‘Women in motion’ in a world of nation-states, market forces, and gender power relations.

21 ‘Women in Motion’ in a World of Nation-States, Market Forces, and Gender Power Relations

Des Gasper and Thanh-Dam Truong

Abstract

This chapter provides concluding reflections from a set of nineteen case studies of transnational and intra-national migration and mobility. It contrasts the ‘sedentary bias’ present in policy regimes and associatedthought centred on nation-states, where movement is seen as exceptional, including normatively exceptional,with the centrality of movement in the processes of socio-economic change and evolution, particularly thosepromoted under capitalist systems of economic organization. While market capitalist and nation-state principlesof organization differ, they combine in hybrid systems, such as those currently being elaborated in policyregimes for temporary migrant workers, to exploit migrant labour. Many of these arrangements mirror theindentured labour regimes of earlier eras. The chapter presents by contrast a perspective based on principles ofhuman rights and human security that uses a global framework both for understanding and for evaluation andthen adds an explicit gender-aware enrichment of that perspective, in order to do justice to the special vulner-abilities and exploitation of women’s migrant labour. A human security perspective, in particular, helps to baseconcern for human rights in an awareness of bodily and emotional needs, of global interconnections, and ofthe intersecting circumstances in people’s everyday lives; but it requires, and lends itself to, gender-enrichmentthrough partnership with insights from feminist theory, as illustrated in the book’s various case studies. The sys-tems of the nation-state, market capitalism, and gender power that are discussed in this chapter, that structurethe experiences of migrant women workers, are very deeply established. The chapter suggests directions forpossible re-cognition, to reduce and counter the invisibility and misframing of migration, and of women andtheir work; it also suggests priority areas for research and networking following the format employed for thebook: linking researchers, policy practitioners and migrant advocates, South-South-North.

Keywords: Women’s migration, human security, human rights. migration regimes, globalization, women’slabour, intersectionality.

21.1 Themes

This book reflects the great scale and reach of con-temporary migration and its far-reaching impacts, no-tably the frequently problematic outcomes in terms ofquality of life and well-being for many of the more vul-nerable migrants, especially women. Mobility is a nor-mal and necessary component in the processes of eco-nomic, social and personal development andevolution, and of learning and cultural enrichment(section 21.2). Yet in a world structured around,firstly, a nation-state system and nationalist principlesof identity, mobility – at least the mobility of poorpeople – is treated as not normal, and it is assumedthat migrants do not have to receive normal treat-

ment. ‘People on the move’ was the title of the chap-ter on migration in the report Human Security Now(CHS 2003). As counterpart to that phrase we take in-stead ‘women in motion’ (Oishi 2005) for the title ofthis concluding chapter, since ‘women on the move’has become mostly used as a catchphrase for upwardprofessional mobility, which does not fit the cases ad-dressed in this book.

Contemporary migration is structured, secondly,by the pull of market power and by largely capital-cen-tred policy calculation (section 21.3). Nowadays minis-tries of finance and economic affairs often dominatemigration policy, not ministries of social welfare or la-bour. Within these market processes, women’s labouris especially in demand. The principles of the capital-

367M , Hexagon Series on HumanT.D. Truong et al. (eds.), igration, Gender and Social Justice: Perspectives on Human Insecurityand Environmental Security and Peace 9, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-28012-2_21, © The Author(s) 2014.This article is published with open access at SpringerLink.com.

368 Des Gasper and Thanh-Dam Truong

ist market are fundamentally different from those ofthe nation-state.1 The former is not only open to mi-gration but actively generates it, and current migra-tion is in part a response to greatly increased globaland intra-national inequality.2 But the two sets of prin-ciples are widely combined in hybrid policy regimeswhich seek to maximize profit while minimizing per-ceived costs to national identity in richer states. Thesehybrid regimes draw on migrant labour while mini-mizing the rights granted (sections 21.4–21.6).

Thirdly, central to the investigations in this book,a remarkably high proportion of migrant labour isnow women’s labour. Around eighty per cent of Indo-nesia’s international labour migrants, for example, arewomen (Sukamdi 2008); a similar percentage amongBurmese workers in factories in Thailand is reportedin various studies (Pearson/Kusakabe 2012: 78). Yetthis feature is still relatively little considered in policy

discourse and even in much research on migration.Women’s work, whether in formal or informal work-places or in homes, whether in labour-importing coun-tries or labour-exporting countries, remains to a largeextent ‘invisible’ (section 21.7). Thus, in addition tothe structuring roles of legal and policy regimes andof market forces, structures of gender power are alsoat play in the huge growth of exploitation of migrantwomen’s labour, as we outlined in the Introduction.

Nowadays, women may even constitute the major-ity of international migrants, given the scale of de-mand for their labour in most sectors, reflecting theirperceived greater docility because of family commit-ments,3 and especially the demand for their servicesas care workers, maids, and providers of sexual serv-ices (for pleasure, intimacy and emotional wellbeingas well as for biological reproduction). These lastthree roles and more are combined in the case of ar-ranged foreign brides, as illustrated in chapter 5.Enormous numbers of women from low-incomecountries, and especially from South and South-EastAsia, now play such roles in richer countries. Manychapters in this book address a new global class ofwomen, who form one of the largest groups of inter-national migrant workers and yet whose labour is notrecognized as ‘real’ ‘work’ by domestic laws and mi-gration regimes, and who thus work with little protec-

1 This essay adopts the usage ‘nation-state’ rather than‘nation state’. Historically such terms were originallyused to help differentiate between types of state: com-pared to a city state or empire a nation state was a “sov-ereign state of which most of the citizens or subjects areunited also by factors which define a nation, such as lan-guage or common descent” (Oxford Dictionary of Eng-lish 2010). However, in the literatures of politicalscience new layers of meaning emerged. In the realisttradition of international relations, the terms nation andstate have often come to be used interchangeably. Somelines of work have explored the meaning of this coinci-dence, its fusion of belonging and governance. In thenation-state an apparatus of governance ( ‘the state’) hasfused with the society it governs, so that the unit of gov-ernance is asserted to be also in important respects anintegrated community and body politic: an identity-areaand not only a governance-area. Use of only a few termsis inevitably imperfect for describing the many situa-tions possible. In English, ‘state’ is ambiguous: it some-times refers to a country and sometimes to its stateapparatus, because of the history of partial fusion.‘Nation’ too is ambiguous: it sometimes refers to acountry but also has strong connotations of culturalcommunity. However, the term ‘nation’ does not nowimply necessarily a relatively full cultural or ethnic unity;any significant degree of shared identity is sufficient,and is typically achieved (despite considerable internalheterogeneity) in important part through distinguishinga ‘We’ as against a ‘They’. The disadvantage of the term‘nation state’ then is to convey a too simple picture. Thehybrid term ‘nation-state’ is intended here to better sug-gest, by its evident artificiality, the social construction ofa system of governance which includes both a notion ofcivic belonging and citizenship and a culture of nationalfeeling and identity, the latter based on (in BenedictAnderson’s term) an ‘imagined community’.

2 Economic calculation is, however, never more than partof the causes of migration. Goldin, Cameron, Balarajan(2011) note that the US mainland has three times theaverage income and a quarter of the unemployment ofthe American territory of Puerto Rico, whose residentshave the right to emigrate to the mainland – yet thelarge majority choose not to (p. 100). Worldwide, eco-nomic analysis alone cannot explain why still relativelyfew people try to migrate, why emigrants are concen-trated among particular social groups and localities, andwhy even chronically ageing Japan holds out against offi-cial in-migration. The relevant costs excluded by theeconomic analyses include costs of meaning and iden-tity too; thus Goldin, Cameron and Balarajan (2011),using economists’ highly restricted notion of welfareadmit that their accounting is purely in ‘economic andwelfare’ terms (p. 269.)

3 Of the Burmese women in Thailand interviewed forchapter 4, three-quarters ‘related that they had migratedout of a sense of duty to their parents’ (Pearson/Kusak-abe 2012: 58), and many supported younger siblings.They continue their remittances home much longerthan their male counterparts, including after marriage(ch. 3). Yet having gone to Thailand to support theirfamilies in Burma, many gradually lose their place andsocial base in Burma but remain rejected outsiders inThailand and never achieve much security (chs 6, 7).

‘Women in Motion’ in a World of Nation-States, Market Forces, and Gender Power Relations 369

tion and who are disproportionately subject to abuse.In recent times both India and Indonesia, for exam-ple, have been led in some cases to stop their citizenstaking up contracts abroad as domestic servants untilconditions were improved (see, for example, TIP 2010on one Indonesian proscription on moving to suchwork in Kuwait). But, as observed by Irianto andTruong in chapter 2, of the 109 articles in Indonesia‘s2004 law on the placement and protection of migrantworkers abroad, only eight cover protection. Womenare disproportionately affected too by the care bur-dens that remain in the country of origin when menor women leave to work in another country. Largelysimilar issues arise in much intra-national migrationtoo.

