Word: migrants
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...Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur. Last year, he agreed to pay a recruitment agency $2,400 to win a position on the production line of an auto parts manufacturer. But in the wake of the financial crisis, that job is gone, and Hussein, like hundreds of thousands of migrant workers around the world, is stranded far from home, saddled with debts that will take years to repay...
...work visas it had granted other Bangladeshis, and officials are now threatening to round up foreigners for deportation. "I am hiding and avoiding places where Bangladeshi people gather," says Hussein. If caught, he risks jail, a heavy fine, and even a whipping before being sent home. (See pictures of migrant workers in the Gulf...
...Hussein's plight reflects one of the burgeoning problems of the global downturn. Countries that built successful economies in part on the backs of cheap migrant workers now face upheaval in their labor markets. In places like Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea, and the Gulf states, companies are folding, factories are closing, and thousands are losing their jobs - meaning migrant workers like Hussein are being shoved out of the labor pool and into a tenuous half-life on the margins of the world economy...
...Observers warn of greater social traumas now facing migrant workers marooned at the foot of the global socio-economic ladder. Because the economic situation is even worse in their native countries, many decide to stay on in their adopted homes even though they have lost their jobs and their work visas are no longer valid. "They will settle to be illegal," says Manolo Abella, a Bangkok-based expert on regional migration for the International Labor Organization. "Migrants workers often tolerate all sorts of abuse and deprivation just to stay and earn a wage, to avoid being sent home." Recent cases...
...Support, though, is hard to come by in countries where unemployment is skyrocketing and competition for jobs fierce. Oil palm plantations in Malaysia, which involve intense toil under the hot sun, were once the exclusive province of migrant labor, but laid-off Malaysians like former factory worker Palani Kandasamy are turning to this sort of work. "The pay is lower, but it is impossible to live in the city without a job," he says. Kandasamy now harvests oil palm fruit in a plantation south of Kuala Lumpur...