Cell phones are touching the lives of Tajikistani women in many ways. Photo: Kate B Dixon (flickr)

Technology, migrant labor, and patriarchy: three world systems that bring benefits to some have become a tragic combination for the Tajik women whose husbands are divorcing them remotely via text message, reports Radio Free Europe.

Tajikistan's struggling economy means that as many as one in seven Tajiks works abroad, often spending most of the year away. The country is also heavily dependent on the remittances that constitute half of its GDP. If migrant men decide to divorce their wives back home, some do so via cell phone by texting the word "talaaq," Arabic for "divorce." In Sunni Islam, saying the word three times is a recognized way for men to end their marriages.

Migrant Tajiks are largely beyond the reach of their country's laws. Neither text messages nor "talaaq" are legal methods of divorce there (unlike in other countries like Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, where courts have sanctioned the combination), but courts can't enforce this or other divorce proceedings — like alimony payments — on an absent husband.

These Tajik women are often left without homes or means of support when their marriages end. Respite may only come when they are fully integrated into the legal system — to match their immersion in the technology that has already deeply touched their lives.

Unemployment is already high in Mexico. It could be even higher if Mexican workers in the U.S. went back. Photo: Aneas (flickr)

Mexican workers often come to the United States to earn money and send it to their relatives back home. But NPR reports that as the U.S. economy has gotten worse, some of these worker's families are sending them money from Mexico.

It's a phenomenon that could have a positive economic impact: These reverse remittances, as they're called, allow the migrants to keep searching for higher-paying work than they could get in Mexico, explains an NPR report. These reverse remittances may also prevent a flood of returnees from further devastating Mexico's economy and increasing unemployment.

When the U.S. economy rebounds, these workers are well-positioned to start sending remittances back to their families again.
These remittances play a big roll in Mexico's economy — they're the country's second-largest source of foreign income.

Still, the total dollar amount of reverse remittances remains small in comparison to the traditional southward flow of cash and there is no reliable data about its overall volume, points out a World Bank report.

As one Mexican father of a migrant worker told the New York Times, “We have an obligation to help them [until they find work again]. They’re our sons. It doesn’t matter if they are here or there."

What will the growth of the Mongolian mining industry mean for the country's nomadic herders? Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Mongolia could soon be home to the largest copper mine in the world.

After years of negotiations, Western mining companies Rio Tinto and Ivanhoe are close to reaching an agreement with the Mongolian parliament to develop significantly the Oyu Tolgoi mine. Mineweb reports that the untapped deposit contains 78 billion pounds of copper and 45 million ounces of gold. If all goes to plan, the massive investment would double the size of Mongolia's economy and create thousands of jobs, according to NPR.

The economic crisis has hit Mongolia harder than most countries in East Asia. One in four people are out of work, NPR reports. The country’s nomadic herders – 40 percent of the population – are struggling after the price of cashmere dramatically declined earlier this year (see Manasi Sharma’s Downturn in the Gobi). Now, some are hailing Oyu Tolgoi as an immediate economic fix.

But there are several obvious challenges. First, Mongolia is highly corrupt. It is ranked 102 out of 180 countries in the latest Transparency International index, an annual rating of perceived levels of corruption (defined as the abuse of public office for private gain). Additionally, the editorial in Mineweb suggests that Russia and China may have inordinate influence over Mongolia’s mining industry. Given these two factors, how much will the average Mongolian gain?

Lastly, there are the social implications of this investment to consider. For many nomadic herders, shifting to industrial mining jobs is far from ideal, but there isn’t much else to turn to. People are desperate now that raw cashmere and other materials do not provide a reliable way to feed and clothe families. "They are losing their land, their animals, and even their culture," reported NPR’s Louisa Lim, "for a few specks of gold."

As unemployment increases worldwide, countries are looking at ways to stop the bleeding. Spain, Japan and the Czech Republic have decided to pay unemployed immigrants to return to their homelands.

Spain is offering immigrants from outside Europe an average of $18,500 in unemployment benefits to leave. The government is hoping to lower its 17.4 percent unemployment rate, the highest in Europe. Those who take the deal get 40 percent up front, 60 percent once they arrive in their countries of origin. They can't reapply for work visas in Spain for three years.

Japan is offering a one-time payment of 300,000 yen (about $3,100) to South American factory workers of Japanese descent who buy a plane ticket home, plus an additional sum for each dependent. Immigrants taking the deal agree not to "return until economic and employment conditions improve." Japan's unemployment benefits pay nearly $2,100 per month. So, unemployed immigrants could theoretically make more money without a job in Japan than they would by taking the offer to leave.