The phrase ‘feminization of migration’ has be-come popular to refer to women’s increasing statisti-cal share in various migration streams (internal,South–North, South–South). Studies in this bookshow the importance of the qualitative dimensions, inaddition to headcounts: how migration practices beardistinct gendered values, norms and characteristics,the gender-differentiated treatment of migrants, andgendered modes of migration and means of migrantlivelihood. That migration’s patterns and effects arestrongly gendered should be no surprise: gender isnot a peripheral decorative feature in social life but acore dimension. Formal migration research has how-ever been dominated by behaviouralist approachesthat are preoccupied with surface phenomena andthat try to build generalized models about, for exam-ple, when people move and the impacts on economicproduction (for further discussion, see Truong/Gasper 2011a, and chapter 1 in this volume). The spec-tacular rise in officially measured international remit-tances, from an estimated US$31 bn. in 1990 toUS$316 bn. in 2009, has understandably attracted at-tention. What migrants – especially migrant women –experience and think has been a lower research prior-ity, so that many of the realities of social life havestayed relatively neglected. Yet according to studies re-viewed in one recent survey of global migration (Gol-din/Cameron/Balarajan 2011: 10–12), these new reali-ties include accelerated innovation, including innova-tion in identities (not least via the movement of brides).

Even Goldin, Cameron and Balarajan’s prominentsurvey still in many ways reflects the slight and unbal-anced attention typically given to migrant experience.The lead author, Ian Goldin, earlier a vice-president ofthe World Bank, heads the Oxford Martin School offutures studies at Oxford University, and evincesthroughout the book a sympathy for migrants that re-

flects his own family history and personal trajectory,as a progressive émigré South African of East Euro-pean Jewish background. But the perspective remainsthe abstracted generalized gaze typical of an econo-mist. Women migrants receive very little specific men-tion. Only two-thirds of the way through the book –and two-thirds of the way through a fifty-page chapteron the impacts of migration focusing overwhelminglyon measured economic impacts – do women migrantsat last specifically appear, in one brief mention thatthey are the most absolutely and relatively disadvan-taged participants in labour markets compared to thenative workers (p. 194). The treatment of the socialcosts of outmigration more broadly remains remarka-bly brief and superficial (e.g. p. 193). In these respectsthe book is typical of many treatments of migration,which underrate the various aspects of societal repro-duction, including the biological, familial, emotional,psychological, and cultural.

The present book has in contrast explored the life-worlds of migrants, especially migrant women, the im-pacts on migrants’ security and insecurity of the sys-tems of nation-state membership and exclusion and ofglobal market power, and how migrants seek to copeand respond. This concluding chapter reviews and re-flects on themes arising from these studies, from aworkshop on the draft volume held in Trivandrum inFebruary 2013, and from wider literatures.4 It does notattempt a summary, which has already been offered inchapter 1. Instead it essays an interpretation and com-mentary with reference to key issues, of which someare specific to women migrants and others commonto all migration or all international migration. Part ofour analysis will locate migrant women’s problemswithin the context of market-dominated developmenttransformations and nation-state systems (sections21.2–21.6); and part will highlight the specific and ad-ditional difficulties that millions of migrant womenface, and the shifts of cognition and representationthat are needed to acknowledge and respond to these,as well as sister shifts needed to respond to the struc-tural forces that affect all migrants (sections 21.7–21.9). Since the opening chapter has theorized genderdimensions in some depth, this closing chapter paysconsiderable attention to the latter forces too. It seeksto identify causal structures and also their social con-struction, and thus to indicate some spaces for reformefforts.

4 Our thanks go to all the workshop participants, notleast Indu Agnihotri, Ruth Pearson, and Anita Shah, forhelpful and thought-provoking contributions.


21.2 Migration is Major and Normal but is Treated as Exceptional and Ethically Aberrant

The 2010 World Migration Report reported 214 mil-lion people now living outside their country of birth.Sometimes it is observed that this constitutes onlythree per cent of the world’s population, a modestshare that is little or no higher than twenty or a hun-dred years ago. However, the figure is misleading inseveral respects, quite apart from the question of thepossible and increasing exclusion of many irregularmigrants from the statistics. It does not include chil-dren who have not themselves emigrated but havebeen born in a different country from where their par-ents were born and grew up, or have been left behindand separated from one or both parents who haveemigrated. And it does not include other persons whoare also strongly involved: the other family membersand (former) close associates of the emigrants in theircountry of origin; people who have moved earlier intheir lives but have returned to their country of origin;people who are preparing to emigrate; and otherswho are strongly affected by emigration, whether inthe countries of origin or destination or en route. Ifwe include these groups we talk of a figure severaltimes larger. Beyond this, and much more than in ear-lier eras, the ‘transnational’ character of muchpresent-day movement – that so many people retainstrong connections with a land (or lands) of personalor family origin, through more frequent visits andcommunication, cultural exchange and identification,strong family links, and even recurrent switches ofplace of residence – has profound implications (see,for example, Truong/Gasper 2008b, 2011b).

The numbers of intra-national migrants are severaltimes higher: estimated at over 300 million in Indiaalone, including a large majority of women migrants(whose primary recorded reason for migration is mar-riage). Most of the themes that arise in the discussionof international migration – of the economic impactsof remittances and of absences and returns, of the po-litical and psychological impacts of cultural changeand interchange, of social strains and endangered so-cial cohesion, of changed gender roles, of the emer-gence of new identities different from those prior tothe move, and more – often apply almost equally in in-ternal migration. The existential gap betweenJharkhand and Delhi may well be bigger than that be-tween Delhi and Dallas or Dubai.

In contrast to the scale of movements, much socialscience and policy has been marked by ‘sedentary

bias’ (Castles 2009): movement from the locationwhere one was born is presumed to be abnormal, inthe normative sense too, and especially when wespeak of ‘location’ in terms of the scale of nation-states. Thus migration studies are not treated as a nec-essary dimension of all social studies but as a minorspecialism. Moving between locations, and certainlymoving between nation-states, is often presumed toarise from some failing, inadequacy, or sickness in theoutmigration location’s economy or body politic. In,for example, the leading American philosopher JohnRawls’s treatise The Law of Peoples, international out-migration is taken as proof that the country of ori-gin’s government has failed in its duties (see likewisethe work of Rawls’s prominent pupil Thomas Nagel[2005]). International migration, in contrast to tradeor short-term travel, is thereby in this view excludedfrom the sphere of matters that governments are mor-ally obligated to regulate amongst themselves by mu-tual agreement; instead, each government can regu-late it as it sees fit. Such a perspective matches theconflation of migration with pathologies of crime anddrug smuggling that has arisen in some ‘homeland se-curity’-type thinking. Young people’s migration forwork is likewise often presented as overwhelminglydue to the machinations of traffickers. Huijsmans hasanalysed the prevailing narratives concerning themovements of young women from Laos to Thailand(Huijsmans 2011; and chapter 19 in this volume).Movement supposedly destroys an idyll of childhoodand/or rural residence; and young women are pre-sented as forced to move in order to compensate fortheir drunken fathers’ failure to earn. Huijsmans re-ports that the young Lao people he studied, not leastthe girls and young women, often in fact seek to mi-grate at an early age as a prestige-raising step towardsbecoming an adult, and that they cope competentlywith the challenges.

Movement by women is particularly prone to berepresented as abnormal. Processes of nation forma-tion have often included the strengthening of an im-age of women as symbols of family, domesticity,motherhood, and tradition, as counter-poles to West-ernization, and as requiring male protection (Chatter-jee 1993). Migrant women’s lives expose and challengethese hegemonic norms; women who move are thenliable to be treated either as trafficked or as pervertedand hence as having forfeited their rights (Kapur2010).

Movement is a normal part of life and adaptation,as we can see from all human history, implied theWorld Migration Report 2008; though it was too cau-


tious to say so openly, and so presented this positionas just one possible perspective (IOM 2008; Campillo-Carrete/Gasper 2011). Goldin, Cameron and Balara-jan state the position openly, after a pointed review ofhuman history. First, the human race is one. We allstem from a core group of perhaps two thousand hu-mans who lived in East Africa a modest 75,000 yearsago (Goldin/Cameron/Balarajan 2011: 12); they/wethen moved, across the world. Second, ‘Migration isnot a problem to be solved. It is an intrinsic elementof international society and inextricably bound upwith globalization itself’ (p. 260). Yet while movementis normal, borders make it seem not normal, and leadto special problems for migrants, pushed and pulledby the pressures in the world political economy.

Rawls’s liberal justice framework uses the idea ofa social contract amongst citizens. It reasons in termsof individuals who are tacitly viewed as members of anation-state, which is the frame for the social con-tract, but not as residents of the globe who exist inand through global webs of relationships. Extraordi-narily – given its formulation within the USA, a coun-try founded on immigration – the framework excludesmigrants and issues of immigration (Gasper 2011).What we can call its Westphalian perspective com-bines a normative nationalism – moral communitiesare held to exist only within borders, not across them– with an explanatory nationalism that seeks to ex-plain and allocate responsibility for events within acountry’s borders exclusively within those borders, asdo Rawls and Nagel and the governments of somerich countries. “[R]ich countries that energetically ex-port arms to troubled poor countries whose manufac-tured and agricultural exports they at the same timefirmly restrict through use of tariff and non-tariff bar-riers, while also drawing away their best educated per-sonnel, yet hold the poor countries overwhelminglyresponsible for their failed systems of governance andthereby draw no conclusions of moral obligation forthemselves – obligations to help constructively, tocease destructive exports, to open economic opportu-nities, and to admit more deserving migrants”(Gasper/Truong 2010a: 345–346). As global economicforces feed into local political conflicts and dynamics,the categories of economic migrant and political refu-gee merge in many cases, but this is denied in politicalphilosophies grounded on nation-states.

