More workers are crossing national borders to look for jobs than ever before. Many migrants seek overseas employment with the help of agents or intermediaries. These "merchants of labour" include relatives who finance a migrant's trip, provide housing and arrange for a job abroad; public employment services; and private recruitment agencies. They also comprise an insalubrious underworld of smugglers and traffickers. The agents who recruit and deploy migrant workers are at the heart of the evolving migration infrastructure, i.e. the network of business and personal ties that is creating a global labour market. This book highlights best practices in the activities and regulation of these merchants of labour as well as innovative strategies to protect migrant workers, underlining the contribution of ILO standards. It covers a broad range of national and regional experiences and puts "merchants of labour" in the wider context of changing employment relationships in globalizing labour markets. The papers it contains are an important contribution to understanding a major mechanism facilitating the growth of the migrant labour force.

Some 10 million migrant workers cross national borders each year. This book examines the businesses that move low-skilled workers, explaining recruitment, remuneration and retention, and showing how national borders increase recruitment costs. Tackling the often murky world of labor migration, it fills an important void in this fast-growing field.

Explores the role of private agents in moving workers over national borders. Explains the role of agents in labour markets, to examine the fees they extract, and sets out policy options that the ILO and governments might consider to regulate their behaviour. Reports from many countries suggest that fee-charging private agents often engage in activities that are quasi-legal or illegal under national laws and do not conform to ILO Conventions and Recommendations, such as helping migrants to cross borders in defiance of migration laws, requiring them to sign supplemental contracts abroad that raise the fees they originally agreed to pay for brokerage services, and entrapping migrants seeking higher wage foreign jobs in smuggling and trafficking operations that lead to bondage or slavery.

Study of employment policy in respect of migrant workers in the USA, with particular reference to the employment of Mexican seasonal workers in agriculture in california - covers labour shortages of rural workers in the state, the recruitment of braceros, working conditions, collective agreements, labour contracts, etc. Bibliography pp. 260 to 276, and references.

This is the first general survey of the implementation of two major ILO instruments on merchant shipping since their adoption in 1976. It covers the scope and application of the standards in general, as well as hours of work, manning, safety, social security and ship-board conditions of employment.