Migrant workers in the ILO's 'Global Alliance Against Forced Labour' report: a critical appraisal

Temporary migration for agricultural work has long historical provenance globally, and has increased in the most recent period of globalisation. In this paper, using examples based on my own research on both cross-border (to the UK) and internal (within India) migration by workers for temporary agricultural jobs, I raise questions about how such movements, and the labour relations with which they are associated, have been represented in global and regional analyses. The discussion is set within a summary of recent debates over the usefulness of the concept of geographical scale. I use as a case study the ILO's 2005 report, Global Alliance Against Forced Labour, which makes a clear association between temporary migrant work in agriculture and forced labour in rural Asia. I argue that the representations of forced labour that emerge from the report risk, first, painting temporary migrants as victims, rather than as knowledgeable agents, and, second, residualising unfree labour relations, rather than shedding light on their connections to context-specific and contingent forms of capitalism and capital-state relations

Temporary Migration, Labour Supply and Welfare

This essay addresses the incidence of temporary migration in poor rural economies. The methodological view taken here is that temporary or seasonal migration is a strategy of self-insurance, used largely by peasant households in order to cope with the risk of unemployment and income loss during agricultural slack seasons. Households typically implement the insurance strategy by sending away some of its working members to seek urban jobs during slack seasons while the remaining members pursue rural employment. This allows for diversification of household slack season income risks to the extent that the incomes from rural and urban sources are not fully correlated. The analytical focus of this paper is on exploring how household behaviour, especially with respect to labour supply, is affected by participation in seasonal migration. The market and income distributional outcomes of seasonal migration are also analysed in relation to the corresponding outcomes in the counterfactual state of no migration. The following results are obtained. In the event that the participation in slack season migration is utility/welfare improving, the participating households are likely to supply more labour during the post-migration peak season, compared to the counterfactual state. The intuition is simple. In an intertemporal (i.e., a two season) setting, participation in welfare improving migration in the slack season will allow households to allocate more resources for consumption in the peak season. Higher consumption leads to higher effort supply via the consumption-effort relationship. In terms of the aggregate/market outcomes of migration, the land-owning (employer) households and the peasant households with migrants will experience welfare gains while non-participating peasant households will suffer a welfare loss relative to the counterfactual state.Development; poverty; seasonal rural-to-urban migration; rural labour markets; risk coping strategies

Temporary Migration, Remittances and Agriculture

Discussions within the World Trade Organization on the temporary movement of labour across borders have met with limited success, in spite of the potential benefits to both home and destination countries. Developed countries have been reluctant to allow increased immigration because of concerns about the social and economic impacts of integrating foreign workers. Recently available bilateral data on current migration flows, differences in wages and remittances makes it possible to estimate the potential impacts of temporary migration on wages and national income. Using a general equilibrium model that separates skilled and unskilled labour, we show that a three per cent increase in the labour force due to increased migration would increase national income in Australia and New Zealand by an estimated US$5 billion annually. Remittances sent abroad would amount to an additional US$750 million. Most developing country regions would benefit. More specifically, allowing in 10,000 temporary unskilled workers to work in the agricultural sector in Australia generates estimated welfare gains of US$100 million.Migration, trade, GATS mode 4, International Development, F13, Q17,

Impact of Paternal Temporary Absence on Children Left Behind

Using the first two waves of the Vietnam Living Standards Survey, we investigate how a father’s temporary absence affects children left behind in terms of their school attendance, household expenditures on education, and nonhousework labour supply in the 1990s. The estimating subsample is children aged 7-18 in households in which both parents usually coreside and the mother has not been absent. Our results indicate that paternal temporary absence increases non housework labour supply by his son. The longer the absence of the father, the larger the impact. One additional month of paternal temporary absence increases a son’s nonhousework labour supply by approximately one week. However, a daughter’s nonhousework labour supply is not affected. We find no evidence that paternal temporary absence influences his children in terms of school attendance or education-related household expenditures.parental absence, temporary migration, schooling, human capital investment, child labour, Vietnam, VLSS

Migration Flows and Labour Market in Poland

In the paper temporary migration flows are analyzed in conjunction with information on labour market gross flows. Gross migration flows were calculated on the base of the household survey that is conducted jointly with the LFS survey in Poland. The results indicate that the propensity to emigrate is higher for unemployed as compared with employed or non-participants. Moreover, after the EU accession these were employed and unemployed who experienced the most pronounced increase in the propensity to emigrate. The steadystate analysis of the gross labour market and migration flows delivers the estimate of the ratio of the temporary emigrants to the total population of Poland in the period 1994– 2006. The ratio rose sharply after the EU accession from around 2% in 2002 to roughly 6% in 2006. Although, higher intensity of migration movements is unlikely to considerably bias the labour market figures like the unemployment rate and the activity rate,it may still lead to notable biases in the estimates of the labour productivity if emigration trends are not properly accounted for in estimates of the LFS population data.emigration, labour market flows, labour market, EU enlargement