Castles points out that most social science hasshared the sedentary bias seen in modern nation-statepolicies. By the late twentieth century, however, wecould no longer plausibly treat the nation as the natu-ral, self-enclosed ‘society’-cum-‘economy’-cum-‘polity’

that had been typically assumed in the social sciencessince their origins and codification in the eighteenthand nineteenth centuries (Wallerstein et al. 1996). Theassumption that the nation-state, an apparatus of ruleover a given geographical territory, also represents aneconomic and sociocultural community and exercisesclose control in it has come to diverge too far from re-ality. The present-day scale of flows of messages,ideas, hopes and values, commodities and finance, oflonger-term and permanent migrants and refugees,and of short-term visitors, pathogens, weapons, andtechnologies, has required changes in social sciences’traditional choice of the boundaries of states as themain frame for organizing their attention.

21.3 Global Interconnectedness and Global Economic Forces

Methodological nationalism in social science analyses– automatically taking the nation as the appropriateframework – is obsolete. The much discussed ‘tran-snational migration’ of the past generation, for exam-ple, has involved the maintenance of ongoing intenseinteractions with the area of origin, including throughtrade, movements to and fro of persons, cultural rela-tions and exchange of ideas, and much more. It is partof an increased global interconnectedness that gener-ates global-wide streams of ‘side effects’ that rendernationally-enclosed analyses outdated. This book ispart of an ongoing passage from a conception of ‘in-ternational migration’ (a definition based on the na-tion-state as a unit and actor in international relations)to a conception of ‘transnational migration’ (based onthe recognition of a transnational space formed bythe trans-boundary activities of a variety of actors, in-cluding but not limited to the nation-state). Theformer conception is associated with a primary focuson the management of aggregate flows between coun-tries (population, goods, finance, skills, etc.). The lat-ter conception tries to grasp the interactions betweenthe global and local dynamics of migration, and re-quires a multi-pronged approach in research, advo-cacy, and policy advice. Debates on migration that usean ‘international migration’ conception often fall intoa “North versus South” framework which depicts a ge-ographical divide and a binary opposition of power(North) versus vulnerability (South). More fruitful fordealing with contemporary realities in migration is tostudy structures, networks, and relationships that cutacross national boundaries, including the practicesadopted by migrants and their trans-local networks, in


interaction with different state agencies, employers,migration brokers, and so on.

Kaye (2010) illustrates the interconnectedness bylooking at some of the drivers of outmigration fromSenegal. Senegalese farmers are out-competed by sub-sidized foreign produce, and many Senegalese fisher-men have been displaced by foreign factory trawlersthat exceed their approved catches. Eighty per cent ofthe country’s rice is now imported. European govern-ments see, or acknowledge, no causal connection be-tween these economic patterns and the presence ofEuropean Union Frontex ships off the Senegal coastto block attempts at migration, sometimes in canoes,across the ocean to outlying territories that belong toSpain and Portugal (Kaye 2010: 232–235). Tandian andBergh’s chapter in this volume noted how the Spanishgovernment in 2008 recruited two thousand (again)Senegalese ex-fishery workers on permanent con-tracts. Kaye quotes the ambassador of Senegal toSpain – ‘I think if Spain offered employment contractsin Senegal, it is because somewhere there is the phe-nomenon of canoes’ – and shows us how behind thecanoes are the factory trawler boats, the EuropeanUnion’s subsidies to fishers and farmers, and its defacto barriers to many types of processed and manu-factured imports.

To draw these connections has been taboo inNorthern governments and businesses; no global-wide social impact assessments of policies and pro-grammes are undertaken. Kaye adds that the huge In-ternational Organization for Migration (IOM) con-tains negligible expertise on local development,because its central function has been to shift cheap la-bour into metropolises when it is required and backagain when it is no longer wanted there. DespiteIOM’s name, forty per cent of its 2009 budget wasfunded by one country, the USA (Kaye 2010: 249).The broader picture he presents is of how, being ableto rely on a huge reserve labour army – from, for ex-ample, the Philippines, thanks partly to the lack ofland reform there (Kaye 2010: 39) – a footloose globalcapitalism pulls people here and there, whenever con-venient to business, and whatever the formal legality.

Intensified global interconnections mean that notonly do the actions of the strong impose ‘externali-ties’ on the weak worldwide, but also that sometimesand increasingly the weak ‘talk back’, whetherthrough conscious reactions or through ramifyingchains of consequences, such as in the fields of envi-ronment, education, and health. Old habits of thestrong – imposing negative ‘externalities’/‘side-ef-fects’/‘collateral damage’ on the weak – can boomer-

ang and damage the strong too. Neglecting the educa-tion and care of some groups of international migrantchildren, within a framework of self-oriented nationalgovernance, for example – as in Japan or Thailand,where often the children of foreign workers have hadand still have no de facto right to education (chapters4 and 17) – may eventually lead to sad and disruptiveoutcomes. So can their exclusion from health care sys-tems, and the roles of social inequalities in the emer-gence and spread of diseases (Farmer 1996). Under-mining of local economies and of the care of childrenwhose parents work abroad can lead eventually to anext generation of economically and psychologicallydisplaced young people whose actions will not remainconfined, in execution and effects, by national bound-aries. Conflicts can spread, just like disease.

In the longer run, legal exclusion but de facto ad-mission of low-skilled workers creates in some coun-tries an undereducated marginalized underclass. Itprovides a supply of cheap labour, but can foster aworld of associated illegality and criminality – of‘black money’, bribes, and marginalized people wholack qualifications – whose existence then serves inthe ideological reproduction of a certain sort of sys-tem of rule. It isolates a group or groups who aredeemed ‘other’ and can be viewed as dangers: ‘they’must ‘therefore’ be ruled firmly by a tough-minded na-tional elite. The underclass can fulfil the role of scape-goat and be blamed for various social ills in a way thatremoves criticism from, indeed mobilizes support for,national elites (see chapter 20 by Sandoval-Garcia onthese cultural dynamics in Costa Rica, Abella [2013]on attitudes to migrants in ASEAN, and De Genova[2005]). The politics of securitization of borders invarious parts of the world has eroded existing protec-tion systems and promoted xenophobic sentiments.These have in turn encouraged ever more stringentpractices of migration management where thinking isin terms of “flows of people” across borders ratherthan with understanding of persons having their ownhistories, networks, and contributions.

21.4 The Attempted Maintenance of Nation-State Projects Through Migration Regimes of ‘Temporary’ and ‘Irregular’ Workers

In many respects global economic forces act in waysthat do not respect, and can undermine, a system cen-tred on nation-states. The global system of market


capitalism causes calculations and decisions to bemade in the light of worldwide market alternativesand opportunities. However, while globalist in this re-gard it is like the system centred on nation-states inanother way: it has no inherent respect for universalhuman rights; its calculations concern profitability.Partnerships between the system of market power andthe nation-state system have emerged around the ex-ploitative use of migrant labour (Gasper/Truong2010a). Since women’s labour too is a space for inten-sified exploitation, migrant women’s labour is such aspace par excellence.

A ‘migration regime’ is a system of regulation ofmigration that covers far more than formal laws andwritten regulations. De facto systems of national andinternational regulation of lower-skilled migrant work-ers frequently allow additional value to be extractedfrom these workers through their official rejection aslegal migrants. Huijsmans (2011; see also chapter 19),for example, noted that Laos (the Lao People’s Dem-ocratic Republic) prohibits the recruitment of Laoworkers for unskilled work in Thailand, and yet allparticipants know that this is what the largest groupof Lao international migrant workers do. Kusakabeand Pearson in chapter 4 demonstrated the impacts ofthe migration regime for foreign women workers inThailand and the human costs of a blinkered ap-proach (see also Doneys 2011; Pearson/Kusakabe2012). Negative impacts are partly deliberately dis-criminatory and partly unintended in countries whereeconomic expansion induces in-migration, particu-larly to activities which citizens become unwilling toundertake, and yet where national identity is a prod-uct in the making or something that is reviving. Manymigration regimes are attempting to control a transna-tional phenomenon that is unavoidable, but are doingso while an exercise in nation-building is still goingon. In such situations Mushakoji (2011) warns againstattempts to directly enforce universal humanist valuesin order to defend migrants, for migrant rights willthen be reviled as imperialist imposition. He advisesinstead seeking creative syntheses of humanist valueswith compatible strands in the national culture.

A migration regime extends across borders, andinterfaces with and links to other such regimes, asshown by Irianto and Truong in chapter 2. Many ac-tors are involved in the multi-billion-dollar migrationindustry, in both its legal and illegal channels, includ-ing not only recruitment agents and smugglers andtraffickers of persons, but especially the employersand customers who benefit from the low-cost flexiblesupply of labour power and goods and services. Even

Lao migrants with an ‘irregular’ status in Thailand arepart of a highly regulated system, regulated by theThai state and Thai employers. Employers prefer ille-gal low-skilled foreign workers, for they are cheaper,more vulnerable, more flexible and exploitable, andeasier to dismiss and expel than legals. Their very ‘ir-regularity’ increases the demand for such labour.

