants in Thailand, Guy Thijs, ILO sub-regional coordinator for Asia,
explains that for them “there is no minimum wage, no social security, no organised
protection” 23 Excessive or “broken” working hours, low wages, late payment, unaware of
their rights… the dream can quickly turn to a nightmare.

There are ILO Conventions on equal treatment, notably Convention 97 (1948), and a United
Nations Convention on the protection of migrant workers and their families, Convention 158
(1990). Adopted with great pomp in 1990 the Convention has still not received the number
of ratifications needed for its application (only 8 countries out of the required 20 have
officially ratified it). But despite these, not all States are blameless in their attitude towards
the attacks on the human rights and dignity of the men and women obliged to seek work
outside their own country. In the case of Saudi Arabia, for example, Human Rights Watch
considers the labour legislation itself allows for such abuse.24 Even where there is no abuse,
even where they are legally established, migrants are second class citizens, usually deprived
of any voting rights. They are accepted provided they remain different “As a worker, the
immigrant is useful, precisely because s/he occupies a socially marginal position”, write
Bastenier and Dassetto25. Trade unions are usually the exception as migrant workers are
considered first and foremost workers and may vote and stand for election.

*partie=titre MIGRATION, A THREAT TO SOCIAL PROGRESS *partie=nil 
The neo-liberal economy is based on the market, on the law of supply and demand.
Logically, if there is competition between workers owing to an excess of supply over
demand, the price of labour falls. This price consists of both the worker’s salary and their
working conditions. Hence Claude Pottier's conclusion in Le Monde: “In the industrialised
countries, immigration weakens workers’ negotiating strength vis a vis employers.” This is
not the fault of the immigrant workers, it is because globalisation “places workers throughout
the world in direct competition with each other, driving employment conditions and pay
downwards.”

The traditional method of “divide and rule” is replaced here by “open (borders) and rule”.
Mass migration combined with the declining power of national States has
decompartmentalised national markets for the benefit of a globalised market. This is no bad
thing in itself; national borders are largely artificial. But historically, workers’ social rights
have been won within the national framework, with the fight carried out within a particular
context, and based on that particular balance of power. Globalisation transposes this power
relationship to the world level. And despite the work of international and continental trade
union organisations, the business world dominates at this level.

Paradoxically, to play devil’s advocate, there could be one positive outcome (but only one) to
sending immigrants home from a country such as Thailand, for example. If country nationals
have to take on the low paid, low status jobs abandoned by the migrants, employers may
have to improve wages and working conditions. But this would require solidarity and a
balance of power in the workers’ favour - and therefore a level of organisation - which is
unlikely in the present globalised context. The most likely outcome is a levelling downwards.

Why not have an International Immigration Agreement, which would protect migrants just as
other agreements protect investments, services or goods? No doubt because the climate is
not ripe; on the contrary: “Enterprises demand that the policies and laws of a State promote
their freedom of action, particularly as regards the regulation of the labour market”27. Some
international conventions do exist at the ILO and in the United Nations. It is a question of
making sure they are applied.

*partie=titre OUTDATED POLICIES AND ATTITUDES *partie=nil 
In Asia and the United States in particular, but also elsewhere, a large proportion of
immigrant workers are illegal. This does not usually cause many problems, provided the
workers are not perceived as being in competition with country nationals on the labour
market. The illegal workers are in fact meeting an economic need for enterprises, in terms
of labour costs.

But as soon as tensions are felt, as in Asia recently but also in Europe and the United
States, their illegal situation is used as an argument to exclude these workers. Two
conflicting lines of logic seem to be in operation at the same time: the logic governing labour
costs in a capitalist economy, which encourages the hiring of foreign workers, and the logic
that approaches nationality at the political level. At the same time, there is the neo-liberal
economic argument, which calls for cheap labour, in conflict with the collective psychological
tendency to use foreigners as scapegoats.

