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MIGRATING WORKERS PROVIDE WEALTH FOR THE WORLD  
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Vijay Prashad
June 7, 2024
CounterPunch
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_ If the migrants of the world—all 281 million of them—lived in
one country, then they would form the fourth largest country in the
world. Yet, migrants receive few social protections and little
respect. _

(Photo by aboodi vesakaran),

 

Each year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) releases
its _World Migration Report_. Most of these reports are anodyne,
pointing to a secular rise in migration during the period of
neoliberalism. As states in the poorer parts of the world found
themselves under assault from the Washington Consensus (cuts,
privatization, and austerity), and as employment became more and more
precarious, larger and larger numbers of people took to the road to
find a way to sustain their families. That is why the IOM published
its first _World Migration Report_ in 2000, when it wrote
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“it is estimated that there are more migrants in the world than ever
before,” it was between 1985 and 1990, the IOM calculated, that the
rate of growth of world migration (2.59 percent) outstripped the rate
of growth of the world population (1.7 percent).

The neoliberal attack on government expenditure in poorer countries
was a key driver of international migration. Even by 1990, it had
become clear that the migrants had become an essential force in
providing foreign exchange to their countries through increasing
remittance payments to their families. By 2015, remittances—mostly
by the international working class—outstripped
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volume of Official Development Assistance (ODA) by three times and
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). ODA is the aid money provided by
states, whereas FDI is the investment money provided by private
companies. For some countries, such as Mexico and the Philippines,
remittance payments from working-class migrants prevented state
bankruptcy.

This year’s report
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that there are “roughly 281 million people worldwide” who are on
the move. This is 3.6 percent of the global population. It is triple
the 84 million people on the move in 1970, and much higher than the
153 million people in 1990. “Global trends point to more migration
in the future,” notes the IOM. Based on detailed studies, the IOM
finds that the rise in migration can be attributed to three factors:
war, economic precarity, and climate change.

First, people flee war, and with the increase in warfare, this has
become a leading cause of displacement. Wars are not the result of
human disagreement alone, since many of these problems can be resolved
if calm heads are allowed to prevail; conflicts are exacerbated into
war due to the immense scale of the arms trade and the pressures of
the merchants of death to forgo peace initiatives and to use
increasingly expensive weaponry to solve disputes. Global military
spending is now nearly
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trillion, three-quarters of it by the Global North countries.
Meanwhile, arms companies made
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whopping $600 billion in profits in 2022. Tens of millions of people
are permanently displaced due to this profiteering by the merchants of
death.

Second, the International Labor Organization (ILO) calculates
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about 58 percent of the global workforce—or 2 billion people—are
in the informal sector. They work with minimal social protection and
almost no rights in the workplace. The data on youth unemployment and
youth precarity is stunning, with the Indian numbers horrifying. The
Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy shows
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India’s youth—between the ages of 15 and 24—are “faced by a
double whammy of low and falling labor participation rates and
shockingly high unemployment rates. The unemployment rate among youth
stood at 45.4 percent in 2022-23. This is an alarming six times higher
than India’s unemployment rate of 7.5 percent.” Many of the
migrants from West Africa who attempt the dangerous crossing of the
Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea flee the high rates of
precarity, underemployment, and unemployment in the region. A
2018 report
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the African Development Bank Group shows that due to the attack on
global agriculture, peasants have moved from rural areas to cities
into low-productivity informal services, from where they decide to
leave for the lure of higher incomes in the West.

Third, more and more people are faced with the adverse impacts of the
climate catastrophe. In 2015, at the Paris meeting on the climate,
government leaders agreed to set up a Task Force on Climate Migration;
three years later, in 2018, the UN Global Compact agreed that those on
the move for reasons of climate degradation must be protected.
However, the concept of “climate refugees” is not yet established.
In 2021, a World Bank report
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that by 2050 there will be at least 216 million climate refugees.

WEALTH

The IOM’s new report points out that these migrants—many of whom
lead extremely precarious lives—send home larger and larger amounts
of money to help their increasingly desperate families. “The money
they send home,” the IOM report notes, “increased by a staggering
650 [percent] during the period from 2000 to 2022, rising from $128
billion to $831 billion.” Most of these remittances in the recent
period, analysts show go to low-income and middle-income countries. Of
the $831 billion, for instance, $647 billion goes to poorer nations.
For most of these countries, the remittances sent home by
working-class migrants far outstrips FDI and ODA put together and
forms a significant portion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

A number of studies
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by the World Bank show two important things about remittance payments.
First, these are more evenly distributed amongst the poorer nations.
FDI transactions typically favor the largest economies in the Global
South, and they go toward sectors that are not always going to provide
employment or income for the poorest sections of the population.
Second, household surveys show that these remittances help to
considerably lower poverty in middle-income and low-income countries.
For example, remittance payments by working-class migrants reduced the
rate of poverty in Ghana (by 5 percent), in Bangladesh (by 6 percent),
and in Uganda (by 11 percent). Countries such as Mexico and the
Philippines see their poverty rates rise drastically when remittances
drop.

The treatment of these migrants, who are crucial for poverty reduction
and for building wealth in society, is outrageous. They are treated as
criminals, abandoned by their own countries who would rather spend
vulgar amounts of money to attract much less impactful investment
through multinational corporations. The data shows that there needs to
be a shift in class perspective regarding investment. Migrant
remittances are greater by volume and more impactful for society than
the “hot money” that goes in and out of countries and does not
“trickle down” into society.

If the migrants of the world—all 281 million of them—lived in one
country, then they would form the fourth largest country in the world
after India (1.4 billion), China (1.4 billion), and the United States
(339 million). Yet, migrants receive few social protections and little
respect (a new publication
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the Zetkin Forum for Social Research shows, for instance, how Europe
criminalizes migrants). In many cases, their wages are suppressed due
to their lack of documentation, and their remittances are taxed
heavily by international wire services (PayPal, Western Union, and
Moneygram) which charge high fees to both the sender and the
recipient. As yet, there are only small political initiatives that
stand with the migrants, but no platform that unites their numbers
into a powerful political force.

_Vijay Prashad’s most recent book (with Noam Chomsky) is The
Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US
Power (New Press, August 2022)._

_CounterPunch is reader supported! Please help keep us alive
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offered at no charge to the general public over the world wide web.
New articles, from an independent left-leaning perspective, are posted
every weekday. A batch of several articles, including the Poet’s
Basement, and Roaming Charges by Jeffrey St. Clair, are posted in the
Weekend Edition. _

* refugees
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* Neoliberalism
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* International Organization for Migration
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* migration
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