Conflict in Labour Migration Governance: Balancing Competing Interests

1. CONFLICT IN LABOUR MIGRATION GOVERNANCE Jackie Pollock MAP Foundation www.mapfoundationcm.org

2. Nikita Khrushchev, the former Soviet premier, wrote in his memoirs: • Why should we build a good life for a people and then keep our border bolted with seven locks? . ….We’ve got to stop designing our border policy for the sake of keeping the dregs and scum inside our country. We can’t keep fencing people in. We’ve got to give them a chance to find out for themselves what the world is like.

4. The former American president, George W. Bush : • Their search for a better life is one of the most basic desires of human beings. They are cut off from their their families far away, fearing if they leave our country to visit relatives back home, they might never be able to return to their jobs. The situation I described is wrong. It is not the American way. Out of common sense and fairness, our laws should allow willing workers to enter our country and fill jobs that Americans are not filling. We must make our immigration laws more rational, and more humane.

6. Most states have failed to achieve their declared objectives in regards to migration. Those governments that have imposed strict controls on their people from leaving their countries have often failed to stop the desire if not the movement. Those governments that have imposed strict controls on people entering their borders have usually failed, succeeding only in increasing the number of undocumented migrants.

7. Temporary workers • Many countries impose regulations regarding the length of time migrant workers can stay. The objective being to keep migrants temporary, mobile, unsettled, in a precarious situation which does not encourage the exercise or the demand for rights (Iabour, social, economic, political)

9. But these temporary programs are often repeated year after year, as in Germany’s guest worker program, as in Thailand’s migrant worker registration. • Started on a very small scale in 1992 and in earnest in 1996, the program has been repeated every year since. Each year, migrants register under the threat of this being the last. Some migrants have thus registered for 17 years.

11. The conflict • Temporary policies • long term needs on the side of the migrants to be working for a livelihood • Long term needs on the side of the business community for “flexible, cheap, non-demanding labour” • Permanent rights • No sustainability, no sustainable development

12. Most migration policies do not look at the entire migratory process, • From the initial decision to move through to the seeking of employment and • Forming of communities • And the emergence of a new generation in the new country

14. Conflict • Is the governance really in conflict or are the stated objectives not always the actual objectives? • To really control irregular migration, employer sanctions would be one of the easiest targets. But employers are rarely really targetted.

15. Maybe it is not that states are deliberately setting out to give a false set of objectives but that the factors which shape migratory processes are so complex that states tend towards compromises and contradictory policies. (Stephen Castles, 2003)

17. There are contradictions between competing interests: • The business community wants supply of workers • National Security interests demand comprehensive data on migrants • The local workers want to protect their jobs and working conditions

18. In the case of Thailand, these have translated at different times into different calls and policies • The business community/the employers want unregulated workers (cheap, flexible, easy to exploit). In the registrations in Thailand, employers call for large quotas of migrants. (around 1.9 million) but then actually register at most half this number.

20. National security interests • have at times influenced the policies to be the most restrictive and controlling, and at times to be the most open. • National security interests can say that migrants are a threat to national security and must be restricted (no right to travel, registration only with an employer, frequent raids and deportation) • But they can also lead policies which promote amnesties. Documented migrants are seen as less as a security threat than undocumented migrants.

21. Gender Conflict • Strong resistance to protecting women’s labour (domestic work) not considered work, not protected. But if they did not do the work, households and the work that the employers do would collapse.

23. Local workers • While local workers need to protect their jobs, wages and working conditions and this can lead to an anti-migrant sentiment, they also are aware that the treatment of migrants is a symptom of the general labour market and the protection of labour standards needs to encompass all workers not create divisions.

24. Society interests • On the one hand, the local population may not be tolerant to new populations. Even when the culture is similar, tensions are just below the surface. • In Chiang Mai, when two Shan men raped and murdered a Thai woman student, the male Thai students went on a rampage of destruction of migrant shanty communities.

26. Society interests • But in some areas, migrant communities have kept rural areas alive: • Primary health clinics are kept open because of the number of migrants in the area, • Schools which would have been closed are kept open • Cultural festivities attract Thai and other tourists

27. Politicians, social movements and the media all have a role to play in shaping and directing peoples reactions to migration.

29. Contradictions in countries of origin • Some countries tried to prohibit migration. • Burma is such an example. People migrating out of Burma were totally ignored for decades. They left the country illegally and were often punished when they returned. • But the survival of rural communities has depended on the remittances of the migrants.

30. MOU on Cooperation of Employment • So even when it is not acknowledged, there has been a dependence on labour export. • Recently moves to regulate migration either because believe that cannot prevent migration so better to regulate it and in the same stroke, open channels to regulate the remittances.

31. Bio borders

32. But this too may not have the intended objectives. • Some countries that have set up whole systems to manage migration and have created a structural dependence on labour export (such as the Philippines) have then witnessed political mobilization about the governments inability to provide jobs and livelihoods at home.

34. Contradiction also arises because international migration is inherently part of globalisation, but at national level, states continue to want to control migration. • As the opening quotes showed, receiving countries put in policies to control and limit border entries,

35. Hi tech borders

36. The international labour markets • have led to growth in casual employment and the systems of sub-contracting have led to a rapid growth in the informal sector, which attracts migrant labour particularly the most temporary, informal and precarious, undocumented migrants. So while governments declare crackdowns on undocumented migrants, they are also supporting systems which require and attract these workers.

38. Lack of Global Governance • While common to have global rules and institutions on economic and political relations. Lack of global governance on migration. • Only 2006, UN held High level dialogue on Migration and Development. • No agreement on a world organisation on migration. • Increases the lack of sustainability at national levels

39. Rights? • Inherent in the temporary regimes, is an exclusion from rights. But this is in conflict with liberal states doctrines of democracy and rights. • So eventually there is an acquisition of rights which leads to social integration which leads to access to citizenship.

40. For Thailand, • social integration is rarely mentionned in migration policies, and yet, children of migrants can go to schools and obtain a ten year identity card. • There has also been recent recognition of some long term migrants who are now recognised as stateless and also eligible for a ten year card. And while they may never get citizenship, children born after the acquistion of the card will automatically become Thai citizens.

42. Rights • Civil society, (social movements, NGOs) emerges in countries of emigration and immigration to campaign against discrimination and for the rights of migrants. These campaigns usually start as value based, but as the migrants gain rights and can form their own associations, then the migrants become an interest group.

44. Contemporary migration should be analysed within the context of a broad understanding of migration as a social process,with its own inherent dynamics, the importance of migrants agency, the self-sustaining nature of migratory processes, trend towards structural dependence of both countries on the continuation fo migration processes once they have become established.

45. Must address causes of both economic and forced ( and the blurred area between) in current patterns of global inequality. • Must examine the various interests and develop long term responses • Non-migration policies may be more important than narrowly conceived migration policies

46. Non-migration policies that address : • Gaps in prosperity, social conditions, human rights conditions, conflict resolution. • Need for a multi-sectoral approach which encompasses development aid, trade, foreign affairs, social development etc

48. Migration Management • Danger that migration management regimes will be top down affairs, controlling rather than managing migration issues at national, regional and global • Needs to be understood as a co-operative process in which all participants have a voice, including the governments and civil societies of sending countries, receiving countries, and the migrants.

50. To be effective, policies need to be fair and to be perceived as fair by all groups. • It will require changes in legal frameworks and institutional structures. • National measures: need for public debate on the role of migration in open societies, its relationship to the global society, will require public consultations.