By Marco Luciano
The Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) once again met this year for the fourth time since it started in 2007. GFMD was held in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico on November 10-11, 2010. The first was held in Brussels in July 2007, the second in Manila on October 2008, and the third was in Athens, Greece on November 2009.
The GFMD was conceived by UN dialogue in 2005 on migration and development. It defines itself as an “informal multilateral and state-led multi-stakeholder process” that is meant to “identify practical and feasible ways to strengthen the mutually beneficial relationship between migration and development.” While not formally part of the UN process, it is aimed at providing a venue for labor-receiving and labor-sending countries to trade strategies around instituting temporary labor migration programs (TMLPs). Pegged as a ‘win-win-win’ for both sets of governments and migrants themselves, temporary labor migration programs are being celebrated as the best solution to labor-receiving governments’ demand for cheap foreign workers to whom they are unwilling to extend full citizenship rights, to labor-sending governments’ need to address domestic unemployment, and to bolster foreign exchange reserves, and migrants’ and their families’ needs for livable wages.
The GFMD formally holds a civil society meeting alongside the official meeting to supposedly allow NGOs and other non-state actors to engage in the topics taken up by the government representatives in the GFMD proper. Through this meeting with civil society organizations (CSOs), it claims to provide a forum for non-state stakeholders to get their views and positions on issues surrounding migration and development. The proponents of the GFMD are the same creators of labor export and the commodification of migrant labor. They were in Mexico to discuss the current trends in migration and to strategize on how they can “manage migration” and further exploit the people.
This GFMD in Mexico is particularly significant. First, it is taking place in the midst of the worst economic and financial meltdown since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Second, the world’s largest free trade agreement, North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), is now on its fifteenth year and has failed in its promise of providing a better life. This is driving a wedge between those who have adopted the US-driven approach through the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’ of neoliberalism and those who have been pursuing alternative economic paths. Thirdly, there is the presence of a growing progressive and anti-imperialist social movements and several governments-in-power in Latin America that are resisting NAFTA and other imperialist schemes. Lastly, Mexico is geopolitically significant because of its position as the biggest source of migrant labor for North America and being an arena for US-led militarization in the Latin American region.
The military side of NAFTA via Plan Mexico has meant a brutal militarization of not only the U.S./Mexican border but throughout all of Mexico. Assistant Secretary of State, Tom Shannon, called it ‘arming NAFTA’. Plan Mexico is rooted not in the so-called war on drugs, as is often touted, but rather grew out of NAFTA, specifically the Security & Prosperity Partnership.
The US has subordinated Mexico to Plan Mexico or the Merida Initiative, as the security complement for NAFTA. Mexico is where we see one of the world’s most militarized borders, in particular with the US. The US is using Mexico to reassert and strengthen its hegemony over the entire region through regional, subregional and bilateral trade agreements and through the deployment of US military bases, promoting repression and provoking armed conflicts.
Meanwhile, in Canada border controls has become a billion-dollar trade. Tess Tesalona of Immigrant Workers Center (IWC) in Montreal, Canada said, “With almost $2 billion daily in cross-border trade with the United States, keeping the trade system open is critical to ensuring Canada’s economic prosperity.”
Ms. Tesalona further pointed out, “The Canadian government has used a number of repressive legal mechanisms, some of them introduced post-911 to arrest and detain immigrants and refugees without charge and then deport them back to their countries of origin. These measures have been accompanied by other (measures) to tighten the security apparatus of the Canadian state.”
Such measures include the criminalization of dissent or the listing of organizations and individuals as terrorists. She stated, “Entire communities of refugees and migrants have been targeted under the guise of national security. The Tamil refugees is one such community and they have been the targets of harassment, detention and deportation in Canada.” Security measures such as the “no-fly blacklist” also known as UN Security Council Resolution 1267, a resolution first passed back in 1999, is also being used in Canada through the issuance of “security certificates”. Ms. Tesalona further clarified, “(There is) Canada’s Secret Trial Five. They are five Muslim men living in Canada whose lives have been torn apart by allegations that they are connected to Islamic terrorist groups, … no actual criminal charges. (They do not have) fair and independent trial…. the evidence in a security certificate case remains secret ‘for reasons of national security’.”
From the time the UN decided to hold a permanent GFMD, dollar remittance has been the primary focus of discussion. Part of these discussions are sending and receiving countries, international financial institutions (IFIs) and organizations such as the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Available data show that officially recorded remittance flows to developing countries in 2008 reached $338 billion, higher than previous estimates of $328 billion. The true size of flows, including unrecorded flows through formal and informal channels, is even higher. This growth in remittances has outpaced the growth of Official Development Aid (ODA) and Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) to developing countries.
Thus, the World Bank was quick to propose the following to the November 2009 GFMD in Athens, Greece: “Policy responses should involve efforts to facilitate migration and remittances, to make these flows cheaper, safer and more productive for both the sending and the receiving countries.”
It is this policy framework that has guided the Global Forum on Migration and Development. This framework has been exposed by migrant and people’s organizations in the first IAMR in Manila and the second in Athens and in Mexico this year.
