draining development.pdf - Khazar University

184 Draining Development?group (generally women, as in some agricultural areas in Europe). Theonline dating services that offer to organize dates and marriages betweenrural French men and women from Asian countries often operate on theborders of legality.Moreover, some occupations seem always to require more manpower,enabling illegal immigrants to benefit from a certain rent of scarcity.Maids from the Philippines benefit from being Catholic and speakingEnglish, which are valuable characteristics in the eyes of some Europeanemployers. These individuals manage to obtain hourly wages that areabout 20 percent above the minimum wage. They do not have the socialsecurity advantages of the local workforce, but they can sometimes benefitfrom free health care coverage (in France and some Nordic countries).Orrenius (2001), in an informative paper, notes that the earliest modelsof migration emphasize wage differentials as the impetus to mobility.Massey et al. (1987) and Massey (1987) break down the cost of migrationinto direct monetary costs, information and search costs, opportunitycosts, and psychic costs. They demonstr ate that access to migrant networksreduces cost in all four categories. In the case of Mexico, access to anetwork gives access to more reliable coyotes, lowers the probability ofapprehension, facilitates settlement, and shortens the job search.It thus appears that those who become involved in human traffickingin the wide sense we are using in this chapter are sometimes forced to doso, but may often be considered clients who voluntarily use illegal servicesto immigrate. The expectation of quick improvement in earningsand the distorted bundle of information available through differentchannels—media, friends, family, former migrants, and smuggler networks—providestrong incentives for migration. During their journey oronce in the host country, immigrants will, perhaps, recover their powerto make free decisions. The longer they stay under the influence of a network,a criminal organization, or an employer that forces them to workfor almost nothing, the longer they will be part of human trafficking. Inthe best possible configuration, their connection with trafficking will notlast longer than the hours necessary to cross the border.Monetary compensationThe monetary flows that accompany the flows of people we havedescribed can be divided into three channels.