Sorted by skill, sealed by skill: ‘Low skilled’ migrant workers and the Points Based System

Monday mornings at Kalayaan, a London based charity that provides support and advocacy service for Overseas Domestic Workers (ODWs), are very busy and noisy. Dozens of familiar faces throng the centre and crowd around the ‘job board’ looking for newly advertised vacancies. In between making photocopies and writing down phone numbers for them, I have often overheard complaints about long hours of work and inadequate wages, reasons for leaving their previous jobs.

But the most ironical of all refrains in these conversations is the regret that some of them express in doing so, as with only a short time left before their visa expires, it is even harder for them to find new jobs or to apply for an extension of their leave to remain. It is indeed a tragedy that not only their work as domestic workers is devalued as being ‘low skilled’ but even their right to work and stay in the UK is bound to the benevolence of their usually ‘high skilled’ employers.

The skill divide

The fact is that current policies on labour migration in the UK are split along a ‘skill divide’ i.e. the conditions, which lay out the need for so called ‘high skilled’ and ‘low skilled’ labour across various occupational sectors. The UK government, determined to ’Make Migration Work for Britain’, has entrenched the skill divide through the Points Based System (PBS). The terms of the debate and of addressing the various stakeholders, also spin around the question of ‘skill’. For example, in its brief on migration policy in December 2009, the British Chambers of Commercereported that ‘over one third of businesses state that they employ migrant workers because of a shortage of domestic candidates with the requisite skills and/or experience’ and that a flexible and well informed migration policy is essential to supporting economic growth in the UK.

To all extents and purposes, debate about what migration policies could support economic growth in the UK have been restricted to the contributions of ‘high value migrants’ and ‘skilled workers’, of attracting the ‘brightest and the best’ under the PBS.  Such a skewed focus based on an acutely narrow interpretation of skills has marginalised a large component of the workforce, in particular those in the ‘low skilled’ care work sector despite their critical contribution to the economy and the society.

Despite efforts to restrict the number of non-EU ‘low skilled’ migrant workers through the PBS, certain occupational sectors that consist of a high proportion of such workers haven’t showed any significant declining trends in their employment. For example, a study on migrant care workers in the UK by the Centre for Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) shows that 28 percent of the care workers hired in 2008 were foreign born and estimates that just under 20 per cent among them were on work permits from outside the EU. Also, a recent study by Kalayaan, reports that a survey conducted in 2006 with a cross-section of domestic recruitment agencies around the UK estimated that up to 70 per cent of the demand for domestic work is met by non-EU nationals. Most of such workers are on the Overseas Domestic Worker (ODW) visas or have Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) but are likely to have come to the UK on the ODW.

Understanding the value of low skilled labour

Because of ongoing and proposed changes to the rules affecting migrant workers, the possibilities for people to come to the UK to do ‘low-skilled’ jobs in the caring professions in the future are closing down. The question then is whether the PBS does manage the skill gap or whether it actually further entrenches the skill divide on both sides, the sending and the receiving country (discussed further in the forthcoming blog). Not only does such an approach lead to underestimating the value and critical role of so called ‘low skilled’ labour, it also has grave consequences for the employment conditions and rights of the low skilled migrant workers themselves. 

This is not merely an assumption or imagined possibility but has indeed kicked off a dangerous trend of skill selection at the cost of the rights of the ‘low skilled’ migrant workers. Kanlungan, an alliance of Fillipino organizations has been at the forefront of challenging such arbitrary changes in immigration rules for migrant care workers, especially senior care workers. Similarly, there is enough reason to be warned that the legacy of the current political and economic climate can undo the gains of the hitherto successful struggles for the rights of the Overseas Domestic Workers. I shall discuss the particular case of ODWs in the second part of the blog, focusing on the proposed changes, the ongoing campaign and the consequences for the ‘skill divide’ in labour migration policy for both the receiving and sending countries and the migrants themselves.