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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 79-iv House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Tuesday 13 January 2004 DR NICHOLAS VAN HEAR, DR CECILIA TACOLI, MS CATHERINE BARBER and MR RAM CHANDRA PANDA Evidence heard in Public Questions 88 - 137
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the International Development Committee on Tuesday 13 January 2004 Members present Tony Baldry, in the Chair John Barrett Mr John Battle Hugh Bayley Mr Tony Colman Mr Quentin Davies Mr Piara S Khabra Mr Andrew Robathan Tony Worthington ________________
Witnesses: Dr Nicholas Van Hear, Senior Researcher, and head of the Compas research programme on migration and asylum, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford, Dr Cecilia Tacoli, Senior Research Associate, International Institute for Environment and Development, Ms Catherine Barber, Economic Policy Adviser, Oxfam, and Mr Ram Chandra Panda, Deputy Speaker, Orissa Legislative Assembly, India, examined. Chairman: Thank you very much for coming this afternoon. Q88 Mr Khabra: If you look at the history of migration, you will find that the pattern of migration has been predominantly male. Recently, however, my personal experience as a Member of Parliament through my asylum immigration casework has been that more and more women are migrating. The number is increasing and sometimes children also travel with them. The gender dimension to migration is something new and it raises all sorts of different questions with regard to the women having to migrate for various reasons, at what stage of life and in what capacity. All of these different matters, which have never been part of the discussion and debate, are therefore new issues. I do not know whether you would agree with me that the women who come on their own - this is my personal knowledge - have been sending money back and supporting their families. In some cases the males are back in their country and the females are in this country, sometimes living in conditions which would not be considered humane. In view of the changes which have taken place, perhaps I can ask you this question. How does the gender of migrants affect the motivation for, experiences, and consequences of, migration? What are the policy implications of the gendering of migration? Dr Tacoli: There is generally very strong evidence that women are probably the fastest growing group of migrants in the world. It is probably useful to link this to changes in labour markets. Some of the migration of women is motivated by the expansion of new sectors of employment: for example, the international tourist industry, which very often attracts regional migrants, for instance from Tanzania and other countries into Kenya. There is also increasing demand for domestic workers in northern countries, in higher-income countries. There are also the export processing zones' industries, which tend to be quite selective in employing female workers. I think that it is important therefore to look at what are the so‑called "pull" aspects. There is increasing demand: there is no doubt about that. It is important to look at motivations. We have done research in sub-Saharan Africa. In many cases the women who migrate are women who do not have access to assets in the home areas: for example, young women who do not count on the inheritance of farming land. However, they are expected to provide unpaid family labour. So if there are alternatives, they will go for alternatives. They would also quite like not to be forced to have these options. The issue of choice is therefore very important when it comes to women migrants. In terms of the policies which are related to these increasing female migrants, there is a very general one. It is that there is a need to regulate better the sectors of employment in which women, especially migrant women, are the majority. These are the sectors which are the least protected in terms of workers' rights, working conditions and so on. The other thing which is important in terms of policy is that there are also cultural and social gender norms, whereby women are usually expected, either as mothers or as daughters, to send a higher proportion of their income as remittances than men usually do. This means that there is an impact on their living conditions. They will go for cheaper accommodation, for example, which is often in insecure areas. They will forgo medical treatment if they are undocumented or unregistered, and so on. So there are specific elements which relate to women more than to men. The other aspect which also needs to be linked to the migration of women is that, to a large extent, the victims of trafficking are girl children and women. There is therefore a need there for policies which address trafficking at the international level. Ms Barber: I am in agreement with most of what was just said. I would just take issue slightly with the idea that women used not to constitute a major proportion of migrant flows. There has been some new data from the UN Population Division in 1998, and in 2000 they published studies which showed that, even back in 1960, women constituted about 46 % of the migrant flows. Although the data is somewhat rough and ready, I think that women have always been a major part of migration flows; it is just that they have perhaps become more noticed now by studies and by policymakers. To have a gendered migration policy means that you have to look at every stage of the migration process. That is, the decision to leave; the journey; the experience once you are in the host country; then perhaps, if you return home, the experience upon return. You have to find suitable policy responses which reflect those considerations. If you look, for example, at Philippino workers coming to Europe as domestic workers - 70 % of overseas Filipinos are women - they often work in very hard conditions, are very vulnerable, and are supporting families back home. We have to ask a number of questions. Do they have a choice about migrating? Do they have possibilities for generating their own livelihoods at home? Can development assistance help them to have a choice if they do not? Then if women are being driven to enter through illegal means of entry because it is difficult to get access to rich countries' labour markets legally, does that drive them to be smuggled? Does that make them more vulnerable? There is often a very fine line between smuggling and trafficking. We therefore have to ask whether restrictive immigration policies are particularly hitting women, who are more vulnerable to smuggling and trafficking. Once they are in Britain or in Europe, we have to ask whether their rights are protectable. If you are a domestic worker, does that mean that you have more difficulties than perhaps somebody who is working outside of the home? There is a lot of evidence that domestic workers have their passports withheld; that they do not get paid, or even fed; that they may be subject to violence. Gendered migration policies have to take account of all of that. Dr Van Hear: On the gender distribution, with respect to refugees it is often said that women and children constitute the majority of refugee populations in aggregate and this figure of 75 % women and children is often quoted. If you think about it, however, that is a normal distribution because nearly half of the population would be female and half of the children would be female. So I think that we have to be a little wary of some of these claims. I would also like to draw the Committee's attention to an interesting emerging body of research on what is called "global care chains". This refers to, for example, a Sri Lankan woman who goes to work in the Gulf, who has then to find someone to look after her children back in Sri Lanka, who may in fact employ another woman to look after those children - who then has to find somebody else to look after her children. There are therefore these knock-on effects of the migration of women of which policymakers should be aware. On policies towards refugees, there has been an increasing emphasis on projects geared specifically for women refugees in camps: for example, income generation; micro finance schemes; various kinds of projects. However, the tide in the aid field seems to be turning a little, and attention is now turning towards what men should be doing in those camps. They are left twiddling their thumbs, drinking, taking drugs and so on. The male side of projects needs to be paid some attention. Q89 Tony