Conference Programme (PDF, 1019KB) - Trinity College Dublin

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abstracts by stream and session motives for the rejection of EU integration or some of its aspects – e.g. some advocates of this position reject EU integration for economic reasons, others for fear of a loss of national identity, some because of the democratic deficit in the EU political system and others due to the perceived need for a US alliance instead of an EU integration. The main point here is that all these positions were reinforced by the limits imposed on a freedom of movement for Czech citizens. Although freedom of movement cannot be reduced to labour market accessibility, the two tend to be interlinked. The latter also influences the former in terms of the necessity for most people to work in order to meet their living costs. While it was perceived that the CR had to undergo huge social, political, economic and legislative changes in order to adjust its system to the ‘acquis communautaire’, such changes were not always easily accepted throughout society. However, when the goal was finally reached, and after strong EU marketing by the then ruling Czech Social Democratic Party, the result was perceived as limited in possibilities. On its part, the Civic Democratic Party, which at that time was in opposition, was able to flirt with anti-EU feelings when it became clear that the labour market and to some degree even entrepreneurship would be limited for Czech citizens. The ruling Social Democrats were also accused of not doing enough to abolish or reduce the restrictions. In this context, it is pertinent to ask how important this issue really is in terms of job mobility in the CR. Wilful negligence: The lack of employment protection for migrant workers under New Labour. Mick Wilkinson, University of Hull, UK In this paper it is argued that social and employment protections for migrant workers in the UK are wholly inadequate. Further, that the UK Government has a moral obligation to address these deficits because over the past decade they have actively encouraged the flow of hundreds of thousands of temporary workers into the UK, without first ensuring that the legal and social rights were in place to protect them. This paper draws together findings from two recent studies looking at (i) the numbers and needs of migrant workers in the Humber sub-region in Yorkshire (Adamson, Wilkinson et al. 2008) and (ii) the performance of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA). (Wilkinson et al. 2009) The studies, undertaken by the Contemporary Slavery Research Centre at the Wilberforce Institute, Hull, were based on a mixture of secondary analysis of published and other data sets, and on a series of qualitative interviews with people providing statutory or voluntary services for migrant workers, supplemented by a similar number of personal interviews with and the collated testimonies of migrant workers, both individually and in focus groups. On coming to power in 1997, New Labour engaged in a deliberate programme of ‘managed migration’ aimed at actively encouraging the flow of temporary migration in the interests of the UK economy both by expanding the existing temporary worker schemes and adding new programmes. The number of work permits issued to foreign-born workers rose from 40,000 a year in the mid-1990s to over 200,000 a year in 2004. (Flynn 2008) Since May 2004, when the EU expanded eastwards, 700,000 migrants from Eastern Europe have registered with the Home Office to work here. This policy has both generated and fed the demand in the UK for cheap, mobile, flexible and exploitable labour and has led to many migrant workers in the UK today being subject to routine and systematic exploitation. As early as the 1920s, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) recommended to member states that they establish state control over employment agencies by issuing licenses and abolishing those working for profit. In the 1970s, such legislation was enacted in a number of European countries – in the UK, in 1973 the government launched the Employment Agencies Act under which all labour providers had to register and comply with legal standards. However, in 1994, as part of its ongoing neo-liberal agenda, the Conservative government introduced the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act, through which the system of agency licensing was abolished and action against exploiters became primarily dependent upon the complaints of victims. In this regulatory vacuum, the numbers of employment agencies and gangmasters mushroomed; the UK currently has more temporary workers than any other European country. With the enormous rise in gangmasters came a concomitant expansion in the form and scale of worker exploitation. Eventually, a series of negative outcomes surfaced in the national media – for instance, when 58 Chinese were found asphyxiated in the back of a lorry in Dover in June 2000. This culminated in the media explosion surrounding the deaths of 23 shellfish-pickers in February 2004 in the Morecambe Bay tragedy. Under pressure from a range of campaigning organisations the New Labour government were forced to respond. However, the measure finally taken, the setting up of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) in April 2005, provided only a partial solution. The GLA’s remit was effectively limited to those supplying labour in three industrial sectors, agriculture and horticulture, forestry, and shellfish gathering. Other key industrial sectors, including construction, hotels and hospitality, the care sector and contract cleaning, all now highly dependent upon migrant labour, are beyond the GLA’s remit and remain so poorly regulated by employment enforcement agencies such as the Employment Agencies Standards Inspectorate and employment tribunals as to be effectively a free-for-all zone for exploitative employers. There are roughly 10,000 gangmasters operating in the UK. The GLA, however, has less than 30 inspectors. There is also a dearth of accessible information and advice around migrant worker employment issues and how they would seek legal redress. This is clearly not a meaningful response to the widespread problem of temporary worker exploitation. Both studies found evidence of the most appalling forms of exploitation of migrant workers across the UK. They are generally paid the minimum wage, although some are paid much less; but frequently wages are reduced by systematic illegal or unfair deductions. For instance, we came across exorbitant fees for processing passports, for transportation to work or for inadequate safety clothing. Some have excessively high tax and NI contributions taken out of their wages which are not paid on to the taxation authorities. Working conditions are often appalling, sometimes dangerous (with inadequate safety procedures and training). Unsocial hours are the norm, with 12 and 16 hour shifts common, usually without overtime payments. Workers are sometimes called in to do double shifts at a moment’s notice and it is commonplace for those refusing to do a double shift to be threatened with the sack and the loss of accommodation. Respondents gave accounts of systematic underpayment for hours worked, often by hundreds of pounds, and of complaints sometimes being met with threats of violence. Many pay a non-returnable signing-on fee, of up to £1000 to an agency in their home country. Upon arrival, some are then faced with an unexpected similarly-sized further signing-on fee in the UK, which has to be paid off from the outset. 53
