My meandering journey: from Africa to Asia to Europe

By Dew* and Dorte Thorsen

“My journey from Cameroon started when I was 19 years old and I got a visa for China; now fifteen years later I’m in France, hoping to receive the papers that will allow me to work. I’m a sportsman and I’m doing well. This year I came second in the regional championship.”

This is the story of a typical migratory pathway out of Africa, shaped as it is by increasingly restrictive regimes of mobility, a good portion of courage and perseverance and the ability to cope with uncertainty. And yet, each individual’s story has its own specificities making it highly personal and unique.

“I was a black belt judoka of second grade back home and having watched lots of Chinese movies, I thought it would a great place to continue my sporting career. I was lucky to get a visa but although I continued to compete in China, I had to have other jobs to sustain myself. I learned to DJ and through working in clubs got friends from all over the world. One helped me getting a job as a sports teacher at an international school. That was me sorted! For the next many years my life was smooth.

Just before coming back to Cameroon to renew my passport and see my family, things began to go wrong. I had a car accident, and then I had a run in with the police. I got out of it but ever since nothing has worked out for me.

My plan was to get my new passport during a two-week holiday but I was told they had introduced biometric passports and I’d have to wait at least six months for a new one. What should I do? I had my jobs and a girlfriend waiting for me, so I did everything I could to speed up my return. This meant getting a fake passport from one of the countries where they can easily be obtained. It was costly and apart from spending all my savings, I got extra money from my girlfriend and my brother.”

The introduction of biometric passports was pushed by securitisation and the EU’s global approach to migration management. European countries were not the only ones to tighten border control; by the end of the 2000s China had also become more restrictive in its immigration politics but rather than halting African transnational migration, it pushed migrants like Dew into irregularity.

“At first, I still wanted to return to China, so I tried to apply for a visa in every country I went through but every time they told me to go to Mali because I was traveling on a Malian passport at the time. I tried to arrange for a visa at the Chinese embassy in Bamako but when it fell through because my bank card got blocked; I got fed up and went to Algeria. This was where my journey to Europe began.

Seven months later I succeeded in getting a visa for Malaysia but, much to my own surprise, I stopped in my tracks, reflected on my situation and decided not to go. By then my girlfriend of eight years had broken off our relationship. Instead of going back to Asia, I went to Mauritania to obtain reliable information about the routes to the Canary Islands. In Noadhibou, I trained judo with the Spanish military officers who were on coastal patrol. One of them drew me into teaching judo to migrant kids. It was a great four months but, as I couldn’t make money through this work, I continued to Morocco.

Same thing in Morocco. All the work I did – in a bakery, in a restaurant, as removal man – I could only just make enough to pay for a small room and my food. It couldn’t get me anywhere. I had exhausted my savings and the money relatives and friends sent were few and far between. I gave up on getting a visa but still wanted to get to Europe, even though I thought crossing the Mediterranean was too dangerous. I knew I could trust my physical strength to get me there via the over-land route and thus after about a year in Morocco I decided to cross over the border fence into the Spanish enclave, Melilla.

This was easier said than done. The living conditions in the forest around Melilla were extremely rough. To get food was a problem, to sleep was a problem and to get health care if you fell ill was a problem. The area was raided frequently by the Moroccan military to discourage us from climbing the fence. To get across, we went in big groups of 100-200 persons, maybe the first 50 or 40 would succeed in crossing all three fences and the rest were beaten back. All the border patrols – Moroccan and Spanish alike - were vicious. One of the Cameroonians was beaten so severely in the head that he died of the injuries a week later.”

The violence used in the patrol of the Spanish enclaves’ borders was documented by Doctors Without Borders, amongst others, and finally motivated their withdrawal from Morocco in the spring of 2013. Human Rights activists in both countries document the violence and seek to ensure the protection of migrants’ right.

“I was so shocked that I went back to Rabat to take stock. While I was there, a whole group of my friends entered Melilla in a massive attack. If anything, I was physically stronger than they were, so I picked up the courage again. I tried several times. The day I had my luck, I was at the front and had no time to wait for anyone. Once I crossed the third fence I just ran. I ran as fast as I could to get away from the fence area where you risk being moved back to the Moroccan side even if you are standing on Spanish soil. I went straight to the police to register my arrival.

