Study supported complaints made by the Migration Observatories to the Public Ministry of Labor
Haitian immigrants who came to Brazil between 2010 and 2014 and, recruited by the agroindustry or civil construction sectors, went to work in the State of Santa Catarina, had their labor overexploited by their employers, that is, they suffered a violation of the value of workforce. As detailed in the doctoral thesis defended by researcher Luis Felipe Aires Magalhães, at the Elza Berquó Population Studies Center (Nepo), companies used various mechanisms to get the most out of workers.
The first strategy was to deduct accommodation concessions from salaries, followed by the so-called discriminatory allocation, which meant placing Haitians in sectors that required more physical strength or in sectors that favored work-related illnesses. Finally, the thesis pointed out that, without knowing Portuguese well, immigrants were forced to sign contracts with clauses in which they gave up their labor rights after dismissal.
The overexploitation of Haitian immigrant labor is detailed in the thesis and was the basis for complaints made by researchers from the Migration Observatories to the Public Ministry of Labor. Luís Felipe is part of the observatory section in São Paulo, with a Fapesp project coordinated by his advisor, professor Rosana Baeninger. However, research, which covers other states, through a network of observatories and other research groups in other regions of Brazil, also showed the existence of the companies' practices.
According to the researcher, an average of 230 reais was deducted from each worker's salary for accommodation. During field work, Luis Felipe identified that the conditions were very precarious. “In some cases, 11 workers shared two rooms and a single bathroom, there were leaks and the buildings had low ceilings”, he highlights.
The Haitians, adds the author, even though they received less than the Brazilians, were allocated to the heaviest sectors, such as “hanging” in slaughterhouses and also the offal sector. Immigrants often lifted weights beyond what was permitted by regulatory standards.
In the offal sector, workers held hoppers at heights higher than those stipulated by legislation, being forced to spend between 8 and 10 hours a day with their arms at an angle greater than 90 degrees. “One in four workers is off work due to illness”, he adds.
The issues related to the work are situated in a broader context addressed by the thesis, of studying the dynamics of Haitian immigration, understanding the phenomenon as a historical and social process and also the composition of a sociodemographic profile of the flows. “There has always been emigration in Haiti, but the number of people wanting to live in another country increased after a set of transformations basically after 2004, when President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was deposed and the political and electoral crisis in the country worsened” . The sending of the United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti (Minustah), “a foreign military force that would supposedly try to stabilize Haiti”, in addition to the global financial crises of 2007 and 2008, were other factors that contributed to favoring immigration such as notes the researcher. In 2010 there was an earthquake that killed more than 200 thousand people.
Eldorado
According to the study, one of the reasons Haitians chose Brazil was the period of economic growth and social inclusion between 2003 and 2010. “14 million jobs were created and this caught the attention of Haitian families. Brazil came to be considered the new homeland of Haitian immigration. Parallel to this, an exclusive and specific humanitarian aid visa was created for immigrants from that country”.
The first four years of the arrival of immigrants had been marked by undocumentation. The visa was very restricted and met a quota of 1.200 per year. “Those who did not have a humanitarian aid visa were attracted by the network that operates migration, which to some extent involves trafficking, ticket sales, manipulation of information and the indebtedness of immigrants.”
Luis Felipe noted that this network took advantage of the fact that Ecuador does not require a visa for any citizen in the world, to use the country as a route. “Flights were arranged either from Haiti or the Dominican Republic to Ecuador. From there, immigrants took illegal bus trips across the entire Peruvian territory and arrived at the Brazilian border, in the states of Acre or Amazonas, asking for refuge.”
Due to legislation, the Brazilian State was obliged to open an evaluation process for this request, but immediately offer a work card and CPF to the immigrant. “The person could move around the territory and look for a job.”
The documented flow that arrived represented a small portion, 10% to 15% of the total number of immigrants, who came directly from Haiti to Guarulhos airport. “Normative Resolution 102/2013, of the National Immigration Council, in addition to revoking the limit on visas, allowed them to be issued in other Brazilian embassies abroad, not only in Haiti, but also in the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Ecuador and in Peru. The range of possibilities for immigrants has expanded.”
The recruitment of workers began in the concentration areas at the borders or in São Paulo, in the reception areas. “My thesis managed to identify which companies inaugurated the process. Companies from all over Brazil were present, but especially those in civil construction, port services and urban cleaning in the south of Brazil, sectors characterized by a high turnover of the workforce”.
The immigrants began moving, initially to cities on the north coast of Santa Catarina. Afterwards, the meatpacking plants began to request workers to the west of the state. “We were able to follow this process at both ends, participating in recruitment meetings on the coast and seeing the working and accommodation conditions in the interior.”
Profile and dependency
To compose the sociodemographic profile of migratory flows, the researcher participated in fieldwork that interviewed almost 300 Haitian immigrants in 16 cities in Brazil. He himself interviewed 99 Haitian immigrants in the Santa Catarina city of Balneário Camboriú. “The main characteristics of this immigrant are: being male, a young adult of an evangelical religion with complete or incomplete higher education. There were many nurses, teachers and agronomists we heard from”. The profile was also part of a national survey entitled “Haitians in Brazil, profile and trajectories” coordinated by professor Sidney Antonio da Silva, from the Federal University of Amazonas.
Luis Felipe concluded his thesis by formulating a concept of dependency migration for immigrant flows from Haiti. He noted the dependence that Haitian families have on remittances from workers who reside outside the country, not just in Brazil. This dependence represented between 22% and 26% of the country's GDP from 2005 to 2015.
“The phenomenon of dependency is present in several instances in the history of Haiti, which went from being the largest producer of colonial wealth in the world in the 17th and 18th centuries to the poorest country in America today.” For the researcher, Haiti is in a position of marginality and subalternity in the dynamics of global capitalism. The thesis is dedicated to understanding migration as a challenge, as a human right to mobility “not as a crime or as a problem”.
Luis Felipe highlights that reception policies in Brazil are still very fragile and improvised, since the Foreigner Statute is still in force, which is a law from 1980, from the period of military dictatorship. “The Statute sees foreigners as a threat, thus justifying the fact that the first representative of the State that the immigrant encounters is a federal police officer.” Haitian immigration has been fulfilling the important role of resuming studies and a certain militancy regarding the importance of specific public policies for immigrants and refugees, he considers.
