ABSTRACT
In contemporary times, the majority of people on the move are workers, particularly those from the Global South. The global migration infrastructure or industry itself is focused on low-wage, low-skilled migrants, who are largely unprotected in many host countries’ legal systems. In fact, contemporary globalization survives and thrives on cheap and exploitative labor. This chapter will explore and critically reflect on inequality in labor in the context of the contemporary processes of migration and globalization. More specifically, the chapter will consider the experience of vulnerable migrant workers in Asia and North America, including those who are survivors of human trafficking, and it will reflect critically on their vulnerability from legal and theological perspectives. Theologically, the chapter proposes the Catholic social teaching principle of option for the poor and vulnerable as a Christian response by highlighting the principle’s relationship with the social principles of justice and mercy, particularly as understood in the Christian tradition. Legally, the chapter focuses on global and state infrastructures, including programs for temporary migrant workers, the gendered dimension of labor migration, and the constructed distinctions in law and policy between migrants and refugees, distinctions that exacerbate labor migrant vulnerabilities. This chapter examines how the social principles of justice and mercy in Catholic social teaching can be instrumental in addressing the inequality, exploitation, and exclusion experienced by labor migrants on their journeys and in host countries.
