Christine Straehle

Temporary labour migration, global redistribution and democratic justice

Calls to expand temporary work programmes come from two directions. First, as global justice advocates observe, every year thousands of poor migrants cross borders in search of better opportunities, often in the form of improved employment opportunities. As a result, international organizations now lobby in favour of expanding ‘guest-work’ opportunities, that is, opportunities for citizens of poorer countries to migrate temporarily to wealthier countries to fill labour shortages. Second, temporary work programmes permit domestic governments to respond to two internal, contradictory political pressures: (1) to fill labour shortages and (2) to do so without increasing rates of permanent migration. Temporary work programmes permit governments to appear ‘tough’ on migration, while responding to employer pressure to locate workers willing to work in low-skilled, poorly remunerated positions. The coincidence of national self-interest and global justice generates a strong case in favour of expanding guest-work. We evaluate the moral benefits and burdens of expanding guest-work opportunities, and conclude that although there are benefits to be gleaned from the perspective of global wealth redistribution, at present, temporary work programmes are generally unjust. We will argue that just temporary work programmes, in time, permit temporary workers to attain citizenship. This spells the end of traditional temporary work programmes, which require that workers return to their home country in time; instead, what is temporary is the employment obligation that must be fulfilled as a requirement to access citizenship. As long as this requirement is met, we endorse guest-work programmes as a tool to respond to global inequality.

The missing link: Gender, immigration policy and the Live-in Caregiver Program in Canada

Abstract Temporary labour migration is on the rise in the developed world. In May 2009, Canadas Parliamentary Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration issued a report on the state of temporary and undocumented foreign workers in Canada, making a series of recommendations to ensure that labour needs can be met through temporary foreign workers and that those workers are able to successfully integrate into Canadian society. The report highlights one Canadian immigration program, the Live-in Caregivers Program, which offers migrant workers the opportunity to apply for permanent residency after working 24 months as a live-in child or elder care provider. The authors argue that the report errs in holding up the Live-in Caregivers Program as a model for other temporary foreign worker programs. Although the path to permanent residency is an important provision of the Live-in Caregivers Program, a gendered analysis of the program shows that the women who come to Canada as caregivers continue to face vulnerability and exploitation because of key structures of the program, most importantly the live-in requirement. Until policy reform accounts for the results of such a gendered analysis, the Live-in Caregivers Program does not ensure that caregivers will be able to integrate successfully into Canadian society.

Temporary labour migration: Exploitation, tool of development, or both?

Economies around the world have long relied on temporary labour migration programs. For years and years, migrants have crossed borders to access labour markets more promising than those in their countries of origin. Moreover, we have recently witnessed increases in opportunities for temporary labour migrants: for example, between 2003 and 2007, the number of temporary foreign migrants labouring in OECD countries rose by 7% per year. These programs are increasingly celebrated as a solution to domestic economies facing acute labour shortages as well as for their contribution to development assistance. However, the apparent benefits associated with temporary labour migration opportunities are frequently accompanied by harms, which may dampen our enthusiasm for them in some cases. The essays contributed to this issue suggest that we have good reason to worry about the implementation of temporary labour migration programs; yet, the contributors do not suggest abandoning them entirely, as much as they make a case for thinking hard about how to reform them in ways that will mitigate the harms they have been known to cause. Our goal in this introductory article is to offer an analytic framework through which to consider the case studies that follow, and the criticisms of temporary labour migration programs within them, in more depth. Our lens of analysis is exploitation. Temporary labour programs are regularly described as exploitative, and as our newspapers often report, migrants who participate in these programs are frequently the victims of considerable abuse at the hands of their employers and those who run recruitment programs on their behalf. As a result, many commentators – including some of the authors assembled here – believe that guest worker programs that target lowskilled workers in particular are exploitative. The jobs filled by temporary work programs are frequently at least one of ‘dirty, dangerous, and demanding’, and in some cases all three, as a result of which local workers are often unwilling to carry them out. Migrants are often motivated to take these ‘undesirable’ jobs because the living conditions in their home country make them the best, and sometimes the only, way to provide the means necessary to realize the goals they have set for themselves. As a result, some scholars suggest that these programs are unavoidably exploitative. As readers shall see, the scholars who have contributed to this issue disagree with respect to the source of morally problematic exploitation connected with temporary labour migration programs. As we see it, there are four possible sources of exploitation, three of which are related to the contracts that guest workers sign: (1) the vulnerability of the www.elsevier.com/locate/polsoc Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Health Inequalities and Global Justice

Global justice and human rights is perhaps the hottest topic in political science today. This series of monographs and edited collections publishes groundbreaking work on key topics in this increasingly popular field, such as democracy, gender, legal justice, poverty, human rights, environmental justice and just war theory. It will be essential reading for theorists working in politics, international relations, law, philosophy and beyond.

