A/70/310 C. Economic adaptation to abuse and exploitation 39. As the economic exploitation and human rights abuse of migrant workers become entrenched, the suffering of migrants is becoming integrated into the economics of globalization in a number of ways. First, if prices of goods and/or services are dependent upon a supply of cheap labour, then there is a strong price incentive to continue the exploitation and abuse of migrants. Ethical recruiters struggle to compete within a system that has adapted to wholesale and systematic suffering; a vicious cycle of exploitation continues. 40. Secondly, the systematic use of exploitative labour and the related human suffering are also becoming part of our conceptualization of economic development. As countries accelerate their gross domestic product growth and build their infrastructure based on cheap labour, international migration of low-wage workers can be embraced as a force for development without the due attention on the human rights of migrants themselves. This can be seen, for example, with how temporary migration schemes are frequently discussed in international forums, such as the Global Forum on Migration and Development, as positive examples of flexible labour supply responding quickly to economic demands, despite numerous examples of very negative consequences in terms of human rights owing to the structural precariousness created by such temporary migration mechanisms. 41. Destination States accept and therefore become complicit in this economic normalization of exploitation and abuse of migrant workers because of a desire to remain globally competitive. Many examples of barriers to access justice for migrant workers can be given: ineffective labour inspection (in one country visited by the Special Rapporteur, labour inspectors never met with the migrant workers themselves), lack of legal and administrative information, absence or even prohibition of unionization, lack of competent legal representation, lack of legal aid, and the fragmentation of remedies across different parts of the legal system (including private dispute resolution mechanisms), to name a few. 42. States of origin can also fail to negotiate adequate protections for their nationals because of power imbalances between countries. Examples have been reported of States of origin which requested better treatment for their nationals only to see the number of their citizens being accepted as migrant workers drop: host States will play one country against another in order to obtain the least constraining labour conditions possible. States of origin may also prefer not to request better conditions for their nationals in order to avoid threatening the flow of remittances and the upskilling of workers which both contribute to their development. 43. Migrants themselves make a realist assessment of the options offered to them and factor the recruitment system into their migration project, thus accepting the negative incentives and barriers it creates and further embedding the normalization of exploitation and suffering. Their choices are limited, as their immediate objective is sending money home to repay the debt and put bread on the family table. They perceive recruitment fees as a necessary cost of their migration project since they are legal and/or systematic in many countries and thus strongly normalized. Moreover, considering their precarious status that can often be terminated without notice by the employer, migrants’ favourite strategy in the face of adversity is to “move on” and accept losses, with the hope of gaining in the next phase. Temporary migrant workers usually do not protest, contest or mobilize to challenge the 15-13569 11/26