Worthington: On this disparity you were referring to in relation to males and females, and that there was always a larger number of women, was it that in the past the men came over first, and then the families - or those who were going to become family - were brought across, and now it is much more often that the initial migrant is a woman? Is that where the difference is? Ms Barber: Yes, I think that would be right. I did not say that women had been in the majority but just that there had always been substantial flows. I think that you are right, however, that often they would have been coming as dependants, as family members. Q90 Mr Colman: I was just reflecting on that because, certainly from my surgeries, that is exactly what is happening now: that the woman is the first asylum seeker and the rest of the family tend to follow. My questions are about the links between conflict and migration. It is a very interesting memorandum from Oxfam. In it you say that your research into the global arms trade "has drawn the vicious circle between poverty and conflict. As per capita income halves, the risk of civil war roughly doubles". You talk about the "link between violent conflict and the flight of people to seek refuge in other countries". Could the panel talk about what they think is the relationship between conflict, migration and poverty, and whether there should be greater use of aid which is directed to reduce conflict - particularly conflicts which are most likely to lead to outflows of refugees? Catherine, it is your paper which has instigated the question. Could you perhaps answer first? Ms Barber: First of all, it is clear that the relationship is a very complex one. You cannot say conflict causes migration, poverty causes conflict causes migration, but there are relationships there. I am a little wary about saying that we should use aid to reduce conflict to reduce migration. I think that the aim of aid policy should be to reduce poverty and to reduce suffering. If conflict is generating refugee crises and that is a cause of poverty and suffering then, yes, we should be directing aid towards that. If what might be suggested would be to give aid to stop conflicts so that not so many migrants come to the UK, then I would feel a little sceptical about that. Dr Van Hear: I think that in previous sessions you have addressed this question of the connections between conflict and poverty and migration. Suffice to say that the countries that are in conflict also feature poor governance and their economies are in poor shape. So there are very mixed motivations for migration. On the question of aid, I think that it is more a question of what kind of aid you are talking about and what mixes of aid. There is a tendency for development aid to go to relatively well-performing developing countries, for a mix of development aid and humanitarian assistance to go to middle countries that are unstable but not in violent conflict, and for humanitarian assistance to go to those countries that are trouble spots, that are in civil war. The problem is that the humanitarian aid does not have the instruments, the presence, or the longevity in the trouble spots to deal with the factors that are provoking conflict. We therefore need to look at the kind of mixes of aid and styles of assistance to the different categories of countries, of which I have identified three kinds there. Q91 Mr Colman: There is another element, is there not? It is not just migration and humanitarian aid for development but also arms exports. Do you think that the UK has coherence, in terms that it works to pull these policies together? Dr Van Hear: What? Between the arms industry? Q92 Mr Colman: Yes. Dr Van Hear: No, of course not. Q93 Mr Colman: Cecilia? Dr Tacoli: No, of course not. I totally agree. Perhaps I may come back to your question about the relationship between conflict and migration. My institute has worked on this, probably from the other end. Our work in the Sahel region shows that things can work the other way round. Much of the latent conflict which is now crippling the wealthiest nations in the area is to some extent linked to migration and to political use of migration. I think that there is a role for aid here, and probably development aid. Very briefly, what has been happening in the plantation areas, the forest areas on the coast, is that a lot of labour was provided by migrant workers, who were very often working on the basis of secondary rights to land. It means that, even under customary tenure systems, they did not have title deeds or anything formal. These things had to be renewed, one generation to the other. There were changes with changes in population density and in the general economic environment. It has to be said that migrants have been a key factor in the development of the plantation system in West Africa. They have been very important. There is the combination of lack of land rights and the fact that the movement between countries is largely unregulated and undocumented, partly because people come from the same ethnic groups and so there is a porosity in the borders which reflects what people actually do for a living or their relations and their networks. One thing which is very much an area where development aid can support nations where such things are happening is more attention to land tenure systems, for migrants and for non‑migrants, and also helping to document South-South migration, which very often goes completely undetected and, because of that, can be used for political ends - as is happening in the Ivory Coast, for example. Q94 Mr Colman: Looking at Côte d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso, the problems in terms of the migrant labour coming in from Burkina Faso and the divisions within Côte d'Ivoire and the conflicts there, would you like to express any view whether aid could have been used much more effectively? You talk about land tenure, but is there an issue there in terms of development aid for Burkina Faso? Is that the area which you are exploring? Dr Tacoli: I would not go as far as saying that. There is such a tradition in the area for people from the Sahel border to move to plantations further south and then to go back that this is not necessarily something we should think of as a problem. It is the way it is regulated and the way people's rights are protected which are probably the main issues. Q95 Chairman: Last year we were in Pakistan, in the North-West Frontier Province amongst others. There was considerable and understandable frustration on the part of the government of Pakistan that they had absorbed huge numbers of refugees from Afghanistan - largely Pathans but others as well - and there had seemingly been no kind of recognition of this by the international community. There is a slight issue, is there not, on the nomenclature? The word "migrants" obviously covers a very broad range of people, but one also gets internally displaced persons and what we might characteristically describe as refugees, i.e. flows of refugees across borders. On border areas one very often sees large numbers of either IDPs, refugees or whatever. I noticed that in the COMPAS paper you are quoted as saying, "With some justification, and pointing to the neglect of the principle of responsibility‑sharing, some developing countries hosting refugees have responded by becoming less willing to accommodate new inflows. Directing aid to such countries would recognise the contribution such refugee-hosting countries make, and encourage them to maintain a liberal policy towards receiving refugees". In a sense, one can understand that if you are a poor country a substantial influx of refugees can be quite a burden. Would the provision of increased assistance to developing countries which host large numbers of refugees or refugee populations be a sensible move? Should we be targeting greater assistance to them, and how should it be done? Should it be done through the UNHCR, or what mechanism should be used to do it? Or will the counter-argument be that it will simply encourage further migration to receiving areas, and people would just migrate wherever they think they will get the best deal from the international community? Dr Van Hear: As you pointed out with the Pakistan case - and there are many other places, like Tanzania and so on - there has been a certain weariness with these very protracted refugee presences. Typically, there is a welcome for people at first; then patience wears thin. Partly that is a function of these host countries' policies towards