Abstract
This chapter presents a political economy of labour migration in Southeast Asia. It delineates the importance of low-wage and high-wage labour migration to national development and individual livelihoods, then shows that its governance is predominantly shaped by the interests of employers and associated politico-bureaucratic interests, which typically overpower the struggles of migrant workers and their civil society allies. This produces a system geared around official development goals, the management of movement and the deployment of workers, rather than the promotion of workers’ rights and welfare, leaving low-wage migrants open to systematic abuse. High-wage migration regimes also support specific state projects and agendas, generating a highly uneven process of regional “liberalisation” for the ASEAN Economic Community.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Our focus on high- and low-wage migration, rather than the more commonly used high- and low-skilled categorisations, acknowledges two widespread phenomena: first, “skills wastage”, whereby migrants’ qualifications are not recognised in the destination country; and second, highly skilled migrants, such as tradespeople, taking jobs in low-wage employment.
- 2.
Female migrant workers often face the predicament of “double discrimination”—being a woman and a migrant worker—with their vulnerability for exploitation amplified by the nature of their work, notably domestic work where they may be particularly isolated (ILO 2010: 94).
- 3.
Residents comprise citizens and permanent residents.
- 4.
This is one case of many across the region where labour migration arrangements are highly gendered (see Elias, this volume), given the emphasis in both recruitment practices and social stereotypes on attracting young Chinese boys to study in Singapore, alongside the Singapore government’s facilitation of mothers and grandmothers accompanying students (Montsion 2012).
References
Appold, S. J. (2005). The weakening position of university graduates in Singapore’s labor market: Causes and consequences. Population and Development Review, 31(1), 85–112.
Arnold, D., & Hewison, K. (2006). Exploitation in global supply chains: Burmese migrant workers in Mae Sot, Thailand. In K. Hewison & K. Young (Eds.), Transnational migration and work in Asia (pp. 165–190). London/New York: Routledge.
ASEAN. (2014, October 13). ASEAN enhances mobility of skilled labour through qualifications reference framework. ASEAN Secretariat News. http://www.asean.org/news/item/asean-enhances-mobility-of-skilled-labour-through-qualifications-reference-framework?category_id=27
Bal, C. S. (2016). Production politics and migrant labour regimes: Guest workers in Asia and the Gulf. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US.
Bal, C. S. (2017). Myths about temporary migrant workers and the depoliticisation of migrant worker struggles. In K. S. Loh, P. J. Thum, & J. M.-T. Chia (Eds.), Living with myths in Singapore (pp. 249–262). Singapore: Ethos Books.
Bal, C. S., & Gerard, K. (2018). ASEAN’s governance of migrant worker rights. Third World Quarterly, 39(4), 799–819.
Chalamwong, Y., Meepien, J., & Hongprayoon, K. (2012). Management of cross-border migration: Thailand as a case of net immigration. Asian Journal of Social Science, 40(4), 447–463.
Chia, S. Y. (2013). Foreign labor in Singapore: Rationale, policies, impacts, and issues. Philippine Journal of Development, 38(1–2), 105–133.
Collins, F. L., Sidhu, R., Lewis, N., & Yeoh, B. S. A. (2014). Mobility and desire: International students and Asian regionalism in aspirational Singapore. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(5), 661–676.
Crinis, V. (2010). Sweat or no sweat: Foreign workers in the garment industry in Malaysia. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 40(4), 589–611.
Crinis, V. (2012). Global commodity chains in crisis: The garment industry in Malaysia. Institutions and Economies, 4(3), 61–82.
Dewanto, P. A. (2014, December 4). The commitment to protect Indonesian migrant workers. [In Indonesian.] KOMPAS.com. https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2014/12/04/14000071/Komitmen.Perlindungan.TKI
Fernandes, C. (2014, August 28). Malaysia factory riots provide look at migrant workers’ grievances. The Wall Street Journal.https://www.wsj.com/articles/malaysia-factory-riots-provide-look-at-migrant-workers-grievances-1409236485
Gomes, C. (2014). Xenophobia online: Unmasking Singaporean attitudes towards “foreign talent” migrants. Asian Ethnicity, 15(1), 21–40.
Habibi, M., & Juliawan, B. H. (2018). Creating surplus labour: Neo-liberal transformations and the development of relative surplus population in Indonesia. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 48(4), 649–670.
