The 2009 general strikes in the French Antillean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe have deservedly gotten quite a lot of attention. Even though the immediate crisis has been resolved, they still brought into the open major issues like the huge economic disparities between the French Antilles and metropolitan France and the question of race, with relatively poor black majorities on those two islands positioned against wealthy white minorities on the islands and a French state represented mainly by whites.
David Beriss' intelligent 2004 study Black Skins, French Voices provides a very useful overview of the situation of Martiniquais and Guadeleoupéens. One of Beriss' informants reported a parent saying that, "Je suis français depuis 1635, bien avant les Niçois, les Savoyards, les Corses ou même les Strasbourgeois." In truth, the Antilles were integrated in France for a long time, with the 1848 revolution saw the French colonies granted representation in the national assembly, additionally abolishing slavery throughout the French Empire. Nearly a century later, the 1946 passage of the Law of Departmentalization saw Guadeloupe and Martinique, along with the South American territory of French Guiana and the Indian Ocean island of Réunion. "Guadeloupe and Martinique are, thus, integrated more or less completely in French political and administrative systems. Theoretically, the overseas departments are simply extensions of the métropole, represented like any other department in the National Assembly, with the same legal system, the same administrative statues, and no trade barriers. Instead of a colonial governor, the Paris government is represented on each island by a prefect, with authority similar to those in the departments of the métropole" (59).
Despite this, French Antilleans form a distinct and visibly non-metropolitan minority. This is controversial among many: When he mentioned this at a social club was hostile, others disagreeing "because Martinicans are already French citizens, they asserted, they cannot be immigrants in France. They are simply moving within their own country and should be referred to as internal migrants. The distinction was important to them--immigrants, one member heatedly claimed, are foreigners, usually Arabs, who 'bring their Ramadan and other crazy stuff,' Martinicans are more like Corsicans, cultural insiders with a few colorful particularities" (3-4). Still, Martiniquais and Guadeleoupéen difference is enduring. Take language. Jacques Leclerc points out that use of the Corsican language is bottoming out, with intergenerational transfer of the language among native Corsicans dropping sharply and immigrants not learning a largely irrelevant language, but argues that in Guadeloupe and Martinique Creole remains vibrant, coexisting alongside France thanks to each language's dominance in specific separate domains of life. More obviously, Martinique and Guadeloupe are islands located very far from the European mainland with social, economic, and political histories very different from that of Corsica. This is despite the fact that these islands were French long before Corsica.
The incorporation of Guadeloupe and Martinique into France allowed these two territories to benefit from the French welfare state. However, this incorporation created the rationale for migration from the islands to the French "mainland." The 1946 law did extend full political and civil rights to the residents of the new overseas departments, their incorporation into the French economy also carried significant economic costs. The act of bringing labour costs in line with those of the French mainland, along with growing African and Latin American competition in sugar production, saw the Antillean islands' sugar plantations become uneconomic. Public employment did grow significantly and income transfers made by the French state prop up the standard of living, but living standards are still significantly below the levels of metropolitan France and unemployment, stable in the 20-25% range, is among the worst in the European Union. Starting in the 1960s, large-scale emigration from the Antilles to France began on a remarkable scale, encouraged by the French government for political and economic rationales.
Metropolitan France is now home to one-quarter of those who were born in Martinique and Guadeloupe. The DOM-TOM (Departements d’Outre Mer et Territoires d’Outre-Mer) population is all French citizens, primarily from the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean and Reunion in the Indian Ocean. The French government encouraged migration in the wake of a post-war labor shortage in Metropolitan France. Recruitment was also intended to continue the process of assimilation, especially in Guadeloupe and Martinique, to avert possible political unrest in response to unemployment and underemployment and also to circumvent U.S. economic incursions into the islands. During the sixties, these black migrants were seen as posing less of a threat than those from North Africa because of the “frenchness” of the Afro-Caribbeans. The government attempted to offset any xenophobia by promoting this migration as Caribbean nationals freely moving within French territory. Before this effort, there were approximately 40,000 DOM-TOMiens already residing in France employed as domestics, in maintenance, in civil service, and in industry. Aside from these occupations, the government recruited workers in the building trades, in customs, and conscripted recruits for the military. At the time, this migration was perceived by the government as permanent because family migration and unification were encouraged and subsidized. As French nationals, they are allowed to work in the public sector, unlike foreign immigrants. But, like foreign immigrants, they occupy low-level positions. The rate of employment is slightly lower than the national average but unemployment for the children of those originating from the DOM-Toms is double the national average. Discrimination is considered the primary reason that unemployment for children of migrants from the DOM-TOM parallels that of non-citizen immigrants. These Caribbean French nationals live largely in the Paris region —the center of state employment—in La Goutte d’Or, Seine-Saint-Denis (where the Paris riots of October 2005 began), or Belleville.
