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Migration and Labor under Neoliberal Globalization: Key issues and

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Migration and Labour under Neoliberal

Globalization
Key Issues and Challenges

Raúl Delgado Wise

Introduction

The nature of contemporary capitalism has been inaccurately represented

and distorted by an apologetic notion of globalization, which emphasizes the
increase in international flows of capital, information, technology, and work-
ers. Underlying this partial and limited vision is a blind faith in a supposedly
free and self-regulating market as a route to achieving a just and equitable soci-
ety, but which has instead provided political cover for a project of ­capitalist
expansion, neoliberal globalization, that has had severe consequences in terms
of development and social justice for the past three and a half decades. One
of the main features of the new global architecture, boosted by the emergence
of the most distressing global crisis since the 1930s recession, is the assault on
the labour and living conditions of the majority of the working class (Harvey
2004). The migrant workforce features among the most vulnerable segments
of the global working class (Márquez and Delgado Wise 2011a).
The purpose of this chapter is to analyse some key aspects of the system in
which contemporary migration is embedded, with particular emphasis on
the process of segmentation and the precarization of labour markets world-
wide. More specifically, the aim is to unravel: a) the re-launching of imperi-
alism (policies of global domination) in search of cheap and flexible labour,
as well as natural resources from the south; b) the growing asymmetries
among and within countries and regions; c) the increase and intensification
of social inequalities; d) the configuration of a gigantic global reserve army of
labour associated with the emergence of severe forms of labour precarization

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and exploitation; and e) the predominance of forced migration as the main

modality of human mobility under conditions of extreme vulnerability. From
this perspective, the migration and labour questions are two sides of the same
coin, whose currency translates into the unbearable conditions of systematic
oppression against the working class promoted by neoliberal globalization
and its driving forces. It demands, inter alia, the unity of social organizations
and movements in alliance with progressive intellectuals in order to foster an
anti-systemic process of social transformation.

Re-launching Imperialism

In the neoliberal era the capitalist world system revolves around the monopo-
lization of finance, production, services, and trade, as well as labour exploi-
tation and environmental degradation in a process of natural resource
extraction and landgrabbing. In the expansion of their operations, the agents
of corporate or monopoly capitalism have created a global network and pro-
cess of production, financing, distribution, and investment that has allowed
them to seize the strategic and profitable segments of peripheral economies
and appropriate the economic surplus produced, at enormous social and
environmental cost.
Monopoly capital (MC) has become, more than ever, the central player.
Through mega-fusions and mega-strategic alliances, MC has reached unpar-
alleled levels of concentration and centralization: the top 500 largest Multi­
national Corporations (MNCs) concentrate between 35 and 40 per cent of
world income (Foster et al. 2011a). Closely associated with this trend, ‘[the]
top one hundred global corporations had shifted their production more deci-
sively to their foreign affiliates [mainly in the south], which now account for
close to 60 per cent of their total assets and employment and more than 60 per
cent of their global sales’ (UNCTAD, 2010). This means that a ‘new ‘nomadism’
has emerged within the system of global production, with locational decisions
determined largely by where labor is cheapest’ (Foster et al. 2011a). This has
led to a re-launching of imperialism understood as ‘the political, diplomatic,
military, economic and cultural strategy orchestrated by the main capitalist
powers of the world to dominate the subordinate social classes and the world’s
strategic regions, thus creating new opportunities for the valuing and appro-
priation of wealth, the control of material production, and the realm of power
exercised by the nation-state’ (Márquez and Delgado Wise 2011b: 14–15).
The postmodern myth of a blurred nation-state has been shattered and
remains only in documents. The state is the main promoter of the inter-
ests of MNCs. The predominance of MC cannot be explained without state
interference inasmuch as, in addition to guaranteeing corporate profitability,

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Migration and Labour under Neoliberal Globalization

it controls the workforce, systematically lowers salaries, and squanders the

nation’s natural resources and patrimony.
In opposition to the myth of ‘free markets’—a myth because what actu-
ally exists is a highly monopolistic market, largely dominated by outsourcing
operations and intra-firm trade—at least 40 per cent of world trade is sub-
ject to such operations (Andreff 2009). Along these lines, two key landmarks
­characterize the current capitalist restructuring process:

1. The creation of global networks of monopoly capital as a reorganization

strategy led by the large MNCs, which through outsourcing operations
and subcontracting chains extend parts of their productive, commer-
cial, and services processes to the south in search of abundant and cheap
natural and human resources (Márquez and Delgado Wise 2011b). This
strategy entails the establishment of export platforms that operate as
enclaves in peripheral countries. It is estimated that between 55 million
(Robinson 2008) and 66 million workers from the south (Singa Boyenge
2007) work in these kinds of plants. Additionally, monopoly capital
helps to avoid direct price competition among MNCs by searching for
low-cost positions through low wages (Foster et al. 2011a).
2. The restructuring of innovation systems. This aspect of neoliberal
capitalism involves the implementation of mechanisms such as out-
sourcing (including offshore-outsourcing) in the scientific and techno-
logical innovation sphere, allowing multinational corporations to have
southern scientists at their service, reduce labour costs, transfer risks
and responsibilities, and capitalize on the benefits of purchasing and
concentrating patents. An unprecedented mercantilization of scien-
tific/technological work is taking place under a short-term perspective
­lacking any social concerns.