refugees. If they are not allowed to work or to move, then they cannot contribute to the local economy. I think that a distinction needs to be drawn between directing aid to these countries that have hosted refugees for a long time and the actual places where they are hosted. Often they are in quite remote areas. The question, of course, is if you allocate money or aid towards such countries, will the funds reach those remote places? I do not think that there is a danger of attracting more refugees to such areas, but there is a history of the manipulation of aid for refugees. Historically, countries like Malawi, Somalia and so on, have milked the aid market, if you like. Q96 Chairman: There are particular political issues in relation to UNRWA, Palestine and so on, but they would be rather exceptional cases - refugees being used to make a particular statement. Dr Van Hear: Yes. You were asking about the mechanisms. Q97 Chairman: It was really in terms of what, in the great tapestry of policies, is the UNHCR doing in all of this? In your judgment, what does UNHCR do? Dr Van Hear: They have long had policies to assist development of refugee populations in refugee camps. They go through various acronyms according to fad, but I think that it is now DAR, Development Assistance for Refugees, or DLI, Development through Local Integration - which means that you integrate refugees within the locality of the host state, and ultimately they may choose to stay and become citizens contributing to the economy or they may eventually return. So there are these mechanisms that have had quite a long history and have had more attention recently. Q98 Chairman: Is there anything you would like to add, Cecilia? Dr Tacoli: We do not have any experience of it. Q99 Hugh Bayley: Would one of you like to comment on what lessons you can learn when things go so badly wrong? I am thinking of the way the refugee exodus from Rwanda was dealt with 10 years ago. Why did that contribute so much to the ability of irregular forces to continue a conflict, which really has gone on for 10 years since? What might have been done better in that circumstance? What lessons can we learn more generally? Dr Van Hear: Perhaps some means of disarming the armed people within those flows, which was one of the main problems with the Rwanda exodus. But how to do that, I do not know. It presents huge logistical problems when you have a million people crossing a border within a matter of a few days or weeks. How do you screen and filter for those who are armed within those huge populations? That has to be addressed somehow. Q100 Hugh Bayley: To move the discussion on, what more could the UK do to put a stop to trafficking and smuggling of people into the UK? What purchase does the UK have on efforts to prevent trafficking and smuggling of individuals between developing countries? Ms Barber: Perhaps I could address the first question. In terms of trafficking and smuggling into Europe and into the UK, one of the reasons that smuggling in particular happens is that there are so few legal routes for entry. In terms of people who want to come as economic migrants or even as asylum seekers, I think that recent research for the Home Office found there was strong evidence that measures aimed at preventing access to the EU had led to growing trafficking and illegal entry of bona fide asylum seekers. I am not saying that all trafficking and smuggling is due to restrictions on entry, but that is one aspect of it. So I think that having routes for regular economic migration, managed migration, would reduce that problem. Q101 Hugh Bayley: Do you have views about the smuggling and trafficking of people into more widely developed countries? Then let us look at the South-South problem. Dr Van Hear: It is obvious that if you increase the restrictions, as Catherine mentioned, on people moving and they are still desperate to move, for whatever reason - for economic betterment or to escape conflict - that will drive up the premiums that smugglers charge. People are still going to use those routes. Somehow that vicious circle of inflating prices and people ever more desperate to get into countries has to be broken. Q102 Hugh Bayley: So what is it you drive up by immigration controls? The price? Dr Van Hear: Yes. Q103 Hugh Bayley: Or the number? You seem to be suggesting that the price is driven up by restrictive immigration policy. Dr Van Hear: Yes, because they have to find new ways to navigate the system. Q104 Hugh Bayley: Catherine is suggesting that the numbers are driven up - I think that is right. Dr Van Hear: By trafficking? No, I do not think so. Ms Barber: I am saying that people who would enter legally as asylum seekers, for example, are forced to enter illegally, and that may be a cause of smuggling. I do not think that is necessarily a question of numbers; it is a question of how you enter. Q105 Hugh Bayley: It seems that you are saying rather different things. You are saying, "Let 100,000 people in as economic migrants and you will reduce substantially the numbers who are trafficked", but maybe you would just have the effect that Nicholas is suggesting and --- Dr Van Hear: I do not think they are contradictory propositions. What Catherine has argued, in terms of work permits that the UK Government has just introduced, for example - a work permit system or intervention - that will relieve some migration pressure and therefore maybe reduce the premium on smugglers. I was going to give you some evidence in the Sri Lankan case, with which I am familiar, and also Somalia. You can see quite clearly an inflation of the fees that are being paid to agents and so on. In the mid-1990s the amount paid to be smuggled to the UK or to Europe by Sri Lankan Tamils was about £5,000. It is now £10,000, £15,000 and £20,000 - or dollars. Q106 Hugh Bayley: You talk about the economic imperative. Do enforcement measures, better catching of trafficking gangsters, have much of a part to play in affecting the numbers of people trafficked? Dr Van Hear: I have no brief for the smugglers or traffickers, but those measures are also going to drive up costs for people to migrate. In turn, that means that only the relatively wealthy can access the asylum system. I think this point has been made before in the submissions to the Committee. The poorer sections of the populations in conflict-ridden countries cannot access the asylum system. They can only move internally or maybe get into a neighbouring country. So there is a built-in unfairness there in terms of access to the asylum system. Q107 Hugh Bayley: But 'twas ever thus. If you had legal economic migration for people from areas suffering conflict, it would be the better-off, the better-skilled - because it still costs. Dr Van Hear: But if the purpose of the asylum system is to give people protection, to me it seems rather wrong for only the rich to be able to access that system. Q108 Hugh Bayley: What proportion of people who are trafficked are escaping persecution? It seems to me that if somebody is about to run, you do not cut some great deal at a cost of $10,000 with some trafficker. Dr Van Hear: A distinction has been made between trafficking on the one hand and smuggling on the other. The terms have been mixed up in the past, but trafficking now usually refers to some kind of coercion - for child prostitution, for female prostitution, or whatever - where the person trafficked does not know their fate; whereas smuggling is seen as a less coercive form of migration, which still involves payment and may indeed involve exploitation, but it is a slightly different circumstance. Ms Barber: I wanted to highlight the US-Mexican border experience, where there has been an enormous amount more expenditure on enforcement, catching people and throwing them back out. The experience has been that people have tried to enter several times, and eventually they will probably get across. They will just have to try more times. Also, putting all the defences in the border towns has caused migrants to go further out along the border, into difficult terrain, and there have been more deaths that way. So I do not think that, in that situation, more spending on enforcement has really had the positive effect that was hoped for. Q109 Hugh Bayley: What about the issue of South-South trafficking? There have been stories recently of trafficking in West Africa - child trafficking of labour for cocoa plantations. There was a ship that seemed to be going up and down the coast. What measures could be taken by Britain specifically, and other