The sluggish economy during the seventies preceded a change in policy to replace foreign immigrants with nationals from the DOM-TOM. But, by the end of the seventies, there was less need for workers in the public sector and a rise in discrimination towards DOM-TOMiens. By the beginning of the Mitterrand government in 1982, policy focused on assimilating and integrating the DOM-TOM population that had already settled in France. And, by 1983, government policy began to focus on developing employment opportunities and increasing social benefits in the DOM-TOM in order to limit the in-migration of DOM-TOMiens to France.
Beriss notes that the immigration flow was relatively feminized, with a slight majority of immigrants from the French Antilles being women employed in low-skilled and low-status positions like nurses' aids and cleaners, but guaranteed the job security by virtue of their French citizenship that immigrants from outside France lacked (64). The scale of this immigration relative to the islands' population was huge: "The total immigrant population in France in 1999, excluding Antilleans, was 4.3 million, or about 7.4% of the total population. The total DOM-TOM population residing in metropolitan France in 1990, counting people born in or descended from people in all of France's overseas departments and territories [. . .] was 526,512. This constitutes a substantial population of color but, as I have noted, is not counted as part of the immigrant population in France" (12). In 1999, roughly 337 thousand people of French Antillean origin lived in metropolitan France (xiii), compared to the 381 thousand people living in Martinique and the 422 thousand people living in Guadeloupe. The emigration from the French Antilles to France may well compare to the Puerto Rican emigration to the United states in its intensity.
During the economic boom of the trente glorieuses, migrants could count on employment. But now, with the post-oil shock deceleration in growth, the rise oflong-term unemployment and youth unemployment, and now this recent recession, emigration to metropolitan France is no longer as attractive as it once was. To a non-trivial extent, French--and Eurozone--economic policy has created in Martinique and Guadeloupe, on the transatlantic fringes of political Europe, a situation where the people of the French Antilles are faced with a failed model of economic development.
La Guadeloupe est une île isolée, excentrée dans un coin du monde. C'est une petite tête d'épingle française dans l'immensité du continent américain ! Ainsi, nous n'avons pas de continuité territoriale. Si un Lyonnais est au chômage, il peut aller voir du côté de Paris s'il n'y a pas du travail. Ici on fait comment ? On va à Desirade, la petite île d'à côté ? Non, bien sûr. Il n'y a rien. Nous devons donc accepter le défi de construire notre propre modèle de développement.
What this model of development could be, with such a relatively isolated and small territory and a population deprived of the chance to find work at home and in the metropole, is anyone's guess. Certainly the economic crisis won't make things easier.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Canada will soon be as united as the European Union ...
... at least in one respect. It's a little-known fact that Canada is still in the process of creating an integrated national labour market.
Premiers put the finishing touches today on amendments to a 15-year interprovincial trade agreement they say will guarantee full labour mobility across the country – but experts warn Canadians to be skeptical of what the changes accomplish.
For decades, Canadian trades and professions have found it difficult to switch provinces because of protectionist rules in each jurisdiction that frustrate the easy portability of their skills. Premiers say their solution – first reached last July, and finalized Friday – will end those problems.
“On April 1, 1009 … a nurse will be a nurse, a plumber will be a plumber and credentials will be recognized by each [province] across the country and we will have true labour mobility,” Manitoba Premier Gary Doer said.
But trade experts say there is a significant gap in the revised deal that would still allow provinces to bar out-of-province workers.
“There are gargantuan loop-holes … allowing any province to opt out for something called legitimate provincial objectives,” Lawrence Herman said. “What does that mean? I guess it means whatever any provincial government says it means when it decides to prevent workers from another province coming to work in its territory.”
Mr. Herman, a lawyer with Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP whose specialties include trade, said the only way to guarantee that trades and professionals can work unfettered throughout Canada would be for Ottawa to pass legislation.
