VN seeks to improve protection of migrants’ rights
I MPROV E D i nt e r n a t i on a l reg ulations and standards to protect the rights and welfare of migrants, including t housa nds of Viet na mese g uest workers, are needed in today’s g loba l ised world, spea kers said at an internationa l conference on mig r at ion a nd labour held on Friday in Ho Chi Minh Cit y.
Labour migration is a highly f luid phenomenon in t he 21st centur y, capturing publ ic at t ent ion a nd d r i v i ng political controversy globally, Professor Ka x ton Yu-Kwa n Siu of t he Hong Kong Polytechnic Universit y’s Department of Applied Socia l Sciences said.
“There are more and more labour migrants working in areas beyond their birth country or region than ever before,” he said.
“Although scattered across the social ladder, migrant workers have always clustered, at least initially, in the bottom rungs of the working class.
“Even as cross-border or inter-regional movement may beckon as a source of hope and new opportunity, the experience for migrants and their families is often fraught with peril,” he added.
In Vietnam, foreign investors, for example, had built many export-oriented factories that had generated a constant rural-to-urban work migration flow, Siu said.
Nguyen Thi Hong Xoan, dean of the sociology faculty at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City, said that migrant workers faced a lack of protections, high recruitment costs, and costly and lengthy migration procedures.
In 2015, some 36 per cent of Ho Chi Minh Cit y’s population were migrants with temp or a r y r e s i denc e s t a t u s , according to figures from the World Bank.
Another survey by the World Bank in the same year showed three quarters of employees at foreign firms in Vietnam were migrant workers.
Around 80,000 Vietnamese leave the country for jobs overseas each year, according to the Inter national Labour Organisation (ILO). About 400,000 Vietnamese workers are present in more than 40 c ountr i e s and t e r r i t or i e s worldwide.
According to the World Bank’s Migration and Remittances, the inflows of remittances to Vietnam by guest workers reached $13.8 billion in 2017, a rise of 16 per cent over 2016, ranking eighth in the world, showing the economic significance of labour migration.
However, t here a re major issues associated with labour migration such as t he v iolat ion of r ig hts of workers by employers, breach of contracts and desertion by worke r s , i l l e g a l ne t wor k s of recruitment, and v iolation of gover nment reg u lat ions on recruitment procedures.
Migrant workers are of ten vulnerable and policies across t he region do litt le to address t heir needs, according to t he ILO.
According to UN data, 80 per cent of intra-Asean migrants are low-skilled and many of them are undocumented.
Construction, plantation work and domestic services are the sectors that receive the most migrant workers.
They of ten face a r rest or deportation when attempting to f ig ht for t heir r ig hts, a nd a re bound to specia l documents t hat limit t heir abilit y to change jobs.
The conference on “Migration and Labour in Vietnam” gathered scholars from different parts of the world and drew on a wide variety of disciplines, including histor y, anthropology, ethnic studies, gender studies, public health, law and public policy.
The event aimed to generate new research agendas and propose policies that can i mprov e c o n d i t i o n s f o r migrants.
The event was organised by Ho Chi Minh City’s University of Social Sciences and Humanities and Hong Kong Polytechnic University.