Abstract
Housing and care are key sites of social reproduction that shape and are shaped by the labour process. As a Theory into Practice contribution, this article proposes social reproduction as a corrective that can restore the ‘human’ to discussions on temporary labour migration, including the potential for agency. Traditionally, ‘housing’ and ‘care’ are treated as disparate objects of regulation, which are further fragmented by the process of policy making itself. The article proposes ideas, some reflected in the International Labour Organization (ILO’s) recommendations, to turn aspirational values into lived realities to improve the historical disadvantages faced by temporary migrant workers. While it is widely accepted that this is necessary, we should remain hopeful that it is also achievable.
Introduction
Over a decade ago, policy discussions around temporary labour migration (TLM) were framed as an ideology (Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014). The parameters of the debate revolved around three perspectives: temporariness, labour markets and rights. First, temporariness refers to the illusionary notion that even though permission to stay might be limited in time, many migrants who arrive on a temporary basis remain permanently with or without permission in the country of destination and the jobs that they perform are not of a temporary nature. Second, the reference to labour markets alludes to the fact that temporary programmes are strictly linked to the needs of the labour market and thus better information on labour shortages, sectoral gaps in terms of labour, and labour matching, can improve the programmes themselves, reinforcing the ideology of TLM. Finally, the rights of temporary migrants under these programmes are not fully respected because of the well-documented issues around dependence on an employer for sponsorship and employment contracts, limitations to rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, and so on (ILO, 2022a; OHCHR, 2022). While the authors advocated for better legal protections for migrant workers, they were also reticent on the promises of rights remedies as permanent solutions to the barriers and difficulties facing temporary migrant workers because of – among other reasons – low enforcement, and because temporary migrant work is anchored in a fundamental subordination (Dauvergne and Marsden, 2014).
Today, temporary labour migration is topical again, and in spite of general acceptance that these programmes are problematic, the parameters of the discussion have not changed much. Temporariness is described as a natural feature of transnational mobility, the rise of these movements is depicted as inevitable, for example, in the European Union, TLM increased by 18 percent and 4 percent in 2022 relative to 2021 and 2019, respectively (OECD, 2023: 25). Labour market needs continue to guide policy design on TLM, and the real origins of labour shortages remain unchallenged. Discourses about rights also continue to frame the debates, with newer themes around remedy and access to justice (Berg and Farbenblum, 2018). Other regions of the world, and not just industrialised countries, have embraced TLM as a development strategy reinforcing another dimension of the TLM ideology, for example in Asia.
In following the spirit of the editorial introduction to Work in the Global Economy, where Moore and Newsome introduced Theory into Practice as a feature of the journal with the objective of ‘generating debates and insights as to how academic ideas are translated in outcomes’ (Moore and Newsome, 2021), this piece reflects on contributions from the themed issue, Transnational Labour Mobility Regimes: Organising Production and Social Reproduction Beyond Borders. This Theory into Practice article uses social reproduction as a lens to interrogate ideologies of temporary labour migration across the different sectors and geographical locations discussed in this themed issue, with the hope of generating ideas to improve the conditions of migrant workers currently and in the future.
TLM programmes have evolved over the years, and we have also seen them disguised as ‘new forms’ under mobility programmes of different sorts.2 The complexity and the scope of defining what constitutes TLM have increased due to visa entry and legal permit systems with regional and national differences, and the presence of mixed flows, which encompass various forms of mobility, including refugee movements. In a world obsessed with evidence-based policy making, where the dominant forms of sources of data continue to be those created through statistics, limitations in capturing these temporary flows have also complicated efforts to harmonise global estimates on temporary forms of migration.
This article will not address data constraints, although this is also an important endeavour. However, by focusing on the role of social reproduction, it invites broader thinking on what constitutes data, and how evidence-based policy making could be improved to provide a more accurate picture of reality, especially for those groups of workers who are invisible, and the social relations in which they are embedded. In this vein, the article advocates the complementarity of labour process analyses and social reproduction to better describe the condition of migrant workers not only as labour, but as humans,3 and develop more integrative policies that can better serve them and their humanity, in particular to recognise the work and the roles they assume transnationally.