Lessons from Canada and Germany

There have been important similarities between Canada’s and Germany’s policies and approaches towards immigration and integration, ranging from practices of ethnic and racial exclusion in the f irst part of the last century to the subsequent development of both countries “into de-facto multicultural societies” (Triadafilopoulos, 2012: 2). However, because of signif icant differences in their historical contexts, as well as in the contemporary political and geographical circumstances that shape immigration and integration discourses and policies, considerable variations remain (Bauder, 2011). This special issue explores recent developments related to the immigration and integration experiences in both countries. Comparisons between Canada and Germany with respect to immigration and integration have become of increasing scholarly interest in recent years (e.g. Bauder, 2006b, 2008, 2011; Bendel and Kreienbrink, 2008; Reitz et al., 1999; Geiβler, 2003; Schmidtke, 2010; Schultze, 1994; Triadafilopoulos, 2004, 2006, 2012; Winter, 2007; ZWH, 20091). Apparently, comparisons of Canada and Germany have much to offer to migration research and policy making in that they “can de-center what is taken for granted” and thereby “challenge conventional wisdom” related to immigration and integration (Bloemraad, 2013: 29). Recent political developments made it necessary to update and expand the existing comparative literature. Canada’s immigration system is in the process of a signif icant overhaul. The Canadian government has lately COMPARATIVE MIGRATION STUDIES

Thinking about Protecting the Vulnerable When Thinking about Immigration: Is There a ‘Responsibility to Protect’ in Immigration Regimes?

This paper analyses the ‘responsibility to protect’ (RtoP) from a moral cosmopolitan perspective. It argues, first, that RtoP postulates a remedial responsibility on the part of those nations that have the means and capacity to effectively protect individuals against vulnerability and to provide for the means of human security. Second, the paper explains that human security implies access to human development, including access to social and economic rights. Finally, it argues that developed nations can discharge their remedial responsibilities towards those who lack social and economic rights by adopting just immigration regimes, part of which can be based on temporary foreign labour programs that allow individuals access to the economic opportunities, thus providing them with means to establish economic security. The paper thus argues for an expansion of the interpretation of RtoP.

Justified state partiality and the vulnerable subject in migration

According to David Miller, there exists a special relationship between migrants at the border and members of a political community that the migrant hopes to join. It is the task of a political philosophy of migration to define a state’s obligations toward individuals who are vulnerable to the state’s actions without being members of the political community. I define the vulnerability in question as lacking capacity to be autonomous for lack of options to realize one’s plan of life. I then discuss Miller’s claim that what matters is sufficiency of generic options rather than access to all options. Miller wants to say that sufficiency can be achieved by assuring the protection of human rights. This claim neglects the source of the individual migrant’s vulnerability. I therefore argue that Miller neglects the specific relationship he has identified between potential host state and hopeful migrant, and advocate instead that the potential host state has to consider the vulnerability that is due to its own policies, such as migration regimes. This grounds a causal responsibility to protect the basic interest in leading autonomous lives for the migrant at the border.

Falling into the justice gap? Between duties of social and global justice

The literature on cosmopolitan justice has yet to address what principles to adopt when duties of global justice and duties of social justice are in conflict. In this paper, I address David Miller’s contention that some may fall into the justice gap since we need to prioritize duties of social justice in cases of conflict. I argue that Miller’s analysis depends on three stipulations: the incommensurability of the values underlying duties of social justice and those of global justice; the need to justify duties of justice to their holders; and the need to consider the necessary institutions to realize and implement justice obligations. I argue against the incommensurability clause by showing that both conceptions of justice pursue moral equality as the underlying and commensurate value. Instead, I propose that the currencies of justice we employ in the two contexts of justice are different. Discussing the justifiability clause I agree with the stipulation that we have to justify decisions that affect the realization of justice to those who have to carry the burden of realizing them. This implies, however, that we may have to accept that some prioritize duties of global justice over duties of social justice. If this is the case, it seems as though the state has little recourse to prioritize duties of social justice. Finally, discussing Miller’s institutional clause I ask why the justice relevant institutions can only be those of the state. It is plausible to say that in our current world, institutions of humanitarian aid are effective means to satisfy duties of global justice.

Vulnerability, Health Agency and Capability to Health

One of the defining features of the capability approach (CA) to health, as developed in Venkatapurams book Health Justice, is its aim to enable individual health agency. Furthermore, the CA to health hopes to provide a strong guideline for assessing the health-enabling content of social and political conditions. In this article, I employ the recent literature on the liberal concept of vulnerability to assess the CA. I distinguish two kinds of vulnerability. Considering circumstantial vulnerability, I argue that liberal accounts of vulnerability concerned with individual autonomy, align with the CA to health. Individuals should, as far as possible, be able to make health-enabling decisions about their lives, and their capability to do so should certainly not be hindered by public policy. The CA to health and a vulnerability-based analysis then work alongside to define moral responsibilities and designate those who hold them. Both approaches demand social policy to address circumstances that hinder individuals from taking health-enabling decisions. A background condition of vulnerability, on the other hand, even though it hampers the capability for health, does not warrant the strong moral claim proposed by the CA to health to define health as a meta-capability that should guide social policy. Nothing in our designing social policy could change the challenge to health agency when we deal with background conditions of vulnerability.

Introduction: Health Inequality and Global Redistributive Justice

It is now frequently observed that millions around the world die from preventable diseases, and that millions more suffer from poor health as a result of extreme poverty. However ‘health’ is defined and however it is measured – and there is considerable controversy about both defining and measuring health – the citizens of developing countries fare significantly worse than citizens of developed countries: life expectancy ranges from 40 (in some sub-Saharan African countries) to over 80 (in many western, developed nations); the number of doctors ranges from fewer than 5 per 100,000 people to nearly 600 per 100,000 (in many sub-Saharan African countries, and in Cuba, respectively); health expenditure ranges from less than US