labor of love

Labor migration to stay strong
Estrella Toress/BMirror/12.02.08

AMID the global financial crunch, the United Nations-attached International Organization for Migration (IOM) appealed to countries to keep their doors open to migrant workers, but also advised labor-sending states to build industries at home and thus generate jobs for their citizens.

The IOM’s 4th World Migration Report, “Managing Labour Mobility in the Evolving Global Economy,” indicated that labor migration will remain strong, human mobility having become a life choice influenced by disparities in demography, income and employment opportunities across regions.

The IOM report noted that half of all the migrant workers, or 49.6 percent of the total 200 million, are women. Their total remittances through official channels have reached $337 billion in 2007, a 99-percent increase from 2002 figures.

The Philippines remains to be the third-largest source of migrant workers with 8.2 million, next to China and India. But the number of Filipino migrant workers is relatively the highest as a ratio of total population—more than 10 percent of the more than 80 million Filipinos, compared with 40 million or 2.9 percent of the Chinese, and 20 million or 1.9 percent of the Indian population.

“The international community made some very important choices in the last century to facilitate the development of the global economy by allowing the free movement of capital, goods and services. The inevitable consequence of that choice is human mobility on an unprecedented global scale. But for all countries, matching the subsequent supply and demand in an international labor market remains a critical challenge,” said Gervais Appave, coeditor of the IOM 2008 report.

It said that in the next 50 years, industrialized countries also competing for highly skilled migrants will also run out of much-needed low- and semiskilled workers, thus prompting the increase in demand for these skilled workers coming from developing countries.

This has been largely due to “an increasing scarcity of local workers available or willing to engage in
low- or semiskilled employment such as in agriculture, construction, hospitality or domestic care,” said the IOM report.

The demographic trends show that without immigration, the working-age population in developed countries is expected to decline by 23 percent by 2050.

By 2050, Africa’s total work force will triple from 408 million in 2005 to 1.1 billion; while China and India are likely to account for 40 percent of the total global work force.

The IOM said too much outmigration should prompt labor-sending economies to create jobs at home to prevent their economies from collapsing.

“What we are witnessing in countries of varying levels of development is a reemergence of low- and semi-skilled temporary labor-migration programs in a bid to square the needs of an economy and a labor market, while minimizing any political backlashes to increases in migration,” says Ryszard Cholewinski, coeditor of the 2008 IOM report. He stressed, however, that “the strategy can only work if there is a complementary vision to develop the human resources of any labor force and to adequately protect the rights of migrant workers participating in such programs.”

The IOM said rich economies should adopt flexible, “front-door” labor-migration policies that meet their own individual labor and skill needs.

“These types of policies are especially important during downturns in the global economy, such as the one we are witnessing today. The Asian financial crisis of the 1990s showed that even in times of economic hardship, there is still a structural need for migrants,” Appave argued.

He stressed that “the world is on the move; there is no turning away from that. If we harness that mobility through policies addressing both human and economic needs, many of the migration anomalies of the past can be overcome, and we would see real progress when we talk about global development.”

The IOM noted that allowing the entry of migrant workers is inevitable for many developed countries, as their population is expected to decline by 23 percent from 741 million to 571 million by 2050.

At the same time, the outward migration policy for many developing countries in Asia is expected to rise by 40 percent from 2.21 billion in 2005 to 3.08 billion in 2050. “ Without emigration, it would rise to 3.12 billion.”

“Over next four decades, the developing world can easily be the source of as many people of working age as are needed in developed countries with decreasing populations of working age,” said the IOM report.