What is social reproduction and why does it matter?
the activities and attitudes, behaviours and emotions, and responsibilities and relationships directly involved in maintaining life, on a daily basis and intergenerationally. It involves various kinds of socially necessary work – mental, physical, and emotional – aimed at providing the historically and socially, as well as biologically, defined means for maintaining and reproducing populations. Among other things, social reproduction includes how food, clothing and shelter are made available for immediate consumption, how the maintenance and socialization of children is accomplished, how care of the elderly and infirm is provided, and how sexuality is socially constructed. (Brenner and Laslett, 1991: 314)
This is a comprehensive take that allows us to look at all the dimensions of social reproduction in global capitalism. Incorporating this lens in policy making could problematise assumptions about causality and the choice of variables that become objects and subjects of regulation and targets. Why is this important? The domains of production and reproduction have historically been kept separate, as if they belonged to different realms of human evolution. Thanks to the work of many critical and feminist scholars, this separation has become more and more illusory as we see and experience these two domains in everyday life. Homeworking during the COVID-19 pandemic made this intersection more apparent, even though the concept of social reproduction goes much deeper than the juggling of domestic chores and work.
the transnational migration of childcare workers of various types represents a subsidy of wealthier ‘first world’ women (and by extension those who employ them) by either young women from other parts of the ‘first world’ or, more commonly, women from the ‘Global South’, whose own children are often left behind with relatives. These transnational exchanges enable those migrant women, not only to work longer hours, but also to receive less compensation in the process [italics my own].
Immigration policies contribute to this separation and transfer, in particular through TLM programmes that do not allow family reunification, when workers are confined to live in determined places and with other restrictions to their liberties. The articles in this themed issue underscore labour mobility as a key aspect of social reproduction. By examining different contexts and political economies, the articles illustrate how historical capital accumulation, facilitated through the labour process as well as (im)migration regimes, have significantly influenced the dynamics of social reproduction. These articles suggest an urgent need for the integration of conceptualisations of social reproduction, labour mobility, and the process of capital accumulation, to produce agency that can transform the scope and the design of policy formulation in the field of international labour migration. The article now considers how these ideas manifest in terms of housing, care, and agency.
Housing and the labour process
One of the prime manifestations of the integration of social reproduction with the labour process is the dormitory labour regime (DLR). The case of Nepali workers in Malaysia describes how disciplined, segregated and migrantised the workforce becomes through this system (Jones et al, 2024). Dormitory labour regimes have been predominant in many spheres of production and in many parts of the world. In factory systems that exhibit a unique integration between production and dormitories primarily inhabited by migrant workers, this becomes a way of life. This system is used in export processing zones, agriculture, and probably the extreme of cases is for workers at sea, where seafarers spend months in vessels that become their homes as well as their workplaces.
The history of the DLR has been traditionally associated with developments in China (Pun and Smith, 2007), but recent studies show how widespread the practice has become in other contexts (Goodburn and Mishra, 2023). The DLR is a form of workplace-residence system that facilitates the control of migrant labour for global accumulation in capitalism. The earlier studies, particularly in China, focused on internal migrants from rural to urban areas, but more recent analyses include interstate migrants in India and other forms of internal migrations. The novelty here is linking workplace-residence practices to migration regimes, that is, how the sovereign decision of a nation-state to provide entry to a particular group of workers also conditions their accommodation.
This practice has been widespread since the time of guest-worker programmes, but preoccupations over housing were not then dominant, with the exception of the ILO, which had recurrent discussions among its constituents on the housing conditions of workers, culminating in Recommendation No. 115 on Workers’ Housing in 1961. The COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on accommodation issues, given the risks of contagion among migrant populations, and informed debates over vaccination and health policy.
