Lea Ypi (LSE)
1st draft
Who is exploited?
The moral dilemmas of guestworker programmes
It is often argued that guestworkers are exploited, and that unfair advantage is taken from their vulnerable position in host societies. This paper assesses the accuracy of this claim by examiningthree different theories of exploitation: a domination theory, an egalitarian theory and a sufficientarian theory. It argues that neither the defenders of these theories nor their critics manage to capture what is normatively problematic about guestworker programmes. Analysing their shortcomings showsthat guestworker programmes exploit workers taken collectively (as a class) rather than distributively (as individuals divided by state-boundaries). The paper concludes by examining the remedial principles to which a similar perspective gives rise and by outlining their political implications.
1. Introduction: workers and guests
A worker is someone who exchanges his labour for money. A guestworker is someone who exchanges his labour for money, as a guest. A guestworker therefore belongs, at the same time, to two distinguishable but relatedsets: the set of workers, who typically exchange their labour for money, and the set of migrant workers, who exchange their labour for money for a specified amount of time andin a foreign labour market.
It is often said that guestworkers are exploited and that unfair advantage is taken from the (allegedly) vulnerable position of foreign workers in domestic labour markets (for some relevant discussions (see (Attas 2000; Carens 2008; Lenard and Straehle forthcoming; Mayer 2005; Ottonelli and Torresi 2010; Stilz 2010; Walzer 1983) for discussions)). Butare guestworkers exploited in virtue of being workers or of being guests or both or neither?
The answer to these questions depends in part on the kind of moral baseline upon which we choose to focus in trying to capture the wrong of exploitation. If we link that wrong to the occurrence of domination we might think that guestworkers are exploited because they are guests rather than citizens (orpermanent residents). Deprived of a significant (even if not full) range of political and social rights that normally protect citizens and permanent residents from the failures of the market and the whims of employers, they can easily be manipulated and taken unfair advantage of. Let us call this “the domination theory of exploitation”.
Alternatively, if we think an agent is exploited wheneveran unequal distribution of benefits systematically follows relatively equal amounts of effort for relatively similar tasks performed, we might say that a guestworker is exploited both because he is a worker and because he is a guest. As a worker, his labour is undervalued. As a guest, his labour is undervalued compared to that of workers operating in similar market conditions. Call this the “egalitarian theory of exploitation”.
Finally, guestworkers might be considered exploited because they operate in a market that fails to reward their labour with sufficient access to primary resources. If prospective temporary workers are on the verge of starvation and accept employment offers just because they couldn’t afford to reject them, they are vulnerable to being taking unfair advantage of. We might call this “the sufficientarian account of exploitation”.
This paperarguesthat neither the domination account nor the egalitarian account nor the sufficientarian account fully capture why guestworkersare exploited. To illustrate the wrong of exploitation, we should focus on workers taken collectively as a class rather than distributively as citizens belonging to different countries. The exploitation of guestworkersis,I shall argue, a result of the collective unfreedom of workers taken together, not ofguestworkersconsidered as a special category deserving particular normative attention. The relevant question to ask when reflecting on the moral dilemmas of guestworkers is not whether guestworkers are exploited but whether guestworker programmes are exploitative. This paper claims that they are. The exploitative nature of guestworker programmes is manifest in the way labour markets operate in a global sphere, in the way states and private employers interact with each other,and in the way the global distribution of labour negatively affectsguestworkers and domestic workers alike (even if not in equal measure).
Viewed thus, guestworker programmes make for a curiousobject of enquiry. Rather than an issue to be explored in the context of a theory of just migration, theypresent a relevant case in which an old and seemingly outdated issue, the exploitation of the working class as a collective agent,re-surfaces with all its normative force. The remedial principlesto which a similar perspective gives rise are principles seeking to abolish the exploitation of workers in general rather than the exploitation of guestworkers in particular. The problem of guestworker programmes can therefore be addressed not by considering a theory that concerns the distribution of the benefits and burdens of freedom of movement but by intervening at the level of the basic institutional structure according to which we want markets to operate.
