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The Global Pie, Who Get To Eat It And The Ones Left Behind

By Sarosh Ali

08 March, 2016
Countercurrents.org

This period will be known for something called as the 'refugee crisis'. The top down international discourse through the developed nations taking center-stage, and with necessary skepticism towards them, the other side of the coin may also just be 'globalization of cheap labor'. One thing that strongly hints toward this is the strong leaning of the mainstream media to focus upon the immigration to the rich countries, that is actually miniscule as compared to the mass displacement and redistribution of people within the third world. Another hint is when, in the developed world, most immigration takes place to Russia, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Canada; countries with scarce population and based on domestic production that actually need some additional cheap labor.
The migration takes place from places in war/unrest-torn West Asia, Africa, South Asia consisting people fleeing from war, persecution or economic instability in their home countries. The procedure is much more inaccessible and time taking than just to knock at a door and sleep in the barn. Once they get asylum, they will still be second class citizens with a lot of restrictions. There will be travel restrictions so that they cannot seek better economic opportunities. There will be upper limits to the money they can possess at a given point of time, so they cannot open shop or help their friends and family. They will not be able to avail help from previously settled friends and family as they will be living in refugee camps until they are integrated with society at some distant future time or even repatriated back. So this surely is not just good old philanthropy. And the refugees who get asylum in this richer world are less than 10% of the total number of normal migrants within the same period of time. Only that the sum total of all misery in the world is much bigger. The asylum seekers, in risking everything they have to the oasis of a distant land, want, however small, a share of the global pie. A tiny fraction of them probably will. But the global pie is made out of the same process by which they were brought into this miserable state in the first place. And there are many many more back home, who won't ever be able to see it. At this juncture it is incumbent to study this phenomenon of mass migration vis-a-vis the impoverishment of those left behind as a cause or sometimes even as an effect of it and whether it is the benevolence of the global masters or just another form of exploitation.

Firstly, to get a glimpse into this phenomena, let us make a qualitative inquiry into the history of human species. At a time prior to about 10,000 years ago (for a period of the order of 100,000 years), the general mode of cohabitation was in small herds, the population remaining more or less constant, and the expanse of land utilized was more in the form of territory rather than occupation or ownership. Exercise of political and economic control over others was to a great extent absent. As humans came into the age of surplus, the concept of property and impositions by institutional hierarchy became more prevalent. As the first population explosion took place, the original autonomous clusters grew larger both in land and people. They lost independence due to bonds of trade and its cultural arm. As clusters overlapped and institutions solidified, wealth started to get concentrated at centers for managing them at the cost of places where it was actually getting produced. This enabled the growth of farther reaching law enforcing bodies with a much bigger domain of control. A self similar process starting from the tiny village groups and reaching to as big a scale as of the world itself created a hierarchy of clusters bonded by socio-economic ties, controlled by laws as imposed by the dominant elite to create a resulting hierarchy of exploitation and deprivation. The present day symptoms of inequality and diaspora originate from the same hierarchy. And people being a resource and a consumer in themselves, in their lure towards the global pie, may even be adding more layers to it. In this complex web, it is difficult to allocate accountability or to draw lines to separate the haves from the have nots, the accomodated from the ones who fell out, the heard from those unheard. But it may be possible to speculate on the nature of this beast by traveling through its layers through examples.

India is one of the poorer country with around 60% of the people living in less than $3.10 a day. There is also a lot of income disparity within India. Due to varying state govt. policies, socio-economic and geographical pre-conditions some states do substantially better than others. Thus, more prosperous states and cities become work haven for people from deprived regions. But this is purely an economic transaction based on demand and supply of labor. Further, the social discourse that ensues only adds to the cultural hegemony that tilts the balance to further increase the disparity.

Take for example the case of Kerala, one of the states with the least poverty percentage and high per capita GDP in India. The better economic means available for the people in Kerala is mainly due to the fact that a considerable fraction of them work in prosperous countries of West Asia and elsewhere, with better remunerations. A large portion of this section are construction workers who make decent money abroad to provide for a better condition for the livelihood of the family back home. The major investment is in the sector of cash crop agriculture, with better profits, so that the owners can employ cheap labor to do the work, as there is a dearth of skilled and unskilled labor within Kerala. A lot of people from deprived states of India like Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal come at the lure of better work conditions here. The number is commensurate to the number of NRIs (Non-Resident Indians) from Kerala.

The returns of agricultural work in Kerala are definitely better for the workers coming from underpriviledged backgrounds outside. But this shifts the economic baseline for the underpriviledged sections from within Kerala as does the relative affluency of those benefitting from foreign remittances. As an example the conditions of indigenous tribal groups in Kerala is getting deteriorated by the day and they appear even less and less in the popular discourse. Considering even the case of the state of Bihar from where the major migration takes place, as the remittances and household incomes of agricultural labor force working outside has been steadily on a rise, the parallel conditions of the domestic population such as the percentage of landless agricultural workers and farm based income of the rural has worsened over the years. And to top this, migrant workers even within India face cultural discrimination in the form of xenophobia and deteriorating social conditions, that shift the baseline of the dignity and value of their work. This has been on a rise even in states like Kerala, known for their values of assimilation and social justice. So it would be interesting to see now the conditions that Indian workers, from places like Kerala, face abroad in Gulf countries, their own work haven, when they seem to be profiting from it so much back at home.

