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Looking at bilateral labour mobility arrangements and their relevance to future societies.
Introduction
Introduction
Europe has had bilaterally agreed labour mobility arrangements since the 50s and 60s, mainly for post-war reconstruction efforts. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the USA also relied on bilateral labour agreements to bring in workers from the Philippines, Canada and Mexico. During the 70s and 80s, bilaterally agreed labour agreements became more prominent in Asia and South America. The Oil crisis of the late 80s and the resultant economic turmoil caused a decline in such arrangements, later picking up towards the end of the cold war. Over 312 new bilateral labour mobility agreements were ratified between 1990 and 2015, with more countries joining such arrangements, including East Asia, Oceania and Europe.
The dynamics of the source country and destination country remained almost stable during this time: a relatively affluent destination country in Europe or West Asia and an economically weaker country sending source labour to the former. The pandemic and the global restructuring of jobs, alongside ageing economies of the affluent West, have brought forth renewed importance to labour mobility arrangements. This can be best understood in the change in attitude to countries in the West in opening up bilateral mobility agreements to countries they have previously considered with suspicion. For instance, the UK and India signed an MoU on migration and mobility partnership in 2021, which includes a reciprocal young professionals scheme allowing Indian nationals (and British nationals), between 18-30 years, to access each other’s labour market without pre-vetted sponsor requirements. The writing on the wall is clear: affluent societies of the West need skilled labour, the bargaining power is now in the hands of the developing countries when negotiating labour agreements.
We reached out to leading names and eminent scholars in the field to respond to us on the following question: Bilaterally agreed labour mobility arrangements are increasingly becoming a reality in many labour-intensive sectors. Do you believe that such mobility partnerships will become the mainstay of international labour migration?
Member States of the United Nations identified bilateral labour migration agreements as a key means of achieving the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. International Labour Organisation & International Organisation for Migration.
Member States of the United Nations identified bilateral labour migration agreements as a key means of achieving the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. The United Nations Network on Migration created a Thematic Working Group (TWG) on Bilateral Labour Migration Agreements (BLMAs), co-led by the ILO and IOM, comprised of representatives of UN agencies, employers’ and workers’ organizations, academia, and civil society organizations to build on this recognition. They developed guidance to assist countries of origin and destination to design, negotiate, implement, monitor and evaluate rights-based and gender-responsive BLMAs, based on a cooperative and multi-stakeholder approach. The guidance sets the criteria against which governments, workers’ and employers’ organizations, as well as other interested stakeholders, may assess existing practices. It is based on the principles drawn from international human rights law and international labour law and standards, related UN and ILO instruments and other relevant sources and promising practices. The aim is to use this guidance for policy development and design of BLMAs to promote cooperative and rights-based management of labour migration flows between countries of origin and destination.
*Paul Tacon, Migration Specialist at ILO had kindly liaised with staff members across ILO and IOM to provide expert commentary on bilaterally agreed labour mobility arrangements.
"Bringing together “coalitions of the willing” can be an easier task than negotiating changes on a regional basis, and such schemes can be bolted on to existing immigration systems without the need for complicated political wrangling"
"Bringing together “coalitions of the willing” can be an easier task than negotiating changes on a regional basis, and such schemes can be bolted on to existing immigration systems without the need for complicated political wrangling"
Mobility partnerships provide many benefits to the country of destination and origin. The former can precisely control the numbers and types of people who come in, ensuring their skills align with needs in the labor market. The latter can demand “compensation” for sending these workers. Bringing together “coalitions of the willing” can be an easier task than negotiating changes on a regional basis, and such schemes can be bolted on to existing immigration systems without the need for complicated political wrangling. Yet such schemes tend to be expensive, time-consuming, and small; they will need to radically scale (in a politically and financially sustainable way that meaningfully prioritises development in the country of origin) if they are to meet demand.
"In my view, free movement of persons and labour within regional economic communities is more promising and desirable and is likely to be more common in the coming years based on regional free movement agreements and protocols as in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean and ASEAN"
"In my view, free movement of persons and labour within regional economic communities is more promising and desirable and is likely to be more common in the coming years based on regional free movement agreements and protocols as in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean and ASEAN"
State-managed bilateral labour mobility arrangements were popular in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s but declined following the oil crisis in the early 1970s. A new generation of South-South bilateral labour instruments (including looser forms such as MOUs) have emerged between Middle Eastern countries (primarily Gulf Cooperation Council countries) and Asian and African-origin countries to recruit low and semi-skilled workers following the oil boom in the GCC countries. Bilateral labour arrangements have also become popular within African and Latin American countries. The main employment sectors are agriculture, construction, hospitality, domestic work and other services. European Union countries employed multipurpose bilateral framework agreements with African and Latin American countries to regulate labour migration, ensure readmission, curb irregular movements, and promote development. The reality,
however, is that most of these agreements are dominated by unequal power relations between the two parties and have suffered from poor implementation with limited impact on either governance of labour migration, mobility or protection of workers. At the same time, bilateral labour mobility treaties are much less common than bilateral trade and investment treaties. Moreover, most labour movements in the world are still unilateral as in the case of Australia, Canada, UK and the USA.
In my view, free movement of persons and labour within regional economic communities is more promising and desirable, and is likely to be more common in the coming years based on regional free movement agreements and protocols as in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean and ASEAN.
"There are indeed much more comprehensive bilateral agreements on free movement of people which make it possible for all nationals of the participating states, and not only certain workers, to move and settle for the purposes of work"
"There are indeed much more comprehensive bilateral agreements on free movement of people which make it possible for all nationals of the participating states, and not only certain workers, to move and settle for the purposes of work"
The main objective of the Global Compact on Migration can be summarised as facilitating mobility. With that background in mind, bilateral agreements on labour mobility can provide a useful tool to regulate migration between two countries. However, two caveats can be highlighted. First, it is crucial that these agreements respect international labour standards both in their design and in their application. ILO has produced useful guidelines in that regard. Second, more limited bilateral agreements on certain labour-intensive sectors should not be understood as the only available option. There are indeed much more comprehensive bilateral agreements on free movement of people which make it possible for all nationals of the participating states, and not only certain workers, to move and settle for the purposes of work.
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