2015考研英语阅读理解精读P5—历史学

2015考研英语阅读理解精读P5—历史

学

Passage 5(Working Far From Home?)

Al Hussein is 19. He is struggling to stay seated on top of a huge truck crossing the desert. He has been riding like that for hours, breathing dust, in an unbearable heat. He has left his home, his twin brother, and the rest of his family down South. Beyond the desert lies the sea, and maybe, if he is lucky a boat to Europe where he hopes to get a job, to start a new life, and to send money to his village.

Al Hussein is hardly alone in his perilous trek. Some 150 million men, women and even children, about three percent of the world’s population, are outside their country of origin coming as strangers to the country where they reside. There is no continent, no region of the world which has no migrants within its boundaries. Every country has become a country of origin, transit or destination of migrants. Many are all three. More than half of international migrants live in developing countries. According to the International Organization for Migration, the largest numbers of international migrants are located in Asia; Europe and North America have about equal numbers followed by Africa, Latin America, and Oceania with progressively fewer numbers. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that up to 80 million of these are migrant workers. In 1997, ILO estimated that the number of migrant workers was as follows: Africa, 20 Million; North America, 17 million; Central andSouth America 12 million; Asia 7 million; the Middle East (Arab countries), 9 million, and Europe 30 million.

Migration is hardly a recent or localized phenomenon. Women and men have been leaving their homelands in search of a better job. People also leave their own countries because of civil conflicts and insecurity or persecution. However, in this globalized world, we are witnessing unprecedentedly high labor mobility and an increasing pressure of migration. Gareth Howell, International Labor Organization representative to the United Nations, points out that “the increasing restrictions on immigration leads to increased trafficking of migrants often with tragic personal consequences.”

Women and children account for more than half of the refugees, and their proportion are increasing in the case of other categories of migrants. 96 percent of children who work and sleep in the street are migrants，about half of them girls aged between 8 and 14. Migrants are a particularly vulnerable group and see their rights routinely violated, not only as workers, but as human beings. They commonly face discrimination and xenophobic hostility. According to the International Organization for migration (IOM) migrants “are more and more targeted as the scapegoats for all manner of domestic problems facing societies today, particularly unemployment, crime, drugs, even terrorism.”As noted by Ms Gabriela Rodriguez Pizarro, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants “This is especially true in the case of the many migrants who are undocumented or in an irregular situation, including the victims of