Moreover, when housing issues are debated at the national level, they rarely include a dimension on migrant housing, and mostly focus on affordability, geographical planning, construction, and decent housing, with the assumption that it refers to citizens, or longstanding migrants with residency rights. In turn, the expansion of temporary programmes that have given employers more power in sponsorship – facilitated by state regulation through immigration laws – and the well-documented accommodation problems of temporary migrants in sectors such as forestry, agriculture, construction, and manufacturing, is providing the opportunity to rethink how we conceptualise and deploy a more integrative approach to the realisation of the human right to adequate housing.4 In this way, the recent pandemic provided an opportunity to revisit the fragmentation of housing policy, occupational health and safety, and migration regimes.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments changed their housing regulations, particularly those concerning migrant workers. An instance that garnered worldwide attention involved migrant workers in Malaysia, who played a crucial role in the supply chains of personal protective equipment (PPE). By April 2020, a cluster of COVID-19 infections was identified across three residences in central Kuala Lumpur, housing migrant workers from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. In response, the government imposed a lockdown and movement control on these workers. Consequently, migrants faced challenges such as isolation and stress, compounded by a lack of access to water during the lockdown period (ILO, 2022b: 4). Later on, the government swiftly enforced the regulations of the Workers’ Minimum Standards of Housing and Amenities Act (Act 446), which was published at the end of August 2020, in light of the rising infection rates. The amendments to Act 446 were designed to enhance housing standards and extend the Act’s reach to all sectors that provide housing or accommodation to workers, whether provided by the employer or the government. Further measures to strengthen enforcement were introduced in 2021 when the government issued the Emergency (Employees’ Minimum Standards of Housing, Accommodations and Amenities) (Amendment) Ordinance. This ordinance mandated employers who provide worker housing to replace, modify, or repair any accommodation that fails to comply with Act 446. It also required them to relocate workers from overcrowded and uninhabitable accommodation to temporary housing, as prescribed by the Director-General of Labour. Failure to comply could result in a fine of 200,000 Malaysian ringgit (approximately US$48,219), up to three years of imprisonment, or both (Malaysia, MOHR 2021 cited in ILO, 2022b: 4).
This is an example to illustrate that it takes a crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, for governments to enforce existing measures, while others implemented new ones or expanded their scope to protect migrant workers.5 However, these measures do not address the isolation that migrant workers went and still go through when placed in employer-provided housing or under a DLR. There is dependence on migrant labour for production purposes, at the expense of migrants’ everyday social reproduction. One way to address this issue is to treat temporary labour migration programmes as transitional stepping stones, thereby providing the opportunity to a pathway to permanent residency (ILO, 2022a: 55). In Canada, to cite an example, the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP) eliminated in 2014 the mandatory live-in requirement, and a second reform included the reduction of the 24-month work experience eligibility for permanent residency to 12 months, which became effective on 20 April 2023 (Oklikah et al, 2024).
Another interesting avenue for exploration, once pathways to permanent residency are allowed, would be to free the housing market to allow migrant workers to choose their own accommodation. This will also require considerations in terms of equal treatment to national workers in terms of pay and securing access to information on renting and accommodation opportunities. It would also involve adjustment to wages, not just equality of treatment, to ensure an adequate standard of living in the country of destination. The ILO’s Workers’ Housing Recommendation No. 115 suggests, in its general principles, that one of the objectives of the national housing policy should be that ‘adequate and decent housing accommodation should not cost the workers more than a reasonable proportion of income, whether by way of rent for, or by way of payments towards the purchase of, such accommodation’ (R.115, article II.4).
Even if the ultimate goal is the elimination of DLR, or the provision of choice to workers on where to live, the stress and isolation that emerges from the DLR could be addressed as a socio-psychological factor under Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) regulations, given that OSH is a fundamental right.6 This could open a conversation about the transnational social dimensions of the well-being of workers while toiling in countries of destination when they still have responsibilities vis-à-vis their families. Caring for others transnationally represents a huge strain, and we turn to this in the section below.
Care
The care economy represents another important dimension of the integration of the labour process and social reproduction. All human beings are dependent on care, as both recipients and providers. Care is necessary for the existence and reproduction of societies and the workforce and for the overall well-being of every individual. The very essence of having independent and autonomous citizens as well as productive workers relies on the provision of care (ILO, 2018: 6).
The ILO understands the care economy to encompass both paid and unpaid work in the care sector, that includes direct, face-to-face personal care activities (such as feeding, nursing a sick person, and so on), and those activities that do not require face-to-face personal care such as cleaning, cooking, doing the laundry, and those performed by domestic workers, for example (ILO, 2018).
In social policy debates, care is normally discussed within national boundaries, that is, a specific localised context or territory. If we are going to consider the role of migrant workers, then the transnational facet takes on prominence. For example, the article describing the experience of Filipino fishers in the UK shows how the labour regime comprises many dependencies, with family members back in the Philippines who shape the decisions and behaviours of migrants, as well as their challenges. In this way, the labour process is not only exercised through management practices at the workplace, but also conditions family and community situations in the countries of origin, as migrant workers feel responsibility and transnational care activities through online support and also by sending remittances (Kelly and Ducusin, 2024).
