This book is an impressive work of scholarship, innovative and timely. In terms of the latter aspect, I first began reading this book in Australia in mid-2012 when the dust had just settled on a national debate on the rights and wrongs of labour migration.
The debate was inspired by the world's richest woman and one of Australia's most prominent mining magnates, Gina Rinehart, who had successfully sought a labour agreement (an “Enterprise Migration Agreement”) to bring in 1,700 foreign workers to work on the Roy Hill iron ore mine in outback Australia. Many commentators were up in arms about the decision to award foreign workers jobs that should have been earmarked for Australian citizens, regardless of the fact that the agreement also ensured that at least 5,000 Australians would be employed on the project. The fact of the matter is that most Australians are unwilling to relocate from east coast urban centres to the vast, and unforgivingly hot, expanses of the West Australian outback. For one thing, the salaries for mineworkers may be excessively high, but so are the food, accommodation and transport costs. Moreover, the adverse social effects associated with temporary mineworkers who are isolated from family and friends are only now coming to light in the Australian media, with little scholarly evaluation of the true impact.
Throughout the world, while locals in the receiving country are unwilling to take on the so-called “dirty work” for some or all of the reasons outlined above, temporary labour migration from the developing world fills the gap. For migrant workers, no matter how hot, poor, or degrading the conditions in the receiving country, the wages are much better than what they would get at home. Labour Migration in Malaysia and Spain: Markets, Citizenship and Rights, impressively and in intense detail describes the situation in Malaysia and Spain, but many important lessons can be gleaned from this book for the people and governments of other countries, including Australia.
Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas begins her book with several comprehensive introductory chapters, outlining the salient roles of the state and markets in the supply and demand of migrant labour, with a particular focus on how issues such as citizenship, human rights, and migration policies also play a key role. The key question for labour-receiving states is quite simple, really: to what extent can states open entry to foreign workers, as a means of boosting economic productivity, while restricting citizenship, which also means restricting rights? As Garcés-Mascareñas argues, the more rights low-skilled migrants have, such as holiday pay or termination pay, the less advantageous or desirable they are. Fewer and more limited rights for migrant workers mean lower costs for employers and thus more migrants employed.
Quite early in the book the dilemma between markets and citizenship is investigated in terms of a particular distinction between liberal democracies (such as Spain) as opposed to illiberal democracies (such as Malaysia). This distinction, which plays out in both laws and practices relating to labour migration, is convincingly demonstrated in chapters 3 and 4, which outline the two national case studies. Chapter 5 makes direct contrasts and comparisons between the ways the two countries have responded to the demand for foreign labour before. The book is then nicely wrapped up with a concluding chapter. The underlying premise of the book's key comparison is the belief that while democratic countries tend to restrict numbers of migrant workers, non-democratic or autocratic societies tend to restrict rights. To be more specific, Garcés-Mascareñas's research question is framed in the following way: “To what point has Spain had a policy of low numbers and high rights and Malaysia one of high numbers and low rights?” (p. 195).
The first national case study presented is that of Malaysia. This discussion begins with a lengthy and concise description of Malaysia's history of migrant labour. In the British colonial era, when Malaysia was known as Malaya, the export of tin, sugar, coffee, and rubber in the increasingly connected world economy was only made possible by the importation of Chinese and Indian labour. Distinctions are made between the “closely knit” and “too organised and expensive” Chinese (p. 58) and the more malleable South Indian Tamils who, unlike Chinese workers, were perceived as “a peaceable and easily governed race” (p. 58). In effect, Indian labour was promoted by the colonial authorities to counterbalance the growing Chinese presence in Malaya. More recently, postcolonial Malaysia's exporting of manufactured goods within an increasingly globalized world economy has been based on the importation of migrant labour from Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and other Asian countries. As in the colonial era, at certain times the Malaysian state has favoured one specific sending state over another, leading to its “Hire Indonesians last” policy of 2002, for instance, which effectively put a stop to the hiring of Indonesian migrants.
