From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERborder, or at Melilla, a small Spanish enclave in the north of Morocco,borders are studded with watchtowers, fences topped with barbedwire, and police equipped with planes, helicopters, boats, radar, thermalimaging equipment, and electronic detectors.However, the migrants keep coming. The economic and socialforces driving immigration are irresistible and growing. Greatestof them all is the wage gap between rich and poor countries. Evenallowing for differences in the cost of living, wage levels in highincomecountries are approximately five times higher than thoseof low-income countries for similar jobs, and the gap is growingas inequality between countries rises inexorably. 80 Demographicdifferences add to the pressure to migrate: migrants are usually young,and youth unemployment is high in developing countries, while theageing populations of rich countries demand ever more workers,especially in low-skilled jobs such as home health aides, caretakers, fastfood workers, or drivers.With the exception of the political barriers imposed by Northerngovernments, migration is getting easier. Transport costs are falling,access to information means that migration is no longer a leap into theunknown, and improved communications mean that migrants canstay in touch with their families and countries by phone, Internet, andhome television channels on cable.Currently, the number of people living legally outside their countryof birth is estimated at 192 million, or 3 per cent of the world population.The total number of migrants is as much as one-and-a-halftimes greater. 81 This includes South–North migration and increasingSouth–South movements, such as the thousands of Bangladeshisworking in the Gulf states or the many Filipino women who work asdomestic servants in Hong Kong and the Middle East. South–Southmigration is now nearly as great as South–North, largely betweencountries with common borders. 82 Both can involve trafficking, sexualabuse, and violations of labour rights, such as the widespread abuse ofBurmese migrants in Thailand.Migrants send vast sums back home. Recorded remittances todeveloping countries were expected to reach $240bn in 2007, eighttimes the 1990 level. 83 Flows through informal channels could addanother $100bn to that figure. 84 By comparison, global aid flows in334