developed countries, to address those problems? Should we be addressing those problems? Dr Tacoli: To be even more specific, it is useful to distinguish between different types of trafficking. It is also useful to look at trafficking as something which involves working conditions and exploitation at the other end, once the movement has been completed. A lot of trafficking, for example in south-east Asia, is across borders in forest areas - for example, from Vietnam to Cambodia to Thailand. I think that there is absolutely no doubt that the labour market is one which is fuelled predominantly by Western demand for cheap sex services in Thailand. This is certainly something on which there is the opportunity, and probably the duty, for Western governments to act - on this type of sex tourism - and there are initiatives already in place. More support to Southern governments who are very much engaged in trying to stop this sort of trafficking - there it is probably a matter of encouraging and supporting the sharing of lessons and experiences within a regional context. The other thing is that to some extent this also concerns labour markets in high-income countries. There was something in the Guardian newspaper today about the death of a Chinese worker. It could be said that this man was trafficked, because he was then forced to work in working conditions which are not acceptable within Europe. So the enforcement of the existing legislation on working conditions for migrants and non-migrants, legal and illegal migrants, whoever it is, is also very important - and to detach this from the migration issue to some extent. Q110 Hugh Bayley: You were saying both in developed countries and in developing countries, so which agency is in the lead on it? Is it the ILO? Which international agency? Dr Van Hear: ILO have addressed these kinds of movements. I do not know so much about South-South movements. I would have to check on that. Q111 Hugh Bayley: What you are arguing, Cecilia, is that the unacceptable type of migration exists where somebody, either voluntarily or because of some deception, has been moved into a situation from which they cannot escape. They do not have the money to go home and maybe do not have the papers to go home. They do not have the contacts. These are labour rights issues in many cases. It is not necessarily a lock and key, is it - although in some cases it is? How should developed countries attempt to address those issues in Thailand, say? I am not so much talking about the sex worker. Or in West Africa? How would you deal with the employment conditions, social conditions, and racism maybe, in the recipient country that disempowers migrants? Dr Van Hear: In the case of specific products like carpets, in the manufacture of which children are involved, sewing baseballs, baseball caps and so on, there are mechanisms. You could require some kind of inspection mechanism or monitoring mechanism to eliminate child labour, to ensure that child labour is not used in the manufacture of those products that are imported. Q112 Hugh Bayley: So it would be us aiding the domestic government to enforce some legislation. Dr Van Hear: Yes. It may not be very successful - but such enforcement. Q113 Hugh Bayley: There may not be co-operation from the host government. Dr Van Hear: Yes, that is what I mean. Q114 Hugh Bayley: Sewing baseball caps is better than no employment. Dr Van Hear: Yes. Or the people themselves. Q115 Mr Davies: Ms Barber was saying that one of the major factors driving human trafficking and smuggling was the absence of legal channels for entry. Surely the problem is that there is such pressure from the five billion people or so in the developing world to join the less than one billion people who live in the developed world that any conceivable system of legal immigration into the US or the European Union would not be sufficient even to begin to cope with the demand? So you would still have virtually the same degree of pressure and virtually the same problem. Ms Barber: I take your point. First of all, we can count out a large part of the five billion, because they just do not have the resources to move at all. I put the 2.8 billion who are living under $2 a day in that category. If you look at where people are being trafficked and smuggled to the EU from, a lot of it is from the European periphery. If you are looking at workers or people who are smuggled or trafficked from Ukraine or from the Caucasus, I think that it is not inconceivable that you could have temporary migration schemes which would address some of those pressures. Q116 Mr Battle: Could I focus on the rights of migrants, even within internal migration? In terms of the status of migrants, if they do not have any legal status or quasi-legal status, if they do not have access to health care, education, land rights - particularly if they are temporary or seasonal migrants - what kinds of pressures does that put on to increase migration or to decrease it, and what does it do for development? In two of the submissions - I think in the ODI submission - there was reference to the inability of migrants to claim access to education, health care, water and sanitation. They suggested that the use of ID cards might be explored. The submission from the International Institute for Environment and Development highlighted the question of migrants' rights in relation to land rights and access to services. How does that configure in the whole picture and what should we be doing about it? Dr Van Hear: May I clarify? Are you talking about the status of migrants in destination countries? Q117 Mr Battle: Yes. Dr Van Hear: In developed countries. Q118 Mr Battle: We had some evidence that within India they do not have the same rights as they move from one state to another. Should we try to campaign that everybody gets the same rights? What would it do? Would that then stop migration? Would it increase development? If we are looking at the development of migrants, if they do not have access to health care and education, then presumably we put programmes in. Dr Tacoli: This is quite a complex question and there are several aspects to it. First of all, yes, the rights of migrants at destination are very often linked to better information on what their contribution is to local economies at destination - for example, to urban economies. In Vietnam it is still the case. I would say that quite generally the rural-to-urban migrants are perceived as being on the fringes of the urban economy, using services without really giving anything in exchange. I think that in general on migration, and especially with regard to internal migration, there is not enough information on what the contribution of migrants is at destination. There is a little evidence here and there. We know that migrants do provide low‑cost services which are for emerging middle classes in low-income countries, for example, and in urban areas. We also know that migrants will move where there are economic opportunities. The rates of unemployment or under-employment amongst migrants are usually much lower than amongst non-migrants. So it is very difficult to think that they are not contributing and so, because of that, their rights should be recognised. Again, it is something which involves recording, a certain bureaucratic capacity, and access to information - which probably needs to be supported in low-income countries. The other issue was access to assets for migrants in their home areas. I think that this is very important. To some extent it is also important to distinguish migration as a strategy to improve people's livelihoods: either the migrants' own livelihoods or the extended household, including the part of the household in the home area, or as a strategy just to make a living and survive. To a large extent this then relates to the capacity of being able to invest in assets which are in home areas. One thing we have learned in the past 20 years in development is that what really strengthens people's livelihoods, what makes them survive risks, including climatic disasters or conflict, is the capacity to diversity those sources of income. In this perspective you can see migration as one form of diversification, but there must also be others. For example, migrants coming from small farmer economies, which are now pushed out by more national and international agricultural policies, are losing one part of this diversification. It is very important to look at this broader picture. Q119 Mr Battle: What should the UK be doing to enhance the rights of