On October 29 and 30, 2008, representatives of states are set to meet for the Second Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD).

This gathering is even more significant now considering that the meeting will be held in Manila, Philippines – a country known for its decades-old export of labor and ranks among the top labor-sending countries and is one of the biggest recipients of remittance from overseas nationals. From the estimated 10 million Filipinos working in other countries across the globe, remittances sent in 2007 reached US$14.4B.1

The first GFMD was hosted by the Belgian government and focused on the following themes: Human Capital Development and Labour Mobility: Maximising Opportunities and Minimizing Risks; Remittances and other Diaspora Resources: Increasing their Volume and Development Value, and; Enhancing Institutional and Policy Coherence, and Promoting Partnerships.

In this year’s Manila GFMD, the central theme shall focus on ‘Protecting and Empowering Migrants for Development’ with the roundtable themes on: (a ) Migration, Development and Human Rights; (b) Secure, legal migration can achieve stronger development impacts; and (c) Policy and institutional coherence and partnerships. 2

While the GFMD holds so much promise in words, delving into its agenda and framework reveals otherwise. What is really in store for migrant workers and peoples of developing countries is the grim future of intensified commodification of migrant labor.

Globalization, Migration and the Rise of the GFMD

It is a foregone conclusion for the grassroots that globalization has failed to deliver its promises of development for the majority of the people. In fact, the world is in such an unprecedented crisis that even the main superpower – the United States – has resorted to wars of aggression and occupation of sovereign nations just so it can salvage its own dwindling economy.

Globalization and its policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization have not uplifted the condition in underdeveloped and developing countries. Unemployment, underemployment, landlessness and deprivation of basic services are more prevalent than ever. Their natural resources are plundered and their economies are held hostage by the powerful countries. The great majority either sink deeper into the quagmire of poverty due to accumulated problems and the current impact of the economic crisis.

According to the research group IBON Foundation, the average annual unemployment rate of 11.3% and of underemployment of 18.9% from 2001-2007 is the “worst seven-year period of these rates in the country’s history.”3

Indonesia, another major exporter of labor, pegs its unemployment rate in 2006 at 10.6 per cent of 106-million workforce while the number of underemployed has exceeded 43 million.4

Poverty continues to worsen in the Philippines. Even with an absurdly low poverty threshold of P41.25 (US$0.80), 32.8% of the population is poor. The economic disparity in the country is so wide that the top 20% of the population has a total income of 52.8% and the bottom 80% shares the rest.

With the prevalence of poverty and shrinking opportunities to survive, millions of people are driven to seek employment abroad. In 2005, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that there are about 191 million migrants worldwide.5 This was about 3% of the total world population.

Labor export has been a flourishing industry in many developing and underdeveloped countries. It is used to prop the sagging economy of countries battered by perennial crisis induced by the drive of the monopoly capitalists to save their own businesses and economies.

Labor-sending governments also use forced migration of people to deflect the simmering social volcano of people’s discontent in face of the massive joblessness, poverty and constriction of social services. It is a deception tool employed to enable the daily survival of a big part of the populace.

However, the biggest and most evident impact of forced migration is the income it generates and the remittances that migrants send to their home countries. Government income mainly comes from the various fees that it exacts from departing and current migrants. The Philippines, for example, earns billions of pesos a year considering that more than 3,000 overseas Filipinos leave the country everyday for work abroad.

Still, remittances overshadow income from state exactions. The estimated US$2.26 trillion combined remittances of all foreign workers around the world far exceed the combined development aid from the rich and powerful countries.

It comes as no surprise then that monopoly capitalists will turn its attention to the lucrative business that is migration.

The GFMD process did not come about from a vacuum. While the decision to convene it came from a High-Level Dialogue on migration backed by members of the powerful OECD in September 2006, its gradual evolution can be traced to various other international gatherings that shaped the concepts of development and migration.

These include the formation of the World Trade Organization that radically shifted the concept of development to embracing the principles of neoliberal globalization in 1995, the Monterrey Consensus in 2002 and the Paris Declaration in 2005 that dealt with development aid, and of course, the botched attempt of the WTO to control migration through the General Agreement on Trade and Services Mode 4 in 2005.

Failing to do so within the WTO framework, OECD countries are now trying to assert its agenda on migration through the GFMD process.

Unraveling the GFMD

The GFMD’s expressed nature is that it is “an informal multilateral and state-led multi-stakeholder process … to identify practical and feasible ways to strengthen the mutually beneficial relationship between migration and development.” 6

To understand the GFMD is to know that it does not really depart from the neoliberal globalization framework. It is globalization applied to migration.

