From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

5 THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM TRADINGMIGRATION 76Migration is the oldest action against poverty. It selects those who mostwant help. It is good for the country to which they go; it helps break theequilibrium of poverty in the country from which they come. What isthe perversity in the human soul that causes people to resist so obviousa good?J.K. GALBRAITH, THE NATURE OF MASS POVERTY, 1979While the international community expends huge efforts constructinga system to manage international flows of capital, goods, and services,there are no effective global rules for the flow of the other ‘factor ofproduction’ – labour. This constitutes a vacuum at the heart of globalgovernance. Only one developed country (Belgium) has ratified the1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of AllMigrant Workers and Members of their Families, which came intoforce in 2003 and aims to guarantee the rights of migrant workers; allthe other signatories are countries of origin, not destination. 77When an Oxfam researcher approached groups of youths on thebeaches of Senegal, waiting to take their chances in risky boats to theCanary Islands and thence to Spain, they gave a simple but powerfulreason for why they were about to risk their lives: ‘Because it is close,and there is work.’ Nothing determines an individual’s life chancesmore than where he or she is born, and migration is the most straightforwardway to change those chances for the better.Throughout history, migration has been one of the most effectiveresponses to poverty. Between 1846 and 1924, 48 million Europeansleft the Old World and scattered around the globe. In the UK,Portugal, and Italy, a third of the population abandoned their nativelands. 78 In relative terms, these numbers are some five times higherthan current levels of migration, even allowing for ‘illegal’ migrants.What is new is the desire to prevent such movement: our great-grandparentsfaced far fewer obstacles than today’s would-be migrants.Passports did not assume their modern form until after the FirstWorld War: not a single person was refused entry to Britain in thenineteenth century. 79Migrants face an ever-expanding array of barriers, both legal andphysical. Where First and Third Worlds meet, on the US–Mexican333