abstracts by stream and session The gangmasters then ensure that they earn insufficient monies to clear those debts. So, for instance, migrants are deliberately laid off work for periods during which time they continue to live in gangmaster accommodation - thus accumulating further debts. This is essentially debt bondage. There are charges for exorbitantly priced multi-occupancy accommodation also provided by the gangmaster/agency. It is standard practice that migrant workers cannot leave that accommodation without also losing their employment. That accommodation is often unsafe, appallingly overcrowded, with inadequate or only very basic amenities. The studies also found there to be a vast pool of undocumented (and thereby illegal) migrant workers. The Home Office median estimate is 430,000. (IPPR 2006) However, this figure may be low, given recent estimates on the number of undocumented Chinese migrants alone at between 170,000 to 200,000. (Pai 2008) These workers are at the most vulnerable end of the work /exploitation matrix. Trades union activists reported particularly distressing circumstances including sexual exploitation, severe mental distress, rape and the kidnap of children, but with no possibility of redress because the workers were unregistered thus liable for deportation if they came to the authorities’ attention. These circumstances meet the International Labour Organisation criteria for forced labour. These circumstances demonstrate the particular vulnerability of foreign workers in what is characterised officially as a ‘flexible’ labour market. Far from tackling this injustice, recent government initiatives such as the new points-based system for work and study introduced in the summer of 2008 and for British citizenship from 2011 will serve to make the position of migrant workers more vulnerable still. Already there is evidence of additional disadvantage for workers in the catering and healthcare sectors. (HoC 2009) The Contemporary Slavery Research Centre recommends a number of policy initiatives including an extension of the GLA’s powers to cover the whole of the temporary labour sector, and a one-off regularisation programme for undocumented migrant workers. What rights for migrant workers? The economics and politics of migrant rights Martin Ruhs, University of Oxford, UK The rights of migrant workers play an important instrumental role in shaping the outcomes of migration for receiving countries, migrants and their countries of origin. Because of their impacts on residents of the receiving country, migrant rights are – and can be analysed as – a core component of nation states’ immigration policies. The analysis of the determinants and variation of migrant rights across and within countries must thus consider the “economics and politics of migrant rights” including the potential inter-relationships with other migration policy components, including especially policies toward regulating the number and selection (especially skills) of migrants admitted. To study these interrelationships in practice, this paper constructs and analyses two separate indices that measure: (i) the “openness” of fifty high- and middle-income countries to admitting migrant workers; and (ii) the legal rights (civil, political, economic, social and residency rights) granted to migrant workers after admission. The analysis distinguishes between policies toward low-, medium, and high-skilled migrant workers. In addition to measuring variation in labour immigration policies and the rights of migrant workers both across and within high-income countries, the indices facilitate empirical analysis of two hypotheses developed in the existing literature: first, the rights of migrant workers are positively related to the skill level targeted by the labour immigration programme under which migrants are admitted; and, second, there can be a trade-off (a negative relationship) between the relative numbers and rights of low- and medium-skilled migrant workers admitted to high-income countries (see, e.g. Ruhs and Martin 2008; and Ruhs 2010). The paper provides empirical evidence on these questions and discusses potential policy implications. Project website: http://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/research/state/the-economics-and-politics-of-migrant-rights/ SESSION 4c The Constitution of Labour Market Needs A “season” of change: intensification, mobility and agency on “local” sites of production. Sally Daly, <strong>Dublin</strong> Institute of Technology, Ireland In this paper, I present ethnographic evidence from Ireland to show that the state’s labour migration discourse is not simply a controlling force imposed externally by the state on migrants, but is itself shaped by migrants’ strategies. In turn such initiative informs the regulation of the market over time. In this regard, I aim to reveal how migrant workers have explicitly and critically shaped the development of the agricultural sector and more particularly horticulture in Ireland. Changes in horticultural production driven by a concentration in retailer power are linked to the availability of migrant workers and state initiatives to manage migration. Prior to two converging occurrences; the opening up of the labour market to migrant workers through specific labour market strategies (the work permit system and the Seasonal Horticultural Workers Scheme: SHWS); and what Rogaly (2008) has called ‘the intensification of workplace regimes’; the employment profile within the sector was markedly different: “it was all summer, kind of casual labour. Children from primary and secondary school and their parents, whole families used to come…. but at that time the price, I don’t know what it is now, maybe it’s per hour rather than volume, at the time people were paid for what they picked and usually the price was about a third of what the farmer was getting at the factory gate”(Excerpt from interview with a former grower; 7th July 2009). More recently, the issue of extended seasonality has impacted on the labour requirements on growing sites: “it would be difficult enough to have local labour because you’d be depending on students and students are not available after September and that’s the problem we had years ago when we started growing this out of season fruit, you’d finish up once, actually from the 20th August, they wanted to go on holidays. You had no staff, you know and only for the foreign labour, we wouldn’t have a business” (Excerpt from interview with current grower; 17th August 2009). While the state’s regulation of the labour market for the industry is evidenced through specific measures, workers have now 54
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• NEW MIGRATIONS, NEW CHALLENGES
Page 3 and 4: table of contents welcome 1 table o
Page 5 and 6: plenary speakers Anna Triandafyllid
Page 7 and 8: keynote speakers Robert J Sampson R
Page 9 and 10: general conference information Conf
Page 11 and 12: programme wednesday 30 june WHEN? W
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Page 19 and 20: parallel sessions METHODOLOGICAL IS
Page 21 and 22: parallel sessions CHILDREN, YOUTH A
Page 23 and 24: parallel sessions MIGRATION, EMPLOY
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conference delegates Laura Morosanu
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