Women migrants comprise almost half, or 49%, of the total number of migrants in the world. They work mainly in labor-intensive industries or in the service sector as domestic workers, caregivers, nurses, waitresses or entertainers. Hundreds of thousands of women also become migrants by way of marriage such as in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, USA, Canada and in a number of countries in Europe.
The massive migration of women resulted first and foremost to the worsening exploitation of women in their home countries. Women, especially of worker and peasant origin, are continuously displaced from their jobs and their lands and are forced to seek employment abroad regardless of what type of job is available, how indebted they can become in the process of migration and however vulnerable they are made to abuses.
While some may call this as “feminization of migration”, the International Migrants Alliance (IMA) still prefers to call it as forced labor migration. What is really happening is the intensification of exploitation and oppression of women.
As part of imperialist strategies to curb the crisis it has itself created, they are now drumbeating migration as way towards development. This framework is most apparent in the thrusts of the Global Forum on Migration and Development or GFMD. Though it is supposed to be a non-binding forum, it does not stop imperialists, their semi-colonies and colonies from pushing through with their agenda of using migration to push for the concept of development that does not depart from neoliberal globalization policies.
The thrusts of GFMD will only intensify the exploitation of migrant workers as it does not address the root causes of forced migration and even further systematize labor export. In fact, it is fast transforming governments of sending countries to become not only facilitator for the migration of their people but direct seekers of job markets where the cheap labor of migrants can be exploited.
Further commodification of migrants and the promotion of modern-day slavery is what GFMD will do. As the exploitation of people is the only way for imperialists to curb the crisis, migrant workers – women migrant workers – are not spared.
One of the most immediate impacts of the economic crisis is the erosion of livelihood of women migrants. Because of the crunch, many companies closed down or reduced their production.
In the first few months alone after the crisis erupted in 2008, some of the recorded mass layoffs of migrant workers included those in Taiwan, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates and Macau. In Taiwan, for example, more than 9,000 workers lost their jobs for the period of October to December 2008 alone. Some countries like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and New Zealand even went out of its way to encourage companies to layoff foreign workers first if they need to cut their work force.
Migrant workers in the construction, manufacturing and hotel and restaurant industries were some of the most heavily-affected in terms of mass layoffs. Even in countries like the United States, Ireland and Spain, migrants who work in these sectors were some of the first to be terminated from their jobs.
Women, especially of worker and peasant origin, are continuously displaced from their jobs and their lands and are forced to seek employment abroad regardless of what type of job is available, how indebted they can become in the process of migration and however vulnerable they are made to abuses
But with the economic crisis, capitalists are actually in an even direr need of cheap labor than before. The cheapest labors that they can find are, of course, the migrant workers. While thousands of migrant workers were terminated from their jobs, most of the migrant workers were maintained but with reduction to their wage and benefits. These included reduction to their working hours or the removal of free board and lodging like the one implemented in South Korea to migrant workers under the Employment Permit System. Meanwhile, workers in Australia under the 457 visa scheme that allowed companies to hire migrants for skills not readily available in Australia experienced a worsening of problems they were already suffering from such as unpaid wages, underpayment, higher wage deductions, and lesser benefits. Restrictions in availability of jobs also became a norm for migrant-receiving states. Malaysia declared a ban on hiring of foreign workers in factories, stores and restaurants while Macau disallowed giving supervisory positions to migrant workers in the gaming industry.
These restrictions in the job market forced migrant workers to compete even for the most 3-D (dirty, dangerous and demeaning) of jobs. Many were forced to accept even the most inhuman condition just so they could hold on to their jobs. Social exclusion and discrimination against women migrants have also intensified due to the crisis. We are already a socially-excluded sector in many host countries. We are not given the same rights even if we play a big part of the productive forces in these countries. Instead of re-evaluating the basic flaws in their social and economic structures and the adverse impacts of neoliberal globalization, governments of major migrant sending countries instead opted to make their respective labor export programs more aggressive and systematic in deploying their nationals abroad.
With the crisis, xenophobia and discrimination became more rampant. This was recognized even by the International Labour Organization as discriminatory policies in host countries that aimed to further reduce the rights of migrant workers mushroomed. In Hong Kong, for example, foreign domestic workers – mostly women and are live-in workers – were not included by the government in their proposal for a statutory minimum wage to the Legislative Council. In a very important labor legislation, the biggest sector of the migrant worker population in Hong Kong was outrightly excluded, thereby creating a subsector of workers who do not enjoy one of the basic labor rights. Last year, Macau tried to implement two policies detrimental to migrant workers. These were the imposition of a levy to employers of migrant workers and the six-month re-entry ban for migrant workers who terminated their contracts.
While the campaign against these gained some concessions like the removal of penalties for migrant workers who terminated their contracts and were not able to report to the authorities and the exemption from the levy of employers of foreign domestic workers, the major anti-migrant and essentially discriminatory provisions of the policies remained. Discrimination also intensified for marriage migrants. Problems of marriage migrants have always been one of the most unattended concerns. Policies that protect marriage migrants are totally lacking even in countries where marriage migrants constitute a big part of the married population. Stricter border control resulted to even stricter immigration rules that made the acquisition of permanent residency even more difficult for marriage migrants.