Closely related to the two aforementioned aspects, at the core of the capitalist
restructuring strategy, we can find:

3. The unleashing of financialization as a major consequence of the new

global architecture aimed at increasing the power of monopoly-financial
capital—with the support of the imperial state—by extending the
supremacy of their institutions over a slowly but increasingly deregu-
lated global economy. The end result has been a disconnection between
the ‘real’ economy and a ballooning money economy (fictitious capital)
based on the operations of speculative and predatory funds (Foster and
Magdof 2009; Bello 2006; Amin 2010).
4. An intensification of environmental degradation, which, with refer-
ence to the deterioration of the ecosystems and the emergence or deep-
ening of climate change due to the privatization of natural resources

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and the irresponsible deregulations fostered by neoliberal ideology, has

reached or is reaching crisis proportions. The commodification of the
natural environment has led to the depletion of natural resources and
the disruption of the global climate. This structural rupture in the mate-
rial bases for the production and reproduction of human life threatens
the natural systems upon which human existence depends (Foladori
and Pierri 2005). According to Minqi Li, ‘after centuries of global capital-
ist accumulation, the global environment is on the verge of collapse and
there is no more ecological space for another major expansion of global
capitalism’ (Li 2008).

Neoliberal globalization is facing a profound multidimensional (financial,

overproduction, environmental, and social) crisis that undermines the main
sources of wealth creation—labour and nature—to the point that it can be
characterized as a crisis of civilization with a potentially catastrophic out-
come. It is crucial to realize that it demands both engaging in a radical social
transformation process and the constructing of a social transformation agent
capable of confronting the current dominant imperialist power.
The responses to the crisis by the governments of developed countries
and international agencies promoting neoliberal globalization have been
short-sighted, elitist, and exclusive. Instead of addressing the root causes
of the crisis, they have implemented limited strategies that seek to rescue
financial and manufacturing corporations facing bankruptcy. In addition,
government policies of labour regulation and fiscal adjustment have affected
the living and working conditions of most of the population. These meas-
ures are desperate attempts to maintain a regressive/parasitic/predatory and
unsustainable form of capitalism and prolong the privileges and power of the
­ruling elites.

The Labour Question Today

One of the main engines of neoliberal capitalism is cheap labour, lowering

the cost of labour by any and all means, and taking advantage of the massive
oversupply of labour reflected in growing levels of unemployment all over
the world. With the dismantling of the former Soviet Union, the ascent of
China and India in the world economy, and the ‘freeing’ of labour through
the implementation of structural adjustment and labour reform programmes
in the periphery of the system (the global south), the supply of labour for
capital over the last two decades has more than doubled (from 1.5 to 3.3
billion). This has led to the disproportionate growth of a global reserve
army of labour, which, according to Foster et al. (2011b), absorbs between

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Migration and Labour under Neoliberal Globalization

57 and 63 per cent of the global workforce. The outrageous dimension of

this reserve army of labour is dialectically interrelated to the abysmally low
wages and chronic insufficiency of ‘decent’ employment that characterizes
contemporary capitalism. According to estimates of the International Labour
Organization (ILO), the number of workers in conditions of labour insecurity
rose to 1,530 million in 2009—encompassing more than half of the world’s
labour mass—with 630 million receiving a salary of less than 1.25 dollars
per day; in other words, finding themselves in situations of extreme pov-
erty, while globally the number of unemployed has risen to 205 million (OIT
2011). This in turn has led to growing pressures to emigrate internally and/or
internationally under conditions of extreme vulnerability.
With the advent of neoliberal capitalism there has been a reconfiguration
of the global working class in at least the following areas:

1. The creation of a dispersed and vulnerable proletariat attached to the global

networks of monopoly capital. The social and productive weave of the
MNCs covers strategic and profitable economic sectors such as agricul-
ture, mining, industry, services, trade, and finance. The restructuring of
labour markets dismantles structures of labour protection and imposes a
‘new labour culture’ based on competitiveness, growth, and the promo-
tion of investment while creating a background regime of job insecurity
characterized by flexibility and precariousness. Outsourcing stands out
as the main management strategy, cheapening labour costs and creating
the permanent threat of dismissal. Business requirements lead to a new
labour profile: young workers without union experience and willing to
work in insecure and badly paid conditions. The new proletariat is com-
pelled to subject itself to high levels of exploitation in order to access
some source of income. It becomes quietly and increasingly alienated
from its sense of class belonging and its place in the socio-economic and
geospatial fabric, given the predominance of what resembles abstract
capital—i.e. global expressions of capital that depersonalize, more than
in the past, the relationship between forms of capital and between capi-
tal and labour in a transnational arena lacking unionized power. The
proletariat does not have a human referent for the exploiter but a face-
less, cold, and de-territorialized corporate entity that, if necessary, can
be blurred without leaving any traces. This also erases awareness of the
work process and easily prevents workers from establishing potential
cooperative and solidarity ties with their class allies; the daily strife to
earn a livelihood occupies most of their vital energies. In addition, wage
referents progressively lose meaning in the context of corporate strat-
egies that relocate industrial processes to countries and regions with
cheap workforces. In this context, the state becomes the real guarantor

