Migrant workers are putting labour markets to test. Latin America has vast knowledge on migration. Sweden and Germany are examples to follow in order to strengthen skills with inclusion and growth.

By Martín Padulla for staffingamericalatina

Early this month the world stopped being indifferent, when newspapers showed the picture of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian three years old kid who died in the coast of Turkey, fleeing from the war. The refugees’ crisis is showing us the greatest movement of people that Europe has experienced since World War II.

This movement of people has certain particularities: clearly, the Arab States of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the UAE) are closer for the Syrian than Europe. However, these countries have kept their doors closed to the refugees. Cultural factors grant Germany economic aid to receive them, but they still cannot receive them. Not even the Palestinian exodus of 1948 equals the demographic threat that the Syrian refugees represent to the Gulf Council and its social composition. The vast majority of residents in those countries are temporary workers. When their contracts end, they go back home. In addition, not every country is receptive to this phenomenon; several European countries are closing their frontiers and others are building walls, a reaction that we though belonged to the past.

According to data from the United Nations’ Refugees Office, there are over 15.4 million refugees in the world. They are running away from wars, social conflicts, faming or human rights violations. 70% of Syrian refugees are middle class people.

The UN Refugees Agency (UNHCR) defines refugees as people who fled “to save their lives or to preserve their freedom”. Refugees, unlike those who migrate for economic reasons, have the right of asking for shelter as long as they can show they are coming from a country with conflict, where the circumstances are forcing them to find refuge beyond the frontiers, or where there is “justified fear of being chased due to race, religion, nationality, belonging to a certain social group or political opinions”, says the UN Refugees Statute. People who migrate looking for a job are not considered refugees, they are migrants as they are moving “for convenience” and as the result of a decision made “freely”.

“The causes of poverty and conflicts that force people to take extreme measures, crossing seas to find peace and a decent life and job will not disappear without a joint action arranged by the States that includes solving conflicts, keeping peace, investing in education and creating jobs” stated the experts of the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (CMW).

Syria is not the only country that expels its citizens for different reasons. Countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, Somalia, Nigeria, Sudan, Mali, among others, show different aspects of this wretched social phenomenon.

Latin America was built through the effort and work of migrants.

Several countries in our region have important Syrian communities and nations such as Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay, Mexico, Uruguay and Chile have stated they wish to provide visas for Syrian refugees. There is a rather generalized receptive perspective. This perspective is the basis of the suggestion of the awarded journalist, Andrés Oppenheimer, who says that “if Saudi Arabia and its neighbours of the Persian Gulf may provide money for building mesquites in Germany, they can also pay to help Syrian refugees settle in Latin America”.

The former Uruguayan president, José Mujica said that for Europe “the arrival of a flood of young blood, though in the short term may cause assimilation problems, is a long term capitalization”. Last year, Mujica himself welcomed Syrian refugees in Uruguay.

According to the National Commission for Refugees, Argentina, a country with a large Syrian community, has given refuge to 233 people since the conflict started. Last year it introduced the Syria Program, to reunite families and enable the legal entrance of Syrian people with no criminal records. Many Syrian families who have been living in the country for over three generations are making efforts to bring their relatives to America.

In Chile, the former minister Sergio Vitar, a Syrian descendant, is supporting the reception of 50 to 100 families.

In México, a popular request made through the Change.org platform with over 100.000 signatures demands Enrique Peña Nieto’s government to make the commitment of receiving 10.000 people.

Once the bureaucratic aspect is solved, one of the main challenges that refugees face is finding a decent job. Discrimination? Prejudice? Several studies show that people tend to believe that migrant workers have little qualification and that refugees are even less qualified than migrants.

ILO has Convention N°143 about migrant workers that aims to equal opportunities and treatment and to fight against illegal workforce traffic. Sweden is among the 23 ratifications of this Convention, a country that has clearly understood that it can gain talent of the Syrian drama.

Sweden and Germany are investing so that inclusion in the labour market can become the driving force to integrate refugees and obviously, to generate a benefit for the country’s social and economic progress.

Sweden has received more refugees than any other European country and favours the work of providing them the possibility of a future. Refugees who arrive at Sweden are not placed in camps nor assigned to social assistance; instead they are signed into a labour integration program. When they gain their residence permission, the national public employment service, not the Sweden General Migration Direction nor the councils, helps refugees to settle in their new environment. Finding a job is a key issue.

The public employment services and the private employment services, together with employers, identify those who are willing to give an opportunity to refugees and negotiate with those who are less willing, to invest in the development of skills among workers. Allowances planned for training programs complete this virtuous circle. The follow up, once the refugee has started working, helps to grant the sustainability of the job.

Last week, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, went to the German Migration and Refugees Office to gain information about the times of processing documentation. “A fast integration of people who request refuge in Germany is a priority. To achieve that we need to process their situation in a short period of time so they can start working”, said Merkel, being applauded by those who want to gain control of their lives again. The German Labour Ministry, Andrea Nahles, said that 600 to 1.100 million euros will be delivered to integrate the refugees in the labour market. Germany has received over 450.000 and the government expects to reach a record of 800.000 refugees this year.

By 2060 the total number of Germans is expected to reduce in 10 million people: from 81.3 million in 2013 to 70.8 million. The percentage of people over 65 years old compared to the amount of people aged between 15 to 64 years old will go from 32% in 2013 to 59% in 2060. In other words, by 2060 there will be two Germans younger than 65 years old working and generating taxes for every German older than 65. The diagnosis is clear: with a contracting German population, companies find it difficult to fill many vacancies and specialized workers are increasingly scarce.

This trend will grow during the next few years and risks the future prosperity of the country. It is also about providing a solution for a future problem: Germany will not be able to satisfy its needs of work using only the European labour market that enables the free movement of workers within the EU. All these reasons sustain Mujica’s simple words.

Will the refugees’ crisis be the test we need to overcome so that concepts such as mobility, inclusion and diversity are not left empty of contents?

About Martín Padulla

Managing Director of Staffingamericalatina. Martín Padulla is a Sociologist (USAL), MBA (UCA) and labour markets expert. He published Flexible Work in South America and Regulatory Frameworks for Private Employment Agencies in Latin America, two books that address the new realities of labour.

mpadulla@staffingamericalatina.com

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