SITUATION OF
ASIAN MIGRANT WORKERS
Rex Varona, Executive Director, Asian Migrant Centre
Paper
submitted to the IVSCF Conference, 8-10 June 1998, Macau
"AMC believes that for
migrants to address the root cause of labor migration, they must be politically
empowered to challenge unsustainable national policies and development
strategies. They must be economically enabled to re-integrate into their home
countries and help build local, regional and international alternatives to
migration." (AMC Brochure, 1997)
Labour migration is a very old
phenomenon. Indeed, man started as a nomadic race more than 2,000 years ago.
The great ancient civilizations (300 BC, e.g. Greek, Roman, Han) were
characterized by the traffic and use of human slaves. The era of colonialism (1500's
to early 1900's) resulted in more than 15 million African slaves being brought
to South, Central and
Today, the Asian Migrant Centre
estimates that there are around 10-15 million Asian migrant workers. While they
are not anymore "slaves" or "indentured labor" like in the
old days, migrant workers today continue to work in adverse conditions.
Deaths
& Detention
Philippine NGO's report that, on
average, 2 Filipino overseas workers are brought home dead every day. Each year
too, young Nepalese workers in
In 1995, the case of Bangladeshi,
Filipino and other migrants in Malaysian detention camps way exposed. Many
suffered or died from diseases, malnutrition and sub-human treatment. This case
illustrates the depths by which migrants can be abused even by the government.
A ridiculous turn for this case is that the Malaysian government, in a
desperate attempt to suppress the issue, harassed Tenaganita, the NGO that
exposed the problem. The government filed a case in court against Tenaganita.
This 2-year-old case may be the longest of its kind in Malaysian history.
The
Asian Crisis: "Double Whammy"
The impact of the ongoing Asian
crisis is best summarised by the May Day 1998 joint statement of HK migrants'
groups and NGO's:
"The ongoing Asian economic
crisis has dramatically demonstrated the extreme vulnerability of Asian migrant
workers, particularly women. Migrant workers are the most directly, immediately
and adversely hit by the crisis. Migrant workers face a "double
whammy": they are being deported - sometimes forcibly- from receiving
countries (e.g.
"
"All these happen because
migrant workers are not treated as human beings, but plain economic
'tools'. Migrants' human rights are not
fully recognized and protected."
Summary
of Issues and Problems Affecting Migrant Workers
At the risk of
oversimplification, the situation of migrant workers can be summarised as
follows:
P Powerless
(politically and socially)
E Excluded
(e.g. discriminated against)
R Risky/Vulnerable
situations
I Insecure
future (especially upon return)
L Large
numbers
O Obligations
(debts, dependents)
U Unprotected
(legal protections, rights, social security)
S Social
and family problems (family breakdown, image in society)
Powerless
In their own countries, migrant
workers don't have any voice in the formal democratic channels -- neither can
they vote nor are they effectively (if at all) represented in their home
government; therefore, they have no way of formally intervening in government
policy-making.
No receiving government provides
any channel for representation, even consultation, with migrant workers; no
legal/formal rights to intervene or be represented/consulted in foreign
country. Migrants usually could not organise. Their human, labour, civil and
political rights are not recognised/protected. Therefore, migrants could not
create or integrate in social or political movements to advance their rights.
Excluded
Migrants are subjected to all
kinds of discrimination- because they have a different culture, religion, or
color; because they are women (esp. in
Local workers/unions tend to view
migrants as "job stealers" and therefore, tensions or even outright
hostility develop between local and migrant workers.
Risky/Vulnerable
Situations
Undocumented, trafficked,
illegally recruited and women migrant workers in general are highly, vulnerable
to all forms of abuses (physical, sexual, psychological, etc.) because they are
virtue slaves/hostages.
Most migrants are hired, in the
first place, because they can be paid cheap and can be assigned to jobs which
local refuse to take (3D jobs). Even regular (legal) contract workers usually
have no labour protection, no job security; therefore, they are always the
first to be sacked when the company or economy in general turns bad.
Migrant workers are usually
subjected to arbitrary, discriminatory, highly restrictive work or visa
conditions. Victims of abuse, violations or violence have inadequate or no
redress mechanism Services are mostly provided by civic/religious and
non-government groups; neither sending no receiving government provide adequate
hotline services, emergency shelter, counselling, paralegal services, free
legal assistance, rehabilitation centers, etc.
Mechanisms are weak or lacking to
monitor and report on migrants' rights violations (MRVs) ant demand
accountability for such.
Insecure
Future
Sending countries usually have no
return/re-integration programs for returning migrants; there an also no
retraining or other schemes to provide opportunity for returned migrants to
reenter the labor force. Worse, there are usually no jobs available upon
return.
