JCWI News

Gender and the new points-based system for labour migration in the UK

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants is an independent, voluntary organisation working in the field of immigration, asylum and nationality law and policy. Established in 1967, JCWI actively lobbies and campaigns for changes in law and practice and its mission is to eliminate discrimination in this sphere.

This document should be read in conjunction with our analysis of the Points Based System for labour migration in the UK also available at www.jcwi.org . In this document we focus on the issues for women who constitute a growing number of the world's labour migrants.

In preparing this document we acknowledge the expertise of Professor Eleonore Kofman of the University of Middlesex and our other partners on the Women's National Women's Committee asylum and migration committee. However we do not purport to relay their exact views here.

1. As the points-based labour migration system is founded on the presumption that most of the UK's labour needs should be met from within Europe, the new tier system means that those from non-EEA countries, in particular in the lower-skilled and unskilled tiers, will find it much more difficult to enter the United Kingdom for the purpose of work. As women in the developing world have varied access to formal learning and experience a greater number of barriers to entering the formal labour market, and given that increasing numbers of economic migrants are women, this policy is, in itself, likely to have a much greater impact on women than men.

2. Gendered notions of education, work and skills are compounded by the value placed on certain sectors of work that are given different weightings. For example, the skill grading of those wishing to work in personal and social care is commonly perceived to be low status and poorly valued, though it is essential. Under the points-based system, women from outside Europe wishing to fill vacancies in social and personal could find it more difficult to gain visas and when entering will be accorded fewer rights. This does not seem logical given that the recent Sector Skills Development Agency Report on Working Futures (published February 2006) predicts rapid expansion of around 3 per cent per annum in health and social care for the next decade due to the ageing population and expansion of paid child care. Furthermore this growth is likely to be an under-estimate since many of the employers are increasingly likely to be individuals in households rather than formal employers whose demand would be more easily measured.

3. Given that demand exists for lower-skilled migrant labour and that legal routes to migration are being shut down to lower-skilled women from non-EEA countries, there is concern that more women will fall back on traffickers and people smugglers in order to migrate with adverse consequences for their rights and protection. Already women constitute the majority of persons trafficked to the industrialized world. According to the ILO trafficking for sexual exploitation is linked to lack of formal and legal employment opportunities at home. Shutting down immigration routes to unskilled women labour migrants is therefore likely to reinforce the role of traffickers thereby running counter to the goals of the Council of Europe anti-trafficking convention which the UK Government has promised to ratify.

4. Lower-skilled women who do manage to migrate legally will have fewer employment and settlement rights as temporary workers, reinforcing the inferior conditions already experienced by women in the gendered workforce, and the poverty and social exclusion of women from visible minorities.

5. The restriction of Tier 3 to short-term contracts makes unwarranted assumptions about the nature of less skilled work. As the CRE (2005) noted this model is based on the SAWS programme which is suited to seasonal demand. Hospitality, and especially caring for people, do not vary according to the seasons but are a year-long and often continuing processes, often resulting in a close relationship between the carer and the cared for. Many employers would prefer to have the option of employing less-skilled labour for longer periods than a year. Many businesses, would also like to be able to recruit low skilled labour from outside the Accession Area.

6. Those who secure work permits will have no right to family settlement or reunion, and will be treated as temporary for the purposes of both work and settlement. This in turn may impact on the ability to access equal rights and opportunities at work and rights to certain services such as health for which it is important to be "ordinarily resident" in the UK. There appears to be no rationale behind the decision to refuse migrants in Tier 3 the right to switch tiers once in the UK and eventually to settle in the UK, as they will be able to do under Tier 2. Many employers interviewed by the Institute for Employment Studies in the report on Employers' Use of Migrant Labour did not see why less skilled migrants should not be allowed to settle. It might be that the Tier 3 person has inadequate English which they are able to make good whilst they are in the UK, and hence qualify for Tier 2 employment. There is a great deal of evidence which shows that many migrants doing less skilled jobs have good educational qualifications and, especially amongst women, may have worked in professional jobs in their home country.

7. Tier 1 is heavily skewed towards youth and seems to suit the financial world with the use of earnings as a criteria favouring men. Thus it favours the occupations where high incomes are earned at an early stage. There is an Impact on married women with children who even if they continue to work in their late 20s and early 30s will often be earning lower salaries due to part-time work because of caring for young children

8. Some of the proposals which fall outside the points system are also of considerable concern. For instance it is proposed that Migrant Domestic Workers will come as business visitors for a maximum of 6 months and tied to their employer, with no right to change their employer or renew their visa. This will make it virtually impossible to challenge any maltreatment or abuse, leaving the worker totally powerless and without even the most basic of their employment rights - a return to a situation which was abolished by the Labour government in 1997. Kalayaan has expressed concern that it is likely this will lead to increased levels of abuse and exploitation. Furthermore, the reasons for limiting the visa to 6 months is not at all clear. Many of these workers undertake caring tasks which, as we have previously noted in 3, cannot be described as "seasonal".

9. The points system could have an adverse impact on developing countries. The World Bank has found that officially recorded remittances worldwide exceeded $232 billion in 2005. Of this, developing countries received $167 billion, more than twice the level of development aid from all sources. Remittances sent through informal channels could add at least 50 percent to the official estimate, making remittances the largest source of external capital in many developing countries; and this money finds its way into local economies and is used for the improvement of educational, health and housing standards (Global Economic Prospects World Bank 2006). The World Bank concludes that migrant worker remittances could have major implications for reducing poverty in the developing world.

10. In an increasing number of countries women are the key family members who are expected to migrate and remit money home; and female migrants contribute significantly to the economy of their countries of origin through their remittances, for example in the Philippines and Sri Lanka. The one characteristic that clearly distinguishes remittance receivers from the general population in all the countries studied is that a majority are women (Remittance Senders And Receivers: Tracking The Transnational Channels Pew Hispanic Center, 2003). This means that if the flow of remittances is restricted this will inevitably impact on women in the developing world.

JCWI's recommendations for a labour migration system that is fairer to women:

• Overall entry under the Points Based System should be based on how essential skills are rather than allocating visas and rights according to level of skills.
• The new Migration Advisory Committee should include employer stakeholders from the third and public sectors, including those who broker household care, as well as corporate stakeholders
• The Home Office must undertake a thorough gender impact assessment of the points-based system prior to implementation
• The HO should work with the Department for International Development to consider the impacts on women sending and receiving remittances as part of a development agenda
• This study should examine the impact the points-based system will have on the flow of women migrants to the UK from the developing world, their classification into skilled and unskilled groups and their ability to access their rights in the UK
• The HO should consult on the gender impact of a programme of earned regularization for irregular migrants already in the UK
• The current concession for Migrant Domestic Workers as introduced in 1997 must be retained so as to safeguard the rights and safety of this especially vulnerable and overwhelmingly female group of migrant workers
• The HO should consult on ratifying of the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families 1990 (as recommended by the House of Lords European Committee Sub-Committee F in their November 2005 report on Economic Migration into the EU)