In a similar fashion, Withers (2024) analyses the situation of migrant workers in the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme, and adopts a transnational social reproduction lens to illustrate how the scheme reconfigures care practices, skills formation, and communal labour to ‘progressively deplete socially reproductive capacity’ within the participating Pacific island countries. This is facilitated through uneven development among origin and destination countries, with origin countries having less resources to counteract the social (and at times economic) harm created by participating in these programmes which are touted as developmental paradigms. However, the article illustrates the difficulties of reallocating care activities transnationally among families, the dissolution of family relationships which come at the expense of financial outcomes, gender imbalances in the divisions of labour, as well as intergenerational constraints on social reproduction.
This case in point shows that adopting a social reproduction lens that is also transnational in nature questions the dominant policy idea that international migration can be an automatic solution to care labour shortages in wealthy countries due to demographic shifts. Why? Because as the case of the PALM scheme illustrates, there is no consideration of the global distributional effects in terms of the strains that participation in temporary programmes pose for social reproduction for migrant workers and the household impacts in countries of origin. A fairer immigration policy should transcend the national domain to include its distributional effects in countries of origin – beyond remittances.
This raises the normative question of national sovereignty, and how attached migration policy making should be to this premise. As described by the ideologies on TLM, there remains some optimism on the triple win that is supposed to embody participation in temporary programmes. But these approaches are in general blind to social reproduction as the articles in the themed issue reflect. Better efforts need to be made to include considerations of transnational impacts in immigration policy making. Given the persistence of national sovereignty in these debates, this seems distant, but is not unfeasible.
The evidence provided in the themed issue, as well as other strands of work in this domain, emphasise the necessity to include relational aspects in evidence-based policy making by showing how social reproduction plays out in practice. Thus, including considerations on social reproduction impacts would allow us to slowly move away from the market-oriented formulation of policies as prioritising labour market needs, which are dominant in (im)migration policy making. International migration as a solution to care deficits is currently inherently formulated in terms of labour market needs, in detriment to migrant workers’ own needs and aspirations. The case of the Live-In Caregiver programme in Canada, and its eradication of the provision to live at the employers’ premises, as well as a pathway to residency, are steps in the right direction.
Agency revisited
Reflecting the ideological aspect of temporary labour migration, in policy circles, migrants are often described as agents of change,7 recognising the crucial role that migrants play in host societies and their contribution to the global economy. In general terms, the notion of agents of change also refers to the economic contributions through sending remittances to their countries of origin to support their families and others. The description of migrants as agents of change is rarely assessed critically, in comparison to the wealth of literature on agency in critical and feminist political economy (Kofman, 2014; Baglioni, 2018; Mezzadri, 2019). As agency in itself is a relational notion, the fact that migrants are treated as agents of change obscures the realities of exploitative practices that stem from (im)migration regimes, their separation from the scope of labour protection for some groups of migrant workers, and the institutional mechanisms that constrain their democratic rights.
In this vein, a focus on social reproduction may recentre migrants’ agency by highlighting the negotiation of roles within the family and the distribution of work and care responsibilities. This is particularly salient for women migrant workers, especially those engaged in managing the social provision of care in paid and unpaid forms. Control over their social reproduction is a critical way to resist exploitation (Fraser, 2018) and exercise agency, illustrated by the case of Nepalese workers in Malaysia who decided to exit the DLR clandestinely (Jones et al, 2024).
The development of TLM programmes, and their control over where workers live and work, puts many constraints on workers’ agency, and it is part of the accumulation strategy that aims to treat these workers as temporary, reinforcing the ideology of TLM. How to re-centre agency in a way that changes policy making? One way would be to treat workers as subjects of regulation rather than objects of regulation. This is achieved in worker-driven initiatives in a number of contexts and sectors,8 including TLM programmes. Mieres and McGrath (2021) have shown that it is even possible for H2A workers in agriculture in the US, in spite of the constraints of the H2A visa programme, realised through participation in community activities and collective action through the human rights organisation, Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
At the ILO, the idea of social dialogue aims to bring workers, employers, and governments to the table to discuss and coordinate policy making. Through participation of workers’ representatives in different fora, the collective action of workers can be improved. However, this is still difficult for temporary migrant workers who, in the context of their employment situation, find it difficult to organise (ILO, 2023). To include subjectivity and cultural practices in policy design is not easy, and this is well reflected in the themed issue article that describes the situation of Indonesian migrant workers in Taiwan (Dinkelaker, 2024), which points to another dimension of agency, through creativity and immediate experience of the labour process, also at the centre of social reproduction and production structures. Resorting to ethnographic techniques, it evidences agency as crucial to the survival of migrant workers, but at the micro level. It would be interesting to upscale these experiences to challenge systemic forms of oppression. In this vein, real policy change seems to have potential through collective action and the extension of solidarity ties (Ford, 2019).
