Borderless labour

SOMABASU looks at a book published by the International Labour Organisation that analyses the link between globalisation and migration patterns.

WHICH is a better option - an Indian textile worker travelling to Tokyo to work in Japanese factories or staying in the country and stitching and sending shirts to Japan?

The standard neoclassical trade theory says countries should produce and export those goods in which they have a comparative advantage in capital, labour, natural resource or technology.

In the past, the flow of people did help economies move closer together. But in recent years, social pressures and political resistance of host communities to migration has stifled this process and contributed to a widening of international disparities. However, this has not stopped migration, but only changed the pattern and direction of flows. In other words, whether trade has and should substitute for migration is a thought which nags even through the gaiety of globalisation.

One of the promises of globalisation was/ is that jobs are distributed to countries that need them and can do them most cheaply. But Peter Stalker takes a look at punctured promises to assess how migration is integrally connected with movements of capital and goods and how it is closely tied up with other social and economic changes. His book, Workers without Frontiers, is a frank comment on how international migration is centrally linked to globalisation and yet the gurus of this dominant theme of the past decade continue to ignore it at the peril of future migrants.

This new book from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) stands out for the complex and contentious issues it raises, with the author making it clear that economic convergence will impact migrant flows - and with broader consequences. In doing so, Stalker salutes the cheap immigrant labourers, who constantly pander to the needs of industrial countries and do the jobs that national workers refuse. But the supply could "dry up if closer and deeper integration of economies promotes economic development in poorer countries", he warns. It, according to Stalker, will eventually blunt the incentive to emigrate.

There is little doubt that as development proceeds, migration pressure will rise in the decades ahead. And what Stalker cautions against is that globalisation may in the end not flatten international disparities but merely rearrange countries into new categories of rich and poor.

For example, sub-Saharan countries - which are yet to feature very strongly on intercontinental migration trails - given the current exodus toward South Africa and the flow of Africans moving through the fairly relaxed border controls of Eastern Europe, could be a harbinger of things to come.

In other words, even if globalisation makes some countries as a whole richer, it could heighten internal disparities. For that matter, India or China - which between them have the majority of the world's poor people - might become much more integrated into global economy leaving vast numbers of their people marginalised, but with sufficient resources to travel overseas in search of work.

In a world of winners and losers, says Stalker, the losers do not simply disappear, but seek somewhere else to go. Since the poorest developing countries are trying to industrialise in a fiercely competitive environment, what could be a temporary (migration) hump could develop instead into a steep and relentless ascent.

The book fills an important gap in ILO's continuing discussions on the social dimensions of globalisation and liberalisation of international trade. By alerting us to the future prospects for labour migration and the issues likely to be raised for the international community, all of the 150-odd pages attract spontaneous reading, mainly because there are no unknowns in the concept.

Moving away from rhetoric, Stalker offers both refreshing and hackneyed views. But more importantly, his book helps stimulate thinking into what should be the shape of a future migration regime that fully respects the rights of individual migrants, while enhancing the positive role of migration in growth and development.

Stalker adheres to a systematic and meticulous approach by discussing globalisation in history and in perspective and the global consciousness about the era of convergence, divergence and the new age of migration.

The author says that in the short-term, free trade is likely to provoke even more emigration from poorer countries, while the longer-term effects will be more positive if trade helps the poorer countries restructure their economies in better use of their labour force and embark on a more broad-based development path.

While suggesting freeing up of trade more slowly, Stalker also says that aiming for quick gains through Export Processing Zones could be a short-sighted strategy. Better perhaps would be to take the more difficult road of encouraging broadly-based investments that is better linked to wider economy.

But the question of whether international migration has an equilibrating effect that leads to a degree of convergence between sending and receiving countries thus remains fairly open. As with most predictions of neoclassical economies, the idea that trade should substitute for migration involves a number of assumptions distant from conditions in the real world. The most significant is that of adjustment - and, obviously of time.

Workers without Frontiers, Peter Stalker, Lynne Rienner, Publishers for the ILO.

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