Towards bilateral labour agreements: The Ghanaian outlook

Throughout human history migration has been a courageous expression of the individual’s will to overcome adversity and to live a better life” (UN, 2006, p. 5). Whilst acknowledging the diversity of migratory factors premised on natural disasters, famine, and conflicts, it is equally important that for a significant others the demand for their skills (e.g. African doctors abroad or Tullow migrant staff in Ghana) and its add-ons, triggers their movement.

The Global Commission on Migration has succinctly summarised these driving forces as “Development, Demography and Democracy” (GCIM, 2005). The focus of this article is on labour migration and its impact.

Ghana’s migration history is both dynamic and complex, and rooted in historical antecedents. The country has a long history and tradition of population mobility. Trade routes from the mainly agricultural production middle belts to the coastal communities, and the pre and post-colonial rural-urban migratory trends goes to confirm the propensity to migrate.

What can be considered mass emigration and its attendant foreign settler communities is, however, a post-independence development and highly linked to the human quest for psychological and material improvement. This is parallel to the observation that attitudes are also often shaped by contextual factors. In effect, but for political persecution, the observation by Anarfi et al., (2003), identifying domestic economic recession, social insurance, professional and academic reasons as being the ambiance within which intercontinental emigration is influenced among Ghanaians has hardly changed.

With a reported 150 million people working outside their country of origin according to the ILO in 2013, the IOM posted a $440b earning from migrant workers in 2011. Thus, while home country job creation is a preferred option, globalization and its structural demographic and socioeconomic realignment, means people are increasingly looking beyond their national borders in search of decent jobs that promise improved livelihoods (Amir, 1998).

For instance, in the past 25yrs (since the fall of communism), the BBC reports that 1 in 5 of Lithuanians have migrated. Thus, economic migration has become an integral part of the world order. In sending countries, labour migration, regulated or not, provides a surreal opportunity to ease the unemployment valve whilst labour shortfalls in receiving countries are compensated for (foreigners make up 71% of UAE, 64% of Singapore and 13% of the USA, with Libya’s 7.8% before the crisis comparable to the largest European receiving states).

Apart from the increasing wage differentials, the glorification of living conditions resulting in higher life expectancy in the developed economies serve as pull factors as well. According to Sassen (1988), global cities are based on dual economies, where the luxury consumption needs of elites create demand for low-skilled workers for construction, garment manufacture, food processing and service industries.

Thus, the decreasing fertility rates in the OECD area plus the aging population manifested in the adjustments in retirement ages in the larger economies of the EU is a clear demonstration that the services of migrant workers of all kinds shall be of increasing need to sustain the dual economies so established.

Manuh et al., (2005) have found Ghana, unenviably, being the African country with the most cumulative loss of tertiary-educated emigrants, with more than 56 per cent of doctors and 24 per cent of nurses trained in Ghana working abroad (Clemens and Pettersson, 2006). According to the EU (2006), only 3 per cent of Ghanaian emigrants have no skills. The fact that immigration policy favours high-skilled applicants means that illegal workers are most often of the low or non-skilled working category (Chiswick, 2001). The movement of irregular Diasporans within the international global economy has been a major issue of increasing concern to sending countries.

In Ghana, unregulated recruitment agencies motivated by the absence of an amalgamated labour policy, has triggered a major black market recruitment of domestic workers from rural Ghana to the Gulf countries. The horrible narratives from returnees call for an urgent need for regulation of recruitment agencies. In some instances, migrant workers mobility and freedoms are restricted by the retention of their passports. An example is the Kafala system across the Arab Gulf countries, which warrants an employer’s permission to switch jobs. Women who account for almost half of migrant workers around the world are the most vulnerable (Black, R., et al. 2003).

