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2006 | Buch

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Mobility, Labour Migration and Border Controls in Asia

herausgegeben von: Amarjit Kaur, Ian Metcalfe

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

One of the biggest challenges facing the Asia-Pacific region in the 21st century is the large scale cross-border movement of people. This book explores: sovereignty; security issues and border-management strategies of major states, in the face of intensified transnational economic and social processes; and the expanding global governance regime.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Divided We Move: Migration Challenges in Asia

Frontmatter

1. Introduction

Abstract

Migration is regarded as the earliest form of globalisation and human migrations have been a constant theme throughout history. Because there were no political boundaries, the movements of people were usually referred to as migration. According to Bohning (1984) the international migration of human beings dates back only to when the ‘nation-state’ took hold in Europe during the Industrial Revolution, and as a result of colonialism spread in all directions throughout the world. The nation state brought along with it a ‘we-they’ or ‘in-out’ distinction and people become identified with a particular nation. Movement from one nation to another or international migration required a change in allegiance and citizenship.

Amarjit Kaur, Ian Metcalfe

2. Changing Border Control Regimes and their Impact on Migration in Asia

Abstract

On 22 January 1954, Australia became one of the first countries to ratify the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (the Geneva Convention) — an agreement which commits Australia to providing asylum to those on its territory or people arriving at its borders, with a well-founded fear of persecution on the grounds of race, religion, nationality membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

Tessa Morris-Suzuki

3. Order (and Disorder) at the Border: Mobility, International Labour Migration and Border Controls in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Labour migration was a dominant feature of Southeast Asian labour history from the 1870s, consistent with open borders, colonial migration goals and the region’s increased integration into the global economy. After the Second World War and decolonisation, restrictive legislation was introduced to halt unskilled labour migration into the region. Since about the 1970s labour migration has assumed ‘new’ regional patterns, coinciding with changing patterns of labour market demands. Migration goals and migratory streams have also changed and emphasise the nationality, race, geographical origins, gender and skills of migrants. Free migration has thus given way to restrictive migration policies and intensified border controls, more sophisticated internal enforcement measures, and a swathe of bureaucratic regulations and procedures. Paradoxically, although the economic incentives for people to move have become stronger, immigration restrictions and intensified border controls in labour-exporting countries now constitute the principal barrier to international labour migration in the region.

Amarjit Kaur

4. Coping With Cross-Border Labour Flows Within Southeast Asia

Abstract

By the early twenty-first century Southeast Asia had emerged as a significant hub for the temporary migration of labour — both on an intra-regional and international scale. The shock of the Asian economic crisis in 1997–98 did not put a significant dampener on flows that had increased significantly in the last two decades of the twentieth century. If anything, structural relationships facilitating migration have become more entrenched. At the same time, most governments have sought to exert more control over cross-border labour movements through national policies and bilateral agreements. They have also facilitated certain kinds of movement through regional and multilateral trade agreements. Against this backdrop, this chapter discusses patterns of temporary labour migration, their impact on labour markets and policy initiatives to deal with migration in the region.

Chris Manning, Pradip Bhatnagar

5. Women, Work and International Migration in Southeast Asia: Trends, Patterns and Policy

Abstract

In the massive expansion of international migration in Southeast Asia over the last two decades a striking feature has been the feminisation of that movement. In several countries of origin of international migrants, females are a major element in the movement, if not the majority of out-migrants. Similarly, in the countries which are the main destinations of international migrants, all have a significant in-movement of women. Yet this movement remains little understood in the region. Indeed its measurement is problematic because data collection systems in Southeast Asia are under-developed, much of the movement occurs outside official migration systems and there is an inbuilt bias in existing census and surveys which leads them to not detect female immigrants. Nevertheless, women are involved in the full gamut of international movement in Southeast Asia. It is important to study the movement of women separately from those of men for a number of reasons:

the patterns differ from those of men;
the causes and consequences of movement can differ from those of men;
the policy implications of movement can differ from those of men.

