Migration and Trade Explainer

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The Gender and Trade Coalition was initiated in 2018 by feminist and progressive activists to put forward feminist trade analysis and advocate for equitable trade policy.

This article is the third in a series of short, Q&A format ‘explainers’ unpacking key trade issues produced for the Gender and Trade Coalition by Regions Refocus. It was written by Erica Levenson (Regions Refocus) with inputs from Carol Barton (WIMN) and Catherine Tactaquin (WIMN). The authors give their thanks to Neha Misra (Solidarity Center), Irem Arf (ITUC), Liepollo Lebohang Pheko (Trade Collective), and Mariama Williams (ILE), who reviewed various versions of the article and provided helpful feedback. Read the full article here and catch up on past explainers here.

1.     What Does Trade Have to do With Migration?

The movement of people is a phenomenon as old as human history, and indeed predates nation-states. Migration is not something that begins and ends so much as it is a process, from the roots of the conditions which form the imperative to migrate, to the migration journey, gradual integration, and complex notions of citizenship and identity. This is precisely what makes migration flows a reflection of the social, economic, and political context in which they happen. Modern migration flows, then, reflect the stark structural inequalities that exist in the global economic order. This view correlates to the core-periphery model of migration, which sees migration as the result of acute labor shortages in capitalist centers that need to be filled through migration inflows from peripheries, drawing parallels to the Marxian concept of a reserve army of labor (Sassen-Koob 1981). As feminist scholars have argued, continuous flows of labor power from the Global South to the North are possible not simply due to the will of the Global North, but because institutions in countries of origin facilitate them (Nawyn 2010).

Rather than this core-periphery model of migration, a simplistic push-pull model guides migration provisions in international trade agreements. Informed by neoclassical economics, the push-pull model assumes that migration is the result of micro-level decision making processes that weigh the ‘pros and cons’ of migration, envisioning a simplistic calculation of factors such as perceived wage differentials, employment conditions, and migration costs. Migration is effectively reduced to a household decision meant “to minimize risks to family income or to overcome capital constraints” (Aldaba 2000, 6).

There is a persistent assumption in trade governance that migration and trade are substitutes. Both European Union and United States policymakers have tried to substitute open markets for open immigration policies: to open their markets to exports from states in the Global South in order to reduce migration. This was the explicit goal of former US President George H.W. Bush when he signed NAFTA, and of the EU in liberalizing trade with Northern African states (Campaniello 2014). Simultaneously as the US and EU agreed to liberalize trade, they increased their border policing and passed restrictive migration policies. But these and other free trade agreements have failed to curb migration through substitution because of a key flaw in their assumption: that increasing free trade leads to increases in GDP and wages in developing countries. In fact, quite the opposite is true– trade liberalization has severely hindered the economies of developing countries. Consequently, free trade agreements have actually increased migration in the long-term (Orefice 2013).

There is a clear gap in structural understandings of the relationship between trade and migration and a need to challenge the ideologies of the people governing them. It is high time to acknowledge the many unfulfilled promises which have been hung on trade liberalization and the socioeconomic catastrophes it has instead led to (Aguinaga et al. 2013; Benería, Deere, and Kabeer 2012; Flynn and Kofman 2004; Hannah, Roberts, and Trommer 2021; Harrison 1997). A critical feminist analysis of the relationship between trade and migration points out the numerous connections between deeply unequal trade and migration governance regimes and illuminates urgent areas in need of improvement.

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The state in Africa is a colonial state

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Map of Africa from 1583

The default unit of analysis for many economists when dealing with national economics is the state. Yet, in economics textbooks ‘the state’ is often assumed to be a neutral actor exogenous to economic processes. It is assumed to be the same – in essence – everywhere. This conception is based on a Eurocentric view of the state, which assumes all states are ahistorical Westphalian nation states based on Enlightenment principles. However, states are not neutral, but deeply shaped by historical processes. Analyses of ‘states’ in economics – country analyses, country data, evaluations of so-called ‘macroeconomic fundamentals’ – must be rethought by taking the complexities of the state in Africa into account in their conceptualisations, analyses and policy proposals. In this piece, I unpack how the African state evolved as a colonial project and the implications of it being mischaracterized as neutral state.