migrants in developing countries? Campaigning or providing services? What is your view on what we should be doing? Dr Van Hear: Perhaps I may back up what Cecilia said, and this perhaps indirectly answers your question. There is growing evidence from various pieces of research that secure status in the destination country - it does not have to be citizenship, but secure residence - forms a basis for migrants to provide development inputs to their home countries, both in terms of remittances, investments and so on, but also that they are more prepared to return to their home countries if they are guaranteed a secure status in the destination country. In terms of development, therefore, secure status in the destination country can promote those kinds of inputs, both in terms of the capacity to direct remittances and so on, and the willingness to do so. To backtrack to your point about migration pressure, it is perhaps worth remembering that the proportion of international migrants has remained roughly the same over the last five decades or so, at about 2% of the world population. So it is not a huge population that we are talking about. Even though more people might want to migrate, that is the actual proportion. Q120 Mr Davies: Two per cent per annum? Dr Van Hear: No. The stock, if you like. Ms Barber: I would just come back to the question of what the UK can do for migrants within developing countries - internal migration within developing countries - so that their rights are respected. I think that, as a donor, the UK can encourage developing countries to mainstream migration in their poverty reduction analysis, in the same way as gender, or HIV/AIDS, or conflict are mainstreamed. I will give you an example. I have been working recently in the Kotido region in Uganda, where there is a large pastoralist community and there is seasonal migration. It is a predictable pattern of migration, such that the menfolk and the boys from the villages will go off for six months a year and look after the cattle and then come back. Even so, their public services do not respond to that, because it is not in the planning mentality; they have not captured it yet. That means that the boys are not going to school. The girls are not going to school either, but the boys are not going to school partly because they are migrating. When the government allocates funds to districts, it does it on the basis of permanent residence in the district. If there is seasonal migration from Kotido to Kitgum and those people do not count in the population figures, then the funds do not come there. That is in Uganda, which is doing pretty well in terms of poverty reduction. So I think that mainstreaming migration could really help. Q121 John Barrett: Perhaps I could move on to the rights of immigrants in the UK. The UK Government have not ratified the UN Convention on the Protection of Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. The Government argue that that it has the balance right between the rights of migrant workers and immigration control. Do you agree? Do you think that the Government have the balance right? Ms Barber: Oxfam would certainly encourage the Government to sign the Convention. If the provisions for migrant workers' rights are as good as we say they are, then I think that we should not be afraid of signing this Convention. Dr Van Hear: I echo that. Q122 John Barrett: Are you aware of anything which would dramatically change if the Government decide to sign the Convention - which would change from the situation now? Dr Van Hear: To my knowledge, it is only the sending countries of origin - migrant countries of origin - that have ratified and signed the Convention and that no destination countries have. So the UK would be a leader if it were to do so. Ms Barber: I am not aware of anything that would hugely change but, having said that, if we do not expect big changes then why should we be afraid to sign it? If there were going to be changes and that would mean that migrants were doing better, then we should also sign it. So I do not think that there is any reason why we should not sign it, on that argument. Q123 Tony Worthington: In each of your papers I think you all say that it would be better if everything was more coherent - which I would agree with. However, you have dealt with migration in different bags. There is the asylum bag, the development bag, the humanitarian bag, the trade bag, and so on. Have any of you seen where anyone has achieved coherence? Where progress has been made? None of you goes on to say, "This is a coherent policy that we are offering to you". Is that because it is too difficult? Dr Van Hear: My experience, and probably your experience, is that the home affairs or domestic affairs side of things have a very different set of interests from the development people, and there are quite evident tensions between them. You can see this at the EU level, and I imagine in the UK Government as well. There are therefore inherent tensions there to be overcome. I think that a very small step in the right direction has been this high‑level working group on asylum immigration in the EU, which has at least brought together those various parties. It has not been successful. The migration control imperative has dominated in that format. As I understand it, it has been too unilateral. That means the EU end of things has dominated in these partnerships that they are supposed to be trying to develop with target countries in the developing world. However, at least it is a forum where these different elements of policy - foreign policy, development policy, migration control, security - can come together and talk to each other. So I would say that there is a need in the UK to offer some kind of similar forum where those parties come together, if they do not already. Some kind of standing committee on migration and development, for example, might be useful. Q124 Tony Worthington: Is the biggest force for change or coherence likely to be labour shortage in Europe, perhaps the United States, and other countries - where they would have to take a different attitude to migration? Dr Van Hear: It is one spur, yes - where both migration and development issues are forced together, both in terms of development in the developed world and the impact on the sending countries. Ms Barber: Yes. I think what Nicholas was saying was that there would be a convergence towards interests being aligned - as opposed to there being attention to wanting to keep people out, people wanting them to come in. If there is a labour shortage or a demographic trend such that we actually need more people, then that inherent tension that he was talking about does start to disappear. In the absence of a perfect forum for reconciling trade, aid, immigration, asylum, et cetera, I would like to see the Department for International Development analysing other policies from the Home Office or from the Foreign Office a little more assertively, to say, "What impact will this have on development?" For example, to look at the recent sector-based schemes from the Home Office, under which 10,000 low‑skilled economic migrants are coming into the UK this year. There has not been an analysis of that from a development point of view, and that is something which could very easily have been done. That would have been a step towards joined-up policymaking. Dr Van Hear: Perhaps I could give one example of coherence or non-coherence at the other end, at the sending end. I have interviewed households in Sri Lanka, Tamil households in the conflict areas, who feature many different forms of migration. Some, the elderly, might therefore stay in their home village; others are internally displaced within Sri Lanka; still others have sought refuge in Tamil Nadu in south India; other members of the same family or extended family have gone to Norway, Britain, or wherever; others may have gone to work as labour migrants in the Gulf countries. My point is that a policy change in one of those countries or environments - in the Gulf or in the UK - will impact on all those other forms of migration, and it will affect the kinds of strategies that households try to work out in terms of their livelihoods, for instance. So that is one area where there is a need for coherence. You have to think of the implications of what your measures are for these different interests, even within households. Q125 Mr Khabra: The New Economics Foundation would like the definition of "refugees" to be changed, to include those who are forced to migrate due to