Graeme Hugo

Crossing Borders: The State, Migration Strategies and Temporary Migrant Worker Schemes

Frontmatter

6. Trading Labour: Socio-economic and Political Impacts and Dynamics of Labour Export from the Philippines, 1973–2004

Abstract

The international labour migration of temporary and contracted foreign workers has become one of the most important contemporary labour supply systems for labour-deficit nations and a critical source of foreign exchange earnings for labour-exporting nations. No region in the world has been more profoundly affected by the rapid growth of global demand for migrant workers than in South East Asia. Since the early 1970s, the Philippines has been the dominant labour exporter in the region in terms of the magnitude of its labour trade. Both ordinary Filipinos and the Philippine State have increasingly embraced labour export as a palliative against an ailing economy and extensive poverty, to the extent that even contemplating a future without exporting workers would be untenable for the livelihoods of millions of people, and for national economic and political security. In fact, the Philippines has actively globalised and transformed its economy and society through labour export as a quasi-development strategy, despite the fact it is highly contentious and fraught with political difficulties for the Philippine state resulting from wide-ranging levels labour and human abuse of its nationals working overseas.

Rochelle Ball

7. Indonesian Labour Migration after the 1997–98 Asian Economic and Financial Crisis

Abstract

The reduction of unemployment is currently one of the most pressing tasks of government, as the Indonesian economy has not fully recovered from the Asian economic crisis of 1997–98. The export of labour has thus become an important issue as Indonesia confronts the economic and social issues associated with unemployment and the globalisation of labour markets. During the period from 2001 to 2002, 455, 879 Indonesian workers went to work abroad. Again, between January and June 2003 the government sent 62,655 workers to East Asia (Department of Manpower and Transmigration 2004). Previously, about 2.5 million Indonesians had worked abroad. However, all these figures exclude undocumented Indonesian migrants. The main regions that recruit Indonesian workers include the Middle East and East and Southeast Asian countries (particularly with the latter’s commitment towards economic integration).

Carunia Mulya Firdausy

8. The Feminisation of Migration: Gender, the State and Migrant Strategies in Bangladesh

Abstract

At the start of the twenty-first century, one out of every 34 persons worldwide is an international migrant. The Population Division of the United Nations estimates the total number of international migrants at approximately 175 million (United Nations 2002). This number includes refugees and displaced persons, but does not capture irregular migrants who escape official accounting. Almost half of the estimated 175 million migrants worldwide are women.

Ishrat Shamim

9. ‘White-Collar Filipinos’: Australian Professionals in Singapore

Abstract

Not all migrant labour in Asia is regarded with the same complex relationship of need and demonisation as many of the documented cases cited in this book. In Singapore, for example, highly educated and entrepreneurial white-collar professionals are clearly not only wanted by the government, but unlike their domestic and blue-collar counterparts, are encouraged to settle there. Supporting the migration of foreign talent is one of the corner stones of Singapore’s economic development strategy, but professional migrants are also impacting on the country’s social organisation. The process of migration and settlement of transnational professionals is reflecting the wider dynamics of cultural change that are taking place as a result of global mobility. It is this latter phenomenon that is the focus of this chapter, using Singapore’s Australian expatriate community as a case study of how global labour regimes can shift or reinforce personal understandings of identity and belonging.

Melissa Butcher

10. Indian Professional Workers in Singapore

Abstract

Falling fertility in most developed countries, as well as in high-income developing countries like Singapore, has led to population ageing, and is causing serious labour shortages. Consequently, the achievement of growth objectives has become increasingly dependent on foreign labour. Globalisation, the expansion of multinational corporations (MNCs), growing intra-firm linkages, the demands of a knowledge-economy requiring highly skilled workers and the need to maintain international competitiveness, are adding to this process. Under the globalised production regime based on cost minimisation, multinational firms are relocating production and services as well as outsourcing to cheaper locations. Policy makers in these countries are also facing the dual challenge of rising structural unemployment due to economic restructuring on the one hand, and the need to provide knowledge workers on the other. The question then arises; what role can labour migration play in moderating the effects of population ageing and alleviating labour shortages, as well as maintaining the competitiveness of knowledge-based economies?

