Page 69 - ILC Together For a Just World Broşür.indd

Together For A Just World

WORLD MIGRANTS DAY STATEMENT

“Migration Is Not a Crime; It Is a Structural Reality Produced by Global Inequalities
and an Expression of the Movement of Labour.”

On the occasion of World Migrants Day on 18 December, the International La-
bour Confederation (ILC) once again underscores the following with clarity and
determination:

Migration is not merely the outcome of individual choice. It is a structural ne-
cessity produced by wars, occupations, authoritarian forms of governance, de-
epening poverty, the climate crisis, and an unjust global economic order.
Today, across the world, hundreds of millions of people are compelled to le-
ave their countries of origin in search of a dignified life. Migrants are not only
crossing geographical borders; they are also striving to overcome inequality,
exploitation, and exclusion.
Regrettably, migrants are increasingly becoming the targets of racist, xenop-
hobic, and exclusionary political discourses. Migration is deliberately framed
as a security issue or a social threat, while migrants are unjustly portrayed as
scapegoats for economic crises and social challenges.

Yet the reality is clear:
The source of the problem is not migrants themselves, but the unequal and
unjust global system that renders migration unavoidable.

Migrants are, first and foremost, workers. For this reason, migration policies
cannot be separated from labour policies.
Today, millions of migrant workers are subjected to precarious and informal
working conditions, employed at low wages, effectively excluded from trade
union rights, and deprived of legal protection. This situation points to a structu-
ral regime of exploitation that weakens not only migrants, but the entire world
of labour.
In migration processes, women and children face far more severe forms of exp-
loitation, violence, and abuse. Human trafficking, forced labour, and invisible

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