The potential for exploitation is endemic in the current international migrant labor system. In Hong Kong, Filipina domestic workers have reported working 19-hour days and are often beaten and underpaid. In Qatar, the well-documented abuses of the kafala system enable employers to take away their South Asian migrant employees’ passports and prevent them from leaving their place of employment, withhold wages, charge illicit fees, and deport them almost unilaterally. Controversy also raged in early 2015 as reports suggested that as many as 4,000 Qatari labor migrants might die in the run-up to the 2022 soccer World Cup. While not all migrant workers suffer under terrible working conditions—especially not highly-trained or skilled migrants—the migrant labor systems in many countries facilitate abuse.
Part of the blame for the lack of human rights and social protections guaranteed to low-skilled migrant laborers lies in the attitudes and programs of the current system. Migrant workers, destination countries, and origin governments alike all acknowledge that migration is an essential part of the global economy. However, they view labor migration as a stopgap measure on the way to economic prosperity; a necessary but transient inconvenience or hardship. Economic security and political concerns form a web of incentives that encourage actors associated with migration to focus on making the duration of an individual’s stint abroad as brief as possible, instead of working to improve human rights and securities abroad. This system of incentives focuses on keeping migration temporary, thereby turning attention away from the human rights abuses that might occur even within that limited timespan. However, these laborers’ temporary migratory status does not make them expendable. Migrant labor appears to be here to stay. Exploitative structures do not have to be.
International Apathy
The widespread mistreatment of migrant workers across the world has been extensively researched. However, despite growing awareness of the exploitative nature of the employment of migrant workers, very little effective change has been made internationally to improve the situation of this vulnerable population. For example, as Ruxandra Paul, a Postdoctoral Harvard College Fellow, explained to the HPR, fewer than two dozen countries—mostly net exporters of migration—ratified the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, which came into effect after more than ten years. She notes that similar documents and conventions “have abysmal ratification rates … [because] states don’t want to restrict what they can do, and especially not in this kind of general, global way.”
The inevitable pull of market forces is responsible for some of the international ineffectiveness. Simply, migrant workers will always be subject to regional and global economic push and pull factors, and most international advocacy has proven futile in the face of these incentives. Poor economies and high levels of unemployment at home coupled with the promise of higher wages, steady work, and better lives overseas for both the migrant and their families are compelling reasons to migrate despite exploitative and even deadly working conditions abroad. As Michael Forsythe noted in New York Times in February, “Despite the conditions, a minimum salary of just over $500 a month, plus food and an annual plane ticket home, is enough to attract many women to Hong Kong … [since t]hey are eager to escape the grinding poverty in their native countries.” Thus, as the supply of migratory labor continues to increase despite the preponderance of evidence regarding the human rights abuses that these laborers endure, movements to end such abuses lose much of their traction.
Destination Nation
While the financial pressure on migrant workers certainly plays a powerful role, this factor alone does not explain the inability of international actors, advocacy groups, or state governments to improve human rights records and mitigate the exploitation of workers. In reality, each actor is influenced by further incentives that shift the focus away from human rights protection and towards other aspects of migratory labor.
For instance, economic incentives abound for destination countries to focus on preserving the temporary and low-level nature of migration rather than the rights of individual workers. By their very nature, these systems of temporary labor actually reinforce conditions that lead to human rights abuses in the first place.
From Europe, where arguments about immigration and citizenship are threatening to tear apart the European Union, to Japan, few countries are in favor of receiving large numbers of migrants. However, in the face of high demand by business for migrant labor, they cannot afford to entirely close their borders. Many destination countries for migrant workers view temporary guest worker programs as their best option. These programs encourage short-term immigration to meet labor demand but enforce strict regulations and migrant management policies. For example, in the words of the UK Independence Party, Great Britain should seek solely migration that is “limited [and] controlled.” Returning to the example of Qatar, the kafala system requires an in-country sponsor before a work visa is issued, and makes that sponsor responsible for the migrant worker. The system removes agency from migrants, making them completely dependent upon their employers.
With these guest worker programs in place, governments are trying to manage the unmanageable, believing that harsh restrictions that tightly constrain migrant movement and rights will reconcile the needs of businesses for cheap labor with the public’s general animosity toward migrants. Paul notes, “States are trying to encourage certain forms of migration while at the same time creating limits for other types of migration. The idea is that states are trying to both have their cake and eat it too. They acknowledge the fact that there are needs of the national economy that can only be satisfied based on international migratory flows.”
