The expendables: migrant labour in the
global workforce
This Case discusses the ethical challenges involved in employing migrant labour
across a number of regional contexts. It provides an insight into the vulnerabilities of
migrant workers, and the poor working conditions that they often encounter,
sometimes giving rise to slave-like conditions. The Case provides an opportunity to
examine the issues of employee rights, as well as offering a deeper look at the
conditions giving rise to violations of these rights.
Millions of workers across the world migrate to new countries, regions, or cities in order to
make a better life for themselves and their families. Whether it is Polish workers moving to
the UK, Mexicans to the US, or Indians to Bahrain, migrants have become a major part of
the global economy. However, migrant workers are also typically the most vulnerable
members of the modern workforce. They are far from home, often with limited language
skills, scant financial resources, poor support, and sometimes questionable legal status. As
a result, migrant workers are at a particularly high risk of encountering poor working
conditions, exploitation, and human rights violations of various kinds. In addition, they
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typically face discrimination and have few resources available to bargain for
better conditions or to ensure the protection of their rights. For their employers, these
conditions may make migrant workers an attractive, low-cost labour force, but it also
injects considerable ethical risks into the global economy that are difficult to manage.
Migrant workers in Europe
With its colonial ties to much of the developing world and its close proximity to Central and
Eastern Europe and Africa, Western Europe has long been a major destination for migrant
workers. The expansion of the European Union to include Central and Eastern European
countries gave rise to significant movements of people across the continent looking for
better opportunities. In total, the UK experienced a net migration of some 2.5 million people
during the first decade of the 2000s. This is credited with being one of the reasons why a
slim majority in the UK voted to leave the EU in what has become known as the Brexit
Referendum, in June 2016. More broadly, between 3.5 million and 4 million people migrated
to and between the EU member states every year during the 2000s. Some 10% of the
European population who had migrated there were born outside the EU.
Europe has also been a common destination for illegal immigrants, although the numbers
entering the EU illegally have been far smaller than those migrating legally. A peak influx of
around 140,000 was recorded in 2011, following conflict during the Arab Spring, and a
further spike followed the Syrian civil war in the mid-2010s.
In the face of such growth in all kinds of migration across Europe, it has become a hot
political issue in most Western European and Scandinavian countries, giving rise to a steep
increase in the popularity of anti-immigrant political parties and policies. As such, the plight
of migrant workers in Europe is quite challenging. Overall, they fare considerably worse
than their native-born counterparts in the workplace. According to official EU statistics,
first-generation migrants experience considerably lower levels of labour market
participation, higher levels of unemployment, and a higher rate of over-qualification (i.e.
being skilled or educated beyond what is necessary to do the job) compared with nativeborns. However, far worse conditions are typically experienced by those living or working
illegally in the EU, or those with strict limitations on the jobs open to them. For instance, it
was estimated by the International Labour Organization in 2016 that 3.6 of every 1,000
people were victims of forced labour in the European Union, the majority being EU citizens
who had migrated from one member state to another. Domestic work, agriculture,
manufacturing, and construction have been identified as the industries most likely to
experience forced labour among migrants in Europe.
The exploitation of migrant workers in the EU is often connected to the way in which they
enter the country, irrespective of whether they enter legally or illegally. Recruitment agents
and middlemen operating in the workers’ countries of origin may use various forms of
deception or coercion to recruit workers with the promise of sometimes non-existent jobs in
their destination country. Workers often borrow large amounts of money to pay recruiters
for arranging transport and travel documents and a fee for securing a job in the expectation
of future returns. However, if the job they finally receive upon arrival does not enable them
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to repay the loan, let alone to further support their family and community at home, they
sometimes become trapped by huge debts and have insufficient funds to return home.
These debts may be further exacerbated through inflated charges for basic accommodation
and food, which are in turn deducted from their salary. In extreme cases this can land
migrant workers in debt bondage to their employer or recruiter.
Consider, for example, the case of the first conviction for modern slavery in the UK. Four
family members of a small construction firm were found guilty of keeping 23 workers in a
state of servitude and forcing them to perform unpaid work. Living in accommodation that
was deemed unfit for human habitation, the men worked for up to 19 hours a day, daily,
with little or no cash payment. Physical violence and threats of violence were used to keep
the workers compliant, in addition to ‘mental torture’, in the words of one victim.
Migrant workers in the Middle East
In other parts of the world migrants make up a still larger proportion of the workforce.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf in particular.
Taken together, the Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are the
largest recipients of temporary migrant workers in the world. In some Gulf states, such as
Qatar and the UAE, more than 80% of the population consists of non-nationals, the
majority of whom are contract workers. Most of the foreign workers in the Middle East are
Asian—the major countries of origin being Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan,
Philippines, and Sri Lanka. Two-thirds of migrant workers are men, the majority of whom are
engaged in low-skill occupations in production, construction, and service sectors. Women,
meanwhile, have typically been employed in domestic service.
Abuses of foreign workers in the Middle East have been documented for many years, but
the issue made international headlines over a period of more than a decade from the
mid-2010s, following reports of hundreds of foreign worker deaths and reputed conditions
of ‘modern-day slavery’ in the construction boom generated when Qatar was awarded the
right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Thousands of construction workers from India and
Nepal are recorded as having died, because of extreme temperatures, enforced 12-hour
working days, and limited access to water. Evidence emerged of workers routinely having
their documents confiscated, pay being withheld for months, inadequate safety standards,
and squalid labour camps with overflowing sewage and insufficient water supply.