I’ve been waiting ever since. I’ve been waiting for 2 ½ years by now. I’m not sitting with my hands in my lap waiting. In Melilla I washed cars while waiting so I had money to buy internet access and a bit of clothes to look decent. In mainland Spain I was busy learning the language but as the job prospects were minimal I continued to France.

I’m still waiting. If I didn’t have my sport, I don’t think I could have coped with all this waiting. Some days I train a lot, but I don’t always have the means to eat properly to restore my body. When I first began to compete in France, I was surprised I didn’t get prize money when I did well, like we did in Cameroon. I’ve only managed to get work for a few weeks and with no income and no prize money I’ve had to rely on the kindness of others and I’ve had to move on because I couldn’t contribute to paying the bills. That is really, really difficult when you normally are a hard-working person. The day I get my papers and I can work, my life begins again!”

*Dew’s details are confidential, he has given his consent to publish his story.

Dorte Thorsen is the Theme Leader for Gender and Qualitative Research at the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium. Her research interests include child and youth migration and, since 2012, the lives of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa living in Morocco.

  

#IAmAMigrant 

The Protection of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East and Asia Pacific

By: Endang Sugiyarto

Millions of labour migrants from developing countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka try to escape poverty and a lack of job opportunities at home by working abroad. Many end up in Middle Eastern destinations such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Others go to Asia Pacific countries including Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Brunei Darussalam and Japan. In addition to getting jobs for themselves, they send money home to help their families survive day-to-day life, to finance education and healthcare and to invest in a variety of ways. Thus they contribute to the economies of both the destination countries and their countries of origin which benefit from regular inflows of remittances. As a result, migration has become increasingly important to migrants and their families and to sending and host countries.

Many of the migrants work as domestic workers, a sector that is dominated by women due to the nature of the work and by the demands of the receiving countries. Many of them have low educational levels and insufficient skills to carry out the work expected by the employers. The lack of appropriate good quality training makes the matter worse. On top of these they face additional challenges such as different languages, cultures, laws, common practice, and other day-to-day aspects of life in the home of their employers.

The potential pitfalls of such working arrangements are obvious. It is common for a domestic worker to accidently destroy clothes while doing laundry and/or ironing due to a lack of training. The costs associated with such accidents can be high. If the atmosphere in the house is calm the consequences of mishaps can be minimal. But in a home that is hectic and full of tensions a small accident can easily flare up into an incident of abusive domestic violence. And if such incidents are repeated the situation can turn into one of habitual domestic abuse that is worsened by its location inside the home where there can be no third party and/or community scrutiny.

Moreover, the nature of the work that must be done in the employer’s property and the fact that the domestic worker has to live there too, leads to extended working hours and puts the worker in a very vulnerable situation. It is even worse when incidents happen in large secured houses or private apartments which offer no opportunities for the workers to interact with others. Reports of domestic workers being treated like slaves and suffering physical and sexual abuse sometimes conclude with them suffering permanent injuries, depression and even death.

Newspaper reports of a series of incidents involving Indonesian migrant domestic workers in the Middle East and Asia Pacific give a shocking insight into the severity of some of the abuse:

·         In 2004, Nirmala Bonat, working in Malaysia, suffered burns to her chest and back from a hot iron and was scalded after boiling water was poured over her body;

·         In 2005, Nur Miyati, working in Saudi Arabia, had to undergo the amputation of a body part due to infection caused by physical abuse;

·         In 2007, Ceryati, working in Malaysia, was forced to escape through a window of the 15th floor apartment of her employer because she could no longer tolerate the daily physical abuse she was subjected to. Almost her whole body was injured, in particular her forehead was swollen, and her neck and hands badly injured;

·         In 2009, Siti Hajar, working in Malaysia, endured abuse  in the form of beatings and by having boiling water poured on her. She had been with her employer for 34 months but was unable to seek help from others until her escape from the house;

·         Wasiah binti Toha worked in Abu Dhabi in 2009 but received no salary for 8 months. She decided to return home with neither money nor help from the recruiting agency due to the beatings she had endured from the beginning of her employment;

·         Sumiati had to be hospitalised in Saudi Arabia in November 2010 after her employer cut her top lip because she complained about her workload;

·         Erwiana worked in Hong Kong for 8 months in 2013. She had been made to work for 21 hours per day, was kept hungry, and got beaten with a wooden hanger or anything else within the reach of her employer, who eventually fired her and forced her to return home with injuries to her face, hands and legs.

