Medidas contra la morosidad en el sector público

One of the pressing issues for magisterial and conciliar documents is to define the subjects of their concern; in particular the preoccupation has been to answer the question: who are migrants, refugees and itinerant peoples?471 John Paul II in his 87th World Day of Migration Message for 2001 argues that

[t]he term “migrant” is intended first of all to refer to refugees and exiles in search of freedom and security outside the confines of their own country. However, it also refers to young people who study abroad and all those who leave their own country to look for better conditions of life elsewhere.472

Hamao, speaking at an Australian conference in November, 2005, emphasizes that migrants of any type are distinguished by the permanent or long-term nature of their departure from their country of origin whereas itinerant people leave for only very short periods of time with the intention of returning to their homeland.473

From the first an essential distinction was made by the Church between “forced” and “natural” migrants. Thus, Joseph Cardinal Ferretto in Exsul Familia describes the former

470 _{John Paul II, Message for the 91}st _{World Day of Migrants and Refugees, 2005.} 471

In Chapter One I have given general definitions. It is interesting to compare these with definitions from Church documents.

472 _{John Paul II, Message for the 87}th _{World Day of Migration, 2001, #1.}

473 _{Hamao, “Pastoral Care of People on the Move: Challenges for the Church Today”, keynote address at}

the Australian Conference for Pastoral Agents of Migrants and Itinerant People, held in Sydney, 17-18 November, 2005, 1. In his definition of migrants Hamao also includes labour and professional migrants, diplomats, refugees and asylum seekers, diplomats as well as foreign students. On the other hand, among itinerant people he includes classified seafarers, flight personnel and airport workers, nomads, circus and carnival people, people on the road, tourists and tour operators, and pilgrims. The earlier PCPCMIP document, People on the Move, makes a similar distinction but classifies them all as “people on the move”, 8, #2.

as those who are expelled, deported, exiled or constrained in any way to flee their native lands, whereas he defines the latter as those who freely choose and arrange their migration.474 Later Church and People on the Move provides a similar basic distinction between migration, (movement “as a result of the freewill of those concerned”), and refugees, (those who move “as a result of compulsion of any kind”).475 However, Ferretto, in his commentary, raises what is now seen as a very pertinent issue by the Church when he notes that even the so-called “natural” migrants do often experience an element of compulsion in their migration.476 As Hamao signals in 2005, forced and voluntary mobility are two poles in a continuum and there is a whole range of combinations in these.

By 1993, with the mounting global concern over the number of refugees seeking asylum, Refugees is concerned specifically with the question of who is a refugee and it criticizes the definition of the United Nations International Convention adopted in 28 July 1951.477 Like various magisterial documents478, this document suggests that de facto refugees and internally displaced persons should also be recognized as refugees and accorded international protection.479 In particular Refugees: A Challenge to Solidarity argues that the category of economic migrants needs to be included in the definition of a refugee. Thus, this category encompasses those “who flee economic conditions that threaten their

474 _{See the first of his two commentaries in the 1962 English version of Exsul Familia.} 475 _{Church and People on the Move, 7, #1.}

476 _{Exsul Familia, 153.} 477

For that definition see Ch. One, 17-18.

478 _{Paul VI, Octogesima Adveniens, # 17, John Paul II’s “Address” in Nairobi, Kenya, 6 May, 1980, # 8,}

and his Annual Address to the Diplomatic Corps in 1983, # 6.

479 _{Later documents of the United Nations have since broadened the original definition of refugee. See the} Declaration on Territorial Asylum of 14 December, 1967; the Convention of the Organization of African

Unity of 10 September, 1969; and the Final Declaration of the Cartagena (Columbia) Conference of 22 November, 1984.

lives and physical safety” as distinct from “those who emigrate simply to improve their position”. As the document indictes, it also includes those people who are displaced within their own countries.480 Moreover, Hamao points out that “it is not always easy to distinguish between a refugee, an asylum seeker and a labor [sic.] migrant … regular and irregular migration are often two aspects of the same phenomenon.”481 In its turn Erga migrantesi, in its recognition of the cultural and religious pluralism of today’s migrants and refugees, urges the need for differing outreaches to those migrants who are members of the Catholic Church, those who are “not in full communion with the Catholic Church” i.e. Orthodox and other Christians, and those who are of other religious faiths.482

Implicit in the above definitions of the terms “migrant and refugee” is the issue of what is meant by the term “migration” as this can indicate the circumstances in which various people migrate. This is something which has also changed over time. Thus Benedict XVI in his first message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees in 2006, in reference to the Second Vatican Council, speaks of migration as “a sign of the times” in which

Various factors play a part. They include both national and international migration, forced and voluntary migration, legal and illegal migration, subject also to the scourge of trafficking in human beings. Nor can the category of foreign students … be forgotten.483

Benedict XVI also refers to the “feminization” of migration in recent times. This “feminization” of migration includes “women who, (like their male counterparts), cross

480 _{Refugees, 8, #4 and #5.}

481

Hamao, “Problems and Challenges of Migrants and the Response of the Church”, speech on the inauguration of the Catholic National Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migration and Tourism in Sri Lanka on 7 March, 2003.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/migrants/documents/rc_pc_mig ... .

482

Erga migrantes, #7 and all of Part II – “Migrants and the Pastoral Care of Welcome”.

483

Message for the 92nd World Day of Migrants and Refugees, 2006, entitled “Migrations: a sign of the

the border of their homeland alone in search of work in another country”.484 It relates to not only impoverishment in many developing societies but also to another migration factor Benedict XVI mentions earlier in his message – migration as “an important factor of the labour market worldwide, a consequence among other things of the enormous drive of globalization”485 which has caused migration to take on structural characteristics.

Hamao emphasizes a very important point with regard to female migration, i.e. that “a migrant woman’s rights have to be safeguarded twice.”486 Benedict also notes the link between trafficking as a form of migration and the vulnerability of women in this respect, especially where “opportunities [of women] to improve their standard of living or even to survive are limited.”487 In his 94th World Day of Migrants and Refugees Message Benedict also refers to the issue of human trafficking for children and adolescents, especially in relation to refugee camps.488

The Specific Rights of Migrants and Refugees and the Responsibilities