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of these new business practices of labour domination and alienation; it

additionally exercises direct political control in the workspace via laws,
rules, policies, and corporatization mechanisms, co-option, and repres-
sion. Moreover, corporations implement new forms of worker subjec-
tion through mechanisms such as the permanent threat of dismissal,
the promotion of credit to cover household consumption, and the
­ideological training of workers under alienating corporate bases.

2. The covert proletarianization of the highly qualified scientific and technologi-

cal worker. The large monopolies have managed to subsume scientific
and technological work with the ultimate aim of creating extraordinary
profits that are protected by the patent system; this way, the fruits of
technological progress are directly appropriated by multinational cor-
porations’ IMC. Scientists and technologists are a privileged segment of
the working class and do not conceive themselves as such but, rather,
as part of the global ruling class, even promoters of social transforma-
tion inasmuch as their innovations affect everything from production
patterns to the lives of ordinary people. This highly qualified workforce
gradually loses, directly or covertly, its relative autonomy and control
over the means and instruments of labour (research agendas, laboratory
equipment, and other means of research, etc.). In this sense, scientific
and technological labour is subsumed by IMC and an awareness of the
work process is progressively lost. One of the strongest forms of scien-
tific and technological labour appropriation and subsumption is that
of the disguised proletarianization of this type of worker under forms
of outsourcing and offshore outsourcing. The bulk of science and tech-
nology research is carried out in spaces located in central countries and
designed for this purpose (e.g. Silicon Valley and Route 128 in the United
States—Koepp 2002), but peripheral spaces with a considerable popu-
lation of researchers (e.g. Bangalore in India—Chaminade and Vang
2008) are increasingly important. These places, which are geographi-
cally separated from the IMC’s administrative/financial control centres,
host research and development units encircled by a constellation of
small businesses and ‘independent’ inventors that offer their products
(patents) to specialized operators serving the large MNCs. Research pro-
jects heavily depend on funding designed by the Imperial states and the
MNCs to benefit the expansion of global networks of capital and the
military industry serving imperialist power centres (mainly the United
States). Many of the most noteworthy innovative advances have served
to strengthen strategies of over-exploitation and power, including the
military advance of the imperialist powers. This scheme is reinforced
by the patent system that ensures ownership of the results of research.

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Migration and Labour under Neoliberal Globalization

The products of scientific–technological progress respond to corporate

needs, not social ones. Scientists and technologists are alienated from
production processes in their field, which does not allow them to envi-
sion the political and strategic role of their efforts. Peripheral states,
researchers, and research centres are contributing to this dynamic with-
out realizing the subsidiary and subordinate role they play in regards
to IMC.
3. The real or disguised proletarianization of the peasantry. A global agribusi-
ness system controlled by large international corporations controls
all stages of the productive, financial, and trading processes, leaving
practically no room for small-scale agricultural production. Like other
economic sectors, agribusiness employs subcontracting schemes that
degrade peasant autonomy and entail visible or covert forms of pro-
letarianization with a high degree of precariousness. Accumulation by
dispossession (Harvey 2007) dismantles the peasant subsistence system
and expands the presence of international agribusiness, annihilating
political attempts at food sovereignty, appropriating the natural infra-
structure of common goods and biodiversity, blocking public resources
from being channelled into this sector, and freeing workforces that
can, in turn, be employed in precarious and unsafe conditions. In order
to subsist in the new institutional framework of capitalism, peasants
are forced to: i) become a proletariat working for agribusiness, even in
lands they might have once owned; (ii) migrate to the cities in search
of precarious jobs, many of them offered by the MNCs and in areas
such as manufacturing; (iii) survive within the ranks of the lumpenpro-
letariat; or iv) migrate abroad to work in degraded and poorly paid jobs.
These processes of overt or covert proletarianization have furthered and
exacerbated the dynamics of semi-proletarianization already in place
before the neoliberal onslaught. Despite the social decomposition of
the peasantry as a subaltern class that lies even below the proletariat,
it is worth noting that some of the most visible and consistent anti-
globalization movements come precisely from the ranks of the peas-
antry and indigenous groups (i.e. the International Peasant Movement,
the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, CONEI, and the Landless
Workers Movement).
4. The semi- and sub-proletarianization of migrant workers mobilized (forced to
migrate) by the capitalist development of production. Neoliberal capitalism
has accelerated mechanisms of social exclusion and dispossession. The
most evident result is the creation of an overpopulation that has no
means of earning a living and whose livelihood is at stake. These social
groups are forced to migrate domestically or internationally in order to

