The City (State where it is located)
Has Commodification of Migrant Labor and Knowledge Gone too Far?
Actually, commodification is a relatively new word that means a process of transformation of different resources, goods or even knowledge into such objects that can be sold. Such a commodification makes a great contribution to the national economy. This fact cannot be denied –commodification is developing rapidly. But developing of commodification has negative or positive or even mixed results. During recent years the problem of commodification of migrant labour and knowledge has risen and become very controversial as it difficult to define the positive and negative sides in comparison with economy’s requirements and benefits.
Commodification of knowledge
The commodification of knowledge is perceived in different ways. On the one hand, it helps to create wealth and capital, but on the other hand, in the case of commodification, knowledge loses its status of public good and turns into private one (Baskaran and Boden, 2006).
Knowledge becomes one more additional means for obtaining a profit. The other good reason is that commodification makes collaborate the firms, educational institutions and governments, etc. The results of such cooperation are very prolific –various patents and arranged partnerships. The commodification of knowledge is very perspective field as it offers an intellectual property that is very valuable. Besides, such type of commodification helps to deepen the interrelation between science, economy and state. Before the process of commodification of knowledge started, scientists had been not interested in economic usage of their knowledge. The commodification of knowledge helped to set the connection between knowledge production, its commercial usage and contribution to the economy (Baskaran and Boden, 2007).
However, there are a few drawbacks of commodification of knowledge. Everybody knows that knowledge is the most important resource for human development. Nowadays, knowledge has become a part of economy. Also science became under control by industry and it means that just interests of industry are promoted but not of the public ones. But commodification turns knowledge into private acquired commodity (Muchie and Xing, 2006). It is very challengeable to find a balance between serving the public interests and the interests of the national economy.
Commodification of migrant labour
One of the main controversial issues is a migrant labour. It turns out that, migrant labors help to make contributions and investments into their fatherland’s national economy. To the positive side of migrant labour we can add that migrants are able to enrich the host country by paying taxes. The negative aspect prevails; it includes a dramatic growth of unemployment; migrants can ignore the productivity of work. The fatherland’s economy suffers as well -it loses a lot of young workers; a very important social institution as a family breaks up–children are brought up without parents.
Nowadays a new class of a migrant worker has appeared – a commodified labour. It is proved that migration can provide a great potential for the world economies. Temporary commodified migration is believed to be a new source of money and an enormous flow of income. The contracts usually are long- term paper, as people work as simple construction workers or they are engaged in the certain services, because they are low-skilled. As a result, a number of migrants exaggerated extremely and they brought to their homes a lot of money. It was decided to commodify short –temporary migration. It was done to make migrants to diminish remittances to their homes. At the same time, the human rights are neglected. Host countries do not concern about social protection of labours, because it is a very expendable procedure (Rosewarne, n.d.). The commodification of migration does not allow migrants to make a good profit, making their contribution to the global economy.
Breastfeeding as a kind of commodification
However, there is one thing that is commodified in a right way and makes contributions not only to the economy, but also to medicine and population’s health. It is the breastfeeding. This type of commodification is growing popular in India and Indonesia (Palmer, 2009).It has been proved that breastfeeding is very useful both for a child and a mother, as it helps to protect a baby from different diseases and of course improve a survive. The breastfeeding is very crucial for the developing countries.The economy loses money because women feed their infants with the artificial substitutions. Replacing the breast milk with other methods of feeding influence the budget of the whole economy (Economic Value of Breast-Feeding in India, 1993). It is easy to realize that mother milk is a natural resource that can make a profit and save money.Moreover,working on the formula and using the method of bottle feeding stresses the environment and causes the pollution. As a result, commodification of breastfeeding should be encouraged and promoted as it the main national resource of developing countries.
Conclusion
References
Baskaran, A. and Boden, R. (2007). Prometheus Bound: Accounting and the Creation of the New Science Paradigm. International Studies of Management and Organization, 37(1), pp.9-26.
Baskaran, A. and Boden, R. (2007). Prometheus Bound: Accounting and the Creation of the New Science Paradigm. International Studies of Management and Organization, 37(1), pp.9-26.
Economic Value of Breast-Feeding in India. (1993). Economic and Political Weekly, [online] 28(26), pp.1390-1391. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4399902 . [Accessed 10 May 2016].
Muchie, M. and Xing, L. (2006). Globalization, inequality, and the commodification of life and well-being. London: Adonis & Abbey.
Palmer, G. (2009). The politics of breastfeeding. London: Pinter & Martin.
Rosewarne, S. (n.d.). The Globalisation and Liberalisation of Asian Labour Markets.