These conflicting lines of reasoning can sometimes be employed by the same person.
Ronald Reagan, for example, strongly advocated neo-liberal economics, yet decided to
impose strict controls on the entry of Latin American migrants into the United States.
Sompong Nakornsri, a Thai entrepreneur, speaking of the plans to send home hundreds of
thousands of migrants from Thailand commented: “The Minister of Labour wondered
whether employers will find enough Thai workers after sending the migrants home.”28
Anxious to keep its population happy, however, Thailand confirmed in mid-March that
800,000 illegal workers had to leave the country. It even foresaw sanctions for employers
who did not comply with the decision. At the same time, the government of Hong Kong,
perhaps to be more realistic, or at least less bound by democratic constraints, announced
that despite unemployment and poverty it would “import” new immigrants for the construction
industry, against the will of the local trade union confederation.

*partie=titre THE TRADE UNION RESPONSE *partie=nil 
Trade unions are calling on governments to provide more development aid to the developing
countries to assist job creation, so that workers are not forced to emigrate. Governments
should provide the same level of protection and the same advantages for workers moving
from one country to another and for those moving within the same country. The trade
unions, at both the international and national level, are mobilising throughout the world to
urge their governments to sign up to and ratify the international legal instruments on the
protection of migrant workers. (see list of legal instruments in Appendix I).

The trade unions should also adopt a trade union charter for migrant workers, organise
campaigns against racism and xenophobia, and organise migrant workers, giving them
special support in view of their serious disadvantages.

In some cases, such as Italy, the trade unions have for a long time been carrying out
campaigns and specific action in an attempt to organise and assist migrants. At present
such action is one of the spearheads of the trade union struggle in the United States, where
there are more than 2 million agricultural workers, principally Mexican immigrants, who are
not affiliated to a trade union. The United Farm Workers (UFW), which under the leadership
of its founder Cesar Chavez, came to prominence in the sixties by successfully organising
vineyard workers in California, has managed to put agricultural labour back at the heart of
the US labour and social movement. This offensive in the agricultural sector symbolises the
regaining of lost ground for the American trade unions. And the choice of this specific sector
is highly symbolic. To defend California’s seasonal workers is to defend the poorest, the
socially excluded, a new immigrant proletariat very different from the traditional membership
of the US trade unions.

Migrant workers employed as domestic maids, who are even more difficult to organise and
often the most exploited, are also the target of organising campaigns, despite the difficulty
in penetrating the immigrant community these women belong to. In Australia, through the
Australian clothing workers’ union (CATU), in Canada through the women clothing workers’
union (ILGWU) and in the Netherlands through the women’s union affiliated to the national
centre FNV, trade unions have set about establishing contact with these women workers. In
all three cases, they took a three-pronged approach: establishing contact, collecting
information to sensitise opinion and pressing for a strengthening of migrant domestic
workers’ rights.

As the ICFTU Women’s Committee recommended (see recommendations in Appendix II),
the trade unions should take concrete action to forge alliances with the various actors
concerned, particularly the NGOs and churches present on the spot. The ICFTU for
example is involved in a broad coalition of NGOs and trade unions in a project developed by
SOLIDAR and supported by the European Commission, to set up a network of migrant
women domestic workers in Europe.

*partie=titre CONCLUSION: “Are migrants men and women, or just labour?” *partie=nil 
“The growing economic and demographic gap separating the industrialised and developing
countries can only serve to reinforce migratory phenomena. These therefore constitute a
structural component of the contemporary world economy.”

All the signs are that despite the xenophobic reactions it provokes, migration will continue to
be an unavoidable fact of life. Professor Appelyard, editor of the International Migrations
magazine is among many who believe that the phenomenon will continue to grow,
particularly between countries of the South.

Opposition to international migration in the name of national sovereignty raises fundamental
questions both of a political nature (restoring the role of politics, weakened by a globalised
business world) and in terms of economic efficiency.

There is also an ethical aspect. How can it be acceptable, for example, that in California
only US citizens have the right to social security benefits, when these are financed by all
workers, national citizens or otherwise, regular or irregular workers? Why is an immigrant
family which lives and pays its taxes in a country, like its indigenous neighbours, deprived of
citizenship? Can the workers that were sent for yesterday, because they were needed, be
thrown away when there is no more need for them, like an old tool? Are migrants men and
women, or just labour? The trade union movement has only one answer to all these
questions, which can be summed up in one word: solidarity.