Broken Borders: Subsistence Knows No Boundaries: Subsistence Labor and the Human Right to Work

Migration has landed many countries with illegal immigrant labor problems. This research based argument assigns labor two categories: subsistence labor---a human right without choice, and labor above the subsistence level with choice. This book is concerned with that part of work each human being has to perform in order to survive. This means work effort directed towards making sufficient income to pay for basic needs such as food, shelter, and clothing, including such other things necessary for survival in a given society. Labor supply data analysis in Appendix III confirms that human beings have no choice but to work for subsistence. The appendix also contains text concepts which are explained in more detail with graphical economic models for further illustration. The text includes ideas and concepts generated from my research project, my academic and international career background, my life experiences, and my social and religious convictions about the two classes of work that coexist so closely and yet so distinctly different when the absence of the element of choice in subsistence labor is recognized. In addition, the text is based on general economic theory and thinking in economic academia and literature with specific recommendations for change in basic labor theory. The extent to which the two classes of labor should be treated differently in economic labor theory and policy and in national and international human rights and political institutions is substantially covered in the text. At best, the text opens discussion, debate and basis for further research on work and the element of choice at the subsistence level. The consistent confirmation of the absence of such choice at the subsistence level forms solid ground for the human right to work for subsistence and national and international laws to protect that right. This text concludes that not only economic theory, but history, culture, religion and science solidly support this argument, therefore all laws forbidding any able human being from working for subsistence for any reason are inconsistent with this human right.