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Migration and Trade Explainer

August 30, 2024September 24, 2024 Regions RefocusLeave a comment

The Gender and Trade Coalition was initiated in 2018 by feminist and progressive activists to put forward feminist trade analysis and advocate for equitable trade policy.

This article is the third in a series of short, Q&A format ‘explainers’ unpacking key trade issues produced for the Gender and Trade Coalition by Regions Refocus. It was written by Erica Levenson (Regions Refocus) with inputs from Carol Barton (WIMN) and Catherine Tactaquin (WIMN). The authors give their thanks to Neha Misra (Solidarity Center), Irem Arf (ITUC), Liepollo Lebohang Pheko (Trade Collective), and Mariama Williams (ILE), who reviewed various versions of the article and provided helpful feedback. Read the full article and catch up on past explainers .

1. What Does Trade Have to do With Migration?

The movement of people is a phenomenon as old as human history, and indeed predates nation-states. Migration is not something that begins and ends so much as it is a process, from the roots of the conditions which form the imperative to migrate, to the migration journey, gradual integration, and complex notions of citizenship and identity. This is precisely what makes migration flows a reflection of the social, economic, and political context in which they happen. Modern migration flows, then, reflect the stark structural inequalities that exist in the global economic order. This view correlates to the core-periphery model of migration, which sees migration as the result of acute labor shortages in capitalist centers that need to be filled through migration inflows from peripheries, drawing parallels to the Marxian concept of a reserve army of labor (Sassen-Koob 1981). As feminist scholars have argued, continuous flows of labor power from the Global South to the North are possible not simply due to the will of the Global North, but because institutions in countries of origin facilitate them (Nawyn 2010).

Rather than this core-periphery model of migration, a simplistic push-pull model guides migration provisions in international trade agreements. Informed by neoclassical economics, the push-pull model assumes that migration is the result of micro-level decision making processes that weigh the ‘pros and cons’ of migration, envisioning a simplistic calculation of factors such as perceived wage differentials, employment conditions, and migration costs. Migration is effectively reduced to a household decision meant “to minimize risks to family income or to overcome capital constraints” (Aldaba 2000, 6).

There is a persistent assumption in trade governance that migration and trade are substitutes. Both European Union and United States policymakers have tried to substitute open markets for open immigration policies: to open their markets to exports from states in the Global South in order to reduce migration. This was the explicit goal of former US President George H.W. Bush when he signed NAFTA, and of the EU in liberalizing trade with Northern African states (Campaniello 2014). Simultaneously as the US and EU agreed to liberalize trade, they increased their border policing and passed restrictive migration policies. But these and other free trade agreements have failed to curb migration through substitution because of a key flaw in their assumption: that increasing free trade leads to increases in GDP and wages in developing countries. In fact, quite the opposite is true– trade liberalization has severely hindered the economies of developing countries. Consequently, free trade agreements have actually increased migration in the long-term (Orefice 2013).

There is a clear gap in structural understandings of the relationship between trade and migration and a need to challenge the ideologies of the people governing them. It is high time to acknowledge the many unfulfilled promises which have been hung on trade liberalization and the socioeconomic catastrophes it has instead led to (Aguinaga et al. 2013; Benería, Deere, and Kabeer 2012; Flynn and Kofman 2004; Hannah, Roberts, and Trommer 2021; Harrison 1997). A critical feminist analysis of the relationship between trade and migration points out the numerous connections between deeply unequal trade and migration governance regimes and illuminates urgent areas in need of improvement.

