Few days ago, in the Southern part of Italy another labor boss case was discovered. Thank to the courage of a Senegalese citizen it was possible to vanquish a well-organized criminal context which includes conniving farmers and extra-European labor bosses. Moreover the same people, also had been forcing migrant women into prostitution.
The massive problem of the migrant workers’ exploitation and of their joining the criminal environment – often because they desperately research for better living conditions – has gone worsening and worsening trough the years. This is true not only in Italy, but even for the other European Countries which host them (symbolic is Germany).
This wide-ranging exploitation has creating more and more problems concerning warranties and protection either of the migrant – and his family – or of the social context in which the migrant himself works. The same is true even for the local workers who more and more often have to compete with the endlessly low labor costs offered by the migrant.
In order to solve this problem, the UN has published some guiding principles on which the signatory Countries could rely to reform their own national labor law, including protections and specific duties of a new labor class: migrant workers, both legal and illegal.
The UN General Assembly indeed, has approved a resolution on the 18th of December 1990, the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families. Its actual entry into force on the other hand, took place only on July 2003, when the minimum threshold of 20 ratifying Countries was reached at last.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to take a look at which are those Countries that have actually ratified the Convention. Following, they are all represented in a map in which the light green is used to underline the initial Member State; the dark green is used to underline the following States; the yellow is used to underline those States which had signed the Convention but that have not ratified it yet:
(mappa presa da Wikipedia)
As it could be seen, none of the Western Countries which traditionally host migrants have ratified the document – neither Canada, USA and Australia.
The reasons behind this failed ratification are mainly political and economic but, in order to fully understand them, it is fundamental providing here a brief summary of the content of the Convention.
Aim & Content
It is essential to understand what is the main goal behind the drafting of this document.
Since the very first articles indeed, it is clear that the UN wants to provide a detailed interpretation of the principle according to which the existing human rights are applicable even to the migrants who, consequently, are entitled to have the same fundamental rights of the hosting Country’s citizens.
This principle is greatly relevant since it is aimed to destroy the theory according to which migrants are “class b citizens” and therefore they would not have been among the beneficiaries of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
That is why there was the reason to promulge a document in which this highly discriminated subjects are protected, adopting ad hoc measures – mainly concerning employment, since it is fundamental in order for the migrant to start a new life and to integrate in the social context in which he/she lives.
It is important to underline that this Convention does not create new exclusive rights of which only the migrants are entitled to, rather it repeats the application of the principles of the hosting Country national labor law – meaning its entire discipline, included that concerning salary and termination of the employment relationship – even to the migrants and to his/her family.
Another of the essential aims of the text here discussed is that of eradicate the trafficking of the illegal workers – which in Italy, as we have seen, consists in exploiting farmer workers and prostitution but it could be done in always new and inhumane ways.
As described by article 68 of the Convention indeed, the legislator has made a list of actions which would be better to be taken by a State so that it could fight against illegality. In particular the suggested measures are:
“ (a) Appropriate measures against the dissemination of misleading information relating to emigration and immigration;
(b) Measures to detect and eradicate illegal or clandestine movements of migrant workers and members of their families and to impose effective sanctions on persons, groups or entities which organize, operate or assist in organizing or operating such movements;
(c) Measures to impose effective sanctions on persons, groups or entities which use violence, threats or intimidation against migrant workers or members of their families in an irregular situation.”
Furthermore, the Convention states that the State, whenever it is necessary, would give adequate and effective penalties to the employer who exploit migrant workers.
It is also said that, even if migrants are entitled to the same rights and duties of local workers, an extra special care has to be provided for the “social, economic, cultural and other needs of the migrant workers and their family in addition to the consequences of these migrations on the interested community” in order to avoid any kind of discrimination.
Obviously, even the Convention distinguish among the legal migrant workers’ discipline and that of the illegal ones, providing more protection to those who legitimately have entered the national territory.
Nevertheless, a disposition of the Convention allows anyone to limit the access to the labor market at the migrant if this would lead a national interest. This provision has been included to protect certain public figures, in the attempt of making the text more appealing for the Western States – unsuccessfully, as we have seen.
Moreover, the Convention prescribes the creation of a supervisory mechanism which monitors the effective application of the principles included within the Convention and the quality of the measures adopted by the ratifying States. This mechanism is called Committee for the Migrant Workers and it assembles at the UN head office.
Criticism
The creation of the above said Committee is one of the most criticized principles of the Convention from the Western Countries. In this way indeed, a multilateral debate would be opened in order to choose which are the rights migrant workers are entitled to, thus threatening the sovereignty of the State itself.
Mainly in the latest period, where nationalism and populism are aggressively spreading through Europe indeed, the idea of granting such a huge strategic role within the national context to a debate joined by several institutions and States, it is extremely utopist.
Another aspect which influences the rejection of the Convention by the Western States is that it would extend to all migrants the same rights, independently to their skills or values at the labor market, outlining the universal standards for their protection. But this faces off with the economic and political aims of the migration policies adopted by the Western States, in which massive protection is granted for highly qualified workers – so that their cooperation could be ensured – but nothing is granted to the un-specialized workers since there would always be a migrant willing to accept inhumane conditions in order to work, without the government providing any kind of incentive.
Furthermore, there are even political reasons behind the refusal of the Convention by the Western States, namely:
- Migrants do not have the right to vote, so that they could not lobbying on the hosting government;
- Xenophobia is spreading more and more within the national borders so that it is unlikely that who is entitled to vote would lobby on their government in order to grant migrants those rights to which they are entitled to according to the international law;
- There is no reciprocity at an international level since the migratory flow is mostly unidirectional (from South to North) so that the migrants’ Home Countries do not have any need or reason to grant the same rights to potential migrants coming from North.
Lastly, and ruthlessly, the principles included within the Convention are the complete opposite of the market rules which analyze costs and benefits of the migration and which assume the necessity of a net distinction between national and migrant workers – the presence of whom indeed, is subjected to the interest of the locals.
Abstractly and definitively then, the greatest fears of the Western Countries could be summarized as followed:
- The Convention aims to set out standards and principles which discipline one of the less regulated matter in general;
- Prescribing an international monitoring mechanism, a much more global and equilibrate perspective of the migration phenomena is encouraged;
- The distinction between national and migrant workers is erased, so that practically there would be a convergency of the interests of both categories.
Unlikely, due to the xenophobic and nationalistic streams that have been spreading through the Western Countries in the latest decade, their ratification of the Convention is further away than ever.
It is true tough, that it would be very helpful for the immediate future – where Western Countries would have to absorb more and more migrants within their labor market, since the debarking are not decreasing at all. The risk then is that there would be an exponential increase of both the social gap and the discrimination that migrants have to endure on one hand, and that of an increase of unfair competition at the expense of national workers on the other.