A large number of Indians and other South Asians go to Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait etc for better pay. They mainly work as construction workers, industrial workers, domestic help and other service sectors. They make do with the cultural restrictions, religious policing and high risk prone work conditions in order to earn an extra buck that they can send back home. A recent report suggests that the percentage of workers dying in these countries due to deteriorating workplace conditions is on a rise. The human rights violation of people working as domestic help, especially women, from India is also on the rise. They have to work long hours, have a very restricted life with little organization and help from other compatriots just in order to send back home a little more money than they can make in India (about 2-3 times). The annual remittances of Indians from Saudi Arabia is about $10 billion. That from a country whose annual GDP is $1.5 trillion. And Indians constitute more than a tenth, and South Asians about a fifth, of the population (expatriates) of Saudi Arabia. This population is 0.2% of the population of India. Well this seems to be one level up in the hierarchy.

Right in this neighborhood lie countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan plagued by destabilization due to wars actually controlled by the global powers. The issue has been their strategic location in the land of oil, one of the major drivers of world economy. Then there are also people like Palestinians and Kurds, second class citizens in their own land. From all of these and others joining them from Africa are an elite, who by stretching their dreams as much as they can, wish to live in developed countries like those in Europe. Many of these European countries do let a fraction of those seeking asylum to enter their countries, even though after very careful deliberation. But this acceptance will only be at the level of servility to the already existing elite. These new members will only join, if not subordinate, in smaller numbers, the quiet diaspora of others from lesser economies like Turkey, Lebanon etc. The scale can be ascertained by the fact that out of more than 11 million Syrians displaced by the war, which is about half the pre-war population of Syria, only about 5 % have found home in Europe. What is suspect is that these powers don't blame the others among them who don't share an equal responsibility. Many of these don't even have an obvious role in the actual creation of instability in the concerned areas. And they even don't take into account the apathy of the most important stakeholders in the original destabilization.

The US has committed in taking about 10,000 Syrian refugees. Such a small percentage doesn't even make any sense. That doesn't mean that the US doesn't need cheap work force. But it gets the required number from neighboring countries in the Americas. And it has its own list of asylum seekers from the Mexico, Caribbean, Central America. Some of these are countries it had, in one way or the other, destabilized in the past and are in quite an economic fix ever since. They are presently plagued by tremendous criminalization of their societies and an all pervading gang violence due to unstable governments. These are spreading in countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and even certain parts of Mexico. Spending the income accumulated over a lifetime, donated by friends and family, they undertake epic journeys, about a 100,000 seeking asylum in the US every year, a huge number of women and children among them. The US apprehends most and even outsources the apprehending to Mexico, through which they must pass. Well, the international law that refugees – people fleeing from war and persecution, must be granted asylum, can be circumvented in many new ways. The US also other means of acquiring cheap labor like outsourcing work. Latin America was destabilized by coups, puppet regimes and wars since the 50s by US interests, which eventually led to a lot of failed and unstable states. The same is now being exercised all over the world by NATO and allies through military operations, financial warfare and economic control through banks. The counter balance of Russia, China, Iran etc are yet another microcosm of the same process. And through the loudspeakers, the powers always come out as the civilized and benevolent, where as the deprived to be always looked at with suspicion. The hierarchy is made rigid downwards from here.

Even though all the details of this complex process have not been exhausted, the few examples mentioned above cut a cross-section through the world, to hint at a universal phenomena that scales with the economy under consideration. So let us identify and state this pattern. The world, in its economy and in the resultant cultural discourse, is a hierarchy of various levels where control can only be exercised from above through class structure, politics or global economic constraints and justified by the mainstream discourse. With the growing of deprivation in some part of the world, an opportunity of a better life coming from a level up can only reach a smaller number with the rest left behind or made even worse. This opportunity may make the structure stable by the introduction of a new layer or class within it. This new layer may even undermine the power of discontent. Resources like human beings or land may act as a curse for their people in a global economy. Rather than looking at diaspora as deprived people seeking refuge elsewhere, it may even be fitting to see the powerful seeking cheap labor according to their needs. The policy makers in the developed world are already considering the possibility of the refugee crisis worsening in future due to climate change and trying to device new stratagems to deter refugees to knock at their doors. In this free market the misery and labor of the deprived are reified, effectively making them less important beings. The most brunt is suffered by those who choose to stay back at every level. When the climate is becoming a threat to all life, it is troubling to see that, even at this turning point, those who actually live harmoniously with the environment are getting deprived of their livelihoods. This mammoth of a system is so self replicating that the only way to change even a bit for the better would be a paradigm shift.

Author Bio: My name is Sarosh Ali. I live in Navi Mumbai, India. My educational background is in the field of Theoretical Physics, in which I have pursued research for more than 4 years. I am also a Mathematics enthusiast. Recently, I am trying to explore some issues within the realm of Social Sciences like Environment and Diaspora, and have a dream to, someday, identify the cause effect relationship pertaining to these issues. I also like to write. My writing is mostly speculation that emerges from a simpler picture of society and try to put the problem in front of the reader. To get a glimpse into this you can visit my blog http://sarosh30.blogspot.in/



 



 

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