Piore (1979) long ago explored this rationale in aNorth American context. Illegal labour has no rightsand no protection; its secretly sanctioned entry bringsno admission of the political sin of polluting themotherland/fatherland through an open-door intro-duction of aliens. Further, such workers have little orno access to social benefits, and so, given that andtheir low wages, they are obliged to have a high rateof participation in work, often relatively dangerouswork (Goldin/Cameron/Balarajan 2011: 206–207).The intensity of this rationale has increased since the1970s as global competition has increased (Chun2009; Hiemstra 2010): many employers prefer right-less illegals, who have fewer alternatives also becausethey have less education and less access to education.The employers pay little or nothing towards the fullcost of the social reproduction of their labour force –including the costs of bringing up and educating chil-dren and caring for the old and the sick. These bur-dens fall exclusively on the workers and their families,especially the women. But relatively neglected chil-dren may eventually disrupt this short-run marketlogic of cost minimization.

Both ‘temporary’ and ‘irregular’ workers are nowfound worldwide in huge numbers and proportions.For the USA, Goldin, Cameron and Balarajan (2011)cite recent estimates of twelve million irregular work-ers, who have only a one to two per cent chance ofbeing caught (pp. 117–119). While border control inthe USA has grown enormously, the “percentage ofundocumented migrants working on US farms and inlow-level service occupations and construction alsorose continually” (p. 119). Kaye (2010) investigateshow this form of migration regime is constituted inparticular US states, such as in Texas’s alliance be-tween business and migrant groups. Border controlschemes do not achieve their objectives, and com-pared to the vast gains realizable potentially for allparties by well handled legitimate migration they arean anachronistic waste of resources, conclude Goldin,Cameron and Balarajan (2011: 210). A theatrical appa-ratus of border checking has been instituted – compa-rable to the enforcement apparatus in the era of at-tempted alcohol Prohibition in the USA – whichprevents relatively few people from entering (except


for asylum seekers), and cannot prevent millions ofoverstayers. ‘The [high] regulation/[low] enforcementgap in low-skilled sectors represents a political com-promise for governments that face pressure to be“tough on illegal immigration”, when key sectors ofthe economy depend on the low-skilled labour thatthey provide’ (Goldin/Cameron/Balarajan 2011: 252).

Comparable patterns apply, mutatis mutandis, be-tween regions within a continental-size country, India,where huge numbers of workers are controlled andexploited in circuits of temporary and circulating la-bour, as shown by Mazumdar and Agnihotri in chap-ter 7 (see also Breman 2009). Internal xenophobiaagainst internal migrants serves as part of a similar so-cial logic of creating and keeping a rightless class toprovide cheap labour. An extreme example of such apattern was apartheid South Africa pre-1994, whicheven tried to turn itself from a single country into a se-ries of supposedly separate nation-states, most ofwhich would be the ‘national homes’ of the low-wagelabourers, even if many of these had never lived intheir supposed ‘national home’. Capital was allowedto move freely across the new boundaries, while la-bour movements were to be strictly controlled. Inpractice, irregular labour was still plentiful and – be-cause irregular – cheap. The same pattern is seen incontemporary practices in the USA and the EuropeanUnion.

The form of legal migration now put forward bythe governments of most rich countries and the mi-gration management organizations that they supportis temporary migration. In effect the model countryin the contemporary migration order is the Philip-pines, whose economy revolves around preparing itsworkers for recurrent temporary emigration, as rela-tively cheap, docile, and supposedly short-term labourto fill slots identified by rich importing countries. ThePhilippines is a demonstrably inferior developmentmodel, socially and economically. As a substitute forthe sort of land reform and other internal reformsthat sustained the economic transformation of manyof its neighbours, it recurrently exports its citizens, atconsiderable personal cost to them and their familiesand children (see e.g. chapter 12 by Marin and Que-sada).5 It is not gutted by this brain drain in the sameway as a country like Malawi, where the large majorityof doctors and nurses have left the country (Goldin/Cameron/Balarajan 2011: 180), because the Philip-pines specializes in training extra staff who will thenattempt to emigrate for at least some time. Some Fili-pino doctors even retrain as nurses in order to morereadily gain access to the USA.

Many contemporary projects to promote securityfor citizens within labour-importing countries rest onthe insecurity of the lives of an underclass, those intemporary work and irregular work, whose labourpower is wanted but who are not wanted as citizens.Much current temporary labour, legal and illegal, is ineffect indentured labour (see e.g. Pearson/Kusakabe2012, ch. 2, on the millions of foreign workers in Thai-land). The workers are tied to a single employer anda single location for a long period; payment is in partonly at the end of the period and subject to a seriesof conditions. This is the case in Canada’s seasonalworker scheme described by Goldin, Cameron andBalarajan (2011: 132) that seeks to prevent long-termentry; by contrast, a 2008 law allowed foreign gradu-ates of Canadian universities to stay and work forthree years, in the hope of then culling the best ofthem (p. 139). Similarly, Korea and Japan avoid officialin-migration, and draw instead on the labour of ‘train-ees’ and students and overstayers (p. 131). In the Span-ish seasonal agricultural work scheme studied by Tan-dian and Bergh (chapter 3), most of the Senegaleseworkers quickly ‘absconded’ to elsewhere in Spain toseek work with better prospects, particularly workwith a longer time horizon.

Historically, indentured labour paralleled and thenreplaced slavery. Not only was it the format used tobring South Asian and East Asian workers to theAmericas, South Africa, and elsewhere after the aboli-tion of slavery, but before then: “of all the colonialwhite immigrants [to the thirteen colonies that be-came the USA] between 1580 and 1775, more than halfcame as indentured servants who had agreed to pro-vide several years of labor in exchange for passage,food, protection, and eventual landownership” (Kaye2010: 127). Nowadays, vast numbers of South Asians,South-East Asians, and Africans working in West Asiaare de facto indentured, but, as in many other con-temporary cases, they have no path for movement tocitizenship – unlike in the American case in the seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries.

5 Philippines government induction courses to prepareemigrants for international employment as domesticservants tell them not to expect more than five hourssleep a night, but do not tell them that the contractsthey sign in the Philippines will often be replaced by farmore unfavourable contracts when they reach their des-tination (Marin 2013).


21.5 Who Counts? National Versus Market Versus Humanist Frames

This book has explored the forms of insecurity expe-rienced by “people on the move” (CHS 2003) whostraddle different jurisdictions and systems of socialprotection. The two stances we have just highlighted– a nationalist stance that gives weight only to the in-terests of citizens of one’s own nation, and a market-oriented stance that gives weight only to the expan-sion of economic profit – represent two of the poleswithin the political landscape. A more formal analysishelps to clarify this. Table 21.1 uses two dimensionsfor classification: 1. how far is global community – theexistence of values and responsibilities of globalscope – accepted? and 2. how important are nationalcommunity and national boundaries deemed to be?Cosmopolitan positions hold that: all humanity is thereference group in ethical discussions, some importantcommon values apply across humanity, and some re-sponsibilities exist across all humanity. In full cosmo-politanism (#7), an extensive set of values is deemeduniversally appropriate and to be promoted. In con-trast, ‘international scepticism’ (#3) holds that coun-tries do and should pursue only their own interests.These sceptics concerning inter-national morality are,however, believers in intra-national morality (unlike po-sition #9b). In contrast, libertarian-minimalist positions(#9 especially) first assign no special priority to na-tional boundaries: individuals and their liberties are allthat matter worldwide, not nations/states, which mustnot interfere with those liberties; and second, libertar-

ian-minimalists deny having significant responsibilitiesto almost any others, not only to foreigners.

The formal analysis reveals more positions besidesthe three corner positions (3, 7, 9) that we have men-tioned. ‘Scandinavian’ positions combine strong na-tional feelings and strongly felt global obligations(#1). Position 2 is an ‘inter-nationalism’: while coun-tries are the primary units, held together internally asestablished communities, a community of countries isheld to have emerged to some degree, for andthrough the regulation of their interactions; and thisinter-national community produces agreements whichmust be respected. In a solidarism-pluralism variant ofcosmopolitanism (#4; Dower 1998), global-wide con-cerns and obligations are emphasized but with accept-ance of considerable variation in values and behaviourbetween settings. And towards the bottom right of thetable are a range of positions held by business actors(5, 6, 8), that represent variants around the full ‘liber-tarian-minimalist’ category (9a, 9b). Market perspec-tives can seek to turn almost everything into a com-modity, including human life, human organs, thehuman genome, even (in position 9b) legal rulingsand police services. But other market-based perspec-tives include a greater acknowledgement of the pru-dence and/or appropriateness of accepting certain el-ements of obligation in relation to compatriots oreven to all fellow humans (positions 5, 6, 8).

In the era when Europeans wanted to spread outand trade as they wished, in China, India, and theAmericas, they put forward cosmopolitan doctrineswhich gave people a natural right to move in this way.

Table 21.1: Viewpoints in Global Ethics. Source: Adapted from Gasper (2005a).

Viewpoints In Global Ethics Extent of Values and Responsibilities With Global Scope

Extensive Modest / Slight None

Are

national(and regional)

boundaries

ethically

important ?

Very important 1. ‘Scandinavian’ 2. ‘Inter-nationalist’ (which includes some communi-tarians)

3. ‘International sceptic’Plus some communitari-ans & post-modernists

Intermediateimportance

4. ‘Solidarist- plural-ist’

5. Transnational corporations with national loyalties/ pri-orities but some accepted global duties

6. Typical domestic corpo-ration

Not important 7. Full cosmopoli-tans (‘solidarist-globalist’) e.g. pure utilitarians

8. ‘Libertarian-minimalist’ I: e.g. transnational corpora-tions without national loy-alties but with some accepted necessary global duties

9. ‘Libertarian-minimalist’ II:

9a Business-only corporati-ons

9b Robber-baron businesses


Francesco de Vitoria (1492–1546), considered by manyto be the founder of international law, wrote that “[i]twas permissible from the beginning of the world, wheneverything was in common, for anyone to set forth andtravel wheresoever he would.” Similar ideas appeared inthe works of other great jurists of the time, includingHugo Grotius (1583–1645), Samuel von Pufendorf(1634–1692), and Christian Wolff (1679–1754), whoargued that the state possessed a duty to allow the tran-sit (and sometimes residence) of migrants (Goldin/Cameron/Balarajan 2011: 42).