2. The dilemmas of guestworker programmes
Since the invention of the passport and the institutionalization of border controls, guestworker programmes have become an integral part of states’ efforts to cope with transitions in industrial relations and shortages of labour supply. The first attempts to regulate the entrance of temporary workers date back to the late 19th century, following a process that accompanied the consolidation of the national territorial state and the related increasing hostility towards prospectiveimmigrants.[1]Despite a short period of skepticism towards such programmes in the mid-Eighties, guestworkerschemesare now in place in mostaffluent countries of the world:Mexican agricultural workers in the USA, Central and East-European seasonal workers in Western Europe, Mozambiquan diamond miners in SouthAfrica, Asian construction workers in the Middle East (especially in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Oman), Indonesian nannies in Malaysia, and Phillippina carers in Canadaare only some of the relevant cases in point(S. Castles 2006; Hahamovitch 2003).And there are no signs that the flux is about to stop: since 1997, the number of temporary migrants traveling to OECD countries has been growing annually by 9 percent.Migration to East and West Asia, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, has also increased by 2.5 percent per year since 1985(Agunias and Newland 2007).
Notwithstanding a number of governmental and intergovernmental attempts to modify the procedures surrounding the employment of guestworkers (especially in the EU area), the conditions of their arrival and the contracts regulating their stay have only superficially changed (S. Castles 2006). Guestworkersare neither long-term migrants nor short-term visitors. Theconditions of their temporary settlement are determined by bilateral contracts between sending and receiving societies, andthey are only allowed to remain in the host state for strictly delimited amounts of time. They are also typically denied access to the political and social benefits granted to citizens (and often also permanent residents). On the one hand, it is claimed, guestworker programmes continue to serve well the interests of states (in particular Western states) experiencing industrial change, shortages in specific sectors of the labour market and demographic shifts, especially population ageing and increasing decline in fertility rates. On the other hand, the conditions under which they are able to promote these goals remain concerning. Most guestworkers cannot participate in elections, cannot claim access to public subsidies (e.g. unemployment benefits), cannot join collective bargaining processes, and are in general deprived of the right to have a say on the terms according to which the host political community requires them to conduct their lives. They are entitled to fewer benefits of membership even compared to other immigrant workers, e.g.compared to students who have decided to settle and work in the receiving state, compared to refugeesor compared to other immigrants who have gained entrance as a result of practices of family reunification (to mention but some of the most prominent categories). Unlike these other immigrants, guestworkers are typically tied to one particular work sector, are prevented from changing employers, cannot apply for permanent residence and eventually citizenship after a certain period of time, are often denied the right to apply for family reunification, and are subject to being deported from the country if they lose their jobs(Ruhs and Martin 2008: 251), see also (Stephen Castles and Kosack 1985; Hollifield 1992; Parrenas 2001).
Applauded by employers, politicians and policy-makers and often mistrusted by ordinary citizens, guestworker programmes are likely to provoke bitter controversy both when they are rejected and when they are endorsed.[2] Some see them as providing de-facto coverage to a regime of second-class citizenship which exploits the contribution of workers but offers them no membership benefits to negotiate the terms of that contribution. Others see them as a perhaps non-ideal but nevertheless acceptable form of economic support for workers who can migrate for a specific amount of time to save money, send remittances home and contribute to the development of their countries upon return. Accepting or rejecting such arguments has often been considered to depend on the terms according to which guestworkers are employed in host states, the assessment of their occupational position compared to members of receiving societies and the potential benefits they receive compared to fellow-citizens who are left behind. In other words, addressing the moral dilemmas of guestworker programmes has often been attempted in the context of theories of just migration seeking to fairly distribute the benefits and burdens of freedom of movement. That may not necessarily be the most appropriate way to go. To understand why, we need to examine in some detail one of the most vexed questions that is typically raised in the context of the employment of guestworkers: the issue of their potential exploitation. As we shall see in what follows it is when we address this question that both the moral dilemmas of guestworker programmes and the shortcomings of their solutions come prominently to the fore.
3. Guestworkers and domination
The fact that guestworkers are denied many of the standard membership rights typically granted to citizens (and often also permanent residents) has induced some to criticize these programmes as exploitative, linking their exploitative nature to the politicaldisenfranchisement from which guestworkers typically suffer (Walzer 1983: 59). Being deprived of political membership implies that guestworkers are unable to appeal to the protection of state institutions to defend themselves from abuses of power in the public sphere. Although they are required to comply with the rules of receiving states, they do not have an equal say in the making of these rules. They are subjected to the laws but banned from authoring them. Political inequalityleaves guestworkers in a vulnerable condition and exposes them to the possibility of others taking advantage of that condition to derive profit from it. Indeed, so the argument goes, the very point of their disenfranchised status is to prevent temporary workers from overcoming theirvulnerability. For if guestworkers ceased to be treated as politically unequal,they would end up being just like domestic workers, and the benefits accrued by the programmes in which they take part would cease to serve the interests of employers in the host state. The exploitation of guestworkersdepends on the status of second-class citizens to which they are confined due to the absence of political and economic rights.
