– a blog for International Workers Day
“The state is creating what I call an international human supply chain. So a supply chain of overseas workers to the UK…So called “safe and legal” migration routes are not really safe. They have become safe for the perpetrators of these criminal offences because they are using the immigration system to traffic sponsored workers…People think that the slave trade has stopped, that slavery has been prohibited. No. It has simply been regulated. The fact that the UK Government allows employers to obtain a sponsorship license and to bring workers through the so called “safe and legal” migration routes to exploit them in the UK or other countries- it’s still slavery. It has simply been regulated, not prohibited, simply regulated.”
–Ake Achi, Founding Chief Executive of Migrants At Work, co-founder and CEO of Black Europeans
This International Workers Day, we uphold our commitment to a world where everyone is free to move, but also a world where no one is forced to move. Migrant liberation necessitates anti-imperialism, abolition and decolonisation. Migrant justice also necessitates worker justice– the two are inseparable and incomplete without each other.
Imperialism
Because of imperialism, many migrant workers are forced into positions in labour markets that make them vulnerable to exploitation.
Across the world, migrants are forced to escape the destabilising effects of imperialism in their origin countries: poverty, homelessness, lack of employment opportunities and economic instability. This is particularly true of countries in the Global South, which bear the brunt of capitalism and its policies of extraction and exploitation. During the colonial era, the colonisers exploited the colonised for labour and resources, and this continues until today. Therefore, work related migration often becomes symptomatic of the economic disparities between the Global North and Global South, as a result of the histories of colonial dispossession and systems of globalised capitalism that concentrate wealth into the hands of the Global North.
Visa schemes
Since the latter half of the twentieth century, numerous restrictive visa systems have been introduced, maintaining a system of racial capitalism: the commodification of an increasingly large and insecure class of racialised/Global South migrant workers for the purposes of economic extraction and exploitation by the Global North.
Under our points based sponsorship system, migration routes into the UK for migrant workers are inherently exploitative, and leave migrant workers languishing in slavery-like conditions. Sponsorship visa schemes tie people’s visa status in the UK to their sponsor or employer. Many employers have been charging extortionate and illegal recruitment fees leaving migrant workers in debt bondage once they get to the UK. This means they have little to no money to support themselves if they leave their employer, especially as they have no access to public funds once unemployed, and only have a limited period in which to find themselves a new sponsoring employer before they are at risk of deportation. This means that many end up in a form of quasi-indentured labour, where they end up forced to remain in exploitative working conditions.
The predominance of African and South Asian workers on the Health and Care visa, and the disposability with which they were treated, especially during the COVID pandemic, is emblematic of Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s definition of racism: ‘the state sanctioned….production and exploitation of group differentiated vulnerability to premature death.’ In other words: racism leaves racialised people in situations where they are more likely to die, such as increased exposure to high-risk environments.
The treatment of seasonal agricultural workers is a prime example of the commodification of migrants from both the Global South and Eastern Europe. Labourers from the Global South have provided cheap labour for the Global North for centuries, and the seasonal agricultural worker scheme is the latest iteration of this trend. The British Empire was underpinned by the work of indentured labour and enslaved people, relying on racialised people to be a ready source of cheap and mobile labourers. In the 21st century, migrant workers continue to be reduced to “human capital” or temporary moveable assets to be managed for economic gain.
The points based sponsorship scheme is a form of regulated slavery that continues the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, and the long colonial history of racialised communities being exploited by Europe for their labour power, or being managed as assets for profit. A route that turns migrants into commodities or is conditional on someone proving their skill or economic worth is not a route that upholds dignity, but merely a route that entrenches capitalist notions of worth and belonging.
The right to choose
As we have said before, capitalism is able to maximise profit by creating an “underclass” “labour reserve” of migrant workers, who have no choice but to engage in low paid or exploitative labour abroad. As many live in fear of deportation, they are also scared to organise for better wages and working conditions. There is clearly a level of coercion present when workers migrate to another country, in that they feel compelled to do so in order to make enough money to survive. Many migrant workers have expressed the sentiment that they would much prefer accessing adequately paid jobs in their country of origin, than having to travel to a new place to get that same salary. And as we have touched on earlier, the role of neoliberalism and imperialism in shaping these conditions of economic precarity and lack of job opportunity cannot be downplayed.
A note on international worker solidarity
Those on the right often weaponise the very valid concern with migrants being exploited in order to argue that migrants should not be allowed into the UK. Migrants should never be weaponised in this manner: migrants who are forced to flee should not be subjected to yet another layer of punishment and trauma in the form of being denied entry or being punished because they dare to seek a better life elsewhere. Providing support and respect for those who are fleeing economic precarity does not mean we are supporting the conditions of imperialism that created that economic precarity. Tightening borders or increasing border militarisation merely conflates the symptom (migration) with the root problem (capitalism and imperialism), whilst leaving capitalism unchallenged.
We should therefore stand firmly against the pitting of British workers against migrant workers. Capitalism is able to keep workers divided by blaming migrant workers for “stealing jobs” or “driving down wages”, to distract from the capitalist system that oppresses all workers, irrespective of migration status. Border militarisation just ensures that low paid migrant workers are even more exploited and oppressed, it doesn’t “stop them coming in”, since corporations will always need an exploitable underclass. Capitalism will always find a way to maximise profit through exploitation and keeping costs down, so even if migrant workers were denied entry, this does nothing to stop British workers from being turned into an “underclass” themselves. It is the very logic of capitalism, which necessitates the need for a disposable “underclass”, that has to be abolished.
This is why we must emphasise the shared struggle and interests of all workers. We call for solidarity between all workers, irrespective of migration status, in the struggle against racial capitalism, imperialism, and all forms of exploitation, and in the struggle for an abolitionist world, with liberation, safety and dignity for all.
If you are a migrant worker who wants to stand up against the sponsorship system, join the sponsored-worker led Justice for Sponsored Workers campaign! To get involved and find out more, click here.