Undocumented migrants are also facing the heat brought on by the crisis. Undocumented or irregular workers are again being made as convenient scapegoats of a number of countries to explain the rise of unemployment and social problems to the local workers. Crackdown operations again intensified in countries with a big number of undocumented migrants such as South Korea, Japan and Malaysia. Undocumented migrants were again projected as criminals who “steal” jobs and thus deserved to be arrested, detained under inhuman conditions, and summarily deported. In the first half of 2009 alone, 17,000 migrant workers were deported by the South Korean government. In Europe, the EU has approved for implementation the Return Directive that aimed to deport hundreds of thousands of irregular workers to their home countries. The directive imposed stiff penalties to undocumented workers, allowed for very long detention of arrested migrant workers and paved the way to impose re-entry bans against migrants.
These undocumented migrants did not become so voluntarily. Most of the undocumented migrants were forced to become one due to abuses and labor rights violations that they experienced from their employers. They ran away from their employers and due to various reasons such as the insecurity of the future of their families if they go back home, they instead opted to take the more dangerous path of being undocumented migrants in order to still have that opportunity to survive. Even if they are undocumented, their contribution to the economy of host countries as workers are real. These are, however, ignored and calls for amnesty or decriminalization of undocumented migrants are disregarded. For migrant-sending countries, the crisis meant the intensification of the commodification of migrant workers. Migrant-sending countries were some of the most severely affected by the economic crisis. With an economy that is very much tied up and subservient to the interests of imperialists, the crisis doubly impacts these countries with their economies becoming even more unstable and the economic benefits they get from their nationals working abroad are also threatened. Instead of re-evaluating the basic flaws in their social and economic structures and the adverse impacts of neoliberal globalization, governments of major migrant sending countries instead opted to make their respective labor export programs more aggressive and systematic in deploying their nationals abroad. Part of the further systematization of their labor export programs was the drive to seek out more labor markets for their nationals either through bilateral labor agreements with migrant-receiving countries or dishing out more incentives for bigger profits for private recruitment agencies. Both the Philippine and Indonesian governments, for example, banned direct hiring to force migrants to go through private recruiters as an encouragement
to placement agencies to intensify their hunting of jobs for workers as well as remove from their shoulders the responsibility of taking care of their nationals who encounter problems. Aside from this, sending governments also institute income-generating schemes through more type of fees or hiking up the existing ones. With such fees, governments automatically earn millions of dollars both from new migrants and existing ones. For as long as the basic economic, political and
social setup of these countries remain, they will continuously rely on labor export and the profit they get from such an industry to keep their economies afloat and put a stopper on the social volcano created by widespread and severe poverty and unemployment. Through all these, migrant workers – we – struggle. The issues and concerns of women migrants are of topmost concern of the International Migrants Alliance. Since our establishment, we made the women migrant’s agenda as a major advocacy point for us. In different countries, policies that further constrict the already limited rights of migrant workers were met by advocacy actions from the organized grassroots. Big rallies were held by migrants with many supported by local women’s groups or trade unions. These included the militant movement of migrants in Hong Kong fighting against exclusion to the Statutory Minimum Wage and other discriminatory policies and practices in Hong Kong; the campaign against unjust retrenchments by the united ranks of local workers in Taiwan, New Zealand and Australia; the fight against the immigration reform bill in Japan; and the unity of migrant workers in Europe against the EU Return Directive.
In the international field, the IMA co-organized the first and second International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees or IAMR as the grassroots-centered gathering to confront the GFMD. The GFMD, which will soon have its fourth run, is the current major arena for imperialists to dictate their design on migration and migrant workers. While giving lip-service to the rights of migrants, its basic framework on development remains to be faithful to imperialist globalization and thus develops migration policies that do not only cover up the grave impacts of neoliberal policies to the people, but also actually perpetuate the structures where imperialist control and plunder can flourish. This year, the GFMD will be held in Mexico City. The IMA through the Third IAMR will again be there to hold high the banner of the anti-imperialist movement of migrants and refugees. Aside from advocacy and education on the current situation impacting migrant workers, members of the IMA have also strengthened cooperation with service providers and advocates in order to
respond to crisis situations of women migrants who were terminated from their jobs, have labor and immigration cases, have been victims of violence against women, or have no place to stay or support themselves while in a foreign land. These services are very important in the light of the intensified labor and immigration problems migrants are experiencing. To summarize and conclude the points, the economic crisis in the world today affects women migrants in two fronts. The first is as migrant workers in the countries where they are in and the second is as people of countries where they come from. In the host countries, migrants are made modern-day slaves. They are the disposable workers whose labor power is exploited and whose rights can be arbitrarily withheld and legally violated through anti-worker and anti-migrants laws. For sending countries, meanwhile, migrant workers are nothing more than mere commodities for sale. They are neglected in times of crisis and squeezed dry of their hard-earned money as long as they have the capacity to work abroad. Women migrant workers have always been in crisis and the economic crunch has only made it worse. This is what we must confront. Together we must resist. For still, it is in our solidarity that our resistance can meet the onslaught of imperialists.
Eni Lestari is the chairperson of the International Migrants Alliance. This paper was presented at the Conference on Women Resisting Crisis and War held in Baguio City, Philippines from19-21 July 2010.
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