The Ideal Amount of Work and Leisure

November 14, 2023November 4, 2023 Hritic GautamLeave a comment

Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys, has attracted significant attention for his in which he advises Indian youth to work 70 hours a week to contribute to the nation’s growth. Mr. Murthy, who also happens to be the father-in-law of the UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, supports his advice by drawing parallels to the post-war recoveries of Germany and Japan. He suggests that Indian corporate leaders should similarly consider increasing employees’ working hours to enhance productivity

In my view, Mr. Murthy’s advice is ignorant and misinformed at best, or highly malicious at worst. In either case, it is profoundly misguided. In this blog, we will critically assess his statement, examining both its intent and factual accuracy. This discussion will also lead to broader reflections on the themes of work and leisure

An acknowledgement of women’s work in economics – hits, misses, and a long road ahead

October 10, 2023 surbhi kesarLeave a comment

By and Surbhi Kesar

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2023 was awarded to Claudia Goldin, professor of economics at Harvard University, for “having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”. Goldin is now one of three women who have been awarded the prize, and, more importantly, this is the first time that the prize recognises research that makes a fundamental distinction between economic outcomes of men and women. Her work makes significant contributions to both the empirical and theoretical aspects of the theme, particularly in the context of the US.

Empirically, she applied innovative ways to unearth data for women’s labour market outcomes in the US at a time when the labour force surveys only collected this information for men. This allowed her to uncover the long-term trend of economic outcomes for women. Her work revealed that there was no linear relationship between economic growth and development and the women’s labour force participation. Instead, bringing together cross-country evidence and historical data, she empirically established a U-shaped relationship between women’s employment and economic growth. This implies that at low levels of economic growth, larger share of women tend to participate in the labour market, largely in agriculture. However, with economic growth and a sectoral shift away from agriculture, women’s participation faltered. Goldin argued that the “income effect” — the rise in household incomes alongside economic growth along with the increasing use of technology in agricultural activities — may explain women’s initial withdrawal from employment. However, beyond a certain level of economic growth, women’s participation rose as their education levels increased and as more white-collar emerged by replacing the factory jobs that are often stigmatised for women.

The South Asia to Gulf Migration Governance Complex – Edited by Crystal A. Ennis and Nicolas Blarel: Review

August 28, 2023August 25, 2023 Namrata RajuLeave a comment

Migration Governance: Moving Away from “Uncle Always Knows”

Almost everyone on social media has that one Instagram friend who posts bronzed pictures in Santorini, or screenshots of champagne flutes atop the Burj Khalifa, the Dubai skyline looming in the background. To those internationals for whom travelling on holiday was an annual rite of passage, the pandemic’s travel restrictions resulted in adventures that were inopportunely thwarted. Conversely, to economic migrants everywhere, the implications of banned travel, whether by air, train, or foot, equated directly with the fundamental ability to survive. The scrambles of governments worldwide to gauge appropriate responses to COVID-19 was understandable, inasmuch the magnitude of the event was entirely unprecedented, and the need to contain its spread dire. Yet, one of the largest follies of the pandemic remains undebated: instinctive government responses moved to ban travel without duly considering the global interconnectedness of labour markets in the modern age. Belonging to one state but working in another meant that with travel bans, economic migrants were either shackled to their workplaces, away from their families; or held back from gainful employment whilst trapped at home. In most contexts, migrants are to countries like an unknown opening band at a music concert: the audience does not fundamentally care, and everybody is simply waiting for the headline act. In their origin states, migrant workers often escape the focus of governments who are more concerned with those who remain behind. In the meanwhile, the countries to which they migrate often look at them as charity, despite these workers’ crucial role in economic development. Since they belong to places differently, being of and from multiple geographies at once, migrant workers have shifted typical state-worker relationships to a new realm. What, therefore, does good governance look like for an individual- a migrant– who is from several places at once?

