Recent events showing desperate immigrants drowning as they
tried to cross the Mediterranean into Europe were heart rending because of the
obvious loss of life but also because the streets of Europe are not paved with
gold.
There are two major developments happening in the western
economies which make thinking of going abroad to work less and less palatable.
On the one hand is the growing liberalisation of world
trade. A trend that begun tentatively before, and gathered momentum after, the
end of the cold war in 1989. The signing of the North American Free Trade Area
(NAFTA), the European Union, the beleaguered World Trade Organisation (WTO) and
any number of trade agreements running now around the world are in response to
this new momentum.
The increasing ease with which products can move across
borders means that businesses are now free to set up factories anywhere in the
world and transport their goods to their chosen markets.
By accident of history (Or Deng Xiaoping forsaw all this in the
1970s) China was maturing into the factory of the world, offering capitalists
cheap labour and mass production. So especially in the US, the western
economies have shipped much of their production to China, retaining the higher
end innovation and conceptualisation work.
"It is estimated that the US lost more than three million jobs in the manufacturing sector since China joined the WTO at the end of 2001. The global financial crisis caused further stress and even though they say President Barack Obama’s administration has added at least 4.5 million jobs back into the economy, the reality is the majority are the lowest of low end jobs and the really high end jobs, very little in the middle...
While its true low end jobs have always been there for the
picking, the greater number of immigrants – Mexicans and South Americans in the
US and Eastern Europeans in Europe now means African immigrants are not the
lowest earning labour anymore.
In addition the low end labour is now highly automated with
the innovations in computer technology meaning it’s not enough just to be
literate to work in the west.
That second point – increasing innovation, is also driving
another trend – greater automation in the work place and therefore few and
fewer workers are required for the same job with every passing day.
Banks are cutting staff because most transactions can now be
done online; restaurants the same as waiters are becoming redundant replaced by
automated ordering and paying systems; a handful of cleaners of commercial
properties with hoovers and increasing discipline with regard to waste disposal
are cleaning whole buildings.
If you really want to work abroad make sure you have a
unique skill or are highly educated in a field that is in demand – more and
more this is in IT and its related fields. And highly educated means PhD level
not just your basic degree.
Of course this will not dissuade thousands of immigrants
from making the trip in rickety canoes or marinating in sweltering shipping
containers or once there on bona fide business, disappearing into the concrete
jungles of their cities.
It is a brutal existence.
Our cousins are not telling us the half of it, for fear of
besmearing the fairy tale existence they or you have convinced yourself they
enjoy or because it’s just too grim to even begin to narrate.
But there is a cynical, more self-serving reason why once
you are in any of those western economies and “get lost” they won’t put in as
much effort ferreting you out as they would keeping you out in the first place.
"You the immigrant are useful for pushing down the labour cost for everybody and yourself. Because in your desperation you will do anything and for any amount of money to survive. Because unlike your home country everything is monetised and, far away from friends and family, charity is hard to come by...
It is no surprise that the labour unions are on the back
foot everywhere you look. Previously unionised workers had a lot of leverage
over their employers through their collective bargaining power.
So yes, life can be hard here but it can be harder elsewhere
and it is only getting harder, forget the rosy picture Hollywood paints for
you.