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access a source of income that will enable family subsistence. Migration

in this context is far from being a free and voluntary movement; rather,
it is an imperative. A wide range of social subjects are forced to move
from their places of origin: peasants deprived of land or unable to make
a living out of it; unemployed or poorly paid workers; youths with no
employment expectations; professionals without access to social mobil-
ity; women lacking access to the labour market; skilled workers with
few or no opportunities for work and income. Those who participate
in forced migration are placed in relatively more adverse conditions
than native workers. With irregular migratory status they become a
sub-proletariat subject to social exclusion, wage discrimination, lack of
social and labour rights, loss of citizenship (or experience precarious
citizenship), and liable to criminalization. This massive contingent of
workers faces insecurity, vulnerability, and considerable risks; as a prole-
tarian subclass, they are subject to conditions of over-exploitation that
often exhibit pre-capitalist features and even border on new forms of
slavery.
5. The expansion of the reserve army of labour and with it an increase in new
forms of poverty and an underclass of workers without any hope or possibil-
ity of any, let alone, decent work—disabled or precarized through the process
of capital accumulation and economic growth. Those who suffer from the
worst living and employment conditions are located in the lowest social
level. This is a highly degraded and large segment of the overpopulation.
To survive, the poorest of the poor work on the margins of society and,
often, of legality, participating in petty crime, organized crime, human
trafficking, and prostitution. They also carry out activities in public,
working as mendicants, shoe-shiners, announcers, vendors, and musi-
cians, among many other things. This group also includes ­door-to-door
vendors and informal workers. The dysfunctional nature of their work,
their detachment from the institutional framework, and the discrimina-
tion they endure prevent them from developing a class identity or inter-
acting openly with power, capital, or other categories of the proletariat.
6. The subordination and resistance of the intellectual worker. The privileged
sector of the intelligentsia that enjoys greater visibility and privileges
is bound to support the expansion of large corporations and the pow-
ers behind them. Critical thinking is seen as passé or is attached to the
populist defence of irrelevant social sectors. There is a drive to impose a
single form of thought regarding the neoliberal project: the free m ­ arket,
electoral democracy, and the so-called end of history (i.e. the cancel-
lation of alternatives) disrupt various fields of academia, the media,
parliaments, governments, and political parties, until they eventually

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Migration and Labour under Neoliberal Globalization

inoculate the popular mind or common sense. The educational system

is pressured into privatization or, at least, the commodification of its
services. According to this rationale, the teaching/learning process is
conceived as skill formation, for the student has to dispense with ethical
and humanistic concerns and become human capital ready to enter and
compete in the labour market. For this reason, curricula are moulded
according to the needs of employers rather than social needs. In line
with this pseudo-intellectual trend, the conformism imposed by domi-
nant modes of thought and attached to corporate interests and power
elites portrays critical thinking as banal. In contrast, critical thought
cultivated by artists, scientists, politicians, journalists, researchers, and
academics has been a source of creation and social innovation. The
development of knowledge and ideas meant to understand the con-
temporary world and the detection of possibilities of transformation
is the primary task of this sector, the interests of which sympathize
with those of the subordinate classes, resistance movements, and social
struggles.

Under these circumstances, when working conditions erode the social wage
and the welfare system excludes the subordinate classes from accessing
basic social needs to such a degree that wages no longer ensure subsist-
ence, capitalist development entails the super-exploitation of labour. This
and other violations of basic labour and human rights engender a situation
of systemic violence and human insecurity affecting the majority of the
world’s population, where the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
has been evidently and flagrantly infringed by the economic and political
forces of neoliberal globalization.

The Mushrooming of Unequal Development

A major and inescapable feature of neoliberal globalization is unequal devel-

opment. The global and national dynamics of capitalist development, the
international division of labour, the imperialist system of international
power relations, and the conflicts that surround the capital–labour relation
and the dynamics of extractivist capital, have made economic, social, politi-
cal, and cultural polarization more extreme between geographical spaces and
social classes than ever before in human history. A conspicuous output of this
development is the disproportionate concentration of capital, power, and
wealth in the hands of a small elite within the capitalist class. Nowadays
the richest 1 per cent of the world’s population concentrates 40 per cent of
total global assets (Davies et al. 2008). Moreover: ‘From 1970 to 2009, the per