By the late nineteenth century in Europe passportshad come to be seen as feudal relics, only still used in-ternally by feudal states such as Russia. In 1892, the In-stitute of International Law declared that free entrywas the norm and should only be curtailed for specialand very weighty reasons (Goldin/Cameron/Balara-jan 2011: 71). However, passports re-emerged in therun-up to the First World War, and by the 1930s thenorm had been reversed. The Netherlands refused toadmit Jews in the 1930s unless they could prove thatthey faced an “immediate danger to life” (p. 83). Thisprinciple is now widely applied by rich countries. Theranking of the liberal principles of securing individualfreedom and allowing individual endeavour versus thenationalist principles of restricting rights and respon-sibilities to only those people within national bordershas been inverted. Within liberal countries peoplehave the right to move, and cannot be legally pre-vented from entering a community by the local com-munity itself, but between countries these rights havedisappeared (Goldin/Cameron/Balarajan 2011: 266–267). To a full cosmopolitan these are feudal attemptsto protect unjust privilege (Carens 1987); and for Gol-din et al., given their perspective that all humankind isa relatively new enterprise by two thousand African mi-grants, ‘the earth is one country and all of humanity itscitizens’ (Goldin/Cameron/Balarajan 2011: 285).

Nowadays, the global neo-liberal governance re-gime is a hybrid that asserts that national boundarieshave high ethical status in respect of people – foreign-ers will be kept out – but have no status in respect ofcapital: commodities and finance must flow withouthindrance. This version of neo-liberalism is far fromtextbook nineteenth-century liberalism and marketdoctrine, and is not a pure position. It is laced withrich-country chauvinism, and aims to marry the pos-sessive individualism of market thinking with thepseudo-communalism of nationalism. Different ar-rangements are then constructed for: 1. drawing onhigh-skilled workers from poorer countries; 2. makinguse of but socially excluding low-cost lesser-skilled for-eign labour, in those labour-intensive tasks which can-

not be relocated to low-wage countries, in particularmany tasks in the agriculture, construction, personalservices, and care sectors – some in legally approvedtemporary arrangements and some in formally irregu-lar but tolerated shadow zones; and 3. marginalizingand excluding other groups, both within and outsidea country, as part of the ideological legitimation ofrule by a national elite. For asylum seekers, “the threeDs” are deployed – the instruments of destitution, de-tention, and deportation (Hintjens/Kumar/Puri2011). Overall, the layered system of privilege, exclu-sion, and deportation has thought-provoking resem-blances to what was pioneered by apartheid-era SouthAfrica, and is seen by some as a system of globalapartheid (Hintjens/Kumar/Puri 2011; Mine 2011). Aswith apartheid South Africa, reforming such a systemrequires looking in a differentiated and empatheticway at the concerns of all parties, taking into accounttheir psychological as well as economic insecurities.

A possibly enlightening parallel emerged in chap-ter 8 in this volume by Zhu and Lin on China. In thissubcontinental-size country, perhaps the largest migra-tion flows for employment in world history have beenunder way during the past generation. There havebeen very high average income differentials betweenthe main in-migration areas, mostly in the coastalprovinces, and the main outmigration areas, mainly inthe interior. The majority of migrants do not make aonce-for-all transfer to in-migration areas. They con-tinue moving to and fro, and/or plan to return even-tually to their area of origin (if not necessarily to theirplace of origin), for reasons of family loyalty, senti-ment, access to land, and/or lack of access to manyregistration-based rights and privileges in the place ofin-migration, but also because of lack of access to sta-ble urban employment. A large proportion of urbanjobs are in rapidly changing sectors in which firms’workloads fluctuate markedly, and lay-offs are as fre-quent as hirings. From their own studies of internalmigrants and review of many related studies, Zhu andLin (p. 167) recommend that “the protection of therights of migrants should not rely on ‘urban citizen-ship’, and the whole society (rather than the destina-tion cities) should bear the responsibility for protect-ing the rights of all citizens, including female and malemigrants, no matter where they live.”

The policy in many in-migration countries is nowto promote regulated temporary and circular migra-tion and to exclude the migrant ‘denizens’ from fullrights. That stance has been defended (for example byGerhard Leers, the Netherlands minister for immigra-tion and integration in 2010–12) on the grounds that


rich countries do not wish to have any second-classresidents and ‘so’ insist on having only temporary reg-ulated in-migrants rather than long-term irregular in-migrants. A third option – permanent in-migrants whoacquire citizenship – is very largely closed. Principlesof reciprocity and solidarity apply amongst citizens,but supposedly ‘win-win’ deals will be negotiated withnon-citizens, such as redundant Senegalese fishermenor young Burmese women seeking to support theirstruggling families, that take advantage of their mar-ginalized position. In contrast, the proposal for Chinais to move to a ‘whole society’ approach with specialattention to the interests of temporary and circularmigrants, so that they accumulate rights from theiryears of work that are later transferable elsewhere.

21.6 A Human Development and Human Security Perspective

A human development and human security approach,as articulated by, for example, Mahbub ul Haq, insti-gator of the work on Human Development Reports,attempts to apply a global, humanist perspective bothin descriptive and explanatory work and in normativeand policy work (UNDP 1990, 1994; Haq 1999). Ituses a wide-angle lens that leads us beyond thebounds to analysis conventionally set by national fron-tiers and disciplinary divisions. At the same time ituses a zoom lens, to look at how particular people ac-tually live and can live: at their opportunities that areattainable and valued through reason – this is the ‘hu-man development’ reconceptualization of ‘develop-ment’ – and at the risks and pressures to which peo-ple’s lives are subject within global, transdisciplinarysystems of interconnection: the ‘human security’ focuswithin the ‘human development’ agenda (Brauch2009; Gasper 2005b, 2009, 2010; Truong/Gasper2011b; UNESCO 2008). The concept of human secu-rity focuses on ‘critical, severe or pervasive threats tothe vital interests of human life, livelihood or dignity,where the harm caused can be prevented or mitigatedby human action’ (Lester 2010: 322).

A concern with the meanings and sources of peo-ple’s security and insecurity helps us to think aboutwhat matters most in their lives and how they are af-fected by the intersections of different factors – gen-der, class, race, religion, sexual identity, age, national-ity, chance events – that structure and affect theirlives, their opportunities and risks, rises and falls(Leichenko/O’Brien 2008; Gasper 2013). By situatingindividuals socially, such an approach becomes less in-

dividualistic than unnuanced human rights thinking,while encouraging sensitivity to subjectivities (Burgess2007; Gasper/Truong, 2005, 2010b). It strengthensthe basis for taking human rights seriously (Oberoi2010). By looking at the capability of people andgroups to maintain, restore, and promote their ownsecurity – ‘securitability’ (UNDP 2003) – it partners,and helps to set priorities within, work on ‘human de-velopment’. Reflecting the realities of a transnationaland interpenetrated system, it goes beyond the West-phalian conception of states and citizenship. ‘Non-cit-izens are not viewed as non-persons or “outsiders”, asthey are under the state-centric system of interna-tional relations, but as equal citizens in the globalcommunity facing interdependent and universally rel-evant threats’ (Edwards/Ferstman 2010: 40). Overall,it offers a commodious framework that respects therichness of listening-oriented fieldwork about daily liv-ing, the style of research seen in nearly all the chaptersin this book, and that at the same time connects wellwith themes of global interconnection. The book hasfollowed this agenda, as well as paying attention tothe influence, in combination with other factors, ofgender norms, including forms of gender blindness.6

Rich countries have sought to enforce a global or-der of open trade and capital flows, but with closeregulation and restriction of flows of people, or to bemore exact, of poor people. Some at least amongsttheir leading decision-makers know that the full logicof economic benefit from free trade applies onlywhen all factors of production can move; but theyhave calculated that stronger actors can reap most oftheir own potential benefits without (officially) allow-ing poorer people to move, and they do not feel in-clined to increase the dissatisfaction of some groupsin rich countries by openly imposing upon them cul-tural stresses from immigration in addition to the eco-nomic stresses engendered by free trade and freemovement of capital. Ignoring the principle of com-mon (shared) security, they have calculated that ghet-tos of frustration created in pockets such as thedriven-out fishing communities of Senegal can be se-

6 Whereas a significant body of work has now appearedthat looks at migration in human security terms, thenational framing inherent in National Human Develop-ment Reports has meant that none of the many suchReports that have explicitly investigated human securityhave taken migration as a lead theme (Gomez/Gasper/Mine 2013). In contrast, the Commission on HumanSecurity (CHS 2003) used a global framing and treatedmigration in detail in its chapter ‘People on the Move’;for an evaluation, see Oberoi (2010).


questered, or they do not even consider such conse-quences and the possible knock-on effects. The prin-ciple of common security holds instead that nosustained security can be obtained through undermin-ing the security of those with whom one interacts(Lester 2010; Mushakoji 2011).

