International trade agreements and international migration

Despite large potential economic gains to the countries concerned, bilateral and multilateral negotiations regarding liberalization of migration have not had the high profile of trade negotiations and agreements. Migration and trade have been traditionally the prerogative of different ministries, yet there are many interdependencies between international trade, foreign investment and migration. The relevance of these interdependencies for trade negotiations has been remarkably ignored in the literature. In this paper we therefore focus on the two-way interaction between international migration and agreements designed to enhance cross-border trade or investment. Liberalization of international trade in services and the movement of people are likely to offer much more significant economic gains than liberalization of remaining barriers to goods trade. However, progress within multilateral frameworks is fraught with difficulty. Mode IV of GATS is restricted to temporary movement of service employees and has yielded little progress so far. Negotiations within more flexible unilateral and bilateral frameworks are likely to be more successful in liberalizing the movement of labour. We discuss several specific examples and conclude that trade negotiations are increasingly accommodating migration policies that favour temporary migration over permanent migration and that the migration regulatory framework is likely to be further linked to trade and investment over time

The Global Financial Crisis and Migrant Workers in China: 'There is No Future as a Labourer; Returning to the Village has No Meaning'

This essay examines the impact of the global financial crisis on rural migrant labour in China, with a focus on unemployment. It illustrates the interaction of global and China-specific processes in the context of the worldwide recession. The essay first summarizes China's unique socio-economic system and the mechanisms that have created a system of 'rural migrant labour' and 'super-cheapened' it to help make China the 'world's factory'. The main part of the essay examines the unemployment situation for migrants in late 2008 and the first half of 2009, and the dislocations and problems migrant labourers are facing. The China story is complex but interesting, not only for its rather complicated lexicon and statistics that often confuse outside observers, but also for its distinctive system of exploiting the rural population and internal migrant labour. This system makes the impact of the global crisis on migrant labourers, which are at the bottom of the global supply chain, all the more apparent. The last part of this essay analyses recent governmental fiscal-stimulus policies and measures as well as their impact on rural migrant labour, making some broader observations and linking the crisis to China's model of development. Copyright (c) 2010 The Author. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research(c) 2010 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Refugee movement and development - Afghan refugees in Iran

The increasing discussion of the relationship between migration and development attention is focused almost entirely on voluntary migration. Little attention is given to the development of consequences and potential of forced migration. Yet, forced migration, especially refugees, makes up a significant proportion of international moves, most of it being south-south in nature. While the raison d’etre of forced migration is fleeing persecution and seeking refuge from it, the migration can have important economic outcomes. This paper addresses this issue by examining the educational and occupational outcomes of Afghan refugees in Iran. There is significant upward mobility among the refugees, especially between the first and second generations. It is argued that this represents potential for facilitating development.Graeme Hugo, Mohammad Jalal Abbasi-Shavazi and Rasoul Sadegh