Migrant Rights are Human Rights

Although it is the case that a rights discourse has become part of everyday language, the discourse remains relatively weak when it comes to migrant workers in Canada and around the world. Most certainly, the rights discourse has not been translated into everyday practices that protect the rights of migrant workers and their families worldwide. In fact, although we have the language of rights clearly articulated in the 1990 UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICMW) which offers significant protections for migrant workers, Canada and most other receiving countries have yet to ratify this agreement. Similarly, Canada has not ratified the two International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions that pertain to the rights of migrant workers, C97 Migration for Employment Convention (Revised) (1949) and C143 Migrant Workers (Supplementary Provisions) Conventions (1975). By ratifying these agreements, receiving countries would send a signal that the rights discourse applies to migrants as well as citizens, and it would also indicate a commitment to taking concrete steps towards protecting migrant rights. striking feature of contemporary patterns in international migration is the rising number of migrant workers leaving their homes in the global South for jobs in high‐income countries. Many high income states have turned to immigration policy to meet employer labour needs through temporary migration, creating new programs or increasing the volume of older versions. The United States, for example, now has over 80 types of temporary visas. In the UK, the liberalization of labour mobility has led to an estimated one million migrant workers arriving from EU accession countries in three short years. While some of these managed migration schemes provide a stepping stone for permanent residence, which is particularly the case with skilled workers, those in so‐called low‐skilled or unskilled occupations are generally designed to prevent settlement and restrict mobility. However, as evidenced by the history of temporary migration schemes in Europe and the U.S., temporary migration schemes are never temporary and tend to lead to long term settlement and a growth in undocumented migration. Since the significant demand for workers often exceeds the capacities of legal programs, and there are limited permanent migration channels for many migrants from developing countries (particularly those living in poverty), means that there is significant growth in undocumented migration as well

Temporary Migration in Theories of International Mobility of Labour

There is an increasing awareness of an empirical relevance of temporary migration. This literature overview attempts to summarize the current state of knowledge about drivers and economic role of temporary migration. It sets together elements of relevant theories of initiation, perpetuation and return migration, international trade and conclusions from a growing body of empirical literature on returns, remittances and behaviour of immigrants in host economies, including labour markets. Distinguishing between permanent and temporary migration may help to explain not only the dynamics of the actual labour force movements but also to better describe their impact on source and host economies.temporary migration, migration theory, return migration, remittances

No. 25: Complex Movements, Confused Responses: Labour Migration in South Africa

The end of apartheid undermined the rationale for apartheid-era immigration. Immigration from Europe (which had been declining in the 1980s) dwindled to almost nothing as the new government dissociated itself from the racist immigration policies of the apartheid era. At the same time, downsizing and mine closures in the 1990s led to a dramatic decline in employment opportunities for African migrants in the mining industry. Tens of thousands of local and foreign migrants were retrenched. Although the industry has recovered somewhat, and continues to employ some foreign workers, the overall numbers of temporary migrant workers remain far below the levels of the 1970s and 1980s. The end of apartheid also brought new forms of labour migration to and from South Africa including a marked growth in irregular labour migration from neighbouring countries and the rest of Africa and a major brain drain of skilled professionals, primarily to OECD countries. Since 2000, there have been two further changes. First, the volume of migration from Zimbabwe has grown dramatically as a result of that country\u27s political and economic crisis. Secondly, South Africa adopted a new skills-based labour migration policy. The first section of this paper briefly reviews the post-apartheid decline in permanent immigration and legal temporary labour migration to South Africa. The next section examines some of the new migration trends that have become increasingly important over the last two decades. Finally, the paper examines the current institutional context established by the 2002 Immigration Act. In conclusion, the paper discusses the attractiveness of South Africa for African migrants and the main challenges that face the country in the coming years concerning international migration

Immigration policy and welfare state design; a qualitative approach to explore the interaction

For the design of an immigration policy, in terms of the number and skills of the entrants and their effect on the host country, it is important to realize that the kind of welfare state matters. This study confronts three possible labour migration regimes - a temporary, an open and a selective regime - with two possible welfare state settings - a highly redistributive and a hardly redistributive welfare state. By comparing the likely outcomes between the different regimes, and by taking possible effects on the self-selection of immigrants into account, the study draws the following conclusions. First, both labour migration policy and the welfare state matter for the skill composition of labour migrants. Second, to be attractive for high-skilled labour migrants a highly distributive welfare state needs to undo its discouraging effect on these migrants. Third, a highly redistributive welfare state is attractive for low-skilled labour migrants. Because these migrants may become costly for such a welfare state once they manage to stay permanently, one should be careful with the introduction of temporary migration policies for the low-skilled.

Governing the mobility of skills

About the book: This book offers a critical examination of the way in which the nature and governance of international labour migration is changing within a globalizing environment. It examines how labour mobility and the governance of labour migration are changing by exploring the links between political economy and differentiated forms of labour migration. Additionally, it considers the effects of new social models of inclusion and exclusion on labour migration. Therefore, the book troubles the conventional dichotomies and categorizations – permanent vs. temporary; skilled vs. unskilled; legal vs. illegal -- that have informed migration studies and regulatory frameworks. Theoretically, this volume contributes to an ongoing project of reframing the study of migration within politics and international relations. Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, drawing on examples from the European Union, North America and Asia, Governing International Labour Migration will be of interest to students and scholars of migration studies, IPE, international relations, and economics