A state like no other

The state in Africa has been mischaracterized as a neutral institution devoid of a problematic history which affects its present. In its simplest terms, the state is an institution of governing, i.e., a political organization whose main aim is to establish and maintain security, law and order within its geographic jurisdiction. In economics, the state is discussed and perceived as a one size-fit-all institution, one that is and must be similar in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The African state, in particular, has been presented as if it is similar to other states, especially in Europe and the United States of America to which it must aspire.

Moreover, the African has been evaluated and judged on the basis of other perceived progressive states, especially those on the western hemisphere. That states are the same is both untrue, misleading, and ahistorical. African states are very different from other states as they are products of conquest, colonialism, genocides, epistemicides and slavery. It was created to support these processes and it still dispenses them mainly through violence. Those who colonised African countries did so not only to access markets and raw materials, but to displace epistemologies and decentre the colonized; and in the process they centered the colonising countries as the centre of knowledge production and essence of humanity. This is the origin of the superiority of liberal economics as the dominant way of understanding and doing economics in Africa.

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What is the impact of international economic law on developing countries?

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Just as at the time of Bretton Woods, international economic law is essential to discourage destructive national policies. But it is also vital to understand how law, regulations and institutions are located within a longer historical trajectory of colonialism, inequality and exploitation.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the climate crisis demonstrate how the world today is more connected economically, socially, politically and ecologically than at any other point in history.

Actions in one country have impacts, sometimes very serious ones, on the societies, environment and economies of other countries. The globalisation of economic markets and technological change affect how countries, companies and individuals conduct economic exchange, including trade in goods and services, capital investment and financial transfers.

These developments also accelerate the social and environmental costs of transnational economic activity. For example, while products, such as mobile phones, can be used in one part of the world, their production can criss-cross multiple other geographical regions. Similarly, raw materials can be extracted from one country to be manufactured into consumer products in another.

This means that the social or environmental costs of production – such as low wages, poor health and safety standards and/or air or water pollution – are not necessarily borne by the countries or communities where the final product is sold and used by consumers.

These changes underscore the critical importance of global collective action and international economic law – the set of global rules and institutions that regulate transnational economic transactions.

As discussion turns to how international economic law deals with contemporary global problems – such as managing global supply chains, settling trade disputes, overcoming sovereign debt crises and financing transitions to low-carbon economies – it is important to consider how the historical legacies of the current system can affect its capacity to do so effectively.

This will enable us to move beyond the economics discipline’s approach to international law, which is often limited to narrowly measuring the ‘effect’ of different laws and legal institutions on various economic indicators, such as growth, investment and poverty. Taking this approach will enable us to explore how law is itself developed in a colonial and imperial context, which may serve to reproduce and perpetuate colonial harms and exploitation.

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On recentring people’s voices to decolonise FinTech narratives

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In 2009, I was interested in studying the phenomenon of M-Pesa as a legal scholar—just a year after its launch and intense rollout. My standpoint enabled me to see the initial regulatory paradoxes that M-Pesa presented. In 2010, I began my PhD, exploring what a regulatory framework should look like. My analysis focused on the complexities presented by the storage and transfer of customer funds within mobile money systems. Central to my analysis were themes of financial regulation, consumer rights, financial stability, conceptualising ‘financial inclusion’, and the meaning of ‘banking the unbanked’. At the time, the study was significant, in understanding the contractual tensions between mobile money users and Safaricom, a non-bank entity, which provided services akin to a traditional bank’s deposit system—yet did not appear to be subject to the same regulatory restraints as conventional banks. Crucially, banks and financial institutions had historically dominated much of the financial system, through exclusionary practices due to colonialism. Therefore, M-Pesa caused much upheaval to established banks, but simultaneously provided hope for the excluded. Various actors extended this new hope, in the ‘success’ narrative of M-Pesa. Its beneficial use as a storage and transfer system was extolled as alleviating poverty, and the restatement of its trajectory was and continues to be modelled across the developing world. The global development and digitalisation agenda have subsumed M-Pesa’s pervasive influence, both valorising the pathways to ‘development’ and ‘innovation’ through FinTech with a singular aim of ‘financial inclusion.’

