Migrant workers are more than ‘tools’ for economic growth

There is much optimism about how the vast sums they send home could help finance development but weak international protection leaves migrant workers at risk of abuse.

Saturday marked the unhappy 20th anniversary of the UN convention on the rights of migrants and their families. After two decades, only 44 countries are party to the convention, which remains one of the least ratified of the core human rights treaties.

Meanwhile, the vast sums of money the world’s 215 million migrants send home each year, largely to developing countries, has recently pushed migration further up the list of fashionable development debates. But the persistent lack of international protection for migrant workers puts a serious kink in the renewed optimism about migration and remittances as potential “tools” for development.

Launched in advance of International Migrants Day last Saturday, Human Rights Watch’s annual report on migrants’ rights gives an indication of the human cost of these weak international protections, documenting labour exploitation and barriers to redress for migrants in Indonesia, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, and the US.

Alarmingly, many of these countries make both Human Rights Watch’s list for having particularly bad records on migrants’ rights and the World Bank’s list of top remittance-sending countries.

In 2009 for example, Saudi Arabia’s 7.3 million immigrants sent home an estimated $26bn. This puts Saudi Arabia fourth on the list of countries with the largest populations of immigrants and second on the list of countries sending the highest remittances. In neighbouring Kuwait, 2.1 million immigrants sent home around $9.9bn, and the country’s 660,000 migrant domestic workers from Asia and east Africa account for nearly one third of the country’s workforce.

Both countries were focal points of 2010 Human Rights Watch investigations, which found migrant workers were at particular risk due in part to immigration sponsorship systems which tend to tie a worker’s immigration status to their employer. While employers gain immense control over workers, migrants are left at risk of abuse with few options for recourse.

“These sponsorship systems can trap workers in exploitative situations in which they do not receive full wages, or work long hours without adequate rest,” says the organisation’s report, adding that in some cases migrant workers may also risk criminal penalties if they quit or attempt to change employers “without permission”.

The UN convention on migrant workers, which aims to set out stringent international standards for workers in both regular (documented) and irregular (undocumented) situations, has failed to gather the international support it needs to address governments’ immigration policies and the critical gaps that expose migrants to abuse.

Along with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, France, Italy and Germany, the US and Britain are among more than 100 countries that have doggedly refused to ratify the convention, which has been significantly more popular with countries that primarily send, rather than receive, migrants.

This is sobering stuff, not least for those who eagerly eye workers’ remittances as relatively stable, promising sources of development finance. In 2010, migrants sent an estimated $325bn to developing countries, more than three times the amount sent in overseas development assistance. For many countries, remittances represent large and important sources of foreign currency, and some countries, such as the Philippines, have made labour migration part of their development strategies.

Last December, the Centre for Global Development’s Michael Clemens argued that labour migration was “the biggest idea in development that no one really tried”. More recently, David McKenzie, a senior economist at the World Bank, proclaimed migration – and particularly temporary seasonal and guest worker programmes – “the most effective development intervention we have evidence for”.

Comparing returns from popular development interventions like microfinance and conditional cash transfers, McKenzie finds dramatically higher gains in household well-being from New Zealand’s seasonal worker programme, which he promotes as a politically viable model for leveraging the development potential of migration at a time marked by increasing restrictions.

The fact that remittance flows have so dramatically outpaced levels of aid has led many to suggest that people themselves are better and more reliable development fundraisers than states. Accordingly, much of the debate around migration has centered around initiatives to better leverage remittances so that these largely private cash flows to families and friends at home can help drive broader economic development. This often means things like improving access to saving and credit and developing an environment (and ethos) favourable to investment and entrepreneurship.

But the weak state of international protections for migrant workers, combined with persistent abuse and exploitation, is a reminder that evaluating the development potential of migration means looking at more than dollar figures for remittance flows – it is important to understand, for example, the conditions under which people emigrate and the conditions under which they work. Migrants, after all, are first and foremost humans with rights – not tools for economic growth.