{"id":133725,"date":"2019-05-27T12:01:07","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T11:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=133725"},"modified":"2019-11-19T10:38:44","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T10:38:44","slug":"the-hellish-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/05\/the-hellish-cycle\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hellish Cycle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Indebted, exploited, hunted down, shamed at home\u2026 the harsh reality of Southeast Asia\u2019s migrants.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo from ILO.<\/p><\/div>\n

15 May 2019 – <\/em>Sorry for coming back to this issue, but its immense human dimension justifies this new attempt to report on another aspect, which is deliberately hidden, unwanted to be seen by the new wave of racist, xenophobe, far-right pseudo-politicians, which is now steadily growing in the biggest industrialised powers on Earth: United States and so far a full dozen of European countries. See what it is about.<\/p>\n

Further to the 8 May 2019 article The Most Expensive 529 Billion\u00a0Dollars<\/a>,<\/strong> informing about the immense human cost that over 260 million migrant workers worldwide have to pay to rescue their impoverished families, now it has been reported that tens of millions of them are left far worse off, both economically and socially, when they return home, all of this due to a hellish cycle of debts and indebtedness.<\/p>\n

In fact, the International Organization for Migration<\/a> (IOM<\/a>) on 10 May 2019 reported<\/a> that 1 in 6 migrants in Southeast Asia sub-region are forced to struggle with debt when they return to their countries of origin, being indebtedness a key factor in influencing migration outcomes and an important element in the decision-making process of migrants.<\/p>\n

Southeast Asia sub-region is home to around 650 million people living in 11 countries: Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor (Timor-Leste), Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Map of Southeast Asia for use on Wikivoyage | Cacahuate, amendments by Globe-trotter and Texugo | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International<\/p><\/div>\n

Debt, a primary cause to migrate<\/h3>\n

The findings of the study\u00a0Debt and the Migration Experience: Insights from Southeast Asia<\/a> tells that debt is often a \u201cprimary cause\u201d of migration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith households routinely taking on debt to cope with acute crises such as illness and failed crops, the growth and availability of formal loans offered by banks and micro-finance institutions in rural areas is contributing to changing borrowing patterns and an increased burden of debt among low-income households.\u201d<\/p>\n

In some contexts, loans undertaken can be far greater than average income, and migration is increasingly seen as a coping strategy in response to debt stress. \u201cIn Cambodia, for example, over 40 per cent of rural remittance-receiving households report repayment of debt as the main use of remittances.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meantime, migrants also take on debt to fund their journeys, IOM explains, adding that the increasing cost of migration and recruitment in the region, often taken on by employees, causes prospective migrants to borrow heavily in order to cover the cost of recruitment. Full repayment of these loans can take anywhere from months to years.<\/p>\n

In addition, debt undertaken by migrants to gain legal status or extend their stay legally has been flagged as a\u00a0particular area\u00a0of concern. \u201cThe unpredictable legal costs in countries of destination make it difficult for migrants to anticipate them. This subsequently causes them to resort to loans and take on a higher burden of debt,\u201d adds the report.<\/p>\n

The findings are based on qualitative interviews conducted throughout 2018 with current and returned migrants in Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand, as well as survey data collected by IOM and the International\u00a0Labour\u00a0Organization<\/a> (ILO<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Runkun lives in a makeshift shelter with her daughter and grandchildren by an unused railway track in Poipet, Cambodia. They survive on remittances sent by her children, who work in Thailand.
Photo: IOM 2017 \/ Muse Mohammed.<\/p><\/div>\n

Exposed, exploited, discriminated<\/h3>\n

The International Organization for Migration concludes that there is a \u201cstrong link between indebtedness and increased vulnerability to trafficking and related exploitation.\u201d Reason: migrants in debt are more likely to make potentially risky choices, often choosing to remain in jobs with poor working conditions, while wage deductions used by employers to cover recruitment costs can also inhibit workers from changing jobs or leaving.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile \u201cdebt contributes to negative economic, social and psychosocial outcomes when migrants returned home. Indebted migrants were more likely to encounter financial\u00a0insecurity\u00a0due to\u00a0a lack of savings, struggling businesses and difficulties in finding decent work.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to reduced financial status, the study finds that indebted returnees also reported social and psychological problems, including shame, embarrassment and discrimination in their communities, as well as harassment and violence from lenders. \u201cThese pressures subsequently provided strong incentives for them and their families to migrate again.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, the 2019 Debt and the Migration Experience: Insights from Southeast Asia<\/a> study underlines the very fact that debt and indebtedness are central to the lives of migrants from this Asian sub-region. And that indebtedness can motivate the need for migration and, conversely, migrants regularly use loans to finance costly cross-border moves.<\/p>\n

It also strongly emphasises the key facts that the remittances that migrants then send home are often used to repay household debt.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Credit: ILO\/Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific<\/p><\/div>\n

