28 Pages Posted: 22 Sep 2004

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the transboundary movement of labor, in connection with services provision and the World Trade Organization's (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). This paper seeks to explore how the further liberalization of trade in services, specifically the movement of natural persons, will be beneficial to skilled, unskilled and semi-skilled workers in developing countries.

Large quantities of inexpensive unskilled labor has long been the comparative advantage of developing countries. However, it is not necessarily clear that the comparative advantage is maintained when that labor is sent abroad. While the GATS regime may be useful in solving some of the problems traditionally associated with the movement of skilled and semi-skilled labor from developing to developed countries, it cannot solve the problems associated with the movement of unskilled workers. Indeed, in some situations it would exacerbate those problems.