Seema Gaur

Managing the Border: Governance of Recruitment, Facilitation of Remittances and Migrant Workers’ Rights

Frontmatter

11. The Recruitment of Foreign Labour in Malaysia: From Migration System to Guest Worker Regime

Abstract

In 1997, when the Asian Financial Crisis struck the high-gear economy of Malaysia, it precipitated, among other measures, a major repatriation of the foreign labour force, both legal and illegal, in the country (see Battistella and Asis 1999). Registered foreign workers at that time numbered an estimated 1,471, 645 and the number of undocumented workers was anybody’s guess, although a ratio of 1:1 was often cited (New Straits Times, 27 June 2001). The measures were effective. By the year 2000, the number of legal workers had declined sharply to an estimated 740,000, with another estimated 400,000 in the country illegally (Mingguan Malaysia, 27 January 2002). Since then however, numbers have picked up again. Today, five years after the crisis, and with the economy still struggling to get back on its feet, the foreign share (legal) of the Malaysian labour market has almost fully recovered to pre-crisis levels — at 1.2 million (New Straits Times, 14 October 2003).

Diana Wong

12. After Nunukan: The Regulation of Indonesian Migration to Malaysia

Abstract

Labour migration from Indonesia is a complex phenomenon. Migrants enter Malaysia via a range of formal, semi-formal and informal channels, primarily through Sumatra and Kalimantan. Although Indonesian authorities make little effort to stop semi-formal and informal migration flows, the Malaysian government constantly adjusts its policies towards both documented and undocumented labour migrants according to the condition of its labour market. Periodically these adjustments have involved the mass arrest and deportation of undocumented workers, for example when hundreds of thousands of Indonesian workers were expelled from Eastern Malaysia to the tiny town of Nunukan in East Kalimantan in mid-2002. Both the Indonesian and Malaysian governments have failed to recognise the impact of the Malaysian government’s policies on transit zones such as Riau and East Kalimantan, and that more serious efforts at bilateral cooperation must be made in order to lessen the social costs of labour migration in these zones.

Michele Ford

13. The State and Labour Migration Policies in Thailand

Abstract

Thailand’s rapid economic growth has resulted in an increased demand for highly educated and skilled workers than the country can currently supply. In order to overcome this skilled manpower shortage, the Thai government has approved the recruitment of foreign PTK (professional, technical and kindred) workers. This policy, which does not take into account the movement of unskilled workers into Thailand, has resulted in an increase in undocumented labour migration into the country. Thailand is also experiencing changes in the composition of labour migrants. In the past, the assumption was that Thailand would become a net labour exporter. But it has now become both a labour-sending and a labour-receiving country.

Patcharawalai Wongboonsin

14. The State and Facilitation of Financial Flows (Remittances) by Temporary Workers: The Case of Bangladesh

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the impact of remittances on development and examines the experience of Bangladesh as a case study. Bangladesh is one of the few significant Asian recipients of remittance flows reflecting a long history of Bangladeshis looking to overseas for employment opportunities. Remittances represent an important source of funds for development in this case and in the eyes of recipients it is considered to be the ‘best form of aid’ possible, in that it is spent in the ways they determine to be in their own best interests. From a market driven perspective it can be hypothesised that such a decision-making process is likely to be more allocatively efficient than either official or Non-governmental Organisation (NGO)-sourced Aid finance, since the decisions and expenditure are all undertaken locally by the consumers directly.

Kenneth Jackson

15. Regional Perspectives on the 1990 UN Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers

Abstract

With the ratification by El Salvador and Guatemala on 14 March and Mali on 5 June 2003, the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (hereafter ICRM), adopted by General Assembly resolution 45/158 of 18 December 1990, has finally entered into force on 1 July 2003. To date, from among the 34 countries that have ratified, or acceded to, the ICRM, there are only three situated in the Asian region: the Philippines, Sri Lanka and East Timot (with Bangladesh and Indonesia having signed only). The Asian region, however, has emerged as a particularly important source for the export and import of labour, and there is substantial evidence of the violation of the human rights of migrant workers as stipulated by international standards (Piper and Iredale 2003; Piper 2004). These violations are not necessarily specific to the Asian region. In the light of migrants constituting a highly vulnerable group of people, the ICRM — being a migrant worker specific human rights document — could offer an important source for protection if widely ratified and implemented. Furthermore, the potential and real relevance of the ICRM is reflected in the vigorous NGO activism that has been taken place, particularly in the Philippines and by Filipinos abroad who have been at the forefront of migrant rights’ activism, campaigning among other issues also for the ratification and implementation of this Convention.

Nicola Piper

Backmatter

Titel: Mobility, Labour Migration and Border Controls in Asia
herausgegeben von: Amarjit Kaur
Ian Metcalfe
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK
Electronic ISBN: 978-0-230-50346-5
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-54143-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230503465