The Social Economy of Migrant Labour -- Improving Social Protections to End Exploitation

Over the past decades, with the expansion of global production networks, partial liberalization of cross-border mobility, the rise of new sending states promoting migrant exports and the migration industry with recruitment networks at the lead, the social economy of migration has undergone tremendous changes. The panel invites submissions that address transformations of labour migration, to focus on the commodification, reproduction and control of migrant labour, including how new populations are recruited into migration, the operation of sending state-sponsored circular migration, the regulation of competition in migrant labour markets, threats to the survival and reproduction of migrant labourers, the rise of human trafficking and forced labour, and the subjection of migrant workers to modes of control inside, but also outside the labour process (e.g. through debt, or dormitory regimes). Papers are solicited which also focus on solutions to the inadequate social protections for, the trafficking and extreme exploitation of migrant labour, including the role of social movements, international conventions, trade-union and NGO cross-border advocacy, the promotion of migrant and labour rights, new forms of migrant and transnational agency, and the contributions of a gender perspective on problems and solutions. As the ILO enters its second century in 2020s research which evaluates the contributions for migrant labour of conventions, such as ILO 184 on Domestic Labour, the ILO Declaration of Fundamental Rights of Labour, and the ILO program promoting Decent Work are especially welcome, as well as evidence about efforts to fight trafficking, labour and sexual exploitation.