The federal government could use its trade and commerce powers to lay down one unambiguous law, he said – but it appears unwilling to do so.
Mr. Herman said the amended provincial agreement is “better than nothing” but falls short of what Ottawa could enact.
“If the federal government had the backbone to use the trade and commerce power that would make it unconstitutional for any provincial law to prevent labour mobility throughout the country.”
But the premiers maintain their new deal is solid. They say the revised labour mobility chapter of the Agreement on Internal Trade will provide that “any worker certified for an occupation by a regulatory authority of one province or territory is to be recognized as qualified for that occupation by all other provinces and territories.”
Provinces that break the rules could be fined up to $5-million under the agreement.
However, provinces will still be able to bar out-of-province workers from a particular profession or trade if it's “justified as necessary to meet a legitimate objective, such as the protection of public health or safety,” premiers said.
Canada's labour market was, until recently, roughly as fragmented as that of the contemporary European Union, perhaps even more so, despite the large volume of interprovincial migration within a unified country. As the authors of the informative June 2007 report "Moving in the Right Direction? Labour Mobility, Labour Shortage and Canada's Human Potential" noted, the reasons for this discrepancy can be found in the visscitudes of Canada's unification.
At Confederation, the British North America Act set out mutually exclusive areas of legislative authority for both the federal government and the provinces. Since then, the prevailing view has been that the provinces, rather than the federal government, have the exclusive authority to regulate occupational qualifications. As a result, each province regulates its own occupational groups often independently of
other provinces, resulting in a “patchwork” of regulations across the country.
Wherever regulations with respect to a particular profession differ in two provinces, those differences constitute barriers that inhibit the ability of professionals in that field from moving between the provinces and working in their professional field. A surprising result is that, at times, it can be easier forCanadians to have their professional credentials recognized abroad than to have them recognized in another province within Canada.
The British North America Act was, of course, drafted for a different age. At Confederation, the Canadian economy operated under quite different conditions from today. Interprovincial barriers may have seemed sensible, given the reality of the time. In the post-War period, however, as global economies emerged, there were various attempts to make it easier for regulated professions to have their credentials recognized in other provinces.
Some have argued that the federal government could assert jurisdiction over interprovincial labour mobility through its constitutional power to regulate “trade and commerce.” Thus far, however, successive federal governments have preferred to act in a more iterative and cooperative manner.
The first federal standards came with the Red Seal program of 1952, which established national standards for some trades, while the later adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with its Section 6(2) granting all permanent residents of Canada "the right (a) to move to and take up residence in any province; and (b) to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province" subject to provincial laws, reflected the trend towards interprovincial mobility of professional and skileld labour. more progress was made in the 1990s, culminating in the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement signed between Alberta and British Columbia in 2006 and this year's recent developments. Not only native-born Canadian citizens but immigrants will benefit as well, since a professionally trained immigrant in Québec wouldn't necessarily have his skills recognized in Ontario.
As "Moving in the Right Direction?" acknowledges, in a tightening labour market like Canada's, with below-replacement cohort fertility rates and unpredictable immigration trends, Canada--provinces, territories, and federal government alike--will need to boost labour participation rates and try to make it easier for the Canadian workforce to be more mobile. The same can easily be said of other countries (and continents) with tightening labour markets. Old barriers just have to be dropped.
Premiers put the finishing touches today on amendments to a 15-year interprovincial trade agreement they say will guarantee full labour mobility across the country – but experts warn Canadians to be skeptical of what the changes accomplish.
For decades, Canadian trades and professions have found it difficult to switch provinces because of protectionist rules in each jurisdiction that frustrate the easy portability of their skills. Premiers say their solution – first reached last July, and finalized Friday – will end those problems.
“On April 1, 1009 … a nurse will be a nurse, a plumber will be a plumber and credentials will be recognized by each [province] across the country and we will have true labour mobility,” Manitoba Premier Gary Doer said.
But trade experts say there is a significant gap in the revised deal that would still allow provinces to bar out-of-province workers.
“There are gargantuan loop-holes … allowing any province to opt out for something called legitimate provincial objectives,” Lawrence Herman said. “What does that mean? I guess it means whatever any provincial government says it means when it decides to prevent workers from another province coming to work in its territory.”