environmental changes. Those environmental changes in the modern world, as everyone knows, are man-made, such as global warming. What in your view would be the result of expanding the definition of "refugees" to include environmental refugees? Dr Tacoli: I think that it is important to attract more attention than there is at the moment to the impact of climate change. Having said that, it is extremely difficult to define what environmental refugees are. We know that there are internally displaced persons who are moved because of large infrastructural projects - dams, for example. Would that be part of it? The example that is given by the New Economics Foundation is a very strong one, namely the small islands in the Pacific which will go under water. However, it is a very limited example. It cannot be expanded to many other situations. It is very complex, and I think that there is a risk of missing the fact that environmental change is one of the many aspects which are motivations for migration. Q126 Mr Khabra: As we know, highly industrialised countries such as the USA are mostly responsible for global warming and are not even willing to co-operate with the rest of the countries of the world to reduce pollution. The definition of "refugee" is those who are running away from a political situation, but here we are trying to include others - those who are forced to migrate for various reasons. One of the modern ones is that, because of global warming, the sea level rises and people become homeless or, due to global warming, there could be a drought in a country. Some people get carried away by their emotions and their views. My personal view - and I would like you to tell me if I am wrong - is that there should be a special responsibility on the part of the highly industrialised countries, if they cause a disaster for human beings in another part of the world, to take the responsibility of maintaining and supporting them. Dr Van Hear: Yes, but how you finger the blameworthy countries is another question. It is probably an impossibility. I agree that this issue of displacement by environmental concerns needs to be highlighted, but I am against incorporating environmental refugees into the definition of "refugees". It would just dilute the current refugee regime, if you like, which is already under attack from various quarters. Q127 Mr Davies: Why would it dilute it? Dr Van Hear: By including yet another category. Maybe I have misunderstood your question. If you mean extending the refugee Convention or whatever international legal mechanism to include environmental refugees, I think that is a non-starter. Why would it be? Because the 1951 Convention has rather specific criteria for defining refugees, which allow degrees of protection to be sought, and so on. Q128 Mr Davies: It is a bad idea because it changes the Convention? Dr Van Hear: I would not throw that out of the window, but you cannot extend the Convention to everything. For example, you could also include the 100 million or so people a year worldwide who are displaced by development projects and other migration-linked development - by dams, and so on. Are we going to extend the coverage of the Convention, or whatever international mechanisms you want to devise, indefinitely? Mr Battle: It is not as if it is an unreal problem now. There are islands in the south Pacific where people have been removed entirely because the ocean is rising up over their island and they have to be found somewhere else to live. I am not sure the scale and timeframe of that is quantifiable. I think that 2,500 people are being moved from the islands off Tuvalu. Who will make space for them? Where will they go? Who treats them seriously? Maybe the conventions were written at a time when conflict and violence were seen as the main cause of refugee status. If people are going to be swamped by water and their homeland completely drowned, the international community has perhaps to take some responsibility as to their status. I am not quite sure of your response to that. Chairman: I think that everyone has canvassed that and made their views known. Q129 Mr Davies: Is there not a fair distinction to be made between the victims of a natural disaster - I think that I am following Mr Khabra's views here - where elementary human solidarity might be expected to play a role? So we all share some responsibility. None of us knows when we are going to be a victim of a natural disaster. Secondly, people who are the victims of a man-made but universal disaster like global warming, where we have all contributed, and the developed countries disproportionately. Thirdly, the victims of a development which was a decision taken within a particular country, where much less plausibly do we have a global and universal responsibility for coping with the consequences. Is not that both a reasonably coherent and a reasonably fair distinction to be made? Dr Tacoli: May I suggest that, in the case of environmental disasters, cases like the Tuvalu islands which are going under water are quite limited. In most cases, environmental change is actually managed locally. Putting people in a position of being refugees possibly disempowers them. Instead, recognising and supporting their actions for adaptation and mitigation, and reconciling this with international actions and the international responsibility for that, is much more important. I am concerned that the definition of "refugees" does not recognise or support what people do to improve their own situation. Mr Davies: What do you think is the proper role in a successful integration of refugees, in this country or elsewhere in the developed world, in ensuring that they have good, full and productive lives and that the rest of the community also benefit from their presence, of (a) central government and (b) local government? Are we in danger of ignoring the important role of local government in that matter? Q130 Chairman: I think that this question was in part prompted by the IIED memorandum, referring to the importance of planning for the movement of people to cities, and to ensure that they had adequate access to services and that sort of thing. Dr Tacoli: Maybe I misunderstood the question. I thought that this was more related to international migration. Q131 Mr Davies: It is. When we are ourselves the target of international migration and people come here, what is the role of (a) central government and (b) local government in ensuring that their settlement here is successful, for all parties concerned? Does local government have a role in that? Is there a responsibility there, or is the only public responsibility one to be carried by central government? Dr Van Hear: Local government has responsibility now. Q132 Mr Davies: Do you want to make any comment about how effectively that system works? That is what I am inviting you to do. We are inviting you to survey the status quo and tell us where the strengths and weaknesses of the status quo lie, and where there is scope for improvement. That is what Parliament is all about. Dr Van Hear: Self-evidently there are tensions in certain places over access to housing and education, which need to be addressed. If those are the kinds of questions that you are concerned with --- Mr Davies: If you have anything in answer to my question - perhaps you do not, but if you do - I do not want to confine your answers in any way. By mentioning local government, I want to see whether that triggers any response from any of our three invitees today. If it does not, then let us pass on. Q133 Mr Colman: Perhaps I can ask a blue-sky-thinking-type question, which is about identifying the best practice which should be followed in linking together policy on aid, migration, development. You were somewhat dismissive of Mr Barrett's proposal that the UN Convention would be a good thing for the UK Government to adopt. I personally would be very interested to receive from you - I notice that it is in the Oxfam proposals that we should in fact sign the Convention - what new rights this would actually give to migrant workers in the UK. Frankly, if we are the first one in the world to sign it, it surely would be good practice to do so. Do you have examples of best practice on where the benefits of migration have been fulfilled and where the risks and costs have been minimised, which you would like to draw to our attention? Dr Van Hear: I think that some of them have already been drawn to your attention. For example, the Mexican case where, for each dollar that a Mexican migrant worker remits, this is