Under the GFMD, development for the underdeveloped countries will mean the even further systematization of the labor export program and the commodification of migrants. In simpler terms, it will mean that migrants shall not be different from any other good that is traded.

In its conclusion, the First GFMD said that ‘migration is an opportunity, not a threat; as such, migration policies can contribute to development and to achieving the Millennium Development Goals; that development policies can harness best the potential benefits of migration.’7

While it purports not to advocate for migration to replace genuine development, its adherence to globalization – whose concept of development reigns right now – makes such a declaration empty.

The GFMD does not, in any way, attempt to address the root causes of forced migration. While it hides under the cloak of universally-accepted concepts and principles such as the ‘right to migrate’ and the ‘right to development’, its support for the perpetuation of forced migration and denial to take into account globalization as a cause of poverty, joblessness and maldevelopment is evident.

For as long as developing and underdeveloped countries remain backward and impoverished, monopolists have a steady and even increasing supply of cheap labor to exploit – both the workers exported as migrants and the workers left behind.

Remittance is on top of GFMD’s priority concerns. It maintains that although remittances cannot be appropriated by governments, their positive impact on development can be increased through options, incentives and tools designed and implemented by governments in partnership with other relevant actors.8

Currently, there is a drive to corner the flow of remittance of migrants in the whole world. This is being done in order to ensure the superprofits of monopoly banks, and ensure that debt-ridden countries will have dollars to pay their debts. Even more than the superprofit, the cornering of remittances will lead to further concentration of finance capital. This concentration of finance capital will even be reinforced by the fact that for many migrants, working abroad means getting loans from banks.

The use of remittances is hoped to do away with capital pump priming and Official Development Assistance (ODA) that donor countries and financing institutions such as the IMF have not been able to meet as a result of the globalization-induced crisis.

In order to do this, they must make sure that the administration of migration is going well. Aside from ensuring the smooth flow of labor export, migration management shall ensure that the labor-sending countries can squeeze the maximum benefits from labor export to augment state revenues and help cover deficits in foreign payments.

At the end of it, the GFMD deliberately misses the concrete concerns of migrants for its sole concern is the advancement of globalization policies in labor-sending countries and how monopoly banks, other private businesses, the monopoly capitalist states, and governments of labor-sending countries can benefit from migration.

Grassroots’ response

For the 2nd GFMD, grassroots migrants are taking up the challenge of confronting the meeting, exposing its nature, and bringing to fore the real concerns of migrants.

The Manila GFMD is set to face the resistance of grassroots migrants, advocates for migrants’ rights, and anti-globalization groups. Efforts have already been conducted in various countries to educate migrants and their advocates on what the GFMD is all about and its repercussions.

In June this year, the International Migrants’ Alliance or IMA was formed. Composed of more than 100 organizations coming from the grassroots migrants – domestic workers, factory workers, agricultural workers, undocumented migrants, foreign brides, political refugees, workers in the service sector and the likes – from 25 countries, the IMA has resolved to mount actions that will challenge the very core principles and framework of the GFMD.

While the GFMD is evidently a concern primarily of migrants, its framework and agenda impact on all other sectors of society. As globalization ravages the lives and livelihoods of everyone, the GFMD is both a cover to globalization’s failure and a venue to further advance its agenda.

Thus on October 28 to 30, the IMA together with Migrante International and IBON Foundation will convene the International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR) as a parallel event to the GFMD meeting. In the IAMR, leaders from grassroots organizations of migrants and of other sectors in the regions of Asia-Pacific, Europe, North America, Africa and Latin America will talk about the issues of migrants ranging from the challenges in building the migrants’ movement to the issues of seafarers. In attendance will be regional groups such as the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development and CARAM-Asia.

To confront the GFMD is a daunting task. In the face of such a challenge, the unity and solidarity of migrants and other sectors shall be most important weapon for an effective resistance to GFMD and the imperialists’ and their servile governments’ design on migration.

Endnotes:

1 2007 Annual Report, Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA)
2 http://government.gfmd2008.org/forum_info/gfmd_philippines2008.html
3 IBON Position Paper on Supreme Court Forum On Economic, Social, Cultural Rights, www.ibon.org
4 http://old.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20060925.A05
5 www.iom.int
6 First GFMD background paper
7 GFMD Conclusions and Recommendations
8 Ibid