The wider picture<\/h3>\n

Being part of the big Asia-Pacific region, South-East Asia \u2013also known as the Greater Mekong sub-region- appears to be among the most impacted by poor, informal and vulnerable working conditions.<\/p>\n

On this, the International Labour Organization\u2019s report Asia-Pacific Employment and Social Outlook 2018<\/a> sheds light on the labour market challenges facing this big region, considered the most populous of the world.<\/p>\n

According to the report\u2019s first edition, although the regional unemployment rate is projected to remain at 4.1 per cent through 2020, the vulnerable employment rate is expected to creep up towards 49 per cent, reversing a downward trend of at least two decades.<\/p>\n

While the Asia-Pacific region has made rapid progress to substantially reduce extreme poverty, one fourth of all workers in the region \u2013 446 million workers \u2013 still lived in \u201cmoderate or extreme poverty\u201d in 2017 and \u201cnearly half of the workforce \u2013 930 million people \u2013 were still making a living in vulnerable employment as own-account or unpaid contributing family workers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ILO report informs<\/a> that high employment ratios and productivity gains in the region mask persistent and worrying decent work deficits.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany people, in particular in the region\u2019s developing economies, still have no choice but to take jobs with poor working conditions that do not generate stable incomes nor safeguard them and their families against poverty in the longer term,\u201d says Sara Elder, the lead author of the report and Head of the ILO Regional Economic and Social Analysis unit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is especially frustrating here is that despite the region\u2019s important economic gains, there are still so many workers just barely getting by. Any household crisis \u2013 injury or death of a breadwinner, loss of job, natural disaster, crop failure, etc. \u2013 threatens to push them backwards into poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Image from IOM.<\/p><\/div>\n

Informal, low-paid or even unpaid jobs<\/h3>\n

While in the Asia and the Pacific region more than 2 in 3 workers were in informal employment in 2016 \u2013which is closely linked to the 48.6 per cent of workers still in vulnerable categories of employment\u2013 the informal employment rate is particularly high in Southern Asia, where almost 88 per cent of workers were informally employed.<\/p>\n

Also while large numbers of workers in the Asia-Pacific region, especially those in low-paid jobs, work more than 48 hours per week, the average hours worked in Southern Asia and Eastern Asia in 2017 were the world\u2019s highest, at 46.4 and 46.3 hours per week, respectively.<\/p>\n

In other words, tens of millions of human beings who have been impoverished, find themselves forced to borrow, migrate to pay back their debts, be exploited, detained, persecuted, trafficked, trapped behind fences and walls, obliged to return and to be strangled by lenders, while socially shamed and discriminated in their own societies.<\/p>\n

Most probably none of the new xenophobe, supremacist, populist politicians who are more and more on the rise in the US and Europe would want to hear a word about this hidden side of migration.<\/p>\n

And even if they did, they would just ignore such an inhumane reality, continue with their inflammatory speeches, feeding irrational fears, spreading hate sentiments in their citizens through indiscriminately demonising all migrants\u2026 for the sake of winning elections.<\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t it be wiser, human and rational to stand against that fact that the world military expenditure grew to 1.8 trillion dollars in 2018<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Even for purely selfish motivations, wouldn\u2019t this huge amount of tax-payers\u2019 money which is spent on producing killing machines, be best devoted to alleviate the incalculable consequences of climate change? One such consequence would be that climate migrants might reach one billion by 2050<\/a>!<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Baher Kamal, a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>, <\/em>is an Egyptian-born, Spanish national, secular journalist, with over 45 years of professional experience \u2014 from reporter to special envoy to chief editor of national dailies and an international news agency. Baher is former Senior Advisor<\/a> to the Director General of the international news agency IPS (Inter Press Service)<\/a> and he also contributed to prestigious magazines such as <\/em>TRANSCEND Media Service<\/a>, GEO, Muy Interesante, and<\/em> Natura, Spain<\/em>. He is also publisher and editor of<\/em> Human Wrongs Watch.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 human-wrongs-watch.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

15 May 2019 – Indebted, exploited, hunted down, shamed at home\u2026 the harsh reality of Southeast Asia\u2019s migrants. The immense human dimension justifies this new attempt to report on an aspect that is deliberately hidden, unwanted to be seen by the new wave of pseudo-politicians in the United States and so far a full dozen of European countries. See what it is about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":100598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[237,554,120,354,401,433,267,487,651,883,109,287,821,949,647,639,292,70,126,172,75],"class_list":["post-133725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-africa","tag-children","tag-conflict","tag-economics","tag-environment","tag-europe","tag-geopolitics","tag-human-rights","tag-justice","tag-migrants","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-refugees","tag-slave-labor","tag-slavery","tag-uk","tag-un","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-west","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}