The social order in much of Europe and in Japanand perhaps some other countries, their human secu-rity in the long run, may also not be sustainable as theproportion of old people rises dramatically and careburdens are not absorbed by succeeding generations(UN Report on Replacement Migration 2001). Thewidespread pattern of continually increasing orienta-tion to earn, spend, and consume; declining familycare of the absolutely and relatively increasingly nu-merous elderly; and fewer women (let alone men) in-terested in bearing and caring for families that are onaverage of replacement size, let alone in caring for theprevious generations, while at the same time copingwith – or forgoing – the pressures and challenges ofpaid employment, might constitute in total one ofwhat Daniel Bell (1996) called ‘the cultural contradic-tions of capitalism’. The sheer extent of demographicimbalance in much of Europe and in Japan makes itdifficult politically and socially, however, for thesecountries to swallow the scale of immigration re-quired to counterbalance the consequences of wide-spread – sexist, individualist, consumerist – culturalproclivities.

Goldin, Cameron and Balarajan propose (2011:253) that the huge and growing gaps in the market forlower-skilled labour in rich countries cannot bebridged by the various subterfuges of undocumentedmigration; nor will permanently circulating work-forces from South to North, Philippines-style, makesufficient economic or functional sense or be sustain-able. For highly-skilled labour, they project that pres-sures to import will mount, and will collide with do-mestic resistance, at least in unprepared and fearfullow-trust countries. They present a picture of vast po-tential economic gains from bringing labour to wheredemand for it exists, and cite World Bank estimatesthat economic benefits for countries of origin fromexpanded migration – of which a very large sharewould be by women – would vastly exceed those fromfull free trade or doubled international aid (Goldin/Cameron/Balarajan 2011: 163). Recipient countries,too, could benefit hugely, for example by releasingskilled women into the labour market, as described bySandoval-Garcia for Costa Rica in chapter 20. Givenlabour market stratification, the evidence is that mostimmigrant workers do not compete with domestic la-

bour and so do not significantly reduce domesticwages in in-migration countries (Goldin/Cameron/Balarajan 2011: 166) but do significantly reduce thecost of wage-goods and services.

This sort of economic accounting is not sufficientfor understanding the life impacts, including felt im-pacts and impacts not measured in money terms, forboth immigrants and in-migration country residents;and consequently is not sufficient for devising andmanaging relevant, workable and just policy regimes.Widespread resistance and antipathy to immigrants iscommon: in Assam, Malaysia, South Africa, and Thai-land, for example, not only in Italy, Japan, and theNetherlands; even, as seen in this book, to Nicara-guans in Costa Rica, despite their major contributionsto the country’s agricultural exports and to freeing itsmiddle-class women (and men) for paid employment.National identity and the nationally specific notion ofcitizenship are constructed in contrast to marginalizedor excluded Others. The contemporary Indian statesometimes demonizes Bangladeshis, former fellow-residents of unpartitioned India, to the extent of peri-odically shooting some of them along the now partlyfenced border as they continue to cross as always(Human Rights Watch 2010). Their exclusion helps todefine something non-Indian, and hence to define ‘In-dia’ (Kapur 2010: 200–1). In the Netherlands the prin-ciple of shared membership of ‘ons land’ (our country)conflicts with continuing race-based identification, inwhich the descendants of immigrants from some coun-tries remain classified as allochtoon (from anothersoil), generation after generation.

Temporary-migration programmes plus the twi-light status of de facto tolerated ‘irregulars’ seem de-signed to prevent any impression that a governmenttreats new immigrants better than long-standing resi-dents, but whether they will satisfy traditional resi-dents, when these are exposed to exclusivist ideolo-gies and a perpetual stream of transient foreignersrather than to emergent fellow-citizens, remains ques-tionable. Further, major programmes of this type inthe past in Germany and the USA have in reality stilllargely led to permanent settlement; they on balancediscourage return to country of origin since migrantsrealise they cannot readily come back again (de Haas2012). Similarly, felt security is not furthered by theparallel system of de facto tolerated irregular migra-tion, but rather by the building of migrant loyalty tothe country of in-migration by providing legal chan-nels for entry and channels for legalization.


21.7 A Gender-enriched Human Security Perspective

Let us review our arguments up to this point. We haveidentified and contrasted, first, “a nationalist perspec-tive that adopts only the nation as its ethical space,and typically adopts a national frame in explanationtoo; and second, a capitalist perspective that adopts aglobal frame in both evaluation and explanation, butwith enormous exclusions in concern for poor people”since its measures in evaluation are purchasing powerand completed monetary transactions (Gasper/Truong2010a: 348-9). We contrast both these with the ‘humandiscourses’ fostered in the United Nations system: hu-man development and more especially human rightsand human security. These adopt “a global normativeframe, in two senses – a comprehensive interest in thecontents of people’s lives, and a concern for peopleeverywhere, grounded in perceptions of human dignityand fundamental rights” (Gasper/Truong 2010a: 349).Work on human security in particular combines“‘joined-up thinking’ in explanation – a tracingthrough of fundamental interlinkages that cross na-tional borders and conventional disciplinary bounda-ries – with cosmopolitan ‘joined-up feeling’ in valua-tion, giving priority to basic needs everywhere” (ibid.:349). These human discourses, while open to differ-ent versions and emphases, are close partners and arereadily and desirably combined. For our purposes, itmatters relatively little whether the perspective is elab-orated into an ethical viewpoint that corresponds toposition 1 or 4 or 7 in 21.1, for each of those po-sitions incorporates extensive values and responsibili-ties with global scope.

Of central significance for our purposes, by con-trast, is that like all the standpoints in social philoso-phy that we have mentioned so far these discoursesare not explicitly gendered. The emphases in humansecurity thinking on human bodies, subjectivities, andhuman relationships make it a welcoming partner forgender analysis; but while fully relevant to women,there is no special emphasis on the distinctive pres-sures, discriminations and disadvantages faced bymany women, especially women migrants, and howthey serve as social and economic ‘shock absorbers’(Gasper/Truong 2005).7 Yet Kusakabe and Pearson

(chapter 4), for example, recount how the overwhelm-ingly female Burmese work force in the Thai borderfactories they studied face peculiarly harsh workplaceconditions and must also struggle and improvise tofulfil the needs of social reproduction (material, gen-erational, cultural), including care work, cooking, eco-nomic support of a wider family, and especially thebearing and upbringing of small children. Supportfrom the state (whether Thai or Burmese) and fromemployers is almost entirely absent. Kusakabe (2013)notes with irony how employers recurrently used thephrase ‘We treat workers like family’, as an attemptedjustification for employees’ lack of enforceable formalrights and being always on call for more work ratherthan having fixed maximum working hours. Thewomen improvise responses using community groups,hired services, and family members, in addition totheir own efforts; for example, paying a ‘baby agent’who transfers a batch of sedated babies back to theirmothers’ home places in Burma. None of thesemeans is highly satisfactory, stable and sustainable, sothe methods of coping change frequently.

Women’s relative invisibility within discussions ofinternational relations and social justice is unaccepta-ble. This volume and its predecessor (Truong/Gasper2011b) attempt to contribute in countering lack ofgender awareness in regard to migration. They try todescribe, explain and evaluate the gendered structuresof intra- and especially inter-national migration and toidentify directions for countering the major injustices,both those common to all migrants and those espe-cially affecting women. While many of women mi-grants’ problems and needs are the same as men’s,some are distinctive, though those too can be fruit-fully addressed if we harness and enrich the humandiscourses in order to advance women’s rights, secu-rity and development, rather than seek to build sepa-rate approaches.

For decades, the framework for international mi-gration studies (as well as that of refugee studies) hasreflected mainly the experiences of men of productiveage, while the framework of human trafficking haspredominated in representations of the experience ofyoung and unmarried women. In recent years, espe-cially around and since the High-Level Dialogue onInternational Migration and Development initiated byformer UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (2006),there has been growing recognition of the increasedpresence of women in migration streams – now at par-ity with men’s – and of the factors behind it. We mustgo further though, to undo biased assumptions linkedto gender that have been built into research concepts

7 Even an authoritative collection by human rights lawyerson Human Security and Non-Citizens, edited by AliceEdwards and Carla Ferstman, has little to say onwomen. The 26-page index has no entries for ‘women’or ‘gender’.

table


and methods of data collection and interpretation.The biases have important consequences for policychoices in matters related to migration. Invisibility,misrecognition, and inappropriate framing of genderconcerns are key issues for research on and advocacyfor social justice in migration.

The Migration, Gender and Social Justice (MGSJ)research project from which this book emerged hasadapted Collins’s four-facetted ‘matrix of domination’designed for Black studies to provide a framework forstudying the relations of gender subordination in mi-gration (Collins 2000: 277; Truong/Gasper 2011a: 4).The four facets, or levels, are as follows. First, the he-gemonic level consists of entrenched ruling ideas, in-cluding the dominant idea of the bounded nation-state that has enforceable borders and a relativelyclear set of norms and rules to determine member-ship. Cross-border migration has typically been under-stood in terms of a series of dichotomies: ‘economicmigrants’ versus ‘refugees’, ‘free choice’ versus ‘force’,men as ‘autonomous migrants’ versus women as ‘de-pendants’. These dichotomies give legitimacy to prac-tices that have consequences for (un)fair treatment.They also fail to show the cumulative effects of inter-sectionality and the spiral of discrimination caused bymultiple inequalities based on gender, ethnicity, andmigrant status. Second, the bureaucratic level con-cerns state structures and the articulation and applica-tion of regulations, norms, standards, and proceduresfor specific groups of migrants, including the use ofsurveillance practices.8 Third, the institutional levelconcerns how migration institutions (organizations ofthe state, migrant recruiting agencies, etc.) interactwith each other in gendered ways that can (re-)pro-duce the series of dichotomous classifications of peo-ple on the move (skilled–unskilled, legal–illegal, auton-omous–dependent, etc.) with consequences for thesubordination of women as a group of migrants.Fourth, the interpersonal level concerns how the

three facets above interface and are acted out in eve-ryday social interactions in specific contexts: amongand between the migrants, the local communities,support groups, and bureaucracies. The frameworkhelps to bring out the practical challenges for advo-cacy for inclusive citizenship, due to the intersectingforms of subordination and of legal liminality.

