The worst of both the worlds
How globalisation is creating the need for people to move freely across borders
By Atle Hetland
In the age of globalisation, the rich North has become richer and the poor South has become poorer in the recent decades. That's why people keep migrating to the cities and countries where multinational and other large companies establish their production plants. Except for mass media and information technology, little positive has yet come out of globalisation for those at the lower end of the ladder, and they are the ones who need to be uplifted. However, the reigning capitalist economic development system may not have been set up to benefit them. The social and human development suffer in spite of economic growth, more so in recent decades than in several of the preceding ones.By Atle Hetland
Yet, it goes without saying that economic development is not an end itself but a means to an and which is to benefit people. Otherwise all of it becomes senseless and meaningless.
In this article we will discuss various aspects of major international development trends, with emphasis on growth, trade, distribution of wealth, migration and employment. We will recall some economic aspects of the past which led to the current trends, such as the structural adjustment programmes and expansion of market economies.
Globalisation has made the world smaller, especially through developments in mass media and information technology, increased labour migration, expanded tourism, student exchanges and business travels around the globe, and expanded international trade and movement of capital and production plants. Though on a different level, even what is termed 'war on terror' has made the world smaller, since we all focus on it and all wars are being fought as part of it, with extensive worldwide media coverage.
In the recent decade, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has become the main multilateral organisation regulating trade and, therefore, much of the globalisation processes. The luckiest, and we should add its shrewdest, beneficiaries are the rich countries, and rich people in all countries, in the North as well as the South. It is an empirical fact that globalisation has increased disparities in income and human security between the North and the South. At the same time, it is also a fact that globalisation has led to huge increases in economic wealth. The unresolved problem is the often extremely uneven distribution of the old and new wealth, especially between the North and South, and within countries in the South.
Structural adjustment and privatisation
Protected economies, or sectors of such economies, have been hardest hit by globalisation. These economies were usually based on social-democratic or socialist models of development and modes of production. From the 1980s and in particular after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the world became 'monopolar', these countries and their 'dependencies' were forced to liberalise and privatise the major sectors of their economies. They had to implement what was called donor-recommended structural-adjustment programmes. These programmes led to growth, increased production and export, often with major profits for the multinational companies, with their headquarters in the North, or large indigenous or semi-indigenous companies, with headquarters or branches in the South.
At the same time, transition from protected economies to capitalist market economies also led to dramatic negative effects in the poor countries and affected ordinary people's lives, especially in the social sectors and employment, with traditional modes of production being termed uneconomical and workers termed redundant.
Finally, the main advocates for the structural adjustment programmes, the international finance institutions, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with the regional development banks, in our case, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), began to raise doubts about the efficacy of their own 'medicine' for growth and development in the South. The latest credits to poor countries, including Pakistan, were shelved even before the completion of the programmes initiated under earlier credit programmes. But then the 'damage' had been done and it was too late for most poor countries, especially the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), notably Sub-Saharan African countries and some Asian countries. (Pakistan is not an LDC since its economic performance is better. Recent surveys reported in the media indicate that Pakistan's proportion of poor people has shrunk markedly.)
Mending of (parts of) the social sectors after the effects of the misguided international policies are now under way in developing countries, including building and re-building of the education sector, including Education for All (EFA), with its country-wise action plans, and development of other sectors, such as health and family care. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) -- as outlined by the United Nations, adopted by the developing countries and supported by the rich countries -- are planned to be achieved by 2015. But many countries will not reach these goals in all fields, such as gender equality in education, universal primary education and literacy, major improvements in nutrition, access to clean water and health, and livelihoods and acceptable housing.
Many things that were valuable in traditional and 'old-fashioned' life-styles and livelihoods in villages in the South cannot be brought back. We have created a 'monopolar' and 'monocultural' world with no room for return, it seems, and the promise is that 'it was necessary and everything will become so much better tomorrow'! For the first time in history, the term 'global interdependency', which we learned about as students 30 years ago, suddenly is getting a real meaning. Probably it was all planned to be this way, but we as young students thought we could do things differently. We thought that people's 'basic needs' were more important than the corporate world's impressive balance sheets and dividends to shareholders.
Increased aid and trade
The international community has realised that more deliberate and multifaceted assistance to the poor countries is necessary in order to promote development in the South, and thus expand the markets for the multinational companies, and even a little bit for the large Third World owned companies. But for that to happen major increases in transfers of money from the North to the South are required. We have criticised development aid organisations for failed or naiôve policies, yet, we have to admit that aid also works, and it can work better, and more of it is needed.