matched by a dollar from central government, the regional government, and the municipal government, local government - referring to the previous question. I think that has proved to be quite a useful scheme which could be reproduced elsewhere. The Mexican authorities seem to be the most advanced in that respect. The Philippines has also been referred to in previous discussion, where they have taken account, for example in their training of nurses, of the potentially damaging effect that might have on their own health systems by training more nurses than they need - for "export", if you like. Those are two examples, therefore. Also, home town associations have been referred to in the Mexican case. I think that these kinds of things need to be taken up and reproduced in other areas. Dr Tacoli: I would sound a slightly more negative note. Hopefully not, but my concern is that there might be a little too much expectation that remittances on their own might play quite an important developmental role. I am not sure that this is the case. In all these examples which have been mentioned, there is a strong, accountable and capable government at the national level and at the local level. In many countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa for example, this does not exist. Any expectation that migration can contribute to development in home areas has to go hand in hand with strengthening the institutions in home countries, making them accountable, representative, and capable of responding to the opportunities which are provided by remittances. So far, we have not seen much of that - especially in the poorest countries, which are the ones which need it the most. Q134 Mr Colman: Ms Barber - best practice? Ms Barber: I wanted to pick up on the point Dr Tacoli made, that remittances are not always useful if the infrastructure is not right. Obviously, if there is a healthy investment climate, remittances will be more useful; but even a country like Somalia receives 25 to 30 % of its GDP as remittances. There was just one remittance channel - one private financial institution which was sending them. When that was cut off in 2001, under fears that it was a source of terrorist funding, the consequences for Somalia were very serious. Even though presumably those remittances were not being invested in factories and so on, they were very important for tackling poverty. Best practice? To come to home town associations - that is a phenomenon in the United States which is booming and blossoming. I do not really see that happening in Britain so much. I am not sure if it is because we have some different cultural understanding of dual identity and that it is not acceptable to be Polish-British in the same way that it is to be Mexican-American. I imagine that, if this were a committee meeting in the United States, you would have been bombarded with submissions from Mexican‑American groups and home town associations. I do not know if that is the case now, but I suspect probably not. Maybe that is a challenge for the Department for International Development to take a look at. Can it be working more with ethnic minority groups in the UK? However, it is something that Oxfam is starting to do itself - starting up programmes with minority groups here and, for example, in Rajasthan, and trying to get co-funding for projects which are of specific interest, to local towns' development or something like that. More broadly, there are attempts to get overseas citizens to remit money. For example, the Overseas Pakistanis Foundation, which is a government agency, has something called "the remittance book programme". If you remit $10,000, you get a gold card; if you remit $2,500, you get a silver card. This entitles you to various benefits like special lounges at airports, free issuance of passports, exemption from import duties, and so on - which sounds quite attractive to me, and apparently has quite a good take-up. There are similar examples in India. Although not quite such a developing country, Portugal has been very good at attracting its Diaspora to remit money. I could go into detail, but maybe the best thing is to refer you to a paper by the Inter-American Development Bank by Manuel Orozco, who has written several papers on policy for attracting remittances and for the investment of remittances.[1] Mr Colman: You have suggested that DFID should support home towns as a positive thing. Other panellists may like to say what other single thing the UK Government/DFID should be doing to support successful South-South migration or North-South or South-North migration. What should the UK Government do as a single example, if you like, of best practice in this area? Q135 Chairman: I am going to give the witnesses time to think about that - Mr Panda, you are Deputy Speaker of the Orissa Legislative Assembly and you have asked if you can address the Committee. We will have a vote at four o'clock. Perhaps you could speak for a few minutes. Then if any other colleague wants to add anything, they could do that. We shall then give a final tour de table to our panel - by which time they will have thought up some good ideas to give to Mr Colman. Mr Panda, what would you like to say? Mr Panda: Chairman, I have only a few suggestions to make on this subject. I have come to see your programme and I am fortunate to witness the proceedings of this Committee. Since reference has also been made to my country and this is more or less a global issue, I would like to draw the Committee's attention to the following. Sir, migration is a normal course in human civilisation, so it should not be considered from a harsh point of view, it should have a human approach. Migration is also not confined to developing countries. Four decades ago lots of immigrants came to India from Tibet because of conflict. Migration never takes place out of pleasure. This may have been due to political necessity or even economic activity. Around about a decade ago about half a million people migrated from Sri Lanka to India because of internal conflict. I do not have an accurate figure, but now at least some migrant workers from Bangladesh are working in cities like Bombay, Calcutta and New Delhi. My point is that migration is not confined only to developing countries. The principal ingredient is that in all developed countries human factors should be considered. In a country like Great Britain or the USA, the principal ingredient is the amount of work available in these two places. Twenty to 30 % of developing countries do not yet have irrigation potential. The agricultural potential opportunities are not fully flexed. Huge forests have disappeared and that is also posing a problem. We are now discussing the global warming position. But apart from the economic factor, I would request that the Committee suggest to the Government how to concentrate its aid programme to developing countries and, wherever necessary, to concentrate on the irrigation possibilities. Once you double that irrigation potential naturally the labour force of that particular region will look at the work that can take place and they will not migrate to other places. Hugh Bayley: I would like to put to the panel three conceptual thoughts which I am struggling with. I have not even got past the stage of trying to define what the problem is. The first conceptual issue I would like your response to, not in empirical terms, not in terms of this policy or that policy might drive from it, in ideological terms is this. When we look at the manifestations of globalisation, most people on the Left usually argue for regulation and the control of trade, of labour standards, of environmental standards and so on. Yet today we are in the odd position of having progressive humanitarians coming over here and saying the answer to our problem is to strip away the controls, to have the free movement of people. Conceptually, what is going on? That is the first question. The second question is to do with policy coherence. We seem to be talking as though, if you simply stacked up all your policies together, home affairs policies, foreign affairs policies, welfare policies, international development policies, they will all fit neatly together and they will all be complimentary. We have had some people talking to us about the win‑win benefits from migration. Surely that is a pretty rosy view of things because although migrants in general contribute a lot to the country to which they might migrate, the issue is surely to choose what outcomes you want. I remember talking to the Canadians about