Multiple answers to this question can be gleaned from . As the title suggests, the volume focuses on the South Asia-Gulf migration nexus. There are various considerations that render this book highly topical. First, the movement of people around the world, particularly for employment, has outmoded traditional conceptions of citizenship and a worker’s relationship with a state. This necessitates the re-engineering of these traditional conceptions of citizenship in ways that account for a dynamic and modern global workforce which is constantly on the move. Second, a fitting place to start thinking about the redefinition of worker-state relations is from the lens of workers emigrating from South Asia into the Arab Gulf. These geographies are of particular significance given the staggering volume of South Asian emigrants in the Arab Gulf, with over 80 percent of the region’s labour force being comprised of migrants, as Blarel and Ennis describe in their introduction. Governing this sizeable migrant workforce is what is collectively termed Kafala, a complex set of legal and policy frameworks centred around an employer-oriented visa sponsorship system. For years now, the Kafala system has come under severe criticism from human rights groups for rendering low-wage migrant workers in various conditions of modern day slavery, most recently with the . Further compounding the importance of the South Asia-Gulf nexus is the phenomenon of South-South migration, where the Gulf’s ambitious development projects tend to drive largescale demands for a workforce that can be tailored to expand and contract as per their whimsy (Ennis and Blarel; Hamadah; Walton-Roberts et al). Above all, this volume is timely given the now universal tussle between the need for good governance and sustainable worker livelihoods on the one hand, versus competing pressures for labour market flexibility on the other (Devkota; Babar; Hamadah).

Working Overtime or Being Laid Off: The Pressure under Hopelessness among Workers in Chinese Internet Companies

July 10, 2023July 12, 2023 yunyunyunaaaLeave a comment

“I’ve been working until 1:00 am or later, then getting up at 8:00 am to continue working this week, but my mentor still pointed out a lot of problems that need to be reworked. But there’s no space to escape, if I don’t work harder, I would be laid off in the next quarter. I couldn’t imagine if I lost this job, either I had a rich family to rely on or had some indispensable skills. Now there’s massive laid-off everywhere due to the economic downturn, and it would be extremely hard to find another job if I’m being dismissed. The most probable result of my life would be nothing.”
– Linda, a 26-year-old operation specialist in Tiktok, Shanghai

In China’s bustling urban centers, a significant number of young individuals are employed in Internet firms, driven by the desire for a more promising future characterized by secure employment and affordable housing. Linda’s experienced colleagues at Tiktok, who worked diligently like her, underwent a transformation in their lives. Originating as diligent students from rural or small-town backgrounds as Linda, known as “,”(“小镇做题家”) they excelled academically, performing well in entrance exams and securing places in top universities. While they lacked broader perspectives and social networks, they nonetheless successfully transitioned into urban elites with competitive salaries, stock shares and options from China’s most valuable company in the early years, becoming firmly established in first-tier cities.

However, this once cherished aspiration has been shattered due to the end of rapid growth and the impossibility of significant salary advancements. The soaring property prices in China, especially in big cities, make it impractical for most people to purchase an apartment in such a metropolis, diminishing the chances of achieving such an exciting miracle. Returning to their smaller hometowns or cities is a challenging prospect for these individuals, primarily due to the limited Internet-related job opportunities outside major urban hubs such as Beijing and Shanghai. Furthermore, young individuals like Linda, who often belong to the first generation of college graduates in their families, face immense expectations of securing respectable employment and surpassing their parents’ financial achievements. These young people are swashed down by hopelessness.

Overtime pressure still grows under hopelessness. According to Chinese labor law, workers should not work more than eight hours a day or 40 hours a week, and overtime is restricted to 36 hours a month. However, staff in the Internet sector, especially at big tech firms, face unpaid compulsory overtime, . The pervasive in Chinese internet companies is exemplified by the widespread adoption of the (working from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week) and the (work six days a week, every other week). Despite the alarming occurrences of sudden due to long working hours, which serve as a warning to society, the common issue of excessive overtime work remains largely unchanged.

The Salaried Man and His Others: Rethinking Pressure in the Longue Durée

June 27, 2023June 26, 2023 Jordanna MatlonLeave a comment

Colon statue, C?te d’Ivoire. Author’s collection, 2023.

