Global Labour and the Migrant Premium

Global Labour and the Migrant Premium
Author: Tugba Basaran
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2018-07-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 042988446X

This book provides the first systematic account of the premium costs that migrants pay to live and work abroad. Reducing the costs of international labour migration, specifically worker-paid costs for low-skilled employment, has become an important item on the global agenda over the last years and is particularly pertinent for the UN’s Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. Recruitment costs alone amount in most migration corridors to anywhere between one and ten months of foreign earnings and many migrants may well lose between one and two years of foreign earnings, if all costs are considered. This book is intended as a primer for evidence-based policy for reducing the costs of international labour mobility. The contributors include academics from law, economics and politics, but also authors from international organizations, non-governmental organizations, as well as the voices of migrants. The hope of the editors is that this small collection sets the basis for evidence-based policies that seek to reduce the costs of international migration. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of migration, globalization, law, sociology and international relations, as well as practitioners and policy makers.

Moving for Prosperity

Moving for Prosperity
Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2018-06-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1464812829

Migration presents a stark policy dilemma. Research repeatedly confirms that migrants, their families back home, and the countries that welcome them experience large economic and social gains. Easing immigration restrictions is one of the most effective tools for ending poverty and sharing prosperity across the globe. Yet, we see widespread opposition in destination countries, where migrants are depicted as the primary cause of many of their economic problems, from high unemployment to declining social services. Moving for Prosperity: Global Migration and Labor Markets addresses this dilemma. In addition to providing comprehensive data and empirical analysis of migration patterns and their impact, the report argues for a series of policies that work with, rather than against, labor market forces. Policy makers should aim to ease short-run dislocations and adjustment costs so that the substantial long-term benefits are shared more evenly. Only then can we avoid draconian migration restrictions that will hurt everybody. Moving for Prosperity aims to inform and stimulate policy debate, facilitate further research, and identify prominent knowledge gaps. It demonstrates why existing income gaps, demographic differences, and rapidly declining transportation costs mean that global mobility will continue to be a key feature of our lives for generations to come. Its audience includes anyone interested in one of the most controversial policy debates of our time.

Global Cinderellas

Global Cinderellas
Author: Pei-Chia Lan
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2006-04-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780822337423

Migrant women are the primary source of paid domestic labor around the world. Since the 1980s, the newly prosperous countries of East Asia have recruited foreign household workers at a rapidly increasing rate. Many come from the Philippines and Indonesia. Pei-Chia Lan interviewed and spent time with dozens of Filipina and Indonesian domestics working in and around Taipei as well as many of their Taiwanese employers. On the basis of the vivid ethnographic detail she collected, Lan provides a nuanced look at how boundaries between worker and employer are maintained and negotiated in private households. She also sheds light on the fate of the workers, “global Cinderellas” who seek an escape from poverty at home only to find themselves treated as disposable labor abroad. Lan demonstrates how economic disparities, immigration policies, race, ethnicity, and gender intersect in the relationship between the migrant workers and their Taiwanese employers. The employers are eager to flex their recently acquired financial muscle; many are first-generation career women as well as first-generation employers. The domestics are recruited from abroad as contract and “guest” workers; restrictive immigration policies prohibit them from seeking permanent residence or transferring from one employer to another. They care for Taiwanese families’ children, often having left their own behind. Throughout Global Cinderellas, Lan pays particular attention to how the women she studied identify themselves in relation to “others”—whether they be of different classes, nationalities, ethnicities, or education levels. In so doing, she offers a framework for thinking about how migrant workers and their employers understand themselves in the midst of dynamic transnational labor flows.

Toward Safer and More Productive Migration for South Asia

Toward Safer and More Productive Migration for South Asia
Author: S. Amer Ahmed
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2022-06-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 146481841X

International migration for temporary employment is key to South Asia’s development path, in terms of both jobs and remittance flows. Overseas markets are a critical source of employment for South Asian economies that may not be able to absorb workers sufficiently or quickly enough into the domestic labor market. Migrant workers typically experience wage gains of at least three times their earnings back home, in addition to acquiring new skills and accumulating savings that can be used to start up entrepreneurial activities upon returning home. Remittances sent by migrants while abroad also boost household consumption and support macroeconomic stability in countries of origin. However, multiple challenges exist that prevent migration from achieving its full development potential. These challenges include high monetary costs, information gaps on employment opportunities in destination countries, a lack of protection while abroad, and high concentrations of migrants in few sectors and destinations. These often prevent the poorest from migrating overseas and may place those who actually migrate in situations of considerable vulnerability. Building on rigorous analytics, this book highlights policy actions that can be taken at all stages of the migration life cycle, including after return, to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of migration for migrants themselves, their families, and the home economy. The book provides policy options to address information gaps on employment opportunities overseas at the departure stage, to prepare migrants adequately for their experience overseas, to diversify destinations and occupations abroad, and to maximize the benefits of return migration.