how they looked at their asylum policy and they said they took loads of refugees. I was told by a senior Canadian parliamentarian he would go around the refugee camps and look for the doctors, the engineers, people who could contribute to Canada. Well, okay, that is a big benefit to Canada, but there is probably less of a safety and sanctuary benefit to refugees because only some arrive. How do we weigh the different benefits, the benefit to our economy, the benefit to the developing country's economy, the skill transfers and the safety of individuals? It is not a win‑win. If you do more of some of these things you do less of others. How do we try and resolve that continuum in policy terms? Thirdly, there is this concept of fairness which I think you, Nicholas, used. If you were, as Catherine was suggesting, to increase the opportunities for legal economic migration it would be fairer because you would get more people, lower income, economic migrants, you would not have to have $10,000 to get yourself smuggled in, but there are so many different "fairnesses". I have had settled economic migrants in my constituency saying the way we treat asylum‑seekers, letting so many in, is completely unfair because people like them whose family have been queuing up for an entry permit as economic migrants do not get a look in and the only way you can get into this country is by breaking the rules. There are so many overlapping fairnesses, but does fairness actually mean anything at all? Q136 Chairman: Does any other colleague have anything they would like to add? No. Let us start with Nicholas and do a tour de table on what Mr Panda has said or any of Hugh's questions. Dr Van Hear: I am not going to be able to address all of your conceptual questions adequately but maybe I will have a go at the second one on coherence. Yes, it is a pretty rosy, maybe utopian, idea to try and get coherence between these different fields, development and migration, since we have already noted the tensions between them. It might be an idea to keep them separate, but I think, at the very least, we should not allow them to conflict with each other, to negate each other. That is one more modest aim perhaps. Turning to specific ways in which they could be made more complimentary and I think DFID is already doing this to some extent, to engage diaspora populations in development fora or peace making or conflict prevention mechanisms, to look at where their remittances are flowing, what they are doing and so on and then tailor your development assistance accordingly because remittances may not be going to the poorest of the poor and your development policy is aimed at reducing poverty, but you may want to compliment these different kinds of flows, the remittance flows and development assistance. I also want to make the point that everyone is latching on to this remittance question and it is tending to be seen as a kind of panacea for all problems, even replacing aid. Some might argue that if countries are getting all these remittances why should they also receive development assistance. I think there is a note of caution that needs to be sounded there because remittances are selective in their benefits and they are selective in the people that they benefit. Q137 Chairman: Dr Tacoli? Dr Tacoli: Very briefly. I will try to address your questions on globalisation and policy coherence, but I would also like to emphasise and insist on the fact that when we are talking about migration in the context of development and poverty we are not really talking so much about migrants coming to Europe, we are talking of people who are pushed out of their livelihoods because there is no irrigation or there is deforestation in the area. In terms of globalisation and policy coherence, I think it is important to think of globalisation as something which does have implications for migration and the policy coherence then comes into play in that any actions, aid actions or development actions, which aim to reduce poverty, need to take into account the migration element of it. I will give you just a couple of examples on how globalisation affects migration. National economic growth strategies which are based on export processing, for example, are going to attract migrants to certain areas where there is more infrastructure than other areas of the country, so there will be a first internal movement. There are spatial implications to whatever national policies are taken and which are often supported by the international community. In terms of globalisation and policy coherence, I think I can say that on the basis of our work in the Sahel, for example, many small farmers who have been living off cotton production are now migrating overseas long term. This is destroying local agricultural production because of labour shortages. When people migrate to the Gulf from Mali, for example, they will be away for at least five years because of the cost of moving so far away. So the implications on the development status and poverty status in home areas are immense. There is a policy coherence issue here which is linked to globalisation, trade policies and what type of agricultural development we have in mind for low income countries where the agricultural sector is still the largest one. I will stop here. Ms Barber: Fantastic questions about globalisation and the Left. I am not sure it is entirely fair to say that the Left have been only for regulation and control. If you look at the positions of what you would call progressive humanitarians on trade. Oxfam supporters are certainly not saying no trade. They are saying trade but taking into account the benefits that should go to poor people in developing countries. That is not saying we do not want trade liberalisation, it is saying we want it but with a development focus. I think it is similar when you are looking at labour markets. What I would call the Left are looking at the inequalities which exist because of the international system with restrictions on labour mobility, which does promote big inequalities in terms of wages that would not be there if there was more freedom of movement. It is too idealistic to say that there would be freedom of movement completely, but even small increases or temporary labour schemes in the UK would reduce that gap slightly. I do not think it is inconsistent to say that you are Left Wing and that you care about inequality and you want more freedom of movement. To get back to mundane specifics about what DFID might do, I would like to make two quick points. With due respect to everything that has been said about remittances not being the panacea, they are still very important, they are twice the size of aid flows. There is a lot of research on how banks in the US and in Spain have become "remittance aware" and started to build services around remittances like micro‑finance or give people loans to set up businesses or buy property when they return home. I am not aware if similar research exists in the UK and it might be interesting to investigate whether British banks are remittance aware. The other thing is to reiterate this point about the temporary migration schemes which are currently piloting and at the end of January the sector‑based scheme will be coming to an end and then there will be a decision about whether to renew it. The Department for International Development could be involved in analysing that decision and looking at the way that those workers are recruited, the conditions that they have in the UK workplace, are they being encouraged to remit money, could the UK Government do something like the matching dollar scheme that was mentioned in perhaps contributing. The migrants pay National Insurance contributions and then they leave the UK after 12 months. Should some of those National Insurance contributions also be sent back to the home countries? Those are quite specific things which the Department could be doing. Chairman: Could I just say a big thank you to all our witnesses for grappling with some really complex practical and conceptual issues. Thank you, Mr Panda, for making yourself known to us. We are thinking of doing an inquiry on development assistance and India later this year. It is very good to see you here. Maybe we will find ourselves in Orissa sometime and perhaps we could address your committee then. Thank you. [1] Manuel Orozco, 2003, Worker remittances in international scope. Inter-American dialogue research series. Available at http://www.thedialogue.org/publications/country_studies/remittances/worldwde%20remit.pdf |