From an economic standpoint, these policies provide labor without commitment to immigration. Yet from a standpoint of humanitarianism and social justice, the costs seem too high. It’s as Max Frisch noted decades ago about another guest-worker program: “We asked for workers. We got people instead.” Destination countries are struggling to acknowledge that labor migration will not be a fleeting phase of international development but will remain for the foreseeable future. But states cannot avoid the reality of immigration by depriving migrants of rights and refusing to claim any responsibility for the unjust social and political structures that their programs create.
Origin Stories
Of all the actors involved, it seems that origin governments would have the most reason to effectively advocate for their laborers overseas. In actuality, however, their actions are also influenced by a similarly tricky incentive situation. Origin countries are becoming heavily reliant on the remittances sent back by migrants to their families. Already by 2009, the value of remittances in Indonesia outstripped the pace of international development assistance to the country. In the Philippines in 2014, remittances totaled over $24 billion and made up 8.5 percent of the country’s GDP. For a country struggling with external debt, these numbers are not insignificant. Thus, while the Philippines government claims that the “State does not promote overseas employment as a means to sustain economic growth and achieve national development,” the government facilitates and relies upon it. As Paul explains, “[Sending governments involve themselves in migration] quite a bit because they see migrants as an engine of development. They realize that they can establish this partnership when it comes to development and even social protection because the benefits resulting from remittances are huge.”
Further complicating the position of origin governments is that their own countries rank poorly when it comes to workers protection and rights. A 2014 analysis by the International Trade Union Confederation of the “World’s Worst Countries for Workers” gave the Philippines—a country that sends an estimated 10 percent of its population abroad for work—the lowest rank possible for a functioning state. Indonesia, another country of emigrant labor, received the second lowest rank. Destination countries such as Qatar, Hong Kong, and Saudi Arabia received similarly low ranks, while countries of the European Union mostly received top marks. Thus, countries that many of the world’s migrant workers call home neither guarantee labor rights nor establish a strong moral or normative basis with which to negotiate rights for their citizens abroad.
However, origin governments realize that their migrant, transnational populations will need support. And, for the most part, origin governments are most focused on trying to improve their conditions at home. They want to capture the proceeds from remittance investment to encourage development and lure migrants home, rather than lobby abroad or discourage badly-needed migration. When origin governments have limited influence upon working conditions abroad, they attempt to support their workers from within their own borders. Indonesia has instituted training programs to benefit citizens who work abroad, such as financial management seminars to help them make the most of the money they earned during their stints abroad. By investing the higher wages earned abroad, returned migrants are more likely to be able to remain in their home country, breaking a cycle that forces them to travel away from friends and family as money runs low.
Pressure Builds
However, it would be a mistake to view contemporary abuses in global migration as a static trend. Pressure upon origin countries and from origin countries is increasing as migrant populations grow and labor migration patterns solidify. In some instances, this pressure has partially counteracted the incentives discussed above. Here, the Philippines again provides a perfect example. Recognizing the power of the ever-increasing group of migrant workers and those that depend on them, the government has steadily increased the support offered to its transnational population through institutions such as the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), which is designed to support and protect Filipino workers abroad. The OWWA collects a membership fee from migrants, then puts that money to use when unrest abroad necessitates the repatriation of Filipino workers. Its funds have also been used for training and education programs, death and disability payouts, and even negotiations for the release of imprisoned Filipinos abroad.
Again, however, the majority of the focus is on supporting workers from within the country’s borders, and not beyond; with their preemptive structure, the programs offered to workers implicitly treat exploitative labor conditions abroad as an immutable fact. ThePhilippines has negotiated numerous “memoranda of understanding” with destination countries, but these have not proven substantially effective. That attempts are being made at all to negotiate for workers’ rights is, however, a significant step in a new direction.
From origin countries such as the Philippines to destination nations such as Qatar, the cycle of temporary migration is here to stay. Yet for any number of undoubtedly consequential reasons—security, economic, social, and political—governments refuse to treat migration as a permanent feature of their respective labor market, and the rights of countless citizens are lost in the process. Anti-immigration sentiment abroad and struggling home economies force migrants into limbo with few powerful advocates on their side. And while origin governments may dream of and work towards a day in which a flourishing economy will incentivize their citizens to remain home, such efforts do nothing to address today’s reality. A free and unpressured choice has not yet materialized for far too many labor migrants. Until it does, more efforts must be dedicated to righting the wrongs endured by these individuals as they provide their labor far from home.
Update (11/2/15): This article has been updated from an earlier version to reflect a revision to a source article. The original version of the source reported a predicted death toll of 4,000 migrant workers, due to World Cup construction. The source has since been revised to reflect the difficulty in verifying that projection.
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