Mr. Herman, a lawyer with Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP whose specialties include trade, said the only way to guarantee that trades and professionals can work unfettered throughout Canada would be for Ottawa to pass legislation.
The federal government could use its trade and commerce powers to lay down one unambiguous law, he said – but it appears unwilling to do so.
Mr. Herman said the amended provincial agreement is “better than nothing” but falls short of what Ottawa could enact.
“If the federal government had the backbone to use the trade and commerce power that would make it unconstitutional for any provincial law to prevent labour mobility throughout the country.”
But the premiers maintain their new deal is solid. They say the revised labour mobility chapter of the Agreement on Internal Trade will provide that “any worker certified for an occupation by a regulatory authority of one province or territory is to be recognized as qualified for that occupation by all other provinces and territories.”
Provinces that break the rules could be fined up to $5-million under the agreement.
However, provinces will still be able to bar out-of-province workers from a particular profession or trade if it's “justified as necessary to meet a legitimate objective, such as the protection of public health or safety,” premiers said.
Canada's labour market was, until recently, roughly as fragmented as that of the contemporary European Union, perhaps even more so, despite the large volume of interprovincial migration within a unified country. As the authors of the informative June 2007 report "Moving in the Right Direction? Labour Mobility, Labour Shortage and Canada's Human Potential" noted, the reasons for this discrepancy can be found in the visscitudes of Canada's unification.
At Confederation, the British North America Act set out mutually exclusive areas of legislative authority for both the federal government and the provinces. Since then, the prevailing view has been that the provinces, rather than the federal government, have the exclusive authority to regulate occupational qualifications. As a result, each province regulates its own occupational groups often independently of
other provinces, resulting in a “patchwork” of regulations across the country.
Wherever regulations with respect to a particular profession differ in two provinces, those differences constitute barriers that inhibit the ability of professionals in that field from moving between the provinces and working in their professional field. A surprising result is that, at times, it can be easier forCanadians to have their professional credentials recognized abroad than to have them recognized in another province within Canada.
The British North America Act was, of course, drafted for a different age. At Confederation, the Canadian economy operated under quite different conditions from today. Interprovincial barriers may have seemed sensible, given the reality of the time. In the post-War period, however, as global economies emerged, there were various attempts to make it easier for regulated professions to have their credentials recognized in other provinces.
Some have argued that the federal government could assert jurisdiction over interprovincial labour mobility through its constitutional power to regulate “trade and commerce.” Thus far, however, successive federal governments have preferred to act in a more iterative and cooperative manner.
The first federal standards came with the Red Seal program of 1952, which established national standards for some trades, while the later adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with its Section 6(2) granting all permanent residents of Canada "the right (a) to move to and take up residence in any province; and (b) to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province" subject to provincial laws, reflected the trend towards interprovincial mobility of professional and skileld labour. more progress was made in the 1990s, culminating in the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement signed between Alberta and British Columbia in 2006 and this year's recent developments. Not only native-born Canadian citizens but immigrants will benefit as well, since a professionally trained immigrant in Québec wouldn't necessarily have his skills recognized in Ontario.
As "Moving in the Right Direction?" acknowledges, in a tightening labour market like Canada's, with below-replacement cohort fertility rates and unpredictable immigration trends, Canada--provinces, territories, and federal government alike--will need to boost labour participation rates and try to make it easier for the Canadian workforce to be more mobile. The same can easily be said of other countries (and continents) with tightening labour markets. Old barriers just have to be dropped.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Going west no more
For my first post here this year, I'd like to bring up a recent article in The Globe and Mail by Gordon Pitts ("The Waning of the Boom", available here). In this article, Pitts explores how the the sharp fall in oil prices is likely to impact the wider Canadian economy, since much of Canada's economic growth is concentrated in an Albertan provincuial economy that had been driven by strong investment in the expensive extraction of oil from the oil shale deposits of Alberta. Without prices in excess of $US100 a barrel to drive continued investment, Alberta's labour market is no longer capable of attracting nearly the volume of workers, temporary and otherwise, that it once did.
In the past, rural communities could export their labourers, but they would not lose all the purchasing power. The normal routine for mobile workers is to spend 20 days in Fort McMurray and go home for 10 days, which means they can still buy new ATVs, pickups, and widescreen TVs in their home communities.