The framework helps us also in avoiding overgen-eralizations about the relationship between genderand migration. It is essential to recognize the impor-tance of contexts and their particularities, the layersof factors involved, and the interactions of genderwith other social statuses (legal identity as migrants;class; race/ethnicity; age). Overgeneralizations hidethe various ways in which institutional power dynam-ics circumscribe the space for women migrants toclaim rights. Discussion of social justice in relation tomigration needs to be informed by understanding ofthe locally specific dynamics of migration and of or-ganizational practices and legal regulations. We needalso to recognise, besides the material circumstancesthat drive migration, the patterns of differentiationamong migrants, the sense of prestige that people at-tach to ‘being mobile’, and the role of social networksin the diffusion of images and norms regarding mobil-ity within and across borders.

Through exploration of the contemporary formsof circular, temporary, and transient migration andtheir gendered features, the studies in this volumehave revealed the multi-layered meanings of ‘gender’and their intersectional expression in all stages of mi-gration. The traditional framework for consideringwomen’s rights in terms of citizenship may be applica-ble specifically to immigration (migration for perma-nent settlement). In other migration forms, the tran-snational character of power relations as well as theirlocal expressions and affiliated practices of gender-based discrimination need to be analysed as a seriesof interconnections between different institutions andsystems (households, communities, market-based re-cruitment agencies, relations between sending and re-ceiving states, work placement practices). A new ap-proach to rights is necessary that recognizes the roleof multiple actors in multiple locations and that candiscern the different aspects of structural vulnerabilityat each point in the entire migration process and de-velop a corresponding picture of accountability. Themodel presented in chapter 2 (table 2.2) is relevanthere in combination with the four-part framework justdescribed.9 They help us to examine the realities ofmigrants’ lives.

8 Migrants are affected not only by the framework of clas-sification of identities that separates them from nation-als, but also by a hierarchy of identities within thepopulation of foreigners (as we see in chapter 13 onLibya). Though the specific features of this hierarchy ofidentities may differ according to the particularities ofgeopolitical contexts, often the management of ‘flows’(of people on the move) misframe some groups ofmigrants and their identities into a ‘social problem’ thatsupposedly requires a solution. This misframing canconceal the need to examine dysfunctional aspects ofthe management of migratory flows by the state and bynon-state actors.


21.8 Invisibility and Re-Cognition of Women’s Migration: Promoting Human Rights and Security

The ‘invisibility’ and misframing of ‘migration’, mi-grants, ‘gender’, and women’s work have conse-quences for social justice, as seen throughout thebook. There are great limits to what one can achieveby trying to reform policies, official rules, and actualpractices that violate migrants’ rights and human secu-rity, especially for women migrants, if one does notsignificantly alter the realm of cognitions about migra-tion (including those we referred to above as ‘seden-tary bias’ and ‘the hegemonic level’ or nation-centredperspective) and about masculinities and femininities(ideas about appropriate behaviours, roles, and rightsfor males and females).

The concept of ‘invisibility’ has arisen in severaldifferent ways:

a) statistical invisibility, which leads to the invisibilityof women migrants in the eyes of planners, andthus their exclusion from policy attention andfrom activities for social protection (for example,see chapter 7 on India);

b) institutional invisibility (the fact of having no for-mal status, or an unauthorized status), whichderives from the rigidity of tacit presumptions andinstitutional settings, and excludes some migrantsfrom programmes that might benefit them (seenin most chapters);

c) strategic invisibility, chosen by migrants in order toevade discriminatory practices by the state or abu-sive behaviours at inter-group level or both (see,for example, chapters 4, 6, 10);

d) most importantly, invisibility in the sense of beingoutside the realm of cognition as formal knowl-edge and sometimes even as tacit knowledge; forexample, chapter 14 showed that the girl compan-ions of blind beggars in Senegal and Mali aresocially invisible, simply not noticed; more widely,much of the work done by women in caring fordependants and in household management is notperceived as real work.

Cognitive invisibility is the most important, for it un-derlies statistical and institutional invisibility which

then motivate strategic invisibility. Attaining institu-tional recognition requires re-cognition.

The multiple layers of invisibility have implicationsfor migrants’ economic and sociocultural security intheir daily lives and in their relationship with agents ofthe state. Invisibility (including the non-recognition ofmigrants’ diplomas) and misframing (e.g. misuse ofthe notion of ‘family’ to license unlimited calls on oth-ers’ labour) are functional for powerful groups. Weare dealing here with social fields of power, not justcognitive error. The struggles for rethinking are notjust cognitive struggles.

The social invisibility or scant recognition of muchof women’s work within a country makes it hard forthat country to make credible claims in support of itsown women emigrants who do such work – if thecountry perceives and values their work at all. Coun-tries which treat domestic workers within their bor-ders as not ‘workers’ have little credibility when seek-ing to defend such workers against abusive conditionsabroad. Indonesia’s Domestic Workers ProtectionBill, for example, remains unadopted, after years ofdiscussion of the issue. Similarly, countries which treatin-migrants (and their own women workers) badlyhave less clout when seeking to defend their own out-migrant citizens (especially outmigrant women work-ers). Cholewinski (2010) identifies the feminization ofmigration (meaning here the increased proportion ofwomen) as one reason why migrant rights have notbeen taken seriously by the governments of in-migra-tion countries, nor sometimes by the countries of out-migration.

Invisibility, screening-out, is an extreme exampleof misframing. Discussions about domestic labourand domestic workers frequently involve other formsof misframing, such as failure to connect the mass mi-gration of women domestic workers to the ongoingtransformation in the organization of social reproduc-tion for affluent groups, especially in rich countries.Persistent misframing can contribute to eventual cri-sis, which may then provide opportunity for refram-ing, recognition, and affirmation of certain categoriesof migrants whose presence and contributions to so-ciety have been left invisible.

Invisibility and misframing in terms of systems ofclassification of work, workers and migrants must betaken on board as issues of social justice. The systemsmust not be taken as given. They are based on specificknowledge frames which are time-bound and vulnera-ble to errors and to institutional rigidity. Similarly, theinherited legal approach to women’s rights in migra-tion is partly embedded in a dated framework of

9 The model in chapter 2 can be seen as an elaborationfor migration of the questions raised by the ‘Institu-tional Responsibility Matrix’ developed by Geof Wood;see, for example, Gough and Wood (2004).


group rights built on the rationale of protecting mi-nority groups and minors.

More widely, tacit social constructions of ‘mascu-linities’ and ‘femininities’ affect subjectivities as wellas codified practices, and exercise great influenceboth on how women, men, and young people becomeinvolved in migration processes, and on how policiesof social protection are designed. The role frequentlyaccorded to women is that of the human shock ab-sorber, the nurturing human environment for the ac-tivities of others. Like shock absorbers and the physi-cal environment they are taken for granted.

The frameworks of human rights – for women, formigrants, and for all persons – are nowadays elaborateand quite clear; but they are not self-enforcing, andtheir adoption and implementation is highly discre-tionary and very frequently absent (see, for example,the reviews by Cholewinski 2010 and Lester 2010 formigrant rights). Application of the frameworks tocases of international migration depends on collabo-ration between nation-states, and thus also on the per-ceptions of and pressures from the public in thosestates. Hierarchical relations between nation-states,economic and political agendas, and rigidity in admin-istration make this collaboration ineffective. Parts ofcivil society play an important role in the defence ofmigrant rights, but civic actors too are embedded inthe national sphere of politics that is influenced by na-tionalist sentiments that often do not favour suchrights. A large number of studies in this volume havedocumented social processes of ‘racialization’ orother types of social construction that present mi-grant workers as inferior (and dangerous) beings.Countering such processes is an essential task for in-creasing the likelihood of the implementation of legaldeclarations of migrants’ rights. Chapter 20 by San-doval-Garcia, in particular, describes several relevantavenues for this work.

Cholewinski (2010) lists, over very many pages,the years of meetings and reports on migrant rights,but can unfortunately provide little evidence of im-pact. Oberoi (2010) and Lester (2010) fear that themeetings are another form of theatre, for the moregeneral conventions on human rights, if taken moreseriously, would already accord major protection tomigrants. Apart from the power of groups that bene-fit from the invisibility of migrant workers, Oberoinotes another explanation, another type of invisibilitywhich is produced by the absence of migrant repre-sentation. The meetings and negotiations are con-ducted in closed chambers, with migrants’ own repre-sentatives excluded. Thus ‘in inter-state discussions

the world over, agreement is reached that it is the mi-grant who is to blame for the chaotic state of contem-porary migration, it is the migrant who is a terrorist,a queue jumper, a criminal; he or she is barred fromthe rooms in which migration policy is being dis-cussed’ and where rules are established and rein-forced that render people on the move marginal andillegal (Oberoi 2010: 272).

