In 2000, 175 million people were living outside their home country, more than twice the 79 million in 1960. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) State of the Population 2004 report, this made 1 in every 35 persons a migrant. Nearly 50% were women and 10.4 million were refugees. If the world population quadrupled between 1910 and 2000, international migration increased five fold.

But migration is hardly a new phenomenon. The slave trade shifted large numbers of people from one end of the planet, mostly Africa, to the different colonies. A common saying at the time to justify the torture of slaves was ?The Ivory Coast is a good mother?. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) estimates that, between 1700 and 1850, approximately 10 million Africans were forced into servitude in the Americas, a conservative estimate by any means. With the abolition of slavery came the ?coolie? system, which from 1830 to 1920 saw 12 million Indians and Chinese recruited as workers.

Today, job opportunities and better salaries continue to attract people to various destinations. The UNFPA says that developed countries are now the hosts of nearly 60% of all migrants. Many are found in refugee camps in regions of war or natural disasters. But there is also a significant number in transition economies. In Mauritius, from 1996 to 2000, the number of foreign workers doubled, rising from 9,795 to 14,574. Of these, 95% were employed in the EPZ sector at the turn of the millennium, a figure which subsequently fell to 89% in 2003. In total, the special inspection unit, a joint International Labour Organisation (ILO) and Ministry of Labour initiative, put the number of workers it covered, between July 2002 and June 2003, at 57,937.

Despite the meagre salaries of the majority of this migrant labour, they make an invaluable contribution to the world economy. Remittances to their home countries amounted to $130 billion in 2002, of which $88 billion went to developing countries, according to the World Bank. This is $30 billion more than Official Development Assistance (ODA) provided by international institutions and the industrialised world. Though Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) declined from 1999 on and ODA suffered a lazy growth, remittances continued to expand, assuming an increasingly important role as a source of cash inflow.

Helping home and host

According to the DESA, remittances make up one quarter of the GDP of Lesotho. The Indian and Chinese diasporas contributed nearly $10 billion between them, in 2002, to their home countries. Remittances are mainly used for subsistence, but they are also spent on education or health needs. In Mexico, the DESA calculated that children from migrant families (where one or more members of the family have immigrated) completed between 0.7 and 1.6 more years of schooling compared to children from non-migrant ones. Remittances have also promoted small scale investments or savings.

On the other hand, it would be impossible to think of the survival of the EPZ sector in Mauritius without the contribution of foreign labour. Paid at the minimum rate and sometimes lower and willing to work long hours, they allow the company bosses to maximise profits and remain competitive. This is what the industrialists and government ministers term high productivity. But they also fill in the jobs that Mauritians have declined due to the low pay. Machinists, for example, are mainly recruited among the young Chinese female workers.

Worldwide, migrant workers bring an equally vital contribution to the economies of their host countries. Ageing populations are exerting severe pressures on the economies of most industrialised countries and they need migrants to prop up the numbers. Foreign workers provide a significant portion of the economically active portion of society. The tax contribution by immigrants to the UK was estimated to be £2.5 billion last year. As it stands, Europe needs 1.6 million immigrants a year just to keep up its working-age population in 2050. Anti-immigration policies in developed countries are often at odds with reality. Without migrants, Western workers could basically forget about retirement.

Wage disparity and exploitation

Despite empirical evidence showing the contribution of migrant workers to the global economy, they are often reserved the most xenophobic attitudes and degrading treatment. Wage inequality is very much a problem. Foreign workers tend to earn less than their native counterparts. As the number of immigrants increased in the last decades, their wages, relative to the indigenous workers, plunged. In the US, the DESA points out that the wages of migrants have dropped by 13.3% since 1960. In 1990, they were earning 16.6% less than the US born worker for the same job.

But wage disparity is often mild compared to their living conditions in their new countries. As we have seen with the Chinese workers in Mauritius in recent years, many of them live in squalid quarters. Despite the unrest among this group of workers in 2002, and subsequent promises by the minister of Labour to improve their situation, there is persisting discontent. The Dutch-based Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), an initiative of various NGOs to improve conditions in the garment industry, places a question mark next to the paradise island notion of the country. Exploitative practices, inherent in the textile industry, damage the Made in Mauritius brand internationally, as did a Newsweek article titled The New Coolies in 2002.

Immigrants, whose valuable contributions rarely get a mention, are too readily defined as a labour value unit of the economy. They are reduced to the same level as say machinery in a factory, a situation which justifies their exploitation and draws an opaque veil over their often desperate conditions. Add a drop of racism and xenophobia and you get a potent recipe to deny them of their rights. Our frantic anxiety to generate wealth, not in Mauritius alone, has led us to treat the most vulnerable members of society with contempt. Little wonder then that their frustrations spill over onto the streets and lead to violent confrontations with the state.

Diren valayden

Outlook Correspondent in Dublin