As a result, Kenya has become the site of contestation for overwhelming empirical research, interest, and knowledge production, particularly by Western scholars and institutions. A ‘gold rush’ has emerged, and the scramble for knowledge extraction has intensified across academic disciplines and across methodologies. Studies from Ghana, Senegal and Kenya dominate. The study of ‘development’ in all its iterations has gained a new development. However, much of the ways in which mobile money (M-Pesa) and FinTech are discussed and framed demonstrates a Western understanding of the everyday lives of the Kenyans who use it. Scholars, activists, and proponents often situate the premise of its use as being between two paradigms: advancing financial inclusion through the enhancement of global development aims, and its function as a tool that includes Kenyans in extractive cycles of financialisation. Both of these are true.

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On recentring women’s grassroots struggles to decolonise FinTech narratives

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Drawing realised by artist Pawel Kuczyński for Serena Natile’s book The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion: Mobile Money, Gendered Walls

I came to the study of fintech as a feminist socio-legal scholar researching the gender dynamics of South-South migration. While doing fieldwork in Kenya for my PhD in 2012, I came across M-Pesa, a mobile money service used by locals as an instrument for transferring money from urban to rural areas. From the start of my research in 2011 to the completion of my PhD in 2016, ongoing studies on M-Pesa were mainly celebratory. It was acclaimed as an innovative instrument for poverty reduction, development, and gender equality and was enthusiastically supported by donors and international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as by tech entrepreneurs and corporate philanthropy. Its success story was so uncontested that I decided to change my research question to focus on the gender dynamics of digital financial inclusion, rather than on my initial interest, migration.

The key narrative of M-Pesa’s success in terms of gender equality was, and still is, that it facilitates women’s access to financial services, providing them with a variety of opportunities to improve their own livelihoods and those of their families, their communities, and ultimately their countries. In the specific case of M-Pesa, a basic-mobile-phone-enabled money transfer service is considered more accessible and available than transferring money via mainstream financial institutions such as banks, and more reliable and secure than informal finance channels such as moneylenders or the handling of cash via rotating credit and savings associations (ROSCAs). This claim is based on three assumptions: first, that women have less access to financial services than men have; second, that women would use their access to finance to support not only themselves but also their families and communities; and third, that digital financial services are better than informal financial channels because they overcome the limits of cash, ensuring traceability and security. These assumptions motivated advocacy and investment in digital financial inclusion projects and the creation of ad hoc programmes and institutions, all strongly focused on the question of how digital technology can be used to facilitate women’s access to financial services.

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Decolonising for Whom? Recentring grassroots struggles and voices in the ‘decolonising fintech’ narrative

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By Serena Natile and Joy Malala

Over the last few years ‘decolonisation’ has become an increasingly popular subject in Western academia. Broadly considered the process of recognising and undoing the intellectual and institutional structures that enabled and maintain the reproduction of imperial power, calls for decolonisation have opened uncomfortable debates about epistemological privilege, forcing us to confront biases and injustices and to revisit hidden histories and visions for the future. While these debates remain essential, particularly at a time of political authoritarianism, racism, and violence, they also highlight the contradictions in Western academia between decolonisation as a fashionable conceptual trend and its real commitment to justice.

In formerly colonised communities, generational consciousness of colonial oppression and struggles to recover land, property, wealth, and political institutions have created a lived experience of the long-term consequences of colonialism, usually conceptualised as ‘coloniality’, that is not a concept but a reality. This experience has shaped movements and protests in the Global South, including within universities. An example is the #FeesMustFall movement in South Africa, which followed the significant decline of government subsidisation of universities with discriminatory consequences for the disadvantaged Black population without historical wealth and economic privilege. Similar protests concern the recognition of and fight against pillars of colonial power including philanthropists such as British colonialist Cecil Rhodes, who accumulated wealth by appropriating land, enslaving people and extracting resources, and used that wealth to shape knowledge production.

Other significant protests involve resistance against neocolonial powers such as Western financial infrastructures, corporations and international institutions i.e. the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. A  recent example is the ongoing youth-led (Gen Z) round of protests in Kenya #rejectfinancebill2024, motivated by demands to reject the IMF-supported Finance Bill that, if approved, would have imposed a fresh round of government cuts to basic services and austerity measures on Kenyans. The young people protesting in the streets of Nairobi showed awareness of the colonial legacy and long-term impact of the 1980s structural adjustment policies (SAPs) on the lives of people – particularly those at the lower end of the income distribution, and demanded economic sovereignty as the only way to achieve social justice. The protests were successful in impeding the adoption of the Bill, but many young people paid with their lives, as the government deployed a deadly military response to the protests. 

