Op-Ed Contributors

Concerns for ethnic Chinese

By Bin Wu and Jackie Sheehan (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-10-19 07:56

Exploitation of migrants in the UK should be addressed to prevent labor abuse and promote greater integration

The economic recession has permeated many layers of British society and the Chinese migrant community in the United Kingdom has not evaded its reach.

Reduced product affordability, a fall in consumer demand, stricter government measures against the employment of irregular migrant workers and the weakened pound against the yuan have all combined to dent the performance of the ethnic Chinese economy.

Subsequently, it came as no great surprise, through our research commissioned by the International Labor Organization, to find that irregular Chinese migrants in vulnerable employment were experiencing worse pay and living conditions, greater work intensity and increased exploitation, as a result of the economic slowdown.

But our research also revealed less expected findings that call for immediate and collaborative action from UK government agencies, the Chinese community and civil society organizations.

Some well-qualified, documented Chinese migrants, notably Chinese physicians and chefs, are also falling prey to exploitation, and often find themselves worse off than irregular workers as they are bound to one employer and cannot change jobs when conditions deteriorate.

Personal documents can be withheld or employers take a large deposit to tie work-permit holders to their employer. Both measures, however, may seem less threatening to work-permit holders than the potential loss of their jobs.

The UK government's immigration policies need a thorough review, as the government is actually preventing documented workers that are desperately needed by the Chinese migrant economy, particularly to plug a supply gap in the catering sector, from entering the country.

As a result, labor broking is on the rise. Labor brokers may ally with employers to monopolize the labor market, pushing up the likelihood of labor abuse and exploitation. Our research showed that Chinese transnational organized crime networks control some of the labor broking operations in the UK.

And, although stricter immigration measures by the UK government have forced a decline in irregular Chinese migration to the UK through smuggling agents, there is strong evidence that trafficking from China is increasing.

Trafficking is different from smuggling in that victims pay much lower fees, or sometimes no fee at all, as the traffickers recover the costs of a passage to the UK - as much as 20,000 - through exploitation.

According to the UK Human Trafficking Centre, Chinese trafficking victims form the second largest single nationality group and account for 14 percent of the known total of transnational trafficking victims in the UK.