Sending/receiving governments
usually don't have programs for migrants to learn productive entrepreneurial
and other skills (while abroad); there are no facilities or channels to pool or
mobilise migrants' savings for alternative investments. If returned migrants
want to engage in entrepreneurial activities, there are no government services
or mechanisms to assist them.
Migrants who leave their country
become economically and socially uprooted. When they return they are usually
too old to be employed again, can't return to their former work, and therefore
become unemployed. In the end, they usually end up as cyclical migrants who go
home and out until they are too old to work abroad.
Large
Numbers
Current estimates put the number
of Asian migrant workers at more than 10 million (documented and undocumented),
at least half are women. With such a large number of exposed and vulnerable
workers, abuses are rampant. The tremendous material resources needed to
address their need; and problems requires extensive commitment by the
government (esp. of the sending country).
Obligations
Workers go abroad so that they
can provide for their families' needs, education, housing, etc. therefore,
migrant workers would usually try to withstand any kind of adverse situation
abroad just to fulfill their obligations to their families. Because of
astronomical (and usually illegal) fees collected by recruiters, most migrants
go overseas already laden with excessive debts; therefore, they are virtual
hostages in foreign lands and will suffer anything just to earn money and repay
debts back home; otherwise, the family they left behind will be made to repay
the debts (e.g. sell house, land, or be imprisoned).
Unprotected
(laws, social security, etc)
For sending countries, migrants
are little more than "milking cows" who can funnel in billions of US
dollars to help save the beleaguered local economy; therefore, instituting so
many protections and safeguards will hinder their "competitiveness"
and make it difficult to hire them.
The receiving government are not
interested or willing to protect foreign workers because: (1) they are not
citizens, (2) cost of social protection/benefits would be high, (3) migrant
labour will not be cheap anymore. In practice, receiving countries hire
migrants as "flexibility tools" to plug into jobs that locals don't
want (3D work), or to exploit cheap labor and pull down workers' wages.
The sending government has
marginal or no power (or even presence) in the foreign country; it is therefore
usually impotent to protect its own nationals. Current national laws in sending
countries, if they cover migrant workers, are more in the context of expediting
the export of workers, rather than protecting their rights and welfare.
Existing labour codes/laws of sending countries are mostly silent about
migration.
Laws in receiving countries
usually exclude migrant labor. Therefore, migrant workers usually don't even
have legal or "paper" protection. If rights are recognised, they are
limited.
Existing international laws
defining and protecting migrants' rights are lacking or outdated; the 1990 UN
migrant workers convention is perhaps the most comprehensive so far, but it is
not in effect because governments have refused to ratify it. In Asia, only
Root
Causes
The dynamics of massive labor
migration is dictated by "push" and "pull" (labour supply
and demand) forces. These forces are rooted in poverty, joblessness, wage
imbalances, economic restructuring, government policies, social pressures, etc.
both in the sending and receiving countries.
In Asia, most of these poverty
and imbalances have been the effects of decades of neo-liberal economic policies-
especially imposed by IMF/WB structural adjustment programs, WTO's global free
trade agenda, APEC's "2020 Plan", etc. These policies have created
tight labor markets in the NIC's, cheap wages and high unemployment in the
countries in the south, massive unemployment (at least 130 million) due to
privatization in
The acceleration, in the recent
years, of free market globalization, has further intensified labour migration.
Indeed, the 1997 Asian crisis was a striking rehash of the 1994 "Tequila
crisis" (where the Mexican peso lost 99.7% of its value).
Solutions
The only lasting, sustainable
solution to massive labour migration is to strengthen the local economy so
that: (1) the people have jobs and decent income; and (2) the government does
not have to export workers in order to provide "employment" or to
generate foreign exchange.
Wages, benefits, rights and
protection should be as comparable as possible across countries to lessen dramatic
disparities which encourage richer countries to exploit the cheap labor of
poorer countries.
Minimum international rights and
standards should be set, and effective implementing mechanism: instituted, to
provide minimum institutional protection for migrant labour. All Asian
countries should ratify the 1990 UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights
of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, as well as national
migrant protection laws and bilateral agreements.
Labour migration magnifies and
globalizes gender exploitation (e.g. domestic work, sex trafficking,
entertainment industry, plantation work). Therefore, specific mechanisms have
to be instituted so that companies/governments/etc won't gain relative
advantage by exploiting migrant women workers.
Tthere should be a system of
accountability especially for governments, TNCs, labour agencies, etc. who
violate migrants' rights, profit or benefit from their exploitation.
Since policies of the IMF/WB/WTO
and similar institutions ultimately determine the economic policies of many
Asian governments (more so after the present Asian crisis), there have to be
mechanisms where people, migrants and social groups can challenge and intervene
in these policies