The Czech government will provide unemployed non-EU citizens with a ticket home plus 500 Euros — more if the worker has young children, reports the Wall Street Journal. When the program started, there were no restrictions on when a worker could return. On April 1, however, the Czech Republic stopped issuing work visas for five countries including Mongolia, whose citizens represent two-thirds of those in the pay-to-leave program.

Impacts on unemployment have been negligible at best. The Czech Interior Ministry says that their program has been a success: it's filled nearly 65 percent of its 2,000-person quota. Still, that number is less than 1 percent of all unemployed workers. The 4,000 people who've accepted Spain's offer is far from the government's goal of 100,000. And fewer than 400 people have applied for the program in Japan.

It seems that many immigrants are choosing to weather the economic storm where they are. Their chances of gainful employment in the country they left must not be any better.

Like many young people who dream of coming to the wealthy Gulf States to find work, 27-year-old Anesu Gamba came here to Dubai three years ago to escape Zimbabwe’s crippling poverty.

I met Anesu, a soft-spoken man with a round face, at the Department for Naturalization and Residency in Dubai. He went there to cancel the visit visa he requested for his brother because he could no longer afford the ticket. “I wanted him to come and enjoy Dubai, he was so excited,” Anesu said, gazing sadly at the ground.

In the beginning, his new life in the Gulf was just as he had imagined. “In the first two years, I lived in a dream, I had friends, and I bought a car," said Anesu. He was also able to send money to his mother, father and younger brother in Zimbabwe, none of whom have jobs.

But last month, Anesu didn't send his family any money. He was among several laid off by the small public-relations company that hired him as a graphic designer. The company blamed the downsizing on the global economic downturn.

About a quarter of Zimbabwe's population has gone abroad, and together they send home anywhere from $360 million to $1 billion in remittances, reports the UN news agency, IRIN. These remittances are often credited for saving the country from complete collapse.

But the burden of supporting family members abroad is heavy for those in the Gulf. Many, like Anesu, have cut other costs to keep up the remittances. Anesu sold his car and moved into a shared apartment with three other migrants. “Sending money home is not an option, it’s an obligation," he told me. "I just can’t let my family down."

Finding a new job in Dubai isn't easy these days, but returning to Zimbabwe isn't very tempting. Less than 6 percent of people living in Zimbabwe are employed, the UN said recently. At its peak last year, inflation reached 231 million percent and Save the Children reports that more than 75 percent of the population lives in abject poverty.

Anesu thinks his chances of finding a job are better in Dubai. "I have one month to find a job after the cancellation of my visa," he said. "I came to Dubai with hopes and dreams. I will try my best to find a job, even as a waiter, a dishwasher, I don’t care. At the end, I don’t have many options, do I?"

A call center in India. New U.S. policies against outsourcing jobs overseas will hurt India's IT sector the most. Photo: David Robinson (flickr)

In spite of the global recession's painful effects on most of the world's economies, India has managed to stay stable. The country even expects its economy to grow by 5 percent this year. However, this prediction came before President Obama announced that his administration would be cutting tax breaks and refusing bailout money for companies outsourcing jobs overseas.

Rising unemployment in the U.S. has renewed the political and economic debate over shipping jobs abroad. More than 1,000 U.S. firms that have outsourced jobs abroad are being criticized for taking jobs away from Americans. Countries like India — which gets more than 60 percent of its outsourcing work from U.S. businesses — will likely be hit the hardest by the Obama administration’s protectionist approach to reviving the U.S. economy.

President Obama also announced a hiring ban on foreign workers for companies receiving federal bailout money. Of the 65,000 H1-B work visas that the U.S. issues annually, 21,667 have been for Indian citizens who mostly join the information technology industry. These non-immigrant visas are granted to educated and skilled foreign workers.

But the U.S. is not alone in adopting policies against outsourcing jobs and limiting foreign workers. In Persian Gulf countries like the United Arab Emirates, millions of Indians who are employed in the construction and banking industries have been laid off and forced to return home. In the United Kingdom — where Indians are one of the most prevalent immigrant groups — the government has announced plans to potentially limit foreign workers to sectors of the economy that have documented labor shortages.

New policies against hiring foreign workers in the U.S. may have a long-term impact that policymakers are not anticipating, according to a study by Duke and Harvard researchers. With increased job opportunities in places like India and China, more than 100,000 foreign workers could leave the U.S. for jobs in their home countries. The study found that many Indian professionals in Silicon Valley have already left, and predicts many more will leave to start businesses in India.

