The Global Governance of Labor Migration

On 19 September 2016, a grand vision was adopted unanimously by the United Nations and its Member States: the New York Declaration on Refugees and Migrants. This Declaration set out to start a process of consultations and negotiations culminating in the completion of two global compacts: (1) the Global Compact on Refugees and (2) the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM). This ambitious project, in its lead-up to the adoption of those two Global Compacts by the end of 2018, offers an historic opportunity to enhance the international framework for, and concrete practices on, the protection of the rights of migrants. Although not mandated to establish new norms but rather to strengthen existing principles by moving beyond rhetoric to "action," the Compacts nonetheless represent the pinnacle of a gradual process aimed at reviving multilateral efforts on developing a coordinated response to international migration. This process of concerted multilateral action, i.e., the gradually emerging "global governance of migration," started in the early 2000s, leading to a greater understanding of the benefits and challenges for all who are affected by migration, with the view to arrive at a global regulatory framework that resonates with the spirit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to "leave no one behind."

Even though labor migration has been of interest to various international organizations and a component theme of major world conferences for decades, its global governance — if understood as concrete, problem-solving arrangements in the form of laws, institutions and informal practices such as guidelines and coalitions¹ — has been a slowly evolving affair. Although international migration has an inherently transnational logic, recognition that economic migration, as a policy field, transcends political borders and requires effective global regulations and global institutions has come very late in the day and, as a result, inter-State cooperation has been weak for a long time.² There is now more evidence of greater global coordination between States: the Global Commission on International Migration was created in 2003; the International Labour Organization (ILO) devoted its annual congress to the topic of migrant workers in 2004 and dealt with the protection of a specific group of migrant workers in 2011 when the new ILO Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention (No. 189) was adopted; and the United Nations (UN) held the first UN High-Level Dialogue on Migration and Development in 2006 and the follow-up in 2013, culminating in the global compact negotiations. The Global Forum on Migration and Development, held annually since 2006, has offered another space for nurturing greater understanding among the various stakeholders. These developments are undoubtedly part of a gradual shift towards greater global governance of migration. The question this raises is what type of governance system has emerged and is being promoted.

The "Project" of Global Migration Governance

The endeavor to raise the governance of international migration and mobility to the global level in a concerted manner, and thus to render it subject to a multilateral process and a global regulatory framework rooted in internationally agreed upon standards, has been guided or informed by numerous international organizations, in dialogue with States and non-State actors (employers, civil society and faith-based organizations). The "project" of global migration governance has, unsurprisingly, been approached from various perspectives, reflecting different priorities and concerns — as well as politics — by those institutional actors involved. Broadly summarized, these perspectives are: (1) the economic approach based on the facilitation of mobility with emphasis on skills and qualifications, (2) the securitization approach focused on controlling borders and population flows (exit and entry), (3) and the rights-based approach centered upon UN conventions and the ILO's international labor standards.

The first two approaches are the constituent components of what has been named "management of migration" and championed by many governments and employer organizations. The latter approach emanates mostly from civil society organizations, including faith-based organizations and labor unions (and some employers). It is aimed at the majority of migrants who are either less skilled or have an irregular, unauthorized status.³ Given the range of priorities and interests involved in migration governance by various stakeholders, the attempt to arrive at an agreeable global framework has become a delicate balancing act as evident from the most recent negotiations around the GCM.⁴

At the core of this balancing act lies the tension between global labor market liberalization and the exercise of national sovereignty to restrict labor mobility which has exposed a fundamental anomaly in the globalization project. Whereas the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) are endowed with the authority to compel State compliance with the liberal economic order and liberalize international trade, money and capital flows, there is no international institutional counterpart that has the authority to require State policies to conform to internationally agreed standards or protocols with respect to transnational migration and employment. Beyond the pressure of moral persuasion, the internationally agreed conventions and protocols formulated within the UN and the ILO that set some minimum standards for recruitment and employment, as well as for migrant worker rights, have proved to be quite ineffective and weak instruments.

The existence of the two, at times competing or clashing, main approaches outlined above — the "management" and the "rights-based" approaches — has led to those conventions aimed specifically at protecting the rights of migrant workers being under-ratified. This has resulted in the continuing and widespread occurrence of migrants who are engaged in low-paid, low-skilled and limited duration contracts of employment being subject to exploitative and abusive recruitment and employment experiences along global (productive and reproductive) supply chains.⁵ Efforts to reconcile those two approaches have led the UN to use international development as the key frame for multilateral discussions on migration, in the belief that the "development" frame lends itself to greater willingness by States to re-engage in multilateral conversation — and action.⁶

Emergence of Parallel Agendas

Migrant advocacy and faith-based organizations have embraced the fact that global institutions have begun to display a much greater interest in migration than ever before, by drawing on the international legal system, as well as promoting their own notions of what migrant rights entail in a global and transnational context. But how far does the new global architecture offer rights-based opportunities or institutional entry points for social movements? It has been suggested that these two developments — the emerging agenda of migrants' rights in ways that reflect the day-to-day needs of migrant workers and the slow and fragmented development of institutions that aim to manage migration at the global level — exist in parallel without much crossover.⁷ The development of multi-sited centers of governance of migration has taken shape without much reference to the rights agenda or the importance of migrant organizations in general. As an explanation of why civil society organizations find themselves largely excluded from governance debates and why rights are almost impossible to put at the core of the governance agenda at present, three factors are to be considered: issues of global power, the modes of representation open to low-wage migrant workers, and the complexity and ambiguity of the current global architecture for migration.