Coherent policies in aid and support to develop broader trade relations between rich and poor countries, and between groups of countries, are required. These issues were discussed at last year's G-8 Summit in Scotland, when the world's largest economic powers met. Just ahead of G-8, the Africa Commission Report was presented with a lot of fanfare, by the host, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Finance Minister, Chancellor Gordon Brown, commission members and charismatic and philanthropic pop stars like Bob Geldof.
But transfers of aid have not increased markedly in the year since that remarkable G-8 Summit. Perhaps it is too soon and perhaps it wasn't to be expected. The trade policies are still not favouring the South, or worse still, there has not yet been created a level playing field in international trade. For example, the North keeps the South out of its markets in many fields, especially in the agricultural and horticultural sectors due to farm subsidies in the countries of the North. Other products, such as coffee, receive more or less the same price today as 30 years ago! (Oil is the major exception, but that issue we shall not discuss in this article.)
It should be added, though, that some of the changes to be caused by open markets in agriculture will have negative effects on farmers and other ordinary people in the countryside in the North as their settlements, traditional habitats, cultural traditions and life-styles will have to change. But we discuss such issues more passionately, it seems, when they affect the Northerners than when they affect the Southerners, as so many of the structural-adjustment policies have affected ordinary, poor people in the South.
It should also be added that many countries in the South also need to put their house in better order, notably shape their policies in ways that can create development, reduce corruption, redistribute wealth, and so on. Most developing countries' democratic systems are still fragile and only in their infancy. Some positive developments, however, can be seen in some countries even in Africa. Asian countries are developing faster economically and possibly also in more democratic political directions. When the pie grows, it is always easier to share more generously and include more participation.
Information revolution
The last decade has only seen some positive benefits for ordinary people in developing countries, particularly through what could be termed the 'information revolution'. Not since Gutenberg invented the printing machine five hundred years ago have we seen such a major leap forward in the media field, benefiting all and making the societies more democratic and open. The value of these developments may be more important than we have yet realised, and our criticism of the overall development may become milder over time. But media developments are more on the side of the structural adjustment and WTO policies. The are partly supported by the WTO policies, and then in turn the media directly or indirectly also supports the WTO policies. The media developments are more directly private sector driven and consequences of technological developments than 'bureaucratic office policies'.
Also, we can easily find negative aspects in the media sector, such as the electronic media beaming idealised images of lifestyles in the North right into the poorest villages in the South. The North is made attractive to the South, and the media messages support migration (legal and illegal) and an acceptance of the glamour of modern North as opposed to the grayness of the poor South. Thus the media is used as 'messengers' for globalisation, but we don't quite see it as that.
Anthropologists and historians of the future, though, will be riding roughshod on the North when writing our history, because we actually run 'cultural wars' against poor, traditional cultures and societies in the South. The ideology of the consumer-oriented, middle class societies is probably not even sustainable in the North, because it encourages resource consumption that is too high to be sustainable. How come we can then sell it to the South? Maybe we just want to believe in the myth that the Northern societies are, and we want the Southerners to believe in it too? And some in the South will 'win in the lottery' and achieve lifestyles and consumption patters similar to those in the North, and in addition take advantage of underpaid house-help and social workers.
Capital movement and migration
Globalisation and WTO's policies have hardened the capitalist world's grip on economic and social development, and have ensured free movement of capital, technology, educated human resources and, if the markets require it, also unskilled workers. Since the traditional modes of production in poor countries in the South were restructured to fit the needs of the North and their multinationals, more people have been forced to migrate to where the old and new production plants are, and we see increased rural-urban migration and labour migration across borders.
Migration can often be positive, especially if it is voluntary. It brings new ideas from the more multicultural cities in the home country or another country to the more static rural areas at home, and it brings remittances to the home country, or from the city to the rural areas. Recent research shows examples of remittances from overseas workers being more important to developing countries than development aid. Pakistan's some three million migrant workers send home significant amounts of money to their relatives at home. For instance, close to one million strong Pakistani diaspora in the United Kingdom contributes significantly, especially in Kashmir from where the majority of Pakistanis now living in UK hails.
In Pakistan, the role of migrant workers and immigration is positive light but migration can also be directly negative to developing countries, notably when it becomes a 'brain drain' of highly qualified personnel from the South to the North, such as doctors, nurses, computer specialists, and others, and when the most entrepreneurial and innovative people leave. Unless regulations are put in place, perhaps the North will use people from poor countries for social services in the North, and they may also 'send' their own people from the North to live in the South in retirement, because care is cheaper in the South, never mind that poor people in the South do not get their health needs met because the personnel are absorbed by the North, or the Northerners living in the South.