The above list only highlights those cases exposed by the national and international press. These are just the tip of the iceberg. Many more incidences go hidden or unrecorded.

Many domestic workers suffer verbal and physical abuse combined with poor working conditions. More needs to be done to protect them. Many labour exporting countries have signed agreements with receiving countries to guarantee respect for the rights of the migrant workers, but the implementation details must be worked out.

Domestic workers from Indonesia seem to be particularly vulnerable. The high incidence of abuse has led the Indonesian government to declare a moratorium and there is a plan to stop sending domestic workers by 2017. As part of this plan, the government is going create more job opportunities and to educate and train migrant workers to meet the skills requirements of the jobs, as well as to give them knowledge of law and human rights.

Will this be enough? The answer is of course not. First, there should be a bilateral agreement between the sending and receiving countries to guarantee the rights and protection of migrant workers. Second, there should be a practical framework that adopts a rights-based approach to labour migration, emphasising non-discrimination, gender equality, and equality of opportunity for migrant workers, regardless of their immigration status. Third, not only should the workers receive training to help them adapt to the employer’s culture but the employers also need a basic understanding of the culture of their workers to be able to create a common understanding.

Protection of migrant workers must be comprehensive, beginning in their home country prior to departure, continuing throughout the duration of their work in the destination country, and covering them until they return home. Governments of sending countries need to be pro-active, making regular inspections of workplaces and working conditions to ensure the welfare of their migrant workers. All migrants should be given access to their countries representatives, in particular the labour attaches. The discussion above, however, does not take into account migrants in irregular situations, of whom there is a significant number and on whom the adverse impact is even more severe. For them, a more holistic approach is needed, covering the whole migration system, push and pull factors, and the immigration system. Protection of all migrants must be ensured through formal, transparent, and managed migration.

Endang Sugiyarto is a doctoral candidate in Migration Studies at the University of Sussex, funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.

Indonesia's “Special Treatment” of their International Migrants: Between Lip Service and Reality

By: Endang Sugiyarto

 
 

Indonesia recently experienced a new breeze promising to bring a wind of change when the new president took drastic action to protect the welfare of Indonesian international migrants (who are known as Tenaga Kerja Indonesia or TKI meaning Indonesian overseas worker) by asking the relevant government apparatus to “really treat them as heroes” (as indicated in the government official documents)[1] but also to “remove some of the special treatments” or privileges associated with or given to them. The apparent contradiction between these two requests lies at the heart of the issue. 

 

Due to the lack of job opportunities in the domestic economy, millions of Indonesians are currently working abroad, mostly as low-skilled workers but with incomes at least five times higher than those of their counterparts working in the same job domestically. According to official figures from the National Authority for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Overseas Workers (BNP2TKI), on average 563,262 Indonesian migrants worked abroad each year during the period 2007 to October 2014. This number is far below that of the unrecorded migrants who leave the country using various means. The majority of the TKI work in Southeast and East Asia and the Middle East, and the top five destinations from January to October 2014 are Malaysia (30% of total), Taiwan (19%), Saudi Arabia (11%), Hong Kong (8%) and Singapore (7%). They are mainly employed as  domestic workers (33%), followed by caretakers (12%), plantation workers (11%), factory workers (11%), general workers (5%), seamen (5%) and others (24%). 