This is bad news for the long-term economic recovery of the U.S. because nearly half of Silicon Valley start-ups, including Google, were started by immigrants, the lead Harvard researcher tells BusinessWeek. This long-term “brain drain” will mean that “when we start recovering ... the people we need are going to be in India and China,” according to the researcher, Vivek Wadhwa.

The U.S. has historically welcomed immigrants and their innovative ideas. A reversal of policy could prove to be very harmful — hurting economic growth and limiting the expansion of key industries.

Police in Reykjavik, Iceland after a violent protest turned into a riot on January 20. Photo: finnur.malmquist (flickr)

It’s a lot worse than just about everyone thought. By some estimates, the economic crisis could cost 50 million jobs worldwide. That's a catastrophic number, and even their potential loss is already fueling some discontent and sounding alarms.

Worried about the ripple effects of widespread unemployment, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency recently added the state of the economy to the agency's list of top security threats. Retired Admiral Dennis Blair, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, warned that "economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one-to-two-year period."

On the international stage, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced his concern: "If not handled, today’s financial crisis will become tomorrow’s human crisis. Social unrest and political instability will grow, exacerbating all other problems."

Violent flare-ups over the economic recession and resulting unemployment are already occurring all over the globe.

In Pakistan, chronic power outages have forced many textile factories to close down for hours at a time, triggering thousands of angry protesters to set fire to the state-owned power company's office. Government cuts in Lithuania’s social programs prompted protesters to pelt the parliament building with eggs and rocks ; at least 14 people were injured and 84 detained. Chinese police officers are now undergoing special training to deal with expected social unrest over factory closings that have left millions of migrant workers out of a job.

Iceland and Latvia serve as extreme examples of the devastating consequences from the declining state of the worldwide economy: both countries’ respective governments collapsed under the pressure of the economic crisis.

However, security experts are concerned about other forms of collateral damage that extend beyond protests. Bruno Tertrais, a strategic and security expert at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris tells Time Magazine that he believes the biggest threat to international security is "the collapse of regimes vital to maintaining international order." Tertrais cites Somalia as an example — a place where, after the collapse of its government, piracy has gained a foothold and severely disrupted shipping routes along the horn of Africa.

Extreme poverty has always posed a threat, especially in the world’s emerging economies. However, the breadth and force of the current global economic crisis poses a threat to all nations, whether rich or poor.

Workers on a trading ship in Dubai, UAE. Photo: fleshmeatdoll (flickr)

Despite efforts by the local media to paint an optimistic picture, tough economic realities are quickly catching up with the ambitious, fast-growing city of Dubai. One indication of the gathering storm is recent news that approximately 53 percent of the planned $1.28 trillion worth of construction projects in the United Arab Emirates’ most populous city are now on hold.

Feeling the worsening global slowdown, many of UAE’s companies — mainly in the property, construction and financial sectors — have laid off hundreds of workers. Construction companies have delayed or canceled projects, banks are tightening lending and tourism is slowing. Some companies have given their employees a period of two to three months to look for alternative work — but jobs are rare because most companies are freezing recruitment.

This alarming new reality is most noticeably taking a toll on those who’ve come from other countries to seek work in Dubai. Foreigners make up about 85 percent of the local population and 99 percent of the private work force. According to the Ministry of Labor there are 4.5 million foreigners in the country, compared with 800,000 Emirati citizens. About two-thirds of the foreigners are South Asians, including most of the 1.2 million construction workers.

According to figures accumulated by Dubai’s Indian Consulate from airline records, a total of 20,000 workers from the construction sectors are leaving the UAE next month. Approximately 3,000 Filipinos out of the 300,000 in the UAE lost their jobs over the course of a single month because of the global financial crisis. And it is estimated that about 1,500 work permits and visas are being canceled in Dubai each day.

This mass exodus is causing a curious problem in the long-term parking lots of Dubai International Airport: Over the last four months, Dubai police have found at least 3,000 automobiles abandoned outside the airport.

But not all of those with grievances are exiting Dubai. The Dubai Ministry of Labor has been flooded with thousands of labor complaints, mostly from Indian workers. A local newspaper reports that many are seeking advice about pressing charges against their employer after being forced to take pay cuts, or suing for unfair dismissal.

“There are some real tragedies happening,” said Tony Maalouli, the managing director of a firm that has recently seen labor lawsuits increase by 20 percent. “Small to medium businesses are simply closing down and management is running away because of their liabilities. What they are doing is illegal, they are escaping their obligations. This is happening a lot.”