The burgeoning scholarship over the past several decades documenting youth stalled in their quest for adulthood, the scholarship on waiting, on restless underemployed laborers buying time in the informal economy, on the crisis of African masculinities, on the accumulating material and psychic pressures of unmet familial and community responsibilities – all these are ways of depicting the longue durée of failure best contextualized within the beguiled patriarchal promise of colonial civilizing missions: the breadwinning wage.

In this blog, I draw from my recent book, , to explore how socioeconomic forces particular to the postcolonial African city induce a permanent state of pressure among young men at the interrupted point of social becoming. Observing that the crisis of work is also a crisis of masculinity, I historicize the pressures of late capitalism in African cities – namely, surviving in informal economies – within the longue durée of the wage economy. I show how the introduction of wage labor during European colonial rule produced at its outset an overwhelmingly unachievable male breadwinner norm. The salary was both an entitlement and a source of intense pressure as it produced a novel form of patriarchal privilege but also the social and domestic responsibilities that came to collapse manhood with this exceptional, and exceptionally rare, form of economic activity. Examining these pressures within the long shadow of colonialism critically illuminates the role of race-making and racial difference in the emergence of financial expectation and deeply personalized societal failure among contemporary urban African men.

The Academic Labour Movement: Lessons from the New School and Beyond

April 14, 2023April 13, 2023 Robert NobleLeave a comment

“At its best, one of the most creative activities is being involved in a struggle with other people, breaking out of our isolation, seeing our relations with others change, discovering new dimensions in our lives … it [is] a powerful collective experience”.

Silvia Federici, 1984

News broke on the very last day of 2022 that members of the New School’s part-time faculty (PTF) union – ACT-UAW 7902 – had voted to ratify a new five-year contract, following what some are calling the longest adjunct strike in American history (Hamberg, 2022). A ’tentative agreement’ was reached on December 10^th, after almost a month of strike action where more than 1,600 PTF members had taken to the picket line. Their existing contract had expired, and there was no sign of a satisfactory renewal. The dispute was multifaceted, but primarily concerned poor pay, uncompensated labour time, general job security and health insurance coverage.

The agreement solidified a historic pay increase (the largest PTF at the New School have ever received), as well as an enhanced offer for paid family leave, improved terms for annualisation, compensation for labor performed outside of the classroom and improvements in health care access (Hamberg, 2022). Whilst there is much to be celebrated in these gains, for the New School community this was a month-long struggle marked with uncertainty, tension, and growing hostility. The disconnect between the university’s administration and its community of faculty and students was made painfully, publicly evident. Observers couldn’t help but call hypocrisy on an institution founded on radical values employing “corporate union-busting tactics … antithetical to [its] progressive heritage” (Hamberg, 2022).

Much can be gleaned from this contained episode: the state of higher education following a period of its incessant marketisation; the power of organised labour to rally against exploitation; the role higher education specifically can play in a wider workers’ movement. This blog post will attempt to place the New School’s recent ACT-UAW 7902 strike in its wider context, that of an (inter)national worker movement, both within the higher education sector and beyond. By doing this, I will elicit some of the unique contributions academics, other university workers and students themselves can offer such a movement.

The evolution of mainstream economics in five political-economic questions

February 26, 2023February 26, 2023 Aabid FirdausiLeave a comment

The trajectory of mainstream economics can be understood in terms of how the discipline historically responded to moments of crises by attempting to “theoretically fix” the understandings related to five core “questions” of capitalist political economy – namely land, trade, labour, state, and legal-institutional framework. This involved legitimising improvements in land that led to the dispossession and the destruction of the commons, justifying free trade based on comparative advantage as opposed to mercantilist state intervention, reducing labour to a factor of production that was supposedly rewarded based on its marginal productivity and hence not being exploited, legitimising state intervention to stabilise capitalism and developing a legal-institutional framework to protect markets from popular democratic pressures. These “theoretical fixes” served to ideologically legitimise, preserve, and perpetuate the core content of capitalist social relations even as it corresponded with the modification of the surface-level appearances of capitalism.

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