Labour migration in Southeast Asia: migration policies, labour exploitation and regulation

Amarjit Kaur

Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, 2010, vol. 15, issue 1, 6-19

Abstract: Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are Southeast Asia's economic development success stories and have been shifting towards an intra-regional bias on trade and migration matters. All three countries are heavily dependent on foreign workers and have government-mediated migration policies for their continued economic growth and prosperity. Managing migration is a major problem facing these countries, and the guest worker programme is increasingly seen as the optimal solution to fill labour market gaps. Migration policies often provide incentives for skilled workers, boost circular migration flows among low-skilled guest workers and include stringent border-control regimes to exclude unauthorised migration. The guest worker programme is also reliant on networks and intermediaries, and brokerage fees contribute to less-skilled migrant workers' marginalisation and exploitation. Changes in global migration governance, the inclusion of migrant labour exploitation under the banner of trafficking and the threat of economic sanctions are increasingly resulting in interstate cooperation and more humane border regimes.

Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13547860903488195 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rjapxx:v:15:y:2010:i:1:p:6-19

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rjap20

DOI: 10.1080/13547860903488195

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy is currently edited by Leong Liew

More articles in Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().