The demands for decolonisation are based on ending economic and epistemological oppression, two interrelated aims, each grounded in colonialism. Reclaiming knowledge and the economic means that allow its production and dissemination has always been at the centre of decolonisation as an opportunity to remake societies, nations, and the world itself for the better. In its fight for justice, decolonisation is a grassroots struggle against colonial and neo-colonial rulers and rules, as well as against all global and local actors and structures that enable and reinforce those rules. For this reason, grassroots voices need to be at the centre of any decolonisation project.

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Anti-Colonial Solutions to climate change

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When we discuss the climate crisis in economics, we are often confronted with a debate resting on technical solutions, emissions paths, and energy use: a certain amount of time to go from coal to turbines means a certain amount of carbon dioxide emitted, which means a certain likely degree of global temperature change. In environmental economics, climate change and its associated environmental problems are often framed as ‘externalities’; that is, unfortunate and unintended spillovers caused by market mechanisms. Often, social issues are taken into account within this narrative through sunny phrases like “sustainable development” or “just transition.” The responsible parties are often individuals, states, or firms that are often thought to take action within the market. What does this debate look like if we take two different questions as starting points: not how to solve the climate crisis through market mechanisms and regulation, but how to solve the climate crisis while attending to the colonial legacy and exiting from contemporary neo-colonial accumulation patterns? Let us take a look.

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Misreading Indigenous Politics: A Eulogy for the Eurocentric Left

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Response to Thomas Meaney, “Red Power” in LRB (Vol. 46, No. 14, 18 July 2024)

In the latest issue of the London Review of Books under the title of “Red Power: Indigenous Political Strategies,” Thomas Meaney has written a review of three recent award-winning books by historians of Native North America: Pekka Hämäläinen’s Indigenous Continent; Ned Blackhawk’s The Rediscovery of America; and Nick Estes Our History is the Future. In some ways, the review is impressively learned. Meaney uses the occasion to canvass a generations-spanning array of scholarship on the history of Native North America and engages figures, events, and historiographic questions of which only a very small body of Native and non-native scholars on these topics are even aware.

Marks of erudition aside, Meaney is out to weave together a broader narrative that extends beyond the historical bona fides of these books. The key moment in setting up this narrative comes after Meaney has raised his readers’ hopes by opening with a quite historically literate summary of European settler expansionism and Indigenous peoples’ responses to it. In the paragraph that then really begins the substance of his review, Meaney pivots: “but recent roadmaps of the historiography either sidestep material questions or mistake a colonized mindset for progressivist one.” This is where Meaney divides the three books under review into three categories of political and historical errors: Hämäläinen’s revisionist history overstretches the notion of “empire” in his account of “Indigenous power” by labeling the Lakota (and in earlier work, the Comanche) as such. (I agree with this critique, so I leave it aside in this review). Blackhawk represents a trend of scholars of Native history and federal Indian law who “have so thoroughly internalized constitutional ideology that they seem not to notice how their cause has been instrumentalized by the most fanatically libertarian segment of American society.” And finally, “a nominally [!] left-wing Native scholarship” that romanticizes Indigenous experiences, engaging in a politics of authenticity. The latter is how Meaney represents the work of Lakota scholar Nick Estes.

After establishing these categories, Meaney argues that these various limitations are “all the more regrettable because the 20th century offered examples of Indigenous co-operation with the left, cases contemporary political theorists have examined with more care than their historian peers.” This is a strange thing to assert at the outset, given that there was no recognizable anticolonial “left” in the US settler colony that Native nations could possibly have “cooperated” with in the 19th century. The consensus on the necessity and inevitability of land dispossession and structural predation cut across almost all categories of white society, including almost all of those on the far left of the political spectrum. Moreover, this included, as many others have noted, some key figures in the history of African-American political thought such as Douglas and Du Bois. What these historians—particularly Blackhawk and Estes—ask us to do is to suspend some assumptions about what constitutes the commitments of “the left” at all, given the deep investments of American republicanism and many later iterations of US leftism (let alone the liberalism of the Democratic Party) in colonial dispossession or just racialized indifference.

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