In other words, we can see examples of policies that benefit the rich at the same time as they lead to deeper poverty for the poor. Maybe they are not policies, but they are areas that remain unregulated, for instance, the migration of African nurses to the United Kingdom in order to make a better living or Latin-American health sector workers who migrate to the United States, where there are currently acute shortages of nurses in several major cities. The media focuses much less on these issues than on the illegal or semi-legal migration to North America and Europe.
Open borders?
Free migration for all is kept outside the current globalisation and WTO policies. This means that poverty-stricken people, especially in Africa, and within countries in Asia and Latin America, fall outside the direct purview of WTO, unless they are highly qualified people, or needed for other reasons. Yet they may have become poor, or extremely poor, because of WTO policies.
Other multilateral institutions and organisations, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), advocate free movement of people. The British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently expressed the need for free movement of people but he added that it should happen within a regulated framework. The European Union countries and the North American countries have special attraction for people from countries on their outskirts or outside their borders and elsewhere. Certain other economically successful countries, groups of countries or cities within countries, have similar attractions, leading to massive migration.
It is estimated that there are about 175 million migrants in the world today, mostly foreign workers and economic immigrants, but the figure is probably higher. (The definition of a migrant is someone living outside his or her country of birth for more than one year.) It is estimated that there are in the range of 50 million forced migrants, who include refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) numbering about 20 million, trafficked or smuggled persons estimated to be close to one million with a large proportion of women and children, and 'mixed groups' of migrants who are more or less forced to move from their usual habitat mainly due to impoverishment and hope for a more prosperous life elsewhere or they chose to leave to seek and live 'the American dream'.
Only a minority are illegal or semi-legal migrants (undocumented migrants). In the future, we should expect that migrants will pay less attention to the legal aspects, simply because they may feel forced to move out of desperation, including a feeling of responsibility for their families and children, hoping that at least the children may be able to achieve better living conditions than the parent-generation had. When Tony Blair recently mentioned the need for 'open but regulated borders', it was because the North has begun to realise this situation. The same applies to the situation in the United States, where the southern borders are particularly porous. However, the politicians are still careful in condemning the situation, partly because it may then become more uncontrollable, and partly because legal and undocumented migrants are good for the receiving country's economy as well as that of the sending country, which receive remittances from its people abroad. But this is a situation that none of the parties, especially the receiving country, wants to acknowledge.
Lands of opportunity
In earlier centuries, there were 'lands of opportunity' open to everyone, especially from Europe, such as the United States of America, Canada and Australia, which welcomed immigrants in large numbers. This was the case up to less than a hundred years ago, and until 30-40 years ago, many European countries received immigrants, such as Norway, which has a large diaspora of Pakistanis compared to Norway's small population (30,000 Pakistani-Norwegians in the capital Oslo out of its half a million people). Visa for travel to that country was not required until 1976.
There are fewer such 'lands of opportunity' with open borders today, which have resources and need labour. For instance, Russia is a vast country but it is very selective in the immigrants it wants to receive. President Putin recently said that one of his country's major problems was that it has too few people and low population growth. North America is still relatively sparsely populated, especially Canada but also the United States. Australia has a population lower than Nepal. Scandinavians still enjoy a lot of space per inhabitant. In the Southern hemisphere, Africa, the world's richest and second largest continent, has sparsely populated countries and a reduced population growth, partly due to the devastating HIV/AIDS pandemic, malaria and other diseases.
Climate-wise, Africa has excellent conditions but some areas need irrigation for agricultural production. Most of the other areas we mentioned have extremely cold winter seasons, although with today's modern technology (and perhaps the effects of the global warming) the climatic aspect will not be a major hinderance for people to move if they really want to come out of poverty and if the receiving countries have positive systems in place to welcome and integrate immigrants. But most importantly, the receiving countries should acknowledge that they do indeed need foreign labour.
Today, the percentage-wise migrant populations are as follows in selected countries: Australia: 23; Canada: 19; USA: 12.3; Western Europe: 9.7. Major cities with large migrant populations are Toronto, with 44 per cent, Brussels with 30 per cent and London with 25 per cent. Only 3 per cent of the world's total populations are migrants.
In the next decades it is expected that the world's major growth regions will be in South and South East Asia, especially the more than two billion-strong countries of China and India, and it is foreseen that the increased number of human resources required, will be mostly coming from within these regions. There is already increased rural-urban migration within and between the countries, which is also leading to upward social mobility.
Again, as we have pointed out while discussing structural-adjustment programmes and WTO policies, these countries and regions need to ascertain that social policies and the human rights are to be observed even during times of rapid and large human movements and economic growth.
Atle Hetland is an international consultant who specialises in development, refugee/migration and education/media issues. He is currently based in Islamabad.