GFMD sells neoliberal anti-poverty and financing strategies by promoting the concept that “migration promotes development” and that the remittances of migrants help the economy and therefore serves as a “tool for development.” It directs its efforts towards capturing the remittances of migrants to: a) ensure super profits of bank monopolies, and b) ensure that debt-ridden economies have a large currency reserve to pay off debts.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon in his opening address of the 2009 GFMD in Athens said: “We meet in what I call an age of mobility. An era where people cross borders…Today, the number of international migrants is greater than at any time in history, with 214 million people living outside their country of birth. Thanks to the work of the Forum and others, there is a growing understanding about the good that such mobility can generate. When managed well, international migration greatly improves human welfare and development.”
One of the disturbing themes of the 4th GFMD was that Migration should be integrated into National Development Plans (NDPs), and into Poverty Reduction Strategies that will be complemented by policies, concrete actions and programs at all levels.
This year holds the central theme: “Partnerships for migration and development: shared prosperity – shared responsibility.” GFMD believes that such partnership – among governments, with civil society organizations, public and private sectors, and migrants – is a key tool for managing migration and still pursue its so-called “development” and “reduction of poverty and inequality” goals by 2015.
The GFMD is dishing out a big lie when it claims that its purpose is to identify practical and feasible ways to strengthen the supposedly mutually beneficial relationship between migration and development. GFMD is merely an instrument for justifying the massive export of cheap labor to the imperialist countries under the policy of neoliberal globalization.
Such views peddled to serve neoliberal interests were exposed by the International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR). This assembly was initiated by migrants themselves, with International Migrants Alliance (IMA ) in the lead, since 2008. The IAMR provides a counter or alternative forum for projecting a more critical stance on GFMD’s point of view on migration and development. The first International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR1) was held in Manila, Philippines to coincide with the second GMFD conference in October 2008. The 2nd (IAMR2) was held in Athens, Greece to coincide with the third GMFD conference in 2009. Since then, IAMR has decided to hold its counter-fora on the sites wherever the GMFD is held.
IAMR1 and IAMR2 gave several counter-punches to GMFD. First, it made a clear call to GMFD that the migrants must have a voice representing the autonomous voice of migrants and refugees –“They are talking about migration and development, without the migrants! They have always spoken for us, now we will speak for ourselves!”
The IAMR1 also raised a critical position on the concept of development being promoted by the states and IFIs in the GFMD. It exposed the neo-liberal paradigm of development that has not only failed to deliver on its promise of development but actually ruined many of the underdeveloped economies.
In Athens, IAMR2 was critical of the European Union (EU) Return Directive, a new policy which will drive an estimated 12 million undocumented migrants to face the prospect of arrest, detention and deportation. IAMR2 viewed it as a policy measure towards building what it calls “Fortress Europe.” EU simultaneously utilizes migrant labor from non-EU member countries as cheap labor to propel European capital, while becoming harsh on undocumented migrants who have provided super-cheap and super-exploited migrant labor that benefited European households and its small and medium-size productive and service enterprises of petty capitalists.
The GFMD in Mexico and IAMR3
The theme carried by GFMD in 2008 was “Protecting and Empowering Migrants for Development.” This was followed by “Integrating Migration Policies into Development Strategies for the Benefit of All” in the 3rd GFMD in 2009.
The GFMD is a propaganda mechanism controlled by imperialist and puppet states. It makes migration a topic for periodic discussions among representatives of such states, big business interests and imperialist-lining academic institutions and nongovernmental organizations and excludes the migrants themselves.
The GFMD is dishing out a big lie when it claims that its purpose is to identify practical and feasible ways to strengthen the supposedly mutually beneficial relationship between migration and development. GFMD is merely an instrument for justifying the massive export of cheap labor to the imperialist countries under the policy of neoliberal globalization.
The intensification of labor export is to extract more profit from migrant labor – the main agenda of the GFMD. It is a fact that the GFMD encourages states to adopt labor export policies and only pay lip service to other crucial issues like the rights of migrant workers and their families. Addressing such issues would hinder its core objective of utilizing labor export to gain financial advantage. In doing so, the GFMD clearly sides with rich and powerful countries in its desire to amass huge profits from cheap labor and substandard services for migrant workers. At the same time, it is keeping poorer countries continually under debt and dependent on whatever limited opportunities that host countries can offer migrant workers and their families.
Unless the GFMD tackles the root causes and effects of labor migration and respects the rights of peoples and nations towards genuine development, it will never improve to the lives of migrant workers.
Challenge to migrants and refugees
We cannot expect that these rights would be given to us. We have to fight for these rights. We have to continue engaging host governments and sending governments to respect these rights and to seriously build our capacity to address crucial issues related to labor migration, especially on the promotion and protection of the rights of migrants and refugees and their families.
We need to further build and consolidate organizations of migrants and refugees to further raise our voices. Right now, the International Migrants Alliance (IMA) is our global platform. Through the IMA we are assured that our rights as migrants and refugees, including those of our families, are foremost in our struggle.
It is important, too, that we link our struggles to the other movements: the workers’ movement and their struggles for jobs, decent wages and better working conditions; the peasant movement and their struggle to own the lands that they are tilling; the women’s movement and the youth and students’ movement. We must link our struggles even with national liberation movements which are struggling for genuine freedom. For the core issues of their struggles are the very issues we are also fighting for.
In the final analysis, what will truly liberate us from the evils of forced migration lies in the resolution of the roots of the problems causing the underdevelopment of our peoples and nations. Therefore, linking our struggles as migrants and refugees to the struggle of our peoples in the homeland is crucial. We need to push harder to free our peoples and nations from poverty and hunger, unemployment and underdevelopment. We need to take full control of our future if we want to stop being nations of exploited and oppressed migrants.