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capita GDP of developing countries (excluding China) average a mere 6.3 per
cent of the per capita GDP of the G8 countries’ (Foster et al. 2011a).
In fostering the above trend, global labour arbitrage has become a key
echelon of the new global architecture. It refers to the advantage of pursuing
lower wages abroad. This allows capital in the ‘earning’ of enormous monop-
olistic returns or imperial rents to take advantage of the relative immobility
of labour and the existence of subsistence (and below) wages in much of
the South. Hourly wages in China are but 4 per cent of hourly wages in the
US and 3 per cent in the EU (in Mexico 16 per cent in reference to the US).
Through this mechanism geographic, territorial, asymmetries are reproduced
on a broader scale (Foster et al. 2011b).
Social inequalities are one of the most distressing aspects of this process,
given the unprecedented concentration of capital, power, and wealth in a few
hands while a growing segment of the population suffers poverty, exploita-
tion, and exclusion. Increasing disparities are also expressed in forceful racial,
ethnic, and gender discrimination; reduced access to production and employ-
ment; a sharp decline in living and working conditions; and the progressive
dismantling and segmentation of social security systems.
A fundamental mechanism in the promotion of the new global architec-
ture and its underlying trend towards unequal development has been the
implementation of structural adjustment programmes by the main institu-
tions of neoliberal globalization: the International Monetary Fund, the World
Bank, and the World Trade Organization. These programmes have been the
vehicles for disarticulating the productive apparatus in the periphery and its
re-articulation to the core economies, under sharply asymmetric and sub-
ordinated conditions through the promotion of a triple movement: a) the
dismantling of the national economies so they can undergo restructuring
processes driven by the large MNCs; b) the regulation and precarization of
labour markets, which generates an overflowing population surplus; and c)
the compulsory displacement of a portion of the labour surplus via labour
migration (Delgado Wise and Márquez, 2007).
The exportation of labour in its two modalities, indirect and direct, is a
key element for conceptualizing this process. On the one hand, the indirect
or disembodied exportation of labour is associated with the establishment
of global networks of monopoly capital with its ramifications in the south
through outsourcing operations, as previously mentioned (Delgado Wise and
Márquez 2007, Cypher and Delgado Wise 2007). In this case, the main input
of national origin in exported commodities is the labour used in the assem-
bly (or service or commercial) process. On the other hand, the direct expor-
tation of labour refers to international labour migration, mainly composed
of south–north and south–south flows. In fact, 156 million migrants of the
existing 214 million—72 per cent—come from the periphery (WB 2011).

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Migration and Labour under Neoliberal Globalization

The exportation of labour in its two modalities shapes a new international

division of labour which resembles a re-edition of enclave economies in the
periphery, and encompasses the emergence of new modalities of unequal
exchange, much more severe than in the past: the net transfer of revenues
through outsourcing operations in the south, and the south–north transfer of
social reproduction and educational costs of the migrant labour.
In the first case, the supply of imported goods is managed from abroad or
through outsourcing tax-free (or even subsidized) contracts devoid of any
labour-related or environmental responsibility. The fundamental export prod-
uct is the work itself. In this case, the effective contribution of foreign capital
to peripheral regional and national accumulation is limited to small wage
spillovers owing to the huge differences in salaries and, in the best of cases, a
reduced multiplying effect via consumption. In the second case, labour force
export via migration implies the transfer of future benefits and the expenses
involved in the social formation and reproduction of the migrants.
Moreover, for peripheral economies with advanced demographic transi-
tion, labour export involves the transfer of a demographic dividend; that is,
of a working-age population that acts as support for economic dependents,
mainly children and senior citizens. In a more profound sense, this transfer
involves the loss of the most important resource a nation has: its workforce.
Worse still, exporting a highly qualified labour exacerbates the problem by
seriously decreasing the national capacity for innovation and the implemen-
tation of technology-based development projects. Substantial contingents of
R&D workers are being transferred through the migration of scientists and
technologists.
Human mobility, which is inherent in the global expansion of capital,
entails a mass of domestic and international migratory flows that respond
to the dynamics of capital and, particularly, to the new division of domestic
and international labour. In spite of all appearances, migrations constitute a
significant modality of human and economic resource transfer for the benefit
of big business. This dynamic has been associated with accumulation by dis-
possession and the emergence of new forms of direct labour overexploitation
and control of scientific/technological work.

Forced Migration Under the New International

Division of Labour

Migration has acquired a new role in the labour division of neoliberal glo-
balization. Mechanisms of unequal development produce structural condi-
tions, such as unemployment and inequality, which stimulate the massive
migration of dispossessed and marginalized people. Compelled by the need

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to have access to means of subsistence or opportunities of social mobility,

large segments of the population are literally expelled from their territories to
relocate within their own country or abroad. Labour oversupply and worsen-
ing living conditions turn migration, particularly from peripheral countries,
into a form of forced displacement (Delgado Wise et al. 2013; Márquez 2010).
Forced migration flows have four characteristics: a) they take place on a
national and international level, and move mainly from deprived periph-
eral regions towards relatively more advanced areas in peripheral or central
economies; b) they primarily affect the vulnerable, poor, and marginalized
who are barred, in their place of origin, from satisfying basic material and
subjective needs; c) they generate an oversupply of cheap and disorganized
labour, exploited by employers and corporations interested in keeping costs
down; and d) they fuel mechanisms of direct and indirect labour exportation,
both among low-skilled and high-skilled workers.
The number of migrants (most of whom come from peripheral regions)
has increased over the last three and a half decades, from 84 million in
1975 to 215 million in 2010. The main flows are in a south–north direction
(82 million), followed by the south–south direction (74 million). There is
also a significant contingent of domestic migrants (750 million) that, as a
whole, has reshaped the labour map and turned migration into a keystone
of the capitalist restructuring process (UN 2004 and 2010; Delgado Wise
and Márquez 2009). Undocumented migration that flows in a south–south
direction, including transit migration at an intra-national level in peripheral
countries, is exposed to conditions of utmost vulnerability and occupies the
lowest ­echelons in the displacement dynamics generated by the processes of
accumulation by dispossession.
In line with these considerations, it is possible to distinguish four types of
forced migration:

1. Migration due to violence, conflict and catastrophe. Social inequality,

inter-group confrontations, and political controversies promote social
unrest, driving families, groups, and social segments to abandon their
homeland. The violence unleashed by this imbalance may come from
the state, guerrillas, paramilitary groups, or invading armies. This kind
of conflict is a reflection of weak governability and institutional loss of
legitimacy, as well as that of development models. Some of these forms
of migration are acknowledged in international law under asylum,
refuge, and displacement policies. That said, protective instruments
are not always available to those who need them. In addition, natu-
ral phenomena, such as floods, droughts, earthquakes, and hurricanes,
can effectively wipe out populated or residential areas besides damag-
ing production infrastructure. The environmental destruction and

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pollution caused by the unrestrained expansion of urban areas destroys

natural habitats, threatens biodiversity, and limits the poor’s access to
natural resources. Furthermore, phenomena associated with climate
change and global warming constitute, together with other elements, a
recurring or emerging cause of forced migration. International aid poli-
cies use the term ‘refuge’ to describe this kind of assistance to migrants
(Castles 2002). This category of forced migration involves 43 million
refugees and internally displaced people (UNHCR 2011).
2. Smuggling and trafficking of persons. This grouping is associated with coer-
cion, kidnapping, and deceit, and includes sexual exploitation and ille-
gal adoption among other serious human rights violations. This form
of forced migration has increased in alarming fashion over the past few
years and has become a highly profitable business, given the restric-
tive policies of receiving nations and the harsh living conditions in
­peripheral ones. There are about 2.45 million victims involved in this
category (OIM 2008).
3. Migration due to dispossession, exclusion, and unemployment. Capital
restructuring under neoliberal globalization involves structural changes
in peripheral countries meant to break apart and dismantle production,
financial, commercial, and service systems, forcing large population
segments to emigrate in search of sustenance. Most of the population
suffers social exclusion, whether as producers, workers, consumers,
and/or citizens (Osorio 2010). Structural unemployment is a character-
istic feature of subaltern social groups. This makes it easy for capital
to manoeuvre wage-decrease adjustments and depreciate other work-
ing conditions. Dispossession, exclusion, unemployment, and poverty
are behind the major contemporary labour migration flows; their main
characteristics are vulnerability and extreme exploitation. This third
category of forced migration is, by far, the largest and least protected
by international law. It involves 132 million workers from the south
­without considering the bulk of internal migrants (UN 2010).
4. Migration due to over-qualification and lack of opportunities. Highly skilled
labour segments such as academicians, researchers, intellectuals, artists,
scientists, technologists, and engineers play a critical role in national
development because they generate forms of knowledge and culture that
may be applied for the common good. Nonetheless, peripheral coun-
tries have precarious labour markets, limited institutional support, defi-
cient infrastructure, and low wages, so an important percentage of these
workers becomes, paradoxically, a redundant population, an overskilled
group that cannot profit its country of origin. Shortage of opportuni-
ties, weakened innovation systems, labour market segmentation, and

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Raúl Delgado Wise

limited institutional support make it difficult for many highly skilled

workers to find suitable jobs in their country or hometown. Since for
these people relocating is not a major problem, nor are they looking for
a way to satisfy their basic needs, they resort to migration as an option
to fulfil their labour and intellectual potentials, even when, in many
cases, they experience labour degradation and salary discrimination in
the receiving nations. This fourth category of forced migration encom-
passes about 25.9 million people (Lozano and Gandini 2011).

The conditions under which forced migrations develop involve multiple risks
and dangers, particularly in the case of the most vulnerable groups. These
involve permanent exposure to conditions of labour insecurity and instabil-
ity, and social exclusion in host societies. Furthermore, as has been men-
tioned, international migration is increasingly subject to criminalization
policies and practices, racialization, and race- and gender-based discrimina-
tion, which not only increase vulnerabilities and risk, but also often endanger
life itself (Delgado Wise and Márquez 2009; Castles and Delgado Wise 2008).
The safeguarding of human rights is still a pending issue for most gov-
ernments in countries of origin, transit, and destination. Few nations are
exempt from this responsibility. Either because of the stigma of illegality or
due to racial prejudices—and in fact, mainly because of economic interest,—­
destination countries espouse tacit ignorance regarding the labour and
human rights of migrants. They also put up obstacles that hinder or bar them
from easily obtaining legal residence and citizenship. Countries of origin or
transit function under a double-standard: while governments denounce vio-
lations of the rights of their citizens in destination countries, the rights of
foreigners in their own lands are systematically violated.
Even though international migrants have certain legal means of protection,
such as the 1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of
All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families—still not ratified by any
of the important receptor countries—there are still no effective mechanisms
for their implementation. Instead of adequately formulating the problems
they are exposed to, these groups are classified as ‘economic migrants’ in a
context that presupposes the existence of individual liberty, social mobility,
and a truly free market (Delgado Wise et al. 2010).