Hewison, K. (1989). Bankers and bureaucrats: Capital and the role of the state in Thailand. New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, Yale Center for International and Area Studies.
Hing, A. Y., & Lee, K. J. (2011). Embeddedness and restructuring: Case studies from Singapore. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 41(3), 393–410.
ILO [International Labour Organisation]. (2010). International labour migration. A rights-based approach. Geneva: ILO. http://www.ilo.org/global/publications/ilo-bookstore/order-online/books/WCMS_125361/lang%2D%2Den/index.htm
ILO. (2017). Thailand July–September 2017. TRIANGLE in ASEAN quarterly briefing note. Bangkok: ILO. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/%2D%2D-asia/%2D%2D-ro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_580143.pdf
Iredale, R. (2000). Migration policies for the highly skilled in the Asia-Pacific region. The International Migration Review, 34(3), 882–906.
Jones, L. (2015). Explaining the failure of the ASEAN economic community: The primacy of domestic political economy. The Pacific Review, 29(5), 647–670.
Kaur, A. (2010). Labour migration in Southeast Asia: Migration policies, labour exploitation and regulation. Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, 15(1), 6–19.
Kaur, A. (2014). Managing labour migration in Malaysia: Guest worker programs and the regularisation of irregular labour migrants as a policy instrument. Asian Studies Review, 38(3), 345–366.
Koh, A., & Chong, T. (2014). Education in the global city: The manufacturing of education in Singapore. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(5), 625–636.
Larkin, B. (2013). The politics and poetics of infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42(1), 327–343.
Lee, H., & Khor, Y. L. (2018). Counting migrant workers in Malaysia: A needlessly persisting conundrum (ISEAS perspective no. 25). Singapore: ISEAS. https://www.iseas.edu.sg/articles-commentaries/iseas-perspective/item/7354-201825-counting-migrant-workers-in-malaysia-a-needlessly-persisting-conundrum
Lin, W., Lindquist, J., Xiang, B., & Yeoh, B. S. A. (2017). Migration infrastructures and the production of migrant mobilities. Mobilities, 12(2), 167–174.
Lindquist, J. (2012). The elementary school teacher, the thug and his grandmother: Informal brokers and transnational migration from Indonesia. Pacific Affairs, 85(1), 69–89.
Lindquist, J. (2017). Brokers, channels, infrastructure: Moving migrant labor in the Indonesian-Malaysian oil palm complex. Mobilities, 12(2), 213–226.
Ministry of Manpower. (2018). Work passes and permits. Singapore: Ministry of Manpower. https://www.mom.gov.sg/passes-and-permits
Montsion, J. M. (2012). When talent meets mobility: Un/desirability in Singapore’s new citizenship project. Citizenship Studies, 16(3–4), 469–482.
Nah, A. M. (2012). Globalisation, sovereignty and immigration control: The hierarchy of rights for migrant workers in Malaysia. Asian Journal of Social Science, 40(4), 486–508.
Oh, Y. A. (2016). Oligarchic rule and best practice migration management: The political economy origins of labour migration regime of the Philippines. Contemporary Politics, 22(2), 197–214.
Palmer, W. (2016). Indonesia’s overseas labour migration programme, 1969–2010. Leiden: Brill Academic Pub.
Ray, R. (2010, August 16). 5,000 migrants riot at Malaysian factory. Libcom.Org. http://libcom.org/news/5000-migrants-riot-malaysian-factory-16082010
Rodan, G. (2018). Participation without democracy: Containing conflict in Southeast Asia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Sumano, B. (2013). Explaining the liberalisation of professional migration in ASEAN. PhD dissertation, School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary, University of London.
The Daily Star. (2018, July 5). Malaysia urged to stop crackdown. The Daily Star (Bangladesh). https://www.thedailystar.net/backpage/malaysia-urged-stop-crackdown-1600204
The Economist. (2014, August 15). EU–Thai economic talks on ice. The Economist.
Thompson, E. C. (2014). Immigration, society and modalities of citizenship in Singapore. Citizenship Studies, 18(3–4), 315–331.
TODAY. (2013, December 8). Little India riot: 18 injured, 21 arrested. TODAY.
UN [United Nations]. (2017). UN population division. International migrant stock: The 2017 revision. https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/data/estimates2/index.