Of course being politically disenfranchised is not a sufficient condition for declaring guestworkers an exploited category. After all guestworkers are visitors, and like all other visitors (tourists and students, for example), it is reasonable to ask them to respect the terms under which they are admitted. We do not find problematic the fact that tourists are required to obey traffic laws in the countries that they visit, nor do we ever try to campaign to give them a say in the making of such laws. However, some might argue here that, unlike tourists and students, guestworkers are deprived of the benefits of political membership whilst being asked to contribute to the system that creates and upholds such benefits(Carens 2008; Stilz 2010). It is the contribution guestworkersmake to the production of public goods in receiving societies without being able to claim back equal benefits which might thenaccount for the unfair treatment to which they allegedly subjected.
However, it is not clear why we must always expect the sphere in which a productive contribution is made and the sphere where equal benefits are claimed to overlap so neatly with each other. The argument from cooperation in the production of certain goods would have more force if guestworkers were deprived of the benefits of citizenship altogether, not necessarily if they were deprived of such benefits in a particular host country but continued to retain access to them in their home states.
To see this point, consider the following example. David, a prominent academic from Oxford has been invited to give a series of keynote lectures at the University of Toronto. The series lasts for one month and, although David is guaranteed accommodation on campusduring that period,hehas no right to borrowing facilities from the library, no access to a university of Toronto email address, and no entitlement to attend meetings of the academic board. He is of course working hard to prepare his lectures and contributing to upholding the standards of teaching and research at the University of Toronto. Yet the benefits he can claim during his visiting period in the department are significantly lower compared to those granted to his friend Joe, who is a member of the department. Still, it would be difficult to insist that David is being exploited. He is a member of Oxford University, can borrow from his collegelibrary, can use his Oxford email address, and can attend departmental meetings in his home university. He has rights of membership in the Politics department at Oxford.Although he may miss important meetings and fail to have a say on particular funding decisions during his research stay in Canada, he will be able to make up for those by being an active member of the department and influence the agenda of meetings upon his return.
Guestworkers do not lose all membership rights because of their status of guests. They remain citizens of their country of origin, they enjoy diplomatic protection from such countries in their host state, and they retain relevant membership entitlements (such as voting) in the places from which they come from. Although they do make a contribution to the economy of receiving states without being able to claim the same entitlements as citizens of those states (just like David can’t claim the same entitlements as Joe at the university of Toronto even though his lectures make a productive contribution there), their work contracts have been negotiated with the input of theirhome states. Despite the fact thatguestworkersdo not have an immediate sayin making the rules with which they are asked to comply, in the long term they can contribute modifying the criteria on the basis of whichmultilateral contracts are signed.In other words,they can negotiate acceptable terms of interaction through the institutions of their home states.
Of courseall thispresupposes both that states signing guestworker contracts must have roughly equal negotiating powers to come up with mutually advantageous terms of cooperation, and that workers from sending states must have ample margins of democratic participation to ensure their voice really is channelled by the appropriate mechanisms for political decision making. In practice this is hardly ever the case. But if guestworkersend up being exploited as a result of inequalities in bargaining power between sending and receiving states or dueto insufficient channels of democratic participation in their home countries, this simply strengthens the point we are trying to make. Socio-political disenfranchisement does not by itself explain the kind of injustice suffered by guestworkers in the countries that they visit, nor does lack of equal rights of membership suffice to illustrate why such category of people is always vulnerable to exploitation. Other factors have to be taken into account before we can establish the moral baseline on groundsof which we can show that unfair advantage has been taken from them.
4. Guestworkers and egalitarianism
An alternative way to think about the exploitation of guestworkers is to reflect on their condition by observing the relative inequalities of occupational position in which temporary labour programmes tend to confine them. Short-term contracts subject guestworkers to terms of employment that differ significantly from those of domestic workers. They typically work the same hours, perform the same jobs but are paid simply less. Moreover, unlike domestic workers, guestworkers are barred from trying to change employers, cannot search for jobs different from the ones that they were initially admitted to perform, are bound to remain in a particular work sector, enjoy limited opportunities for participation in workers’ unions, and have very little or no say in the possible extension of their work contracts. Guestworkers are at a relative disadvantage compared to domestic workers.Some have argued, it is precisely this relatively different position in the job market that renders them vulnerable to exploitation(Attas 2000; Carens 2008). But what exactly is the baseline with regard to which we consider the process to confer an unfair advantage upon those who buy labour at the expense of those who sell it?