The Win-Win-Win Fiction

The relationship between migration, development, and human rights is a

topic of growing interest among international organizations, academics, and
civil society organizations. To varying degrees, international organizations
such as the World Bank and the International Organization for Migration

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Migration and Labour under Neoliberal Globalization

see remittances as an essential tool in the development of migrant-sending,

underdeveloped countries. They also envisage international migration man-
agement as a core element in the design and implementation of migration
policies that are apparently beneficial for all parties. We argue that this per-
spective, which has dominated both the academic and policy agendas, is
essentially one-sided, de-contextualized, reductionist, and misleading. It
overlooks the realm of neoliberal globalization and unequal development in
which contemporary migration is embedded. It also disregards human and
labour rights as central and intrinsic elements of coherent migration and
development policies, as well as the exploitation, social exclusion, human
insecurity, and criminalization suffered by international migrants. In addi-
tion, it masks most of the fundamental contributions made by migrants to
the destination countries, and ignores the costs of migration for the countries
of origin; costs that go far beyond the overemphasized ‘positive’ impact of
remittances.
Among the cardinal elements of the dominant discourse, we can men-
tion remittances, microfinance, human capital (a term that reflects a narrow
economistic view), and, perhaps more importantly, the pretention to govern
or manage migration without changing or even mentioning its root causes.
Despite the insistence of international bodies and governments regard-
ing the alleged positive effects of migration and remittances as detonators of
development in countries of origin, there is no empirical evidence to warrant
this assumption.
It is worth adding that the practices and discourses under the label of migra-
tion management advocated by the International Organization for Migration
(IOM) and other multilateral agencies, have been promoted through new
narratives that distort reality, depoliticize migration, negate the existence of
divergent interests or asymmetries of power and conflicts, and promote an
unsustainable and incoherent triple-win scenario in favour of the interests
of the migrant-receiving countries, and more specifically, the large multina-
tional corporations rooted in such countries. In this view a ‘good migrant’,
regardless of his or her status and condition, is respectful of law, flexible
to market needs, and eager to contribute to the development of his or her
­country of origin (Geiger and Pecoud 2010).

Towards an Alternative Agenda

The development of social alternatives must address two fundamental aspects.

The first one has to do with deconstructing the power of capital and the state—
a constituent, structural power that acts as a hegemonic force that must be
confronted. Not doing so will nullify any attempt to develop alternatives and

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Raúl Delgado Wise

will justify illusory, naive, and irrelevant positions. The second consideration
involves detecting points of weakness or rupture, or spaces from which sub-
ordinate social segments may generate social development alternatives. This
challenge is at the centre of the debate between those who attempt to achieve
social change without seizing power (e.g. by limiting change to institutional
reform or developing non-capitalist economic forms of organization within
capitalism) and those who propose the need for a thorough change: another
world, a different economy and society, and a development that is more equi-
table and socially inclusive, and sustainable in terms of both the environ-
ment and livelihoods. Without going into details, we merely want to stress
that, from a south-based perspective, the current social order (or disorder) is
perceived as an unfair, inhumane, and predatory system: there is a need for
alternatives that contemplate genuine development.
From a critical perspective (that is to say, one that questions neoliberal
institutionality and the structural dynamics of capitalism in order to pro-
mote development alternatives that benefit the majority of the population),
sustainable human development is understood as a social construction pro-
cess that starts by creating awareness: the need for change, organization, and
social participation in order to generate a popular power that can then strive
for social emancipation. This involves the eschewal of socially alienating
­relations that deprive people of their merits, destroy the environment, and
damage social coexistence.
In order to characterize sustainable human development we must first
unravel its essential components. First, it must be centred on human life and
conceived in opposition to capital and its demand for the highest possible
profits. This first step is necessary but not sufficient, since it can remain in the
realm of abstract humanism. Real human development requires social condi-
tions that can enable equity and social justice on all social and spatial levels.
Sustainability requires, in turn, that the strategy of development be feasible,
realistic, and long-lasting, with solid social, political, economic, cultural, and
environmental foundations.
Nonetheless, human development cannot be defined ex ante as a globally
applicable model, a prefabricated, one-size-fits-all design. It requires propos-
ing and specifying concrete strategies, having initially addressed structural
hindrances, institutional restraints, local peculiarities, regional cultures, and
the practices of involved social actors.
Building a strategic platform for social transformation capable of fuelling a
counter-hegemonic social power is an urgent task in the context of the cur-
rent global crisis and beyond. This task demands the confluence of collective
knowledge and intelligentsia at the service of the working class in alliance
with social organizations and social movements. This project has already
seen important advances, as evidenced by initiatives from within civil society

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Migration and Labour under Neoliberal Globalization

such as People’s Global Action on Migration, Development, and Human

Rights, the Global Coalition on Migration, and the World Social Forum of
Migrations, among others. We need academics that reject being imprisoned
in an ivory tower and are willing to work, hand in hand, with civil society
organizations. For this crucial task much more networking through the devel-
opment of alternative research agendas is needed. This requires educating
new generations of working-class intellectuals or organic intellectuals.
By way of conclusion, we propose a series of theses that point in this
direction:

