Temporary Labour Migration in the Global Era: The Regulatory Challenges, edited by Joanna Howe and Rosemary Owens. Oñati International Series in Law and Society, Hart Publishing, Oxford and Portland, Oregon, 2016, 427 pp., ISBN: 978 1 50990 628 4, $94.99, hardback.
| Author | Sonia McKay |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12225 |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12225
55:1 March 2017 0007–1080 pp. 215–222
BOOK REVIEWS
TemporaryLabour Migration in the Global Era: The Regulatory Challenges,editedby
Joanna Howe and Rosemary Owens. O˜
nati International Series in Law and
Society,Hart Publishing, Oxford and Portland, Oregon, 2016, 427 pp., ISBN: 978
1 50990 628 4, $94.99, hardback.
This collection of essays is the product of a conference held in 2015 and explores
methods of regulation of temporary migration in a range of countries, including
Austria, Australia, Canada, Italy, Mexico, Sweden, the UK and the USA. The
importance of the book is that it draws together debates on trade law, immigration
controls, labour law and workers’ rights and their enforcement. In essence the book’s
contributors argue that it is not possibleto examine temporary migration without this
multi-dimensional lens. Inevitably, as a collective work, there are areas which could
have been expanded upon but equally this review cannot, in the available space, give
justice to its wide and interesting range of material. The book’scontributors generally
do not argue that there is no place for temporary migration but explore whether it is
possible to create temporary programmes of migration that can be both ethical and
deliver decent work. Although the aim is to look atthe future of temporary migration
in a global era, it is made clear that the issue is not a new one,indeed its editors, Howe
and Owens,argue, that today’sregulatory models echo ‘colonial indentured labour and
older forms of guest worker’ (p. 3). Temporary migrants thus continue to experience
labour market exclusion from decent work, have unequal pay and conditions and are
less able to complain due to their temporary status, which makes them vulnerable to
employer harassment. Furthermore,it is capital that is the clear beneficiary in a world
where people are increasingly forcedto move in search of work, but not in conditions
of their own choosing. A particular theme explored in the book is how capital treats
temporary migrants in the same wayas it treats the delivery of other goods and services,
separating the ‘economic and social dimensions’ (p. 15).
A number of the contributions are by way of case studies that allow the reader
to comprehend how the way that temporary migration is regulated also impacts on
workers’ rights in the specific country contexts. These are useful backdrops to the
study but it is where the contributors grapple with the ethical issues that arise in the
context of temporary migration, that the book is most challenging, asking the reader
to question whether temporary migration can ever serve the long-term interests of
workers. Costello and Freedland, in exploring the interrelationshipbetween migration
law and labour law, argue that the supremacy of immigration law results in the
increase of employer control over labour supply and that this impacts detrimentally
on both migrant and local labour.They, and other contributors, show howtemporary
migration regulationis heavily influenced by the articulated requirements of employers
C
2017 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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