While sustaining economic growth, Garcés-Mascareñas argues that immigration in Malaysia has contributed to a “dual labour market” which has, in turn, intensified Malaysia's reliance on migrant labour. In the contemporary era, migrant labour is found not just in export-oriented sectors, but also in those jobs perceived by local workers as “dirty, degrading and dangerous” (p. 58), such as construction work. Yet in periods of economic downturn, or in cases of illness or pregnancy hampering the capacity of the migrants to work, they are summarily returned. As many of Garcés-Mascareñas's interviewees put it, “Malaysia doesn't have migrants, just foreign workers” (p. 102).
Given that Garcés-Mascareñas framed her two case studies in an “illiberal democracy” versus “liberal democracy” dichotomy, it is very tempting to read and accept her description of the Malaysian case study on face value. That is, as a warning of the dangers of utilizing high numbers of migrant workers in the name of economic growth and development with next to no effort placed on addressing rights concerns, including the right to citizenship. The Malaysian state would no doubt be unhappy about such a bleak characterization, given that Malaysia likes to portray itself as a democracy, of sorts. Yet Garcés-Mascareñas's argument is very persuasive, especially when we are presented with a mountain of evidence demonstrating Malaysia's seemingly ad hoc efforts to both facilitate and regulate migration flows.
To this end, strategies put in place have included privatizing or “commercializing” recruitment processes, restricting or “immobilizing” migrant labour to particular economic sectors, taxing migrant workers as a method of control, and emphasizing the temporary nature of the migrant worker arrangement. Malaysia's recurrent “regularization” programmes have also served to emphasize the so-called “threat” of the migrant worker force which, although in demand, is unwanted. Narratives of Malaysia being “infiltrated” by “aliens” or “uninvited guests” within the territorial borders of the sovereign nation-state (p. 84) are commonplace in Malaysia's government-controlled media and these attitudes have not dimmed with the passage of time. Most damningly, Garcés-Mascareñas clearly delineates the close relationship between regularization and mass deportation campaigns, which are often characterized by corruption, abuse, violence, and worse things besides. For example, in 2002, the sudden influx of tens of thousands of Indonesian deportees to Nunukan, a small island on Indonesia's border with the Malaysian state of Sabah, caused a severe humanitarian crisis.
So much for Malaysia – does Spain fare any better? It would be easy to say that, on the surface, Spain's more restrictive labour migration policy, as compared to Malaysia's open entry policy, has led to more rights. This is only half correct. Despite the restrictiveness of its policies on paper, immigrants have kept coming in all the same, many of them illegally. The ongoing demand for labour has led, in effect, to a situation of high numbers and low rights in the sense that in their capacity as “illegals”, immigrant workers have entered the country and worked without having legal existence, “bereft of minimal social and labour rights, and their presence did not afford access to permanent residence or citizenship” (p. 197). Nonetheless, Garcés-Mascareñas's nuanced argument describes the manner in which, through regularization programmes, most of the legal and illegal immigrants have ended up obtaining a permanent residence permit or even Spanish citizenship. In the long term, therefore, Spain can boast of a situation of high numbers of migrant workers with a high degree of human rights.
In her concluding chapter, Garcés-Mascareñas admits that her comparison between two vastly different countries could be classed, by some, as “a comparison of the incomparable” (p. 210). To some extent this is true: the two nations do not seem immediately suited to a comparative analysis, and I wonder how many of the book's readers will be as fascinated by the Malaysia case study as they are by the study on Spain, and vice versa. Nevertheless, to the extent that such a comparison can be done, this book pulls it off, and handsomely so. We can only hope for similarly comparative research on the nature and practices of labour migration in the future, particularly in the relatively under-researched Asia region. It should be noted, however, that further comparisons between selected countries of Asia and Europe, à la Garcés-Mascareñas, might be pushing one's luck somewhat. But comparisons between the labour migration policies of sending and receiving nations in the Asia-Pacific, such as between Indonesia and the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, or Australia and New Zealand, seem natural, relatively straightforward, and, most importantly, overdue.