 

The TKI directly contribute to the domestic economy by reducing unemployment and providing foreign exchange income via remittances, which could only otherwise be obtained through exports. Thus, this labour export policy is a “win-win” for the government, for it doesn’t need to provide jobs for those who leave while the economy reaps the benefit of their remittance inflows. Thus, the government has decided to treat them as foreign exchange heroes who must be respected accordingly. This is reflected, for instance, in provisions made at the airport. The TKI are given a special terminal, a special immigration lane, a special lounge, special trolleys, a special transfer bus or transportation, and other special things (the pictures below illustrate some of these provisions). The list of special provisions is in fact more extensive than outlined here, as some local governments add supplementary benefits such as temporary accommodation. In some cases, additional special treatments are given to those joining the G(overnment) to G(overnment) programs operated in conjunction with  Japan, Korea and Taiwan for example. These G to G programmes provide benefits in the form of special seminars, financial management and exchange rates for the salaries of the TKI involved.

 

So what is the problem then?

 

The problem is the gap between the policy and the reality of implementation on the ground. In a nutshell, these special treatments provided by the government have been used by corrupt government bureaucrats and their accomplices, often located in the private sector, to extort money. They set up a range of tariffs, exchange rates, and mark ups for their own benefit. The findings of a series of undercover and surprise inspections by the anti-corruption committee that were also exposed by the media have revealed the bad practices. Moreover, during the video conference between the President and Indonesian workers in: Brunei Darussalam, Egypt, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, which took place on 30 November 2014, the exposure of further corrupt practices led to the President taking action to remove some of the special treatments afforded to the TKI. The crackdown on these extortionate practices is welcome, and include the thwarting of a syndicate allegedly engaged in human trafficking of Indonesian migrant workers through Malaysia to destinations in Middle Eastern countries. But more work is needed to address this issue since  what has been exposed so far is just the tip of the iceberg! The new government needs to systematically solve the problems by better facilitating migration and protecting migrants’ welfare, throughout their migration cycle from the stages prior to their departure up to their return home. 

 

To start with, the deployment system must be improved, including better preparation of migrant workers. In connection with this, serious concerns must be addressed in relation to recruitment agencies. Their role has become very dominant (partly due to the lack of appropriate government intervention) which has resulted in migration becoming very commercial. Many agencies now also act as employers, creating a situation in which the migrant worker has become very vulnerable to abuse and exploitation in different forms. The widespread practice of “fly now and pay later” which renders migrants indebted to the agencies until they repay the cost of their flights, and of agencies having full control over all the arrangements: from the migrants’ passports to their contracts and deployment etc., should be seen as worrying.

 

Last summer I met a new migrant on her way to Malaysia where the recruitment agency had organised her trip, obtained her passport and visa, provided domestic and international transportation, and made all the other arrangements, while she had made practically none of the preparations herself. She was just told to go to the airport, board the aircraft, and somebody would pick her up at the destination airport. She had no information at all about the Indonesian Embassy in Malaysia and less than Rp2000 (less than 20 US cents or around 10 GB pence) in her pocket because the agent also told her that she would not need any Indonesian money. What if just one step in this elaborate process went wrong? How would the aspiring migrant worker cope? The outcome of her desperate action is anybody’s guess! 

 

Even more concern will be revealed if we scrutinize the job contract and other details, and ask basic questions such as: what kind of job will she be doing? What are the terms? How much will her salary be? How many months will it take her to repay all the costs associated with her departure that have been prepaid by the agency? And so on…

 

The potential problems and complexities stemming from this kind of arrangement are predictable. To illustrate, the official data shows that 181,193 migrants arrived back in Indonesia through 14 different airports from January to October 2014. Many of them returned before their contracts were completed due to various problems, such as incomplete documents, work-related ill health, an inability to work or communicate properly, and other reasons. Who are to be blamed for these outcomes? I hope that the new government is not going to blame the migrant workers for they are more the victims than the culprits! Their only mistake is to try to escape from poverty by entering into the wilderness of the international labour market. And they only took that route because the domestic market did not provide them with any other opportunities….

---

[1] This kind of treatment is not unique to Indonesia as many other developing countries adopt similar policies.