There are increasing signs that the expatriates who once flocked to Dubai in the last years are leaving. A Western diplomat notes, “There is no way of tracking actual numbers, but the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. Dubai is emptying out.”

As the International Labor Organization predicts that the wages and jobs of more than 1.5 billion workers worldwide will be somehow affected in 2009, we can only anticipate more bad news coming from Dubai.

The World Health Organization has issued a warning for yet another dire consequence of the global economic crisis: the “severe medical workforce crisis” in Africa and Asia, is expected to get worse.

The most recent World Health Report from 2006 estimates that Africa and Asia lack more than 4 million health workers combined. The WHO-sponsored Global Health Work Alliance estimates that 1 in 4 doctors and 1 in 20 nurses will leave Africa to pursue higher-paying jobs abroad.

The repercussions for health worker brain drain are severe, especially in rural communities where access to medical care is limited. In Ghana there is only one doctor per 17,700 citizens — the majority of whom practice in the country's two largest cities. The UN news agency reports that in Ghana the scarcity of doctors and the high cost of medical care are driving some pregnant women to turn to prayer camps, trying to use prayer to get through labor pains.

In an interesting twist, the economic downturn in Europe and the U.S. has driven many well-educated migrants to leave troubled financial hubs like London and New York City and return to their respective home countries in Africa and Asia — a phenomenon some are calling reverse brain drain. As reported in World Focus' online radio show, “Though the U.S. has often been called the "land of opportunity," the country is losing some of its top minds to companies overseas.“

It hasn't hit the health sector yet, but reverse brain drain could help ease the heath-worker crisis. Perhaps a financial recession for some could prove to be a time to regain talent for others.

Congratulations to Manasi in Portland, Ore., this week's winner of our weekly comment contest. Manasi's comment on What a Slowing GDP Means for China's Workforce earned her a $25 prize to keep or donate to a project of her choice at Global Giving.

China has come up with its own stimulus plan to deal with the global recession and rising unemployment, according to the International Herald Tribune. Unlike the U.S., China has few debts, a small budget deficit and therefore more funds to invest in new spending plans. In order to quickly create jobs for millions, China is planning to spend $88 billion this year on construction of intercity rail lines and improving roads and highways throughout almost every city, town and county across the country. This plan will not only create millions of jobs, but will also curb China's dependence on cars, foreign oil and reduce air pollution. The stimulus plan will also include environmental projects like water treatment plants.

Economists are arguing about the actual feasibility of this plan and how quickly it will be executed. But most experts say that China will move faster than the U.S. in implementing their stimulus plan. This is because the government controls large sectors of the economy and is able to seize private property when it wants without all the legal and environmental regulations the U.S. government has to deal with. China is also planning to spend $123 billion to provide universal health care within the next 2 years according to the Tribune.

In a country that has seen the fastest growing GDP in recent years, perhaps it will be able to pull off this larger than life plan — even in a recession!

Whether the Chinese government will be able to stem the deepening economic crisis remains to be seen — right now it is hitting China's workers hard.

Paying people a decent wage may not be just a humane thing to do; it may be the key to jump-starting our ailing international economy.

The logic goes like this. The economic slowdown hit the U.S. hard, which is causing the demand for goods to drop. Countries like China and India are struggling to fill the gap by trying to increase domestic demand for the goods manufactured in their respective countries. By establishing a healthy minimum wage in these countries, people will be able to buy more and, thus, keep the engines of industry moving smoothly, despite the lull in demand from the West.

Global asset manager and author Richard Duncan is a key proponent of this "trickle-up" theory. As Newsweek reports:

Duncan, now a partner at Blackhorse Asset Management in Singapore, believes that kind of government intervention — undertaken within Asia or imposed by the U.S. via import tariffs for any nation not following set minimums — is more important today than ever, as the region's deep pools of labor effectively thwart the market from pushing up wages fast or far enough on it own.

Convincing Asian governments to dampen what they believe to be their biggest business advantage — low wages — won’t be an easy task. Instead, movement towards this goal may come externally, with the new Obama administration keen to negotiate trade agreements with higher labor standards.

It’s still not clear if this theory will actually work. A Global Envision post from earlier this month discussed a New York Times editorial that argued that trade agreements that push for higher wages will force factories out of business, causing their employees to take even less palatable jobs.

So who’s right? Will raising wages help or harm the millions of factory workers across the world?

Tajik women take on the bulk of responsibility while husbands and sons have left the country for migrant work. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Tajikistan has the highest remittance rate in the world — a recent World Bank report says that around half of the Central Asian country's money comes from workers abroad. But a weakened economy in Russia, where 98 percent of Tajik remittance income originates, has drastically slowed cash flow back to Tajikistan and its seven million inhabitants.

