Migrant protection vs merchants of labor
Illegal recruiters were warned that they will be the next target of this administration, next to drug industry players.
In the last ASEAN summit, the leaders signed the ASEAN Consensus on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers in the region. Some highlights of this framework for cooperation include a crackdown on illegal recruiters, prohibition of passport confiscation, and prevention of violence and sexual harassment in the workplace.
Ensuring migrant welfare and protection has continued to be an advocacy for decades now. We truly look forward to more joint local and global successful efforts to protect migrants, including ours, not only in our country, our region, but all throughout the world.
An important step for migrant protection is to comprehensively study and understand the roles of and processes taken by various stakeholders of migration that include the migrants and their households, migrant their advocates and protectors (the church and civil society). Allow me to share today my earlier discussion published in the Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 2009 about the role of the other migrant industry stakeholders: the state and agents and brokers for migration.
"The State plays varying roles in migration - as facilitator, as merchant of global labor and care networks and as protector. In performing its functions, the State is responsible for the formulation of legislation and enactment of laws, the implementation and regulation of laws and policies, and negotiating local and international linkages, among others.The State defines the exit, entry, work/training requirements, status and period of residence and regulation and monitoring of migrants, among others.
With migration now a thriving business and industry, layers upon layers of agents, recruiters, and brokers, eager for profits and businesses, have been involved in the various stages of the movement of migrants from their country of origin to their destination and back.
From training, to recruitment, to entry and dispatch, to marriage, settlement, overstaying, divorce, detention and deportation, merchants of labor have expanded their scope of operation. Their types and roles have evolved as the growing Filipino population came to form a sizable "market," merchants of labor and their related businesses extended to transport, telecommunication, commodity, savings and loans, insurance and real estate markets, among others.Later, as more foreigners, including Filipinos aspired to earn more, stay longer or permanently in the country of destination, or got involved in divorce, detention or deportation, the merchants of labor also expanded their "services," often for exorbitant fees. The composition of those involved in the business of care and labor has also gone global.
For example, in Japan, brokers and agents have shifted from being Japanese ventures to combined Japanese-Filipino or transnational partnerships, which operate in various locations in Japan, in the Philippines or elsewhere. Other businesses which used to be Japanese-owned have also undergone notable changes. Many omise (clubs) in Japan employing Filipino entertainers, for example, are now owned and managed by couples where the husband is Japanese and the wife is Filipino. Also, newly emerged commercial care-related companies and Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) are managed and owned by Japanese nationals married to Filipino partners.
The mode of operation and the fees merchants of labor charge for their services vary. While some do provide help and assistance to their clients, many more resort to exploitative and harmful practices, which render their clients, especially women, vulnerable. Even the dead are not beyond the reach of the merchants of labor, who expanded into the business of facilitating cremation or transport back to the Philippines or other home countries."
The State and other advocates (local and international) should join hands and exert more effective collaborative effort to stop the abuses of the merchants of migrant labor.