The Price of Rights: Regulating International Labor Migration - Hardcover

Ruhs, Martin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691132917 ISBN 13: 9780691132914

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Many low-income countries and development organizations are calling for greater liberalization of labor immigration policies in high-income countries. At the same time, human rights organizations and migrant rights advocates demand more equal rights for migrant workers. The Price of Rights shows why you cannot always have both. Examining labor immigration policies in over forty countries, as well as policy drivers in major migrant-receiving and migrant-sending states, Martin Ruhs finds that there are trade-offs in the policies of high-income countries between openness to admitting migrant workers and some of the rights granted to migrants after admission. Insisting on greater equality of rights for migrant workers can come at the price of more restrictive admission policies, especially for lower-skilled workers. Ruhs advocates the liberalization of international labor migration through temporary migration programs that protect a universal set of core rights and account for the interests of nation-states by restricting a few specific rights that create net costs for receiving countries. The Price of Rights analyzes how high-income countries restrict the rights of migrant workers as part of their labor immigration policies and discusses the implications for global debates about regulating labor migration and protecting migrants. It comprehensively looks at the tensions between human rights and citizenship rights, the agency and interests of migrants and states, and the determinants and ethics of labor immigration policy.

About this title

About the Author

Martin Ruhs is associate professor of political economy at the University of Oxford, where he is also director of studies in economics at the Department for Continuing Education; senior researcher at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society; and a fellow of Kellogg College.

From the Back Cover

"This book lays down some challenging ideas on how we should think about the rights of migrants and needs to be read by everyone concerned with these issues."--Don Flynn, director of the Migrants' Rights Network

"This is a carefully researched book that starkly shows the trade-offs involved between extending more rights to migrants, versus extending more opportunities to enable people to take advantage of the large gains in income possible through international migration. A first-rate contribution to current policy and academic debates."--David McKenzie, lead economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank

"In this excellent book, Martin Ruhs presents a fresh analysis of the reasons why many countries, whether they be high or low income, restrict the rights of migrant workers. His carefully researched volume will be of great interest to policymakers and migration experts across the globe."--Frank Laczko, International Organization for Migration

"This may be the most important book on migration in the last decade. Focusing on the trade-offs between openness to more migration and limitations on migrants' rights, Martin Ruhs tackles one of the fundamental challenges of the twenty-first century: how to resolve the tensions between national security and human rights."--Khalid Koser, Geneva Centre for Security Policy

"In analyzing the trade-off between liberalizing international labor migration and extending social and economic rights for migrants, this book moves the debate about migrant rights from ideals to realities. It is a must-read for those working in the fields of human rights, development, globalization, and international governance, as well as for specialists and organizations dealing with migration-related issues."--Philip Martin, University of California, Davis

"While it is not easy to write a forcefully argued book about the rights of migrant workers, Ruhs succeeds because he opts for a strong, pragmatic approach. He clearly commands a broad and diverse literature, and he makes his case with extensive knowledge and an array of empirical studies about a range of countries."--Saskia Sassen, Columbia University and author of Territory, Authority, Rights

"This compelling and cogently argued book addresses an important matter, namely the conditions affecting the rights of labor migrants. Where much of the research on rights and citizenship focuses on the developed world, Ruhs rightly expands the scope to include the Persian Gulf states, as well as developing societies such as Malaysia and Indonesia."--Roger Waldinger, University of California, Los Angeles

From the Inside Flap

"This book lays down some challenging ideas on how we should think about the rights of migrants and needs to be read by everyone concerned with these issues."--Don Flynn, director of the Migrants' Rights Network

"This is a carefully researched book that starkly shows the trade-offs involved between extending more rights to migrants, versus extending more opportunities to enable people to take advantage of the large gains in income possible through international migration. A first-rate contribution to current policy and academic debates."--David McKenzie, lead economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank

"In this excellent book, Martin Ruhs presents a fresh analysis of the reasons why many countries, whether they be high or low income, restrict the rights of migrant workers. His carefully researched volume will be of great interest to policymakers and migration experts across the globe."--Frank Laczko, International Organization for Migration

"This may be the most important book on migration in the last decade. Focusing on the trade-offs between openness to more migration and limitations on migrants' rights, Martin Ruhs tackles one of the fundamental challenges of the twenty-first century: how to resolve the tensions between national security and human rights."--Khalid Koser, Geneva Centre for Security Policy

"In analyzing the trade-off between liberalizing international labor migration and extending social and economic rights for migrants, this book moves the debate about migrant rights from ideals to realities. It is a must-read for those working in the fields of human rights, development, globalization, and international governance, as well as for specialists and organizations dealing with migration-related issues."--Philip Martin, University of California, Davis

