Origin countries policies on low-waged migrant workers Results from the RIGHTS policy database

ILO estimates there are 169 million migrant workers in the world (ILO 2021). Once abroad, migrant workers are often engaged in low-waged employment, such as in factories work, agriculture, fisheries, construction or domestic work. The nature of these jobs and their migrant status make low-waged migrant workers vulnerable to exploitation and violation of their human and social rights. Many migrant workers face underpayment and non-payment of wages, forced over-hours, threats to their health and safety at work, violence, poor housing and restrictions on their movement. In some cases these violations occur in contravention of national laws, in other cases they take place in the absence of laws covering migrants’ rights. Migrants’ access to rights is often examined from the destination country side as these countries are responsible for making and upholding laws and policies on their territory. The role of origin countries receives much less attention. This is striking as origin countries have both an incentive and an international right to intervene. The RIGHTS project examines what measures origin countries take to support migrants’ access to rights and seeks to understand why countries take these measures – or refrain from taking them. The RIGHTS project focuses on labour emigration policies, meaning policies aimed at restricting, facilitating or directing migration of citizens for the purpose of labour, including policies on living and working conditions of migrant workers once abroad. Labour emigration policies can target (prospective) migrants before, during and after migration. They may be directed at migrants, at private companies involved in labour migration ─ most importantly recruitment companies ─, or at destination countries. This policy note presents an overview of the prevalence, and geographic and temporal spread of a core set of labour emigration policies across fifty origin countries of low-waged workers. The results show that countries are adopting an increasing number of policies. They also show regional variation in policies, that are partially related to variation in destination countries.