Global governance of migration – the emergence of the essential worker Since the early 1970s low-wage foreign labour has been progressively construed as unnecessary and unwanted. However, such assumptions were proven false during the pandemic as apart from medical staff, ‘low-skilled’ migrant workers in care work, food industry, construction, agriculture, logistics proved themselves indispensable to the economy and society of destination countries – while highly-skilled migrants had the privilege of working from home. In certain destination countries, low-skilled and low-wage migrant workers (“hands”) were further expected to fill gaps in the labour market not pursued by the local workforce, while the recruitment of highly skilled and professional migrants (“brains”) was selectively and limitedly encouraged with the explicit aim of fostering innovation and competitiveness among the local workforce. (Bonizzoni, 2018) The 4 aspects of labour migration that currently affect the future of work include (a) the use of money and debt crisis in the country of origin (b) governance, national policies, and its inclusiveness (c) the RCPs and (d) GCM and SDGs. Hence there is a need to observe the definitions of vulnerability, poverty, and data produced. (Tzvetkova, 2017) Global governance in migration has been determined by ‘principled pragmatism’ - proposed by Ruggie (2008) as a critique to rights-based discourse, the model proposed to manage business and human rights rests on three pillars: the State duty to protect against human rights abuses; corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and greater access for victims to effective remedy. 8 However, within this approach, priorities of stakeholders are different, even if interests are shared. Hence, actors will have to make compromises and in certain cases, human rights may be compromised in order to achieve specific results. Other risks of this approach include (i) delayed responses (human rights issues require timely interventions and adequate and feasible strategies especially in the case of crises), (ii) watering down of human-rights related demands during crises that require negotiation and compromise among stakeholders, multilateral solutions and high stakes, (iii) the maintenance of balance between pragmatism and principle viz. balance between pragmatic and result-oriented considerations and those related to principles and values when applied in practice. (decision-making based upon established norms and rules versus cost-benefit calculations of outcomes of all considered actions) (iv) theory/interest and value should be encouraged and pursued for the approach to be consistent. The Colombo Process and the ADD are shown to be important landmarks - however, there are no time bound commitments, nor ostensible goals. For civil society organisations, time has come to take stock of what has been achieved at various national levels. Hence instead of trying to bilaterally negotiate with governments (which is difficult), using such platforms of consultations would become helpful since governments’ methods of preparatory work are insufficient and non-transparent, and national consultations are superficial in a certain sense. 8 https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/PrincipledpragmatismBusinessHR.aspx 31