Research and advocacy guided by a human secu-rity perspective can help expose what is kept invisible,and so help to strengthen the perceptual, affective,and political basis for giving serious attention to for-mal human rights. Ethnographic research can presentmigrants’ voices on their experiences of being invisi-ble, of the multiple and interconnected layers of inse-curity, and of negotiating recognition (such as success-fully achieved by some of the Vietnamese brides inKorea and Taiwan seen in chapter 5). Direct testimonymay counteract streams of misrepresentation and poi-son in parts of the mass media and ‘give a voice tosome of the migrant women’, observe Pearson andKusakabe (2012: 176), who themselves use themethod to good effect.

These voices also direct attention to the ways inwhich the control of migrant workers is carried out.Studying migration means studying not only migrants’everyday lives but the systems of creating and control-ling borders (legal, social, economic, and cultural)that shape their life-worlds and restrict their agency.This can help to bridge the gap of understanding be-tween a state-centric notion of ‘national security’ anda notion of how security is produced or underminedlocally by social interactions.

Many people fear that the language of security is“a double-edged sword. …it can label the subjects ofthis security discourse as threats to security, ratherthan being victims at risk of insecurity” (Edwards/Fer-stman 2010: 40). A language of ‘human security’ inparticular is sometimes adapted to serve forms of dis-cipline and control over migrant populations. How-ever, similar types of labelling and control have hap-pened for centuries and are not generated by a humansecurity perspective that specifically offers resistanceto racialization and related forms of othering andscapegoating. Ensuring the rights of ‘people on themove’ requires as the first step addressing the formsof structural injustice they face. Human security anal-ysis enters the life-worlds, constraints, opportunities,and subjectivities of all participants and considershow these are interlinked. As illustrated in this book,it can help shift thinking about ‘security’ from bordercontrol towards the notion of positive freedom for


those who migrate or return. Eve Lester argues thusthat “the application of a human security lens to thesocial and economic rights framework…may serve asa counterweight to the forces of national security andsovereignty that have historically dominated legal andpolitical discourse, often at the expense of justice”(Lester 2010: 317). Human security analysis is an es-sential partner to a human rights approach, not a di-version or competitor (Lester 2010).

The structures, institutional and mental, which wehave identified and discussed are not subject to over-night change. Goldin, Cameron and Balarajan, as wesaw, closed their book with a cosmopolitan clarioncall in respect of free movement. But in terms of nextsteps they presented a more modest proposal: to cre-ate a global migration body that is divorced from thedirect control of rich in-migration countries, and thatcan counter the policy patterns in which party politi-cians appear largely trapped. They consider that suchan international lead agency can coordinate a long-run agenda for increased international migration,given its unavoidability. Reflecting its size and experi-ence, the International Organization for Migration ap-pears to them and to many as the logical choice, ifconverted into a United Nations agency and thus withan authority beyond the short-term political wishes ofrich countries that fund it (Goldin/Cameron/Balara-jan 2011: 282). This was the recommendation of the2005 Global Commission on International Migration;it was blocked by in-migration countries.

The next best next step brokered by Kofi Annan in2006 – the Global Forum for Migration and Develop-ment – is purely a non-binding discussion forum. ButAnnan framed and launched it within a longer-termperspective and with an attractive boldness of spirit.For Annan, the rationale of the Forum was to gradu-ally build awareness of patterns of interconnectednessand progressively reduce the fears and misperceptionsof in-migration countries and more generally.10 Whilethe Forum conducts its business in closed chambers ithas become a prominent target of attention for civil

society. Migrant organizations, social movements, andmigration research bodies monitor, parallel, andlobby the Forum’s activities. The spirit is consistentwith that in Sen’s approach to justice (2009): not aperfectionist model but focused on relevant ameliora-tions from real starting points. Within such a forumand similar channels, and partnered by pressure fromcivil society, progress is perhaps possible in some im-portant areas.11

21.9 Next Steps

We conclude with an indication of some of the key ar-eas for research and networking. Existing work couldbe deepened by using a human security perspectivethat incorporates a gender framework as suggestedabove.

First, transformations of borders: borders aretransforming in various ways: physically, the gatekeep-ing functions to control and exclude migrants are nowdispersed across numerous locations, including withinthe routines of daily life in the countries of in-migra-tion and even the countries of outmigration; legally,there are now huge grey zones of ‘legal liminality’; cul-turally and psychologically, borders of various sortsare being constructed and deconstructed. Illumina-tion of the new meanings and practices of borders isa research priority, to update the conceptual appara-tus that we bring to considering migration and mobil-

10 Annan’s ‘program logic’, as diagnosed by Gasper andRoldan (2011), was as follows: We should go ahead withthe Global Forum for Migration and Development,given that: 1. We must manage migration, 2. in a con-text where major disagreements exist, and a heritage ofcasual, non-thoughtful, non-constructive behaviour; 3.The alternatives are not feasible at present, whereas 4.GFMD is feasible and 5. can be fruitful since controver-sial emotive problems require calm, structured commu-nication. This underlying set of ideas is open to criticalassessment and possible improvement.

11 In terms of table 21.1, different starting points and dif-ferent potential paths can apply to, and within, differentconstituencies: businesspeople and workers, politiciansand administrators, elites, marginal groups. Countriesthat are presently strongly marked by business-centredpositions (6, 9) might gradually move towards positions5 and 8, with growing recognition and acceptance of thenecessity and appropriateness of various duties thatcross national borders (and that apply within nationalborders too). Roughly speaking, an author like Scheffer(2007, 2011), reasoning within a world of nation-statesand of local communities, proposes a gradual progres-sion of global awareness and trust, moving thus acrossthe top row in the diagram, from 3 to 2 to 1. He arguesthat only by the promotion of healthy local interactions,including a recognition of the historical and geographi-cal strands that have contributed and continue to con-tribute to the cooperative life in a locality, is therequired basis established for more trusting broaderinteraction. Mushakoji (2011) proposes a fuller trajec-tory, 3 2 1 4. He is at the same time strongly awareof the dangers residing in positions on the right side ofthe table, which can grow in reaction to prematureattempts to fulfil a cosmopolitan ideal of position 7.


ity and thus to reorient subsequent research in a waythat does fuller justice to contemporary and emergingsystems. The emergence of new forms of female mi-gration, temporary, circular, and transient, and howthese forms can produce conditions of insecurity notexperienced by settled migrants, needs research andpolicy attention. The implications of border transfor-mation and female migration for, not least, children (asstay-behinds, or co-migrants, or born during migration,or as returnees) have been noted here in the chapterson Mexico, Mali, and Thailand. The existing grouprights approaches (e.g. women’s rights, children’srights, indigenous people’s rights) to migration seemmore applicable to the integration of settled migrantsin the host society than to the increasing number of cir-cular, temporary, and transient migrant communities.

Second, South–South migration has already be-come equal in scale to South–North migration (asconventionally measured) some years ago (UNDP2009), and is likely to rapidly exceed it. Women arevery prominent in such movements. The large major-ity of the component studies in the MGSJ project andin this book address South–South migration, thoughthe original scheme of work was not formulated inthese terms. This trend throws up new questions.However, because of the domination of researchagendas by the concerns and perspectives of North-ern funders, South–South migration remains relativelyspeaking less studied.

One of the largest components of especiallySouth–South migration during the coming decades islikely to be induced by climate change, given thegreater expected impacts of climate change in tropicaland subtropical areas and in low-income countries,the economic dynamism in much of the South, andintensive anti-immigration policy regimes in much ofthe North (see, for example, McAdam and Saul2010). The Bangladesh–India border is a likely exam-ple of a major locus of such migration. While there is

growing research on climate change and migration,relatively little has yet connected closely to the issuesof differential impacts on men, women, children, fam-ily organization, etc.

Thirdly, for both South–South and South–Northmovements, and intra-national migration, portabilityof social protection is a key transformative reformneeded to respect the human rights of the migrantswhom the global economic system requires and gen-erates. The theme emerges strongly from the casestudies in this volume, for example those on China,the Gulf, the Philippines, and Thailand. They revealthe central tension between the mobility of labourand the non-mobility of entitlements for most mi-grants. For migrants whose movements are tempo-rary, circular, or transient, social protection schemesthat can be made portable are vital. For example, In-donesian migrant domestic workers pay for theirhealth and social insurance before departure, but theycannot access this support when in need because ofinstitutional rigidity in the administration of labourmigration policy in Indonesia, as well as in the receiv-ing country. Special attention needs to be paid to theparticular situations and needs of various categoriesof women migrants, and to the role of organization ofand by migrant workers themselves to engage in cam-paigns for portable protection and for acquisition andthen implementation of accorded rights.

The experience of the MGSJ project and the char-acter of these concluding suggestions underscore theneed for the cross-fertilization of ideas between re-gional research networks, South–South–North. Pro-moting cooperation, in order to reduce duplicationand to avoid research driven by purely theoretical orpurely national policy interests without due consider-ation for gender transformation as an ongoing proc-ess integral to migration itself, can help to support abottom-up strategy of rights-claiming that respondsmore directly to migrants’ needs and aspirations.

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‘Women in motion’ in a world of nation-states, market forces, and gender power relations.

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