EurasiaNet reports that between September and November of last year, remittances from migrants dropped more than 50 percent. That decrease alone accounts for a 20 percent drop in the Tajik GDP.

Nearly one million Tajik men work abroad. These workers face growing tensions as local workers fight to keep their own jobs, feeling threatened by the guest workers who poured into Russia and Kazakhstan during better economic times in those countries. The New York Times says that during the migrant boom, the portion of Tajiks living below the poverty line dropped by one-third, to around 50 percent.

At home, Tajik women are left to manage the fields and young boys are the primary wage earners. Remittances help keep Tajik families out of extreme poverty, reports EurasiaNet's Rob Cavese, but because most transactions are cash-based and few Tajiks have bank accounts, the concern is that most funds from abroad are used for immediate consumption and not for investment.

With so many in Tajikistan relying on outside wages, Cavese writes, there is little incentive for the government to initiate a restructuring of domestic wages.

“The Tajik economy is not sustainable without migration,” Dilip Ratha, a senior economist at the World Bank, told The New York Times. “It is not diversified. People are the most important resource they have.”

Dubai's Construction Skyline at Night. Photo: twocentsworth (flickr)

The financial crisis is crimping construction in the Middle East and other places that had been experiencing a building boom, Der Spiegel reports.

Developers in Dubai — once synonymous with high profit margins and high-concept architecture — have delayed lavish developments, including a chain of palm-tree-shaped islands and a $600-million Trump hotel and tower.

The slowdown has affected the migrant workers who make up the core of Dubai's workforce, 43 percent of whom call India home. The Times of India reported that thousands of laid-off construction workers have applied for visa cancellations.

Der Spiegel says developers elsewhere in the Middle East, namely Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, are scaling back as oil prices fall.

And in Moscow, developers halted construction on what was to be Europe's tallest skyscraper. The Russian economy is "a house of cards that is built on Western loans and which is now collapsing," German architect Peter Schweger told Der Spiegel.

Photo: The Tenth Dragon (flickr)

Eight hundred million peasants in China have never been allowed to own their land. Under new reforms by the Chinese government, farmers can trade, subcontract or lease their land — options they have never had before.

In a rather dramatic policy shift, the government has assigned small plots to farmers in communist China. Proponents say this unprecedented plan will lead to “larger, more efficient farms that could increase output” at a time when China isn’t growing enough food to feed its own people, according to the New York Times.

Along with coping with the global economic crisis, China is trying to appease decades of rural discontent felt by farmers who have protested against their lack of land rights and the burgeoning corruption of collective ownership. Too often, “local officials and developers have illegally seized farmland for urban expansion while paying minimal compensation to farmers.”

However, opponents of this new land reform worry that millions of landless farmers will leave the countryside for better-paying work in cities. If these farmers are unable to find work, they won’t have any land left in the countryside to go back to.

Thirty years ago, economic reforms launched China’s rise. But while cities grew wealthy, the countryside remained poor. Let’s see if these reforms give Chinese farmers the same opportunities for financial gain as their urban counterparts have enjoyed.

The U.S. financial crisis is affecting its southern neighbor. Photo: Allen Ormond (flickr)

As Americans grapple with plunging retirement savings, declining home values and rising gas prices, our neighbors to the south are suffering, too.

A decline in both exports — most of which go to the U.S. — and remittances are putting the brakes on the Mexican economy.

Mexican manufacturers rely heavily on U.S. consumers; Americans buy more than 80 percent of the country's exported goods. But as American consumers cut back, Mexican manufacturers are laying off workers. The Arizona Republic ran a story quoting one factory manager who cut nearly half his staff after sales dropped 40 percent.

The slowdown in the manufacturing sector has a trickle-down effect. In Nuevo Laredo, taco vendor Jorge Flores has lost 40 percent of his business in recent weeks due to the economic hard times.

Also hurting the Mexican economy is the decline in money sent back to Mexico from Mexicans living in the U.S., also known as remittances.

One in four families in Mexico relies on remittances as its primary source of income. And remittances have dropped by 12 percent in the past 12 months.

Fewer visits to Western Union are partly due to a fall in U.S. home construction, an industry staffed heavily by Mexican laborers. One day labor center in Los Angeles, for example, says there's been a drastic drop in demand for workers.

Help is on the way, according to Mexican President Felipe Calderon: Yesterday Calderon proposed a 65.1 billion pesos ($5.26 billion) stimulus package to shore up the flagging economy.