LABOUR: Immigrants Face Major Obstacles Finding Jobs, Says ILO

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Mar 9 2000 (IPS) - Foreign workers and their families face “significant and disturbing levels of discrimination in access to employment” in western Europe and other parts of the industrialised world, according to research by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Immigrants in rich countries are often associated with conflicts, ethnic disputes and crime, and are accused of being a burden for the state, lamented Manolo Abella, ILO head of international migration issues, at a meeting this week in Geneva.

But such stereotypes ignore the role historically played by immigrants in the development of countries of the industrialised North, he stressed.

High-level government, employer and trade union delegates are meeting Wednesday through Saturday to discuss the challenges of knocking down the obstacles immigrants and minorities face in obtaining jobs in the industrialised world.

Research carried out by the ILO in the past seven years found that in a number of developed countries, unemployment rates among immigrants were high, and did not respond to economic growth or new trends in economic activity.

In those countries immigrants suffer discrimination both as foreigners and as workers, said Guyanese representative Bertrand Ramcharan, deputy UN high commissioner for human rights.

In most industrialised countries, unemployment among immigrants and their descendants is disproportionately high, said the report.

Abella, representing the Philippines, cited the case of Germany, where unemployment among foreign nationals stands at 20 percent – more than double the average among German nationals.

In France, unemployment among Algerians with secondary or university level education was twice that of French high school or university graduates.

And in the Netherlands, even in periods of near full employment, joblessness amounted to 36 percent among Turkish immigrants and 25 percent among Moroccans.

Workers from abroad or members of ethnic minorities face a spate of problems on the labour market, and find themselves at a disadvantage to mainstream members of industrialised societies, stated the study presented at the ILO meeting.

The UN agency pointed out that discrimination was highest in the services sector – which it described as an “extremely worrying” development because that is precisely the area where employment is growing at the highest rate. Immigrants tend to be concentrated in manufacturing sectors, where downsizing is widespread, the report observed.

The latest ILO statistics estimate the number of immigrants worldwide at 130 million – a figure that includes slightly over 20 million refugees and asylum-seekers.

The ILO recently predicted the advent of an era of great labour mobility, due to the impact of the globalisation process on the world’s economies.

But globalisation has failed to fill the need for jobs, said Abella, who added that with the exception of a few rapidly industrialising economies in Asia and Latin America, increased trade has failed to generate a significant rise in employment.

German expert Roger Bohning, director of a multi-disciplinary ILO team in Manila, pointed out that globalisation began with former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and former US president Ronald Reagan, in the 1980s.

Bohning said the two conservative leaders were the first and chief proponents of replacing state regulation with the forces of the market, which he said foreboded problems for the weakest members of society and, thus, for immigrants.

Immigrants run up against discrimination due to their ethnic or national origins in inter-personal relations, the media, when applying for a job, and when dealing with low-level government officials or the police, said Bohning.

But, he maintained, most politicians in Europe appear to be waiting for the phenomenon to simply disappear with time. In many cases, he said, they deny that discrimination exists, or downplay the phenomenon, probably out of feelings of embarassment or because they do not know what to do.

The mission of this week’s meeting is to identify measures for promoting equity in employment for immigrants.