 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Mr. Igor Bosk of the ILO for South Asia joining us to talk about migration and migrant labor. Thank you for joining us. Mr. Igor, could you please tell us a bit about the current international climate regarding migrant labor? It's always important to look at migration in the context of where the jobs are and why people are migrating. So in recent history, as you would have seen, there's been a significant amount of migration happening around the world in different types of directions, but often approximately two-thirds of the migration is actually for work, which means that people are looking for normal livelihood opportunities, that they're not able to meet those needs back at home, and they need those types of opportunities in places where they go. So the challenge here is how is it that this migration can actually be empowering? And that means basically how are the working conditions for the migrants and what can be done in order to improve the outcomes for the lives of migrant workers. So there's been talk about the global compact for migrants. I'm not very sure on the exact terminology, but could you shed some light on that? Sure. In the last couple years, there's been a lot of discussions about trying to come up with some sort of a global compact on migration, and there's been lots of negotiations, particularly recently. There's already a first draft, a zero draft, now there's a first draft. And so there's going to be this document that is going to be a legally non-binding framework. However, in a context where there have been limited instruments looking at migration, such an agreement is very important because it will start shaping the way policymakers start looking at mobility and labor migration. And it is all the more important because currently that particular draft is still of course a draft, but there is still a lot that can be done to ensure that the link with employment is actually represented so that migrants can actually find the types of opportunities that are necessary and that the document doesn't look at migration as an objective per se. If there are enough working opportunities that are decent, then of course migration will tend to be much easier and regular. However, if the working opportunities are not as good, then of course there will be more irregularity and therefore it is very important to look at decent work as an objective that has to be well articulated in this document. In the context of South Asia, in terms of the out migration and in migration, which side does the migration tend to favor? South Asia is by far one of the biggest migrant-sending regions in the world and it also is the biggest receiver of remittances. So remittances play a very important role, especially for the livelihoods of people who are migrating and their families back in their home countries. And therefore it's really very important that these types of agreements like the Global Compact actually represent as well the interests of countries that are sending migrants abroad. And part of the motivation behind this Global Compact is coming from countries that are developed and that are seeing a rise in political trends where politicians don't necessarily look at migrants in a positive way, as a result of which it is important to also look at the working conditions of migrants. If migrants are actually going to countries for different reasons, then what can be done to actually uphold international labor standards? And are there protections, I mean international labor standards, meaning protections for migrant labor in say other countries? There are labor standards for migrant workers. Now one of the challenges is that many of the countries of destination where migrants go and work to as a majority have not necessarily ratified those conventions. However there are fundamental principles in rights at work which are part of the International Labor Organization's standards and those have certain principles which are supposed to be universal and apply even for countries that have not necessarily ratified. These include issues like for instance the freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining and organizing, freedom from discrimination, freedom from forced labor and child labor. Those are fundamental principles that are very important to uphold in order to ensure that the working conditions improve. So in the case of say countries of origin, what steps can a country of origin take to ensure the protection of its citizens who have migrated? The most important thing is countries of origin have a better bargaining voice when they talk as a group. And so if countries like for instance of South Asia and other region they talk in one voice with countries where migrants are going to then of course that is different. Now what tends to happen is that there is a series of bilateral agreements or memorandums of understanding between different countries which leads countries to have different types of agreements on how their migrant workers are protected or not. And so you will have a certain hierarchy of migrant workers who will be often doing similar types of jobs in destination countries and yet the for instance wages or the working conditions would differ not because of the qualifications that they have but because of the color of their skin, because of their gender. And those are the types of things that international labor standards are useful for addressing. And that's why we try to advocate for that. So in the context of South Asia, what steps have say some of the governments or taken in regards to protecting their citizens who have migrated? So I mean there are a variety of instruments that are used by different governments. India has an emigrant act that from 1983 if I am correct to be verified. Many Nepal passed recently a foreign employment act. Bangladesh has a similar type of a mechanism. Now legislation of course is important but what is particularly also important is to make sure that there are mechanisms in place in the countries of destination through embassies that enable migrant workers to protect themselves and uphold their labor rights so that they don't find themselves in these types of discriminatory working conditions. So that is something which can always be improved and we in the ILO work in countries of destination with different constituents including trade unions and employer organizations as well as governments to try to improve that. So does the ILO also look into the concerns because from various countries there are concerns about illegal migrants who are snatching away the jobs, the common refrain, but does the ILO's guidelines also look into the working conditions of these illegal migrants? Because like you had earlier said if the opportunities exist back home they wouldn't really travel. Absolutely and the working conditions are one of the main sectors which the ILO focuses on. I particularly looking particularly at the issue of vulnerability to forced labor and in connection with the other fundamental principles and rights at work. So for instance to give a practical example we do work in countries of destination specifically on the working conditions of domestic work, the working conditions of garment workers and other types of workers. Now each sector has a very different dynamic and so it's important to understand that dynamic. For instance there's a lot of discussion around domestic workers and the rights of domestic workers and their working conditions. However what is often not understood is why is it that there's increasing demand for domestic workers around the world? That happens in countries like in the US, in Europe, but in West Asia as well as in the main cities of India and other countries of South Asia. And the reason for that is that you do have first of all a pattern of urbanization that's happening that is related with an agrarian crisis in most countries. You have an urban middle class that increasingly needs to rely on some type of assistance in the households and that is often linked to a certain degree into the cities capacities to provide for certain services. If there is good transport, if there is good healthcare service, if there are good childcare facilities, if all those types of services are there then of course households have less of a need to rely on domestic workers. However if funding for such type of services diminishes then of course the burden of the cost falls on the households and therefore there's an increase in the demand for domestic workers. And so that is one of the primary reasons of looking at that. So there are all these economic connections which are important to understand and grapple. Otherwise simply addressing particularly the rights of domestic workers is not enough. Of course it's very important. There is a, the ILO does have a convention for domestic work which is convention 189 that guarantees decent work for domestic workers. But you know it should, the labor standards should be seen as a comprehensive framework that have to be analyzed from different social economic angles. You did mention in this context about internal migration as well. So you would say that the factors of external migration and internal migrations are almost the same. Or is there a difference? There are differences but there's a lot of also similar dynamics. I mean in the, as I mentioned it's important to understand why migration is happening. Migration is often happening because there's a process of economic transformation that's happening in countries and areas where people are migrating from. Where there's a complete transformation of the type of agriculture that was there. The rule economy that was there is changing and the traditional means of livelihoods are no longer working. As a result of that people end up migrating and in South Asia you still have very low, very low levels of urbanization compared to some other parts of the world. So you can expect a certain continuation of this type of flows from urban, from rural to urban areas. So what's important to look at is how is the agrarian crisis, for instance, can affect working conditions in cities of destination. Whether it's within South Asia or whether it's in other countries, for instance in West Asia where many migrants from South Asia go to. And so the more you have migrants flowing into these areas the more of course you're going to have also an economic pressure and a depression of wages and working conditions can be affected. Which gives rise to also sometimes xenophobic types of feelings about why all these people are coming into our cities, why they're coming into our countries from people that we have never seen before. And that is why it's important for policy makers to look at the connection between what's happening in the agrarian context with the working conditions in the emerging sectors often related to the service area or to manufacturing in this process of structural transformation that's happening. Thank you for joining us Mr. Igor. And thank you for watching NewsClick. Keep watching our videos.