Conditions were so bad, according to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC),
that the Qatar World Cup construction would ‘leave 4,000 migrant workers dead’ before the
tournament kicked off in 2022.
Migrant workers are critical for the Qatar economy, but have long been plagued by limited
rights and freedoms. There are 1.4 million migrant workers in Qatar, representing 94% of
the country’s entire labour force and approximately 85% of the population. However, the
average migrant worker makes about $300 a month, compared to the average national
salary of $2,140 a month and gross national income per capita of $80,000. So, while
revenues from oil and natural gas have enabled Qatar to attain the highest GDP per capita
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in the world, the majority of its foreign workforce continues to experience low salaries and
poor working conditions.
The plight of migrant workers in Qatar is exacerbated by the state-run ‘kafala’ sponsorship
system, which also operates in Saudi Arabia and a number of other Gulf states. Under the
kafala system, workers must have an in-country sponsor (typically their employer) who is
responsible for their legal status. Workers are therefore unable to change jobs or leave the
country without their sponsor’s permission, making them highly dependent on their
employer, and giving them limited means of seeking redress when faced with exploitation.
Moreover, certain categories of workers in Qatar are excluded from labour law protections
and only Qatari workers are allowed to form or join trade unions.
Following revelations of systematic abuse of migrant workers in the construction industry in
Qatar, organizations such as Amnesty International, the ILO, the ITUC, and the UN all called
for Qatar to repeal or revise its labour laws in order to provide better protections for foreign
workers. Companies involved in the construction sector were also urged to take action and
institute more effective due diligence policies and procedures to prevent labour exploitation,
including among subcontractors and suppliers, where much of the abuse was found to
occur. Following a severe ruling by the ILO, the ITUC stated that companies were ‘on notice
that doing business with Qatar goes against international laws. Until Qatar brings its laws in
line with international norms, companies face the reputational and legal risks of using
forced labour in Qatar.’
In the face of such major international pressure, the Qatari authorities made substantial
reforms to their labour laws in 2014. This included a strengthening of laws related to
recruitment agency fees, mandatory requirements for firms to pay workers by electronic
bank transfer rather than arbitrary cash payments, an end to foreign workers needing their
employer’s permission to leave the country or change jobs, and a commitment to phase out
the kafala system. According to Amnesty International, it was a ‘missed opportunity’ that
fell ‘far short of the fundamental changes needed to address systemic abuses against
migrant workers’. The problems continue. In a chilling reflection of the ongoing state of play
in 2017, Human Rights Watch found that protection from heat and humidity was ‘woefully
inadequate’, and that hundreds of construction workers were dying each year, and their
deaths are by no means fully acknowledged or reported. They say that any initiatives in
place only cover a tiny minority of workers. As World Cup fever takes over from concerns
about how those beautiful stadia were created, in the run-up to the games, critics angrily
claimed that Qatar’s workers are actually enslaved, building mausoleums, not stadia.
Migrant workers in China
Migrant workers are not always intent on crossing national boundaries. China, for example,
is home to more than 282 million domestic migrant workers who have been drawn from
rural areas to cities in search of higher incomes and an escape from poverty. By 2016, the
rural migrant worker population represented over a third of the total workforce.
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Chinese rural migrant workers have been crucial to China’s economic growth, fuelling the
supply of low-cost labour for the country’s booming export economy. Internal migrants are
typically young, poorly educated, generally healthy, and highly mobile. Short-term
employment sectors, including manufacturing, construction, and social services industries,
account for over 60% of such migrants.
As with cross-border migrants in Europe and the Middle East, domestic migrants in China
also face major inequalities. Local urban workers tend to predominate in the primary labour
market (which offers high salaries, stable employment, and good working conditions), while
rural migrants have mainly been employed in the secondary labour market (characterized
by lower salaries, insecure employment, and poor conditions of work). Rural migrants are
particularly disadvantaged by the hukou system—rules that keep rural residents from
obtaining jobs in the formal sector, and that prevent them from obtaining many of the same
services as urban residents, including health and unemployment insurance, pensions, free
education for children, and subsidized housing. This has not only led to continued income
disparity between urban and rural populations, but also to the mistreatment of migrants.
Discrimination or harassment from employers and co-workers is common.
A further problem with migrant workers in China concerns the fate of their families. Studies
have reported that there are more than 60 million ‘left-behind children’, whose parents have
been forced to abandon them in the home village when moving to the city. These children
face a number of challenges and often struggle with emotional and developmental
problems. On the other hand, the 30 million children who have been able to migrate with
their parents have faced their own problems, mainly due to the lack of time and financial
means on the part of their parents to provide a decent upbringing.
The plight of migrant workers in China was brought into sharp relief in the West by a spate
of worker suicides at Foxconn plants in Southern China, where products for Apple, HewlettPackard, and other technology brands are produced. Foxconn remains the single largest
supplier in mainland China. China also experienced a surge in labour protests by migrant
workers seeking better pay and conditions, threatening the Chinese authorities’ vision of a
harmonious society.
Such problems have not gone unnoticed. While companies have sought to address poor
labour conditions and discrimination with codes of conduct and supplier training, the
Chinese government has instituted various labour market reforms, including attempts to
reform the hukou system. To date, these have met with some success, but deeper change
has been difficult to achieve due to the complex nature of the current system and problems
with enforcement given the entrenched nature of rural discrimination in the country.
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