The mobile work force contributed about $150-million a year to the Fort McMurray economy, according to the Oil Sands Developers - in restaurant meals, hotel rooms, casino chips, and drinks in watering holes like the Diggers bar in the Oilsands Hotel ("Metal detectors in use" warns the sign on the entrance wall). And local homeowners could earn $1,200 a month by just renting out a room.
A lot of that income will dry up now, as will the wealth transfer to the rest of Canada. Assume the average mobile worker might bring home $25,000 in surplus cash to spend at home in Fredericton or New Glasgow, N.S. Those 24,000 jobs could potentially channel more than $600-million a year from Fort McMurray to the rest of Canada - or to Latin America and China, which contribute a small percentage of oil sands labourers. And that's not counting the vast oil sands supply chain of equipment and materials.
It is one of the best equalization mechanisms outside government transfers. But now the workers will be coming home and putting pressure on their home economies. Young men and women had put education on hold while grabbing six-figure incomes in the sands. Now, there will be increased demand for schooling and retraining.
The supply of skilled jobs is often controlled by major trade unions, which in the past, would make up for any scarce skills by phoning union locals across the country. There will be fewer of those calls now, and fewer travel cards giving non-Alberta workers access to plum oil sands jobs.
(Yes, you read the last sentence correctly. In certain respects, Canada's labour market is less integrated than the European Union's.)
I've blogged here in the past about how Alberta has become, per capita, Canada's wealthiest province with a 2005 GDP per capita 56% above the national average, continuing a long-standing trend. As for the migration it's a typical sort of labour migration, with temporary migrants' work earning them the money needed to subsidize consumption in their home communities.
One thing that I have been quite curious about is the question of whether or not there are other similar patterns of large-scale labour migration in other high-income countries, with people moving from one region to another. My first guess is that the scope of the movement to Alberta is unique because of the size of the economic gap--GDP per capita in Alberta, to take one metric, is twice that of the three Maritime provinces--and that, maybe, there might be similar movements from the former East Germany to West Germany. Are there, or are there others? I leave the comments to our readers.
In the past, rural communities could export their labourers, but they would not lose all the purchasing power. The normal routine for mobile workers is to spend 20 days in Fort McMurray and go home for 10 days, which means they can still buy new ATVs, pickups, and widescreen TVs in their home communities.
The mobile work force contributed about $150-million a year to the Fort McMurray economy, according to the Oil Sands Developers - in restaurant meals, hotel rooms, casino chips, and drinks in watering holes like the Diggers bar in the Oilsands Hotel ("Metal detectors in use" warns the sign on the entrance wall). And local homeowners could earn $1,200 a month by just renting out a room.
A lot of that income will dry up now, as will the wealth transfer to the rest of Canada. Assume the average mobile worker might bring home $25,000 in surplus cash to spend at home in Fredericton or New Glasgow, N.S. Those 24,000 jobs could potentially channel more than $600-million a year from Fort McMurray to the rest of Canada - or to Latin America and China, which contribute a small percentage of oil sands labourers. And that's not counting the vast oil sands supply chain of equipment and materials.
It is one of the best equalization mechanisms outside government transfers. But now the workers will be coming home and putting pressure on their home economies. Young men and women had put education on hold while grabbing six-figure incomes in the sands. Now, there will be increased demand for schooling and retraining.
The supply of skilled jobs is often controlled by major trade unions, which in the past, would make up for any scarce skills by phoning union locals across the country. There will be fewer of those calls now, and fewer travel cards giving non-Alberta workers access to plum oil sands jobs.
(Yes, you read the last sentence correctly. In certain respects, Canada's labour market is less integrated than the European Union's.)
I've blogged here in the past about how Alberta has become, per capita, Canada's wealthiest province with a 2005 GDP per capita 56% above the national average, continuing a long-standing trend. As for the migration it's a typical sort of labour migration, with temporary migrants' work earning them the money needed to subsidize consumption in their home communities.
One thing that I have been quite curious about is the question of whether or not there are other similar patterns of large-scale labour migration in other high-income countries, with people moving from one region to another. My first guess is that the scope of the movement to Alberta is unique because of the size of the economic gap--GDP per capita in Alberta, to take one metric, is twice that of the three Maritime provinces--and that, maybe, there might be similar movements from the former East Germany to West Germany. Are there, or are there others? I leave the comments to our readers.
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