1. The current model of world accumulation and its power system cannot
be dismantled or shifted without the development of an autonomous
and independent social power. There is currently no collective agent that
can confront the power of big business (i.e. the major MNCs, imperial-
ist governments and their armies, international financial organizations,
and the scaffolding of associated actors that provide them with ideo-
logical, diplomatic, and political support). There have been, however,
major local, domestic, and international efforts to organize social groups
and movements that have defended their rights from the neoliberal
onslaught, proposing some alternative ideas and projects. Strategies for
real human development will result from social construction processes
carried out by organized groups, civil society, and progressive academia
on the local, national, and, above all, international levels. The project
for a counter-hegemonic social power cannot be postponed; it requires
free, autonomous, and independent civilian organization. This project
has already seen important advances, as evidenced by initiatives such as
the International Peasant Movement Vía Campesina, the World Social
Forum, the People’s Global Action on Migration, Development, and
Human Rights, and the World Social Forum on Migrations, among others.
2. The neoliberal state, guarantor of corporate profitability, should be
replaced by the social state, promoter of human development. The
resources of territories, nations, and populations are offered as low-priced
(‘competitive’ in neoliberal jargon) raw materials in order to guarantee
high profit margins, while institutions and public policies act as guaran-
tors of corporate demands. This is why the reconstruction of the state is
a fundamental requirement for the activation of human development
dynamics. Democratizing access to power through legitimate, legal, and
transparent means and promoting a parliamentary agenda and a legal
framework related to popular interests must be the first steps towards
responsible state-based social development (e.g. a network of social
protection that can guarantee that social efforts meant to generate sur-
plus can be channelled towards redistribution mechanisms that aim

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Raúl Delgado Wise

for equality). The social state must safeguard the peasant economy, as
well as universal public education, social security, decent employment,
and the satisfaction of social needs such as food, education, and health.
The social state bears social responsibility for power, capital, and the
­protection of labour and nature.
3. The neoliberal strategy of global expansion must be replaced by a social
transformation strategy centred on social sustainability. In the dominant
accumulation model, labour and nature have been blindly overexploited
to the point of unsustainability, regardless of the social and environ-
mental costs. In contrast, social sustainability must fully guarantee
human reproduction. This is not possible without encouraging a symbi-
otic relationship between the human population and nature—one that
goes beyond radical conservationism. A strategy for sustainable human
development also requires shifting the state’s developmental manage-
ment so that it can control foreign investment, establish equitable and
complementary commercial treaties, produce its own infrastructure for
scientific and technological development, and, in general, fight all forms
of unequal exchange and surplus transfer. New modes of integration and
regional cooperation must be underway to exercise sovereignty.
4. Against the dominant trend towards structural unemployment, job
insecurity, and superexploitation, a decent work agenda should be pro-
moted. Driven by the compulsive quest for profit, private capital resorts
to deregulating, subcontracting, and unemployment to lower labour
costs. Additionally, technological innovation tends to make workers
dispensable. Extremely precarious labour categories have emerged in
the labour market. We must disassemble the strategies behind labour
instability and insecurity by demanding labour rights that will include
access to a decent job, restitution of the social security system, and the
advancement of human development in both the peripheries and cen-
tral nations. Labour sovereignty is essential, that is, we need state poli-
cies that guarantee full and decent employment.
5. Elite democracy must be transformed into a truly representative and
participative democracy. The formal democracy imposed by neoliber-
alism has been confined to elections. Citizens, with only a minimal
chance to express their opinion, are ritually called to deposit a ballot
for a member of the political class who has been previously selected to
represent the economic and political elites in the areas of government
or parliamentary power. Encouraging the larger population to partici-
pate in public issues actively is an unavoidable requirement of alterna-
tive development. In addition to access to reliable information, said
participation requires spaces for public reflection and decision-making.

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The system must encourage social organization and participation, and

promote instruments of participation inherent to direct democracy
(e.g. revocation of mandate, affirmative action, plebiscites, referen-
dums, and citizen initiatives).
6. Given the climate of structural violence and human insecurity, the
defence of human rights should involve civil society as well as the state.
The rights of big business openly surpass those of the population and
the environment. A radical change in the system of values is needed
to grant precedence to human rights across economic, labour, social,
political, and cultural realms. Furthermore, we should consider the
right to human development as a way of guaranteeing the fulfilment
of basic needs; access to decent, safe, and well-paid jobs; the nurturing
of analytic, creative, and artistic abilities; and access to participatory
decision-making spaces. The problem of forced migration demands that
we address the rights of migrants and their families in places of origin,
destination, transit, and return. The right not to emigrate should be in
place in the countries of origin. This implies creating a material and sub-
jective infrastructure that allows the population to settle in an environ-
ment of generalized human development and common welfare capable
of transforming migration into an option rather than a necessity.

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