"While it is not easy to write a forcefully argued book about the rights of migrant workers, Ruhs succeeds because he opts for a strong, pragmatic approach. He clearly commands a broad and diverse literature, and he makes his case with extensive knowledge and an array of empirical studies about a range of countries."--Saskia Sassen, Columbia University and author ofTerritory, Authority, Rights

"This compelling and cogently argued book addresses an important matter, namely the conditions affecting the rights of labor migrants. Where much of the research on rights and citizenship focuses on the developed world, Ruhs rightly expands the scope to include the Persian Gulf states, as well as developing societies such as Malaysia and Indonesia."--Roger Waldinger, University of California, Los Angeles

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

THE PRICE OF RIGHTS

REGULATING INTERNATIONAL LABOR MIGRATION

By MARTIN RUHS

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-13291-4

Contents

Acknowledgments............................................................
vii
Abbreviations..............................................................
xi
Chapter 1 The Rights of Migrant Workers: Reframing the Debate.............
1
Chapter 2 The Human Rights of Migrant Workers: Why Do So Few Countries 
Care?......................................................................
13
Chapter 3 Nation-States, Labor Immigration, and Migrant Rights: What Can 
We Expect?.................................................................
26
Chapter 4 An Empirical Analysis of Labor Immigration Programs in 
Forty-Six Countries........................................................
53
Chapter 5 Regulating the Admission and Rights of Migrant Workers: Policy 
Rationales in High-Income Countries........................................
91
Chapter 6 Labor Emigration and Rights Abroad: The Perspectives of 
Migrants and Their Countries of Origin.....................................
122
Chapter 7 The Ethics of Labor Immigration Policy..........................
154
Chapter 8 The Price of Rights: What Next for Human Rights–Based 
Approaches to International Labor Migration?...............................
187
Appendix 1 Tables A.1–10...................................................
201
Appendix 2 Overview of Openness Indicators.................................
217
Appendix 3 Overview of Migrant Rights Indicators...........................
221
References.................................................................
227
Index......................................................................
243

CHAPTER 1

The Rights of Migrant Workers

Reframing the Debate

In 1990, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) adopted theInternational Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All MigrantWorkers and Members of Their Families (CMW). It stipulates a verycomprehensive set of civil, political, economic, and social rights for migrants,including those living and/or working abroad illegally. Hailed asa major achievement in the struggle for improving the rights of migrants,the CMW has become a cornerstone of the human rights-based approachto regulating labor immigration advocated by many national and internationalorganizations concerned with the protection of migrant workers.Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, described the CMW as "avital part of efforts to combat exploitation of migrant workers and theirfamilies."

In practice, ratification of the 1990 convention has been disappointing,both in absolute and relative terms. Although the CMW was introducedmore than twenty years ago, so far fewer than fifty countries have ratifiedit—and the great majority of these countries are predominantly migrantsending rather than migrant receiving. This makes the CMW the leastratified convention among all the major international human rights treaties.It has a quarter of the ratifications of the Convention on the Rightsof the Child (passed a year before the CMW) and less than half of theratifications of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities(passed sixteen years after the CMW). Despite having signed generalhuman rights treaties, most nation-states, especially major immigrationcountries, are clearly reluctant to ratify international conventions thatlimit their discretion and ability to restrict the rights of migrants livingand working in their territories.

The most cursory review of the rights of migrant workers around theworld confirms that the majority of them, and especially those workingin low-waged jobs, enjoy few of the rights stipulated in internationalconventions. For example, under most existing temporary migrationprograms (TMPs) in North America and Europe, migrants have neitherthe right to free choice of employment nor the access to welfare benefitsgiven to citizens and long-term residents. In many of the Persian GulfStates in the Middle East, which have long admitted significant numbersof migrant workers, the protections of local labor laws do not apply tocertain types of migrant labor. In Singapore, another major employer ofmigrant workers, migrants working in low-waged jobs are officially prohibitedfrom cohabiting with or getting married to a Singaporean citizen.Illegally resident migrants, whose global numbers are substantial,have few rights regardless of what country they are working in (with fewexceptions).

Aims and Approach of the Book

This book analyzes how and why high-income countries restrict the rightsof migrant workers ("migrant rights") as part of their labor immigrationpolicies and discusses the implications for policy debates about regulatinglabor migration and protecting migrants. It engages with theoretical debatesabout the tensions between human rights and citizenship rights, theagency and interests of migrants and states, and the determinants andethics of labor immigration policy. The empirical analysis of the book isglobal, and includes an examination of the characteristics and key featuresof labor immigration policies and restrictions of migrant rights inover forty high-income countries as well as in-depth analysis of policydrivers in major migrant-receiving and migrant-sending countries.