It is not the problematique of sovereignty, as much as the unequal power and resources between and within States and societies, and the processes of exploitation within the global political economy, that are at the center of the phenomenon of labor migration. To uphold the rights of low-wage migrants would mean interfering centrally with the workings of a liberal global economy that is based on corporate power, high profit levels and elite interests. Rights and liberal economics mix with difficulty and the rights of the workers at the bottom of the labor market, especially when they do not even have political citizenship in their place of work, are exceptionally hard to uphold. These inequalities, which sit at the heart of contemporary global politics, reflect new forms of exploitation and explain the underlying difficulties of constructing a just global migration regime. At the same time, they generate a daunting range of obstacles in the way of civil society's access to governance institutions and to obtaining an effective activist voice.

This state of affairs suggests that the push for change has to come from the "bottom up." Getting migrant grievances and rights claims heard under the new structures of governance will almost certainly require better cooperation between the unions and relevant NGOs. But this is far from easy. The arguably most democratic international organization that also happens to be a standard-setter — the ILO and its tripartite system — offers representation of workers via trade unions. Historically, trade unions have organized mostly skilled workers in industrial (and thus male-dominated) sectors that are part of the formal economy. They also have a long historical record of being anti-immigrant and against the inclusion of so-called "illegal" (irregular) migrants. A lot has changed regarding the latter, but this still leaves many migrant workers beyond the remit of unions and thus, direct representation at the ILO, where NGOs have no direct say and can only give input via collaboration with unions.

Finally, there is the bewildering complexity of current international structures for handling migration and migrant labor. Different agencies deal (generally partially) with different aspects of migration or different kinds of migrants — UN Women takes a stance regarding migrant women, ILO treats migrants as workers, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) identifies migrants as non-citizens, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is concerned with migrant children and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) focuses on issues of underdevelopment in the countries of origin (and thus addresses the causes of migration). This means that civil society organizations are rarely certain with which UN agency or institution they should be trying to work, and they can end up spreading themselves very thinly. The solution, from the activist perspective, might be building "networks of social justice networks," which would give them greater coverage and institutional capacity. Mainly for reasons of resources, this has so far proved a difficult undertaking.

The sobering picture painted so far requires qualification based on a few developments which give hope to the many concerned with the promotion of a rights-based approach to migration. The ILO's adoption of the new Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention (No. 189) is the outcome of formidable activist efforts around the world, bringing together trade unions and domestic worker and migrant rights organizations. The Global Compact process has also given space to civil society, whereby the GCM's final draft is the produce of comprise, to the chagrin of migrant rights advocates.

Concluding Remarks

The field of migration policy has reached a crossroads. The failures of State-led governance at the global level — as well as its moral limits — are increasingly evident. Governance initiatives regarding migration at the global level are proliferating, albeit in an overlapping, fragmented and uncoordinated fashion. But the emerging frame of multi-sited global governance still resembles the old in some key respects. In particular, the conflicts between the "sovereign" right asserted by States to protect local labor markets and economic interests on the one hand, and the fundamental rights of individuals who seek life and work outside of their country of birth or nationality on the other, remain unresolved. These problems are exacerbated not only by State power but, just as importantly, by the difficulties that civil society-based activists and migrant organizations face when it comes to asserting migrants' rights. Despite their vulnerabilities and the extent of their exploitation, migrants and the organizations who represent their interests keep engaging in greater numbers in the struggle to improve the position of migrant workers and assert their basic human rights.

References

Betts, A. (ed.) (2011) Global Migration Governance, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Grugel, J. and N. Piper (2007) Critical Perspectives on Global Governance: Rights and Regulation in Governing Regimes, London: Routledge.

Grugel, J.B. and Piper, N. (2011) "Global governance, economic migration and the difficulties of social activism," in: International Sociology, 26(4):435-454.

Piper, N. (2017) "Global Governance of Labour Migration: from 'Management' of Migration to an Integrated Rights-Based Approach," in: P. Drahos (ed), Regulatory Theory — Foundations and Applications, ANU University Press, pp. 377-394.

Verite (2014) Forced Labor in the Production of Electronic Goods in Malaysia — A Comprehensive Study of the Scope and Characteristics, https://verite.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/VeriteForcedLaborMalaysianElectronics2014.pdf.

Weiss, T. and R. Thakur (2010) Global Governance and the UN — An Unfinished Journey, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.