Fig 1: Examples of airport special facilities for the TKI - Indonesia's foreign exchange heroes

 Endang Sugiyarto is a doctoral candidate in Migration Studies at the University of Sussex, funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium

Dirty jobs but a brighter future? Migrant domestic workers and the discourse on slavery and forced labour

by Priya Deshingkar

Domestic workers  are often described as “modern-day slaves” because of their working conditions which bear many of the hallmarks of forced labour and also because of their intersecting disadvantages of race, gender and poverty.   But listening to the stories of migrants working as domestic workers reveals that the choices they have made, to work as domestic workers are precisely to escape degrading situations and contexts. The realities of the lives of many poor rural women are more dirty, dangerous and demeaning than domestic work, which offers women the chance to earn and be independent. 

After two years of planning with her husband how the household would be managed without her, 34-year-old Arini (name changed) has finally managed make the trip from her remote village in West Java all the way to Singapore to work as a domestic worker or maid.  There are many like her from Indonesia working as domestic workers in other countries including Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia.  The numbers are vast, nearly five million by one estimate, and they seem to be growing.  Like many others, Arini migrated through an agent who found her a job and paid the costs of her migration up front, costs that she must repay by working without any salary for the first eight months of her assignment. 

Across the globe in Ethiopia, the story is somewhat different for Abeba (name changed) who ran away from her village in the drought-prone Amhara region at the age of 15. First she went to the nearest town, worked there as a cleaner until she had saved enough to try her luck in Addis Ababa. Her plan was to save money to migrate to Djibouti or the Middle East where thousands of women and girls have migrated to work as maids. Abeba first got a job in Addis Ababa working for a distant relative but left after they refused to pay her. She found another job through an agent, in a house where she was groped and harassed until she left. In the city she had to live by her wits, continually searching for a place to live and a job that was safe and fair, where she could work and save. The work was hard and payment was poor; sometimes she did not even get paid. She eventually saved enough to pay an agent to migrate to Djibouti.

Both Arini and Abeba are working as domestic workers. ILO research shows that the 53 million domestic workers worldwide are predominantly female and from poor and socially excluded communities.   The working conditions are tough – limits on personal freedom, long working hours and being unable to leave because of debt-bondage. The ILO identifies domestic work as one of the sectors that is most likely to involve forced labour and slavery.  The public discourse on slavery and domestic work imagine domestic workers with almost no agency; their minds are controlled and their bodies are enslaved and the conclusion seems to be that they must be rescued from this awful fate.

But a look at the process from the perspective of migrant girls and women tells another story altogether. Arini wanted to migrate so that her family could enjoy the material comforts that her migrant neighbours have. She wanted her daughter to attend the best school and to make sure that her family did not want for anything. This was a choice she and her husband made together to raise their standard of living. Like many others, she comes from a subsistence farming household where incomes are not enough to provide for the family all year round and where material and educational aspirations have been fuelled and enabled by a history of migration. They hope that migration will enable them to escape the endless hard work and poverty associated with subsistence agriculture.

Abeba’s decision to leave the village, a place and a cultural context that she perceived as dead-end and degrading, was clearly a voluntary act; an example of agency in the face of limited choices.  She ran away from home because her family wanted her to marry at 15. Having been forced to leave school at 12 to work on the family’s failing farm, and with a marriage to a local man arranged for her, she could see how her future would be, and she didn’t like what she saw. To her, life in the city meant freedom, offering her choices of how she lived, dressed, ate and where she worked, despite its many risks. Living in this way was preferable to having her destiny sealed by her parents.

The risks are clearly numerous for such migrants, but for many poor people, migration offers the opportunity to earn more that they would at home and the ability to invest in businesses, land, material security and education. For many women migration also offers them a rare opportunity to earn money of their own, achieve independence and take control over their lives. This is often overlooked in the international debate on migrant domestic workers. The importance of jobs such as domestic work to the social mobility, development and freedom of poor women is hidden under the preoccupation with ideal (and important) employment conditions.

Migration and employment in sectors such as domestic work are sometimes labelled as slavery and forced labour. However, they remain among the most important pathways of social mobility for many poor women and can be considerably less degrading than other alternatives.

Priya Deshingkar is the Research Director of the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.