Merchants of Labour

Merchants of Labour
Author: International Labour Office
Publisher: International Labour Organization
Total Pages: 522
Release: 2006
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9789290147800

More workers are crossing national borders to look for jobs than ever before. Many migrants seek overseas employment with the help of agents or intermediaries. These "merchants of labour" include relatives who finance a migrant's trip, provide housing and arrange for a job abroad; public employment services; and private recruitment agencies. They also comprise an insalubrious underworld of smugglers and traffickers. The agents who recruit and deploy migrant workers are at the heart of the evolving migration infrastructure, i.e. the network of business and personal ties that is creating a global labour market. This book highlights best practices in the activities and regulation of these merchants of labour as well as innovative strategies to protect migrant workers, underlining the contribution of ILO standards. It covers a broad range of national and regional experiences and puts "merchants of labour" in the wider context of changing employment relationships in globalizing labour markets. The papers it contains are an important contribution to understanding a major mechanism facilitating the growth of the migrant labour force.

Research Handbook on the Institutions of Global Migration Governance

Research Handbook on the Institutions of Global Migration Governance
Author: Antoine Pécoud
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2023-07-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789908078

Drawing together the work of leading researchers from various disciplines and backgrounds, this illuminating Research Handbook contributes to a revitalised understanding of migration governance. It introduces novel debates regarding how actors and institutions shape significant migration dynamics.

Let Their People Come

Let Their People Come
Author: Lant Pritchett
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2006-09-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1944691065

In Let Their People Come, Lant Pritchett discusses five "irresistible forces" of global labor migration, and the "immovable ideas" that form a political backlash against it. Increasing wage gaps, different demographic futures, "everything but labor" globalization, and the continued employment growth in low skilled, labor intensive industries all contribute to the forces compelling labor to migrate across national borders. Pritchett analyzes the fifth irresistible force of "ghosts and zombies," or the rapid and massive shifts in desired populations of countries, and says that this aspect has been neglected in the discussion of global labor mobility. Let Their People Come provides six policy recommendations for unskilled immigration policy that seek to reconcile the irresistible force of migration with the immovable ideas in rich countries that keep this force in check. In clear, accessible prose, this volume explores ways to regulate migration flows so that they are a benefit to both the global North and global South.

India Migration Report 2020

India Migration Report 2020
Author: S. Irudaya Rajan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 478
Release: 2020-11-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000223140

India Migration Report 2020 examines how migration surveys operate to collect, analyse and bring to life socio-economic issues in social science research. With a focus on the strategies and the importance of information collected by Kerala Migration Surveys since 1998, the volume: Explores the effect of male migration on women left behind; attitudes of male migrants within households; the role of transnational migration and it effect on attitudes towards women; Investigates consumption of remittances and their utilization; asset accumulation and changing economic statuses of households; financial inclusion of migrants and migration strategies during times of crises like the Kerala floods of 2018; Highlights the twenty-year experience of the Kerala Migration Surveys, how its model has been adapted in various states and led to the proposed large-scale India Migration Survey; and Explores issues of migration politics and governance, as well as return migration strategies of other countries to provide a roadmap for India. The volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of development studies, economics, demography, sociology and social anthropology, and migration and diaspora studies.

Migration and the Refugee Dissensus in Europe

Migration and the Refugee Dissensus in Europe
Author: Nicos Trimikliniotis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2019-09-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429813740

This book provides an explanation for the fundamental disagreement pertaining to immigration and asylum in Europe. Since the collapse of consensus with the end of the Cold War, immigration and asylum have increasingly emerged as a central socio-political issue in Europe. The present work attempts to move beyond the complexity of ‘managing’ migratory flows by focusing on the most daunting issues arising from the response to the ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe. This debate is intimately connected to borders, security, belonging, citizenship and labour precarity/inequality. The book addresses some crucial dimensions related to the migration and asylum dissensus by providing an integrated frame of analysis from the point of view of resistance, rather than that of power. It connects notions of belonging and the migrant integration with the processes of de-democratisation, racist populism, citizenship and authoritarian migration regimes, and contributes towards a theory of the asylum and immigration dissensus by examining the potential for transition towards a society of equality and rights. The author proposes that the encounter(s) with surplus populations in Europe, which result in the multiplication of liminal regimes as well as spaces for resistance, generates potential for social imaginaries, promising a society unimaginable in previous epochs. This book will be of much interest to students of migration and border studies, global governance, European politics and International Relations.

Migration, Security, and Resistance

Migration, Security, and Resistance
Author: Graham Hudson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000467880

This volume explores the digitization, privatization, and spatial displacement of border security and the effects these have on political accountability and migrant rights. The governance of security and migration is unfolding in new political spaces. Cooperation and competition among immigration officials, border guards, transnational security corporations, IT companies, local police, and international organizations has decoupled migration governance from national political structures. The chapters in the volume examine how these dynamics affect the deployment and constraint of sovereign power in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the EU. Contributors trace this process from the disciplinary perspectives of law, political science, sociology, criminology, and geography. Part I of the book explores the reconfiguration of security and migration governance through historical processes of privatization, digitization, and the rescaling of border control technologies to local and global spaces. Part II explores how migrant rights actors have responded by rescaling resistance to global and local levels. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, global governance, migration studies, and international relations.