Labour market performance and migration flows - European ...

Chapter IFinal ReportIn conclusion, circular and temporary migration cannot be considered in any way a panacea to solvethe twin challenges of employment and migration between AMCs and the EU, but they are part of thecomplex equation and they should be explored as such to ensure the appropriate legal and institutionalschemes are put in place.Temporary Migration of Public Employees in EgyptOne channel which has facilitated the temporary migration of public sector workers has been Law no. 73 which was passed in 1971. This law allowed an Egyptian workerwho emigrated and had been working in the government or in public sector, and whose resignation had been accepted for the purpose of permanent emigration, and whoreturned back home within two years of when the worker’s resignation was accepted, to be re-appointed at the entity where he/she had been working before emigration if theworker applied for this within three months of his/her final return. A worker shall be appointed to his/her last post, if it is still vacant, or to another similar post. A personwhose emigration duration exceeds two years may be reappointed, if the worker meets the conditions required for filling the post. In such case, the said worker shall beexempted from the examination procedures or the contest required for the filling of the post. In practice, this law allowed many public-sector employees to emigrate for up totwo years and keep their public-sector jobs, in particular in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2006, 40% of returnees went back to the public sector.National Background Paper on EgyptJackline Wahba (2009)National Migration PoliciesDespite an increasing interest by AMC authorities in the management of migration (Fargues 2009, p.19), one common feature of AMCs is still their lack of migration policies or, in several cases, passivemigration policies. Migration has often been used as a substitute for employment creation in the locallabour market, a source of welcome foreign currency and a release valve for social and labour markettensions. Indeed, encouraging outward migration has been one of the main strategies for decreasingunemployment over the past 35 years at least in Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco, where overseasemployment has become an integral part of national development strategies. In Egypt, the government’sapproach towards international migration was, for a long time, one of laissez-faire. In 1996 theresponsibilities of the Ministry of State for Emigration Affairs was transferred to the Ministry ofManpower and Employment, which was later re-named the Ministry of Manpower and Emigration. TheMOME currently provides information to potential migrants about jobs and to existing migrants aboutvarious facilities.The extreme case is Algeria, where there is no migration policy as such, and the phenomenon hasbeen largely ignored by public institutions since the halt to legal migration imposed by France in 1974.In fact, migration continues to be concealed: there is no particular financial scheme to attract remittances,no statistics, no public institution charged to monitor this issue, no migration policy as such. Accordingto Collinson 1996 and Fargues 2004, this ambiguous stance regarding emigration and its expatriates islargely due to a contradiction between internal policy stakes – containing unemployment and thereforefavouring emigration – and external policy stakes – opposing what it considers neo-colonial policies oflabour imports. However, the political approach to migration is evolving, and in 2009 some newinstitutional developments are to be noted: the creation of a Department for Emigration at the Ministryfor Employment and National Solidarity as well as the establishment of the Consultative Council of theNational Community Abroad.Morocco is the only case among the AMCs where the outline of a comprehensive migration policyseemed to emerge after 2007. There was the legal reform of the Moroccan Nationality Code to grantMoroccan nationality to the children of Moroccan women with non-Moroccans; the creation of theCouncil for the Moroccan Community Residing Abroad (CCMRE), a community of 3.3 millionresidents registered in Moroccan consulates abroad; the creation of a Ministry in charge of theMoroccan community residing abroad; and the presentation of a Five Year Plan to Promote theSituation and Interests of Moroccans Residing Abroad in June 2008. This has been complementedwith the signing of bilateral agreements to organise legal migration (see description of the Spain-Morocco agreement in footnote 21).65