Based on this theoretical and empirical analysis, the book aims to contributeto normative and policy debates about the rights that migrantworkers should have when working abroad. In particular, the book exploreswhether there is a case for advocating a limited set of "core rights"for migrant workers rather than the comprehensive set of rights demandedby the CMW, and if so, what these core rights should be, andwhat implications might ensue for human rights-based approaches tointernational labor migration. As these research questions suggest, thebook separates hard-nosed political economy analysis of the determinantsof migrant rights in practice (i.e., what is current reality) from theequally important normative discussion of what rights migrant workersshould have from a moral/ethical point of view.

Many UN agencies and other international and national organizationsconcerned with migrant workers have responded to the widespread restrictionsof migrant rights by emphasizing that migrant rights are humanrights that are universal, indivisible, and inalienable; they derive from acommon humanity and must be protected regardless of citizenship. Thekey argument and starting point of this book is that we need to reframeas well as expand current debates and analyses of migrant rights by complementingconversations about the human rights of migrants with a systematic,dispassionate analysis of the interests and roles of nation-statesin granting and restricting the rights of migrant workers. This is becausethe rights of migrant workers not only have intrinsic value as underscoredby human rights approaches but also play an important instrumental rolein shaping the effects of international labor migration for receiving countries,migrants, and their countries of origin.

For example, whether or not migrants enjoy the right to free choice ofemployment and other employment-related rights in the receiving country'slabor market is likely to affect their productivity and earnings, remittances,and competition with local workers. The fiscal effects of immigrationcritically depend on whether and how migrants' social rights(including access to public services and welfare benefits) are restricted.Migrants' incentives and behavior in and beyond the labor market—forinstance, the extent to which they acquire language and other skills relevantto employment and life in the host country—will be influenced bywhether or not they have—or are on a path to acquiring—the rights topermanent residence and citizenship.

Because rights shape the effects of labor immigration, migrant rightsare in practice a core component of nation-states' labor immigration policies.At its core, the design of labor immigration policy requires simultaneouspolicy decisions on: how to regulate the number of migrants to beadmitted (e.g., through quotas or points-based systems); how to selectmigrants (e.g., by skill and/or nationality); and what rights to grant migrantsafter admission (e.g., temporary or permanent residence, access towelfare benefits, and limited or unlimited rights to employment). Whenreceiving countries decide on these three issues, the impacts on the "nationalinterest" (however defined) of the existing residents in the hostcountries are likely to be of great significance. Policy decisions on thenumber, selection, and rights of migrant workers can also be influencedby their consequences for the interests of migrants and their countries oforigin, whose actions and policies can play an important role in supporting,sustaining, or undermining particular labor immigration policy decisionsin migrant-receiving countries.

Viewing migrant rights as instruments of labor immigration policy hastwo key implications that motivate and inform the analysis in this book.First, any analysis of the reasons for migrant rights restrictions necessitatesan explicit discussion of the economic, social, political, and otherconsequences of migrant rights (restrictions) for the national interests ofmigrant-receiving and migrant-sending countries as well as for migrantsthemselves. These consequences can include multifaceted benefits alongwith costs that may vary across different rights, between the short andlong run as well as between migrants with different skills. Any analysis ofthe costs and benefits of migrant rights thus needs to be disaggregatedand needs to look at the impacts of specific rights for specific groups ofmigrant workers.

Second, migrant rights cannot be studied in isolation from admissionspolicy, both in terms of positive and normative analysis. To understandwhy, when, and how countries restrict the rights of migrant workers, andexplore what rights migrant workers should have, we need to considerhow particular rights restrictions are related to policies that regulate theadmission (i.e., the numbers and selection) of migrant workers. Do statesgrant skilled migrant workers more rights than low-skilled migrants, andif so, why? Are the countries that grant migrant workers near equal rightswith citizens also relatively open to labor immigration, or are labor immigrationpolicies characterized by a trade-off between openness to admittingmigrant workers and some migrant rights?

These questions and the overall approach to the analysis of migrantrights in this book are, in my view, critical to fostering a more realisticdebate about the protection of migrant workers in the global labor market.They do, however, raise challenging and highly sensitive issues thatcan easily be misunderstood or misrepresented. For example, it can beargued that any discussion of the "impacts of rights," and especially theuse of the term "costs of rights," carries the danger of being misused ormisinterpreted to justify or argue for more restrictions of the rights ofmigrant workers. It is important to emphasize at the outset that just becausesome rights generate costs does not mean that there is a moraljustification for condoning or even advocating for such restrictions. Thereis also no suggestion in this book that all discussion of migrant rightsshould be reduced to debates about costs and benefits. The book looks atthe instrumental role and consequences of rights, because I believe thatwe cannot hope to close the gap between human rights as expressed ininternational conventions and migrant rights in practice unless we understandas well as account for the reasons why nation-states grant and restrictcertain rights. In other words, the current analysis and debate ofwhat "should be" needs to be complemented (but not replaced) by a thoroughdiscussion of "what is."