Bringing back the human: social reproduction as a corrective
This article has discussed how the lens of social reproduction and its transnational dimension illuminates the flaws in fragmentary and nationally-based policy-making spheres, and has the potential to function as a corrective to overcome a deep-seated attachment to sovereignty in immigration policy making. TLM debates continue to treat migrants as human capital, rather than individuals situated in historical, cultural, and economic contexts that influence their decisions to relocate. The politics of othering that stem from immigration obscures their humanity. As a corrective, social reproduction approaches highlight the many dimensions of being human and how their agency shapes migration trajectories.
Temporariness can be addressed by treating TLM programmes as stepping stones towards providing possibilities of pathways to residency, that support migrant workers’ agency to navigate immigration regimes and make decisions about remaining in the country of destination with access to basic living standards, continuing their journey, or returning home.
Transnational social reproduction allows us to return to the social construction of labour markets (Peck, 1996), shedding light on inequalities beyond gender and class. By highlighting transnational care responsibilities and cultural practices, it becomes clear that the narrow notion of the labour market is a misnomer, and there are many labour markets coexisting across transnational levels. Thus, the integration of social policies with immigration policies means rethinking how national agencies work and share information.
In this vein, adopting this lens helps us to make better connections in terms of the needs and realities of workers beyond pay and skill. It can provide a framework for a more human-centred approach to policy making that considers the distributional impacts in origin countries as a way of addressing global inequality. Immigration policy cannot address these imbalances alone. A social reproduction lens can address diminishing family rights and the loss of privacy. For example, in Uruguay, the Family Reunification Law of 2008 recognised the right of all immigrants to family reunification, due process, and access to justice, irrespective of their status. A 2018 study focusing on immigrants in Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital, revealed that Dominican Republicans were exercising their right to family reunification. They were predominantly bringing their children and siblings to settle in Uruguay (Fernández Soto et al, 2020).
Another final reflection refers to what constitutes data in evidence-based policy making. The studies in this themed issue have relied on qualitative material, highlighting aspects of the relational nature between migrants and their contexts. These realities cannot always be quantified. Adapting a transnational social reproduction lens can improve notions of impact assessments that inform dimensions of social justice and inequality beyond classical indicators.
Like researchers, not all policy makers are driven by the same commitment. This piece has shown that it is possible to broaden the lens that inspires policy debates to illuminate the socially-constructed reality that both production and social reproduction coexist along transnational lines rendering migrant workers human.
Notes
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect the official views of the ILO.
See (Vosko, 2022) for an analysis of the evolution of the International Mobility Programme (IMP) in Canada and their resemblances with classic Foreign Worker Programmes.
Building on the work on Arendt’s Human Condition, Dauvergne and Marsden (2014) build their notion of ideology by pointing out that the treatment of migrants as simply labour obscures dimensions of inequality and reinforces subordination of temporary labour migrants.
The human right to adequate housing was recognised as part of the right to an adequate standard of living in art. 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and in art. 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). Other instruments that make reference to it include: the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (1990); the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965); the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979); the Convention of the Rights of the Child (1989); and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) has articles referring to the right to housing. The issue is also referenced in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN 2015), as targets 1.4 and 11.1, and the New Urban Agenda (UN Habitat 2016). Various ILO instruments also reference the topic, and in particular, the Workers’ Housing Recommendation, 1961 (No. 115).
See ILO (2022b) for a description of policy changes in Asia.
As of June 2022, the International Labour Conference decided to include ‘a safe and healthy working environment’ in the ILO’s framework of fundamental principles and rights at work and to designate the Occupational Safety and Health Convention, 1981 (No.155) and the Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health Convention, 2006 (No.187) as fundamental Conventions, https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/safety-and-health-at-work/areasofwork/fundamental-principle/lang--en/index.htm.
See for example, UNDESA, ‘International migrants are important agents of change’, 2022, https://www.un.org/en/desa/international-migrants-are-important-agents-change.
For a recent study on successful worker-driven approaches through the lens of worker voice see Anner and Fischer-Daly (2023).
Funding
The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the ILO in publication of this article.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
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