At the domestic policy level, it is worth appreciating the diversity of the Diaspora. Suffice to say, returning members’ concerns must assume an integral part of Ghana’s migration management and diaspora mobilization efforts. The signing of Bilateral Agreements on pensions portability shall go a long way to trigger a reduction in the over $50billion reported migrants savings abroad, injecting some estimated GHC10 billion from Germany alone yearly.

Another significant default remains the absence of a National Reintegration Center for returning Ghanaian migrants. The changing home dynamics and conditions under which irregular Diaspora return calls for a psychosocial and entrepreneurial support center that shall provide a humane reintegration into the Ghanaian society. A case in point is the recent deportation of 75 Ghanaian Diasporans from the USA on the fringes of the recent Diaspora Homecoming Summit 2017.

Irregular Diasporans might not return with $10,000 but might possess a cosmopolitan outlook with some valuable soft skills and social resources (Hannerz, 2009) that could improve customer relations, change workplace attitudes and introduce new farming techniques.

Formalized labour migration agreements shall project a win-win situation; bring labour migrants into the national tax net, curtail black market recruitments with its attendant human trafficking challenges, reduce unemployment pressures on sending governments, improve livelihoods of migrants and their families, whilst satisfying the labour shortfalls in the destination countries.

Having ratified a number of international conventions including the ILO’s convention which prohibit all forms of forced and compulsory labour (1957 and 1958 respectively), the Conventions concerning migration in abusive conditions and the promotion of equality of opportunity and treatment of migrant workers (1975), the Convention on the rights of migrant workers and their families (1990), Ghana must seek to leverage on these international agreements to enhance its bilateral cooperation in furtherance of her national interests.

At the individual level, the human rights concerns of intercontinental migrants and those in transit have assumed seminal importance. Since migrants are most often minority groups within host countries, ensuring equality for migrant workers should be seen as part of the global efforts to promote human rights and human dignity.

Yet, a major challenge in labour migration in Ghana is the absence of accurate statistics on Ghanaians working abroad. The unreliable and conflicting data on Ghanaian emigrants is partly as a result of the sizeable number of irregular migrants outside the country. Whilst some migrants emigrate through unapproved routes, others register as refugees under different nationalities. In continental Europe, the free movement of people further worsens this scenario as emigrants move in response to labour demands within the EU, most often without making their departure known to the authorized agencies. The above notwithstanding, the Ghana Immigration Services, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration in partnership with the International Organisation for Migration and its partner agencies can initiate an effective data collection on Ghanaian migrants.

CONCLUSION

All countries are predisposed to the effects of migration (both sending or receiving countries alike). The choice before policy makers in labour migration management is not how to manage changes of the social structure, but how to manage the phenomenon of migration itself.

As the North-South economic disparities widen, the challenges of governments in the global South to respond to the increasing demands of their citizens, with over 60% of the unemployed in Africa being young people, means labour migration will continue to be an escape route for all who seek improved living conditions. Concerns over the need for more restrictive measures to curtail migration must therefore be balanced with genuine international efforts to assist developing economies out of their developmental challenges. This way, irregular migration will dwindle given the risks, cost and uncertainties involved.

A highly uneven global demographic profile with developing countries’ workforce projected to rise from 2.4 billion in 2005 to 3.6 billion in 2040, in contrast with developed countries having more people over the age of 60 than under age 15 with an expected population drop of nearly 25 per cent by 2050 (IOM, 2010), means developed countries will in no time need more foreign workers (skilled and unskilled). Ghana can therefore benefit by investing in the technological training of its workforce with a global perspective.

Modeled around those of the Philippines, South Korea and India, the export of such professionals under bilateral agreements, e.g. the Italy-Ghana initiative to recruit 1000 semi-skilled migrants annually from Ghana to work in Italy (See Manuh, 2006) will soar up tax earnings under proactive labour and tax laws, ease the graduate unemployment and in the near future lead to a “brain gain” when favourable conditions are provided under a holistic “Diaspora Policy” to attract these professionals, especially in the industrial and technological sectors back home for national development.