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| Monday, 25 October 2004 |
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Women migrants: some posers by Dr. Mervyn D. de Silva Many are the voices that have been raised and focused on the raging imbalances and inequality created by the Ten Commandments of the Washington Consensus and, the dominant development paradigm that was promoted with much missionary zeal. Many are also the heart-rending accounts of the pain and agony consequenced by the resulting distortion in the distribution of wealth that has become a major factor in creating migration of labour in the Asian region, particularly of women.
With the dismantling of the rural economy and existing food security systems, too early and too fast, by a raft of policies that masqueraded as honest development supported by economic theories that lacked even an iota of humanism, the tide of migration to the cities or, to foreign countries began. Further, the unfavourable terms of trade, created food dependency, job losses in the rural sector, and devious and hidden forms of exploitation under banner of neo-liberal economics, forced these nations to borrow heavily from external sources to buy food and meet deficits in their national accounts. When the debt burden increased exponentially in both relative and absolute terms, more loans were needed, plunging the poor in these countries into further misery. Since ethics, had been banished from mainstream economic thinking (Nobel laureates Gunnar Myrdal and Amartya Sen strongly differ), the powerful economic triad - USA, EU, and Japan, apart from rhetoric and cosmetic aid and grants, have shown no inclination to rectify the situation which for all intents and purposes is economic and financial imperialism/colonialism. They, in fact, flee from looking at the deep rooted causes, just as they do for terrorism, which propagates in the 'well laid out' medium of social and economic injustice. When Third World countries fall in line with the policies that are crafted to benefit the countries of the 'craftsmen', more unemployment results in the rural areas and women are the most hard hit in providing for the family further, exacerbating in many ways their already vulnerable and subservient position. When poverty grows in the debt-trapped countries, the poverty of women grow faster and one can safely conjecture that they are now the majority in the world often entirely responsible for their households. When they find their lot unbearable they take low-paying jobs in the formal sector no matter how for they have to travel or, eke out a living in the informal sector until they can get a job abroad. Unfortunately, the situation of the migrant worker in their new countries do not match their dreams and may turn out to be worse than before. Many of them have to contend with exploitation and abuses ranging from non-payment or under-payment of wages, contract violation, and worse, physical violence leading to death. Abuses are escalating in the Middle East, Japan, Hong Kong and other relatively richer countries and a number are in jails (263 according to the Minister of Labour), while others, return insane because of extreme abuse and stress. Recall the death of one of our girls in Kuwait in February, 1994, who jumped from the fifth flour apartment balcony apparently, trying to escape her male or female employer. The crux of the matter is that export of female labour is an aberration, even though it contributes to the national budget. All that is being narrated are hallucinations of their laziness, condemnations, grumblings on minor detail, and a whole litany of skewed reasons. The political elite and their beneficiaries make no attempt to address basic causes and answer basic questions that are perceived to be in the minds of the migrants as they set out overseas. Why do so many of us have to be poor? Why are they not developing our villages and moving opportunities from the exclusive domain of the cities? Why do they not use every bit of our resources to the maximum? Why do our elected politicians take residence in the cities and make only flying visits to the people who appointed them? Why do thy not pay us well and use our labour? Are existing policies attuned to solving the scourge of poverty? Why are the followers of the different religious cultures at each others throats (jugulars, in fact) when the country and the world is swamped with so many man-made problems that has brought humanity to the brinks of destruction? "I will not tire declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social and economic injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally." - Archbishop, Oscar Romero, who was silenced by an assassin's bullet on 24th March, 1980 |
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It is from rural families that have become desperate because farming
has been made unprofitable and has been neglected that the majority of
migrants emerge.