Outline of the Chapters and Main Arguments

The analysis and overall argument of the book are developed in sevenrelatively self-contained chapters. The discussion begins, in chapter 2,with an examination of why so few countries have ratified internationallegal instruments for the protection of the rights of migrant workers. Theexisting literature has identified a host of legal issues and complexities aswell as a lack of campaigning and awareness of the CMW and other internationalconventions as key factors. I contend that the primary explanationfor the low level of ratifications of international migrant rightstreaties lies with the effects of granting or restricting migrant rights on thenational interests (however defined) of migrant-receiving countries. Thismay sound like an obvious point, but the dearth of discussion about themultifaceted costs and benefits of specific migrant rights for receivingcountries—and migrants and their countries of origin—suggests that thisis an important gap in analysis and debates that needs to be urgentlyaddressed.

If restrictions of migrant rights are used to further the national interestsof migrant-receiving countries, how can we expect high-incomecountries to regulate the rights of migrant workers as part of their laborimmigration policies? What are the likely interrelationships betweennation-states' policies for regulating the number, selection, and rights ofmigrant workers? The analysis of these questions requires a conceptualframework for the process of labor immigration policymaking. Chapter3 develops a basic approach that conceptualizes the design of labor immigrationpolicy in high-income countries as a process that involves"choice under constraints." Nation-states decide on how to regulate thenumber, selection, and rights of migrant workers admitted in order toachieve a core set of four interrelated and sometimes-competing policygoals, including economic efficiency (e.g., maximizing the benefits of immigrationfor economic growth), distribution (e.g., making sure immigrationdoes not harm the lowest-paid workers in the economy), nationalidentity and social cohesion (concepts that are contested and hard to definein practice), and national security and public order. Although theirimportance and specific interpretations vary across countries, and overtime, I argue that each of these objectives constitutes a fundamental policyconsideration that policymakers can and do purposefully pursue in allcountries.

Nation-states' labor immigration policy choices are made given a commonset of potential constraints and institutional factors that limit andmediate the ways in which the pursuit of policy objectives translates intoactual policies. The constraints include domestic and international legalconstraints (e.g., imposed by domestic judiciaries and legal obligationsarising from membership in supranational or international institutions)as well as a limited capacity to control immigration. Examples of institutionalfactors are the prevailing welfare state (e.g., liberal, social democratic,or conservative) and production systems such as labor marketstructures (e.g., liberal or coordinated). Just like policy objectives, thesignificance and impacts of these constraints and institutions are specificto country and time. Consequently, there can be substantial variation inthe "policy space" for the regulation of labor immigration within whichgovernments operate in different countries and at different points in time.

Based on this conceptual framework, and drawing on the existingliterature on the effects of international labor migration, chapter 3 developsthree hypotheses about the interrelationships between high-incomecountries' policies for regulating the openness, skills, and rights of migrantworkers. I maintain that institutional variations across countriescan be expected to affect the strength but not the existence of these threerelationships.

First, high-income countries can be expected to be more open to high-thanlow-skilled immigration. This is partly because compared to low-skilledmigrants, higher-skilled migrants can be expected to generategreater complementarities with the skills and capital of existing residentsin high-income countries, greater long-term growth effects, and greaternet-fiscal benefits. Second, we can expect labor immigration programsthat target higher-skilled migrant workers to grant migrants more rightsthan those targeting lower-skilled workers. This expectation is partly motivatedby the fact that the provision of some rights (e.g., social rights)creates costs and benefits that can be expected to vary with the skill leveland earnings of the rights holder. For instance, granting low-skilled migrantsfull access to the welfare state can be expected to create greater netcosts (or smaller net benefits) for the host country than affording thesesame rights to high-skilled migrants in high-paid jobs.

The third expectation is that there can be a trade-off (a negative relationship)between openness and some of the rights of some migrantworkers admitted to high-income countries—that is, greater openness toadmitting migrant workers will be associated with relatively fewer rightsfor migrants and vice versa. The basis for this hypothesis is closely relatedto the first two: if certain rights for some migrants create net costs for thereceiving country (e.g., full access to the welfare state for low-skilled migrantworkers), policy openness to admitting such migrants can be expectedto critically depend on the extent to which some of their rights canbe restricted.

To explore these interrelationships in practice, chapter 4 analyzes thecharacteristics of labor immigration policies and migrant rights in high-andmiddle-income countries. Given that there are no readily availablemeasures of admission policies and migrant rights, I constructed twoseparate indexes that measure the openness of labor immigration programsin forty-six high-and middle-income countries to admitting migrantworkers and the legal rights (civil and political, economic, social,residency, and family reunion rights) granted to migrant workers admittedunder these programs.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691132917
• ISBN 13: 9780691132914
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272