The Hindu Business Line : UNDP report puts up a support plank for migrant workers

New Delhi, Oct. 6 With the talk of liberalisation of trade in services under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) remaining in limbo for want of impetus to the overall multilateral trade negotiations under the WTO auspices, a new report of the United Nations has pitched for lowering the barriers to human movement and improving the treatment of movers.

Developing countries such as India have been keeping their fingers crossed to get a plausible trade-off in what they have lost in goods talks through greater market access to the legions of its natural service providers plumping for overseas assignments as skilled or semi-skilled workers in the advanced countries.

For such aspiring emigrants or people already in overseas jobs, this year’s Human Development Report of UN Development Programme (UNDP) has been a boon as it has taken up the topic of ‘Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development’.

opposition to outsourcing

While there has been an orchestrated opposition to outsourcing in rich countries for their impact on domestic job seekers in western countries in areas such as information technology and communications, the skilled workers from developing countries have also been subject to vexatious delays in grant of visas even for short duration assignment.

This needs to be viewed against the admission in the report that “more than three quarters of international migrants go to a country with a higher level of human development than their country of origin. Yet they are significantly constrained, both by policies that impose barriers to entry and by the resources they have available to enable their move”.

Boosting economic output

Migrants, the report argues, typically boost economic output and give more than they take.

“Immigration does not crowd out locals from the job market and improves rate of investment in new businesses and initiatives,” the report said. It is also interesting to know that the share of global migrants in the world’s population has remained remarkably stable at 3 per cent over the past 50 years, even over the past century; the number of nation states has quadrupled to almost 200.

It is rather a parody that as more borders to cross have proliferated, policy changes of host countries have further circumscribed the scale of migration, even as barriers to trade fell.

Social remittances

The report makes a forthright plea for countries to eschew protectionism, liberalise labour laws and root out xenophobia and marginalisation of migrant workers, whose families benefited immensely from “social remittances” sent home.

It would be an act of voluntary charity for the rich world as the report states that earnings by economic migrants from poorer countries were 15 times higher than at home, which meant those employed in developed world were helping to double school enrolment rates and decisively prune instances of child mortality at home.

Against the odds of technically skilled and qualified emigrants, the plight of unskilled or ordinary workers in search of job overseas is worrisome. This is aggravated by the global economic crisis which has reduced the role of migrant workers; the report said adding that this is likely to alter dramatically as developed countries face a shortfall in workers over the next four decades.

It reckons demand for migrants would return when economic revival is under way.

In this regard, the report outlines a six-point agenda encompassing opening up existing entry channels so that more workers can emigrate, ensuring basic rights for migrants, lowering the transaction costs of migration, finding solutions that benefit both destination communities and the migrants they receive, making it easier for people to move within their own countries and mainstreaming migration into national development strategies.

In fine, the UNDP has focused on a subject that is relevant for the host and home countries as they wrestle with the wrenching fallout of the global economic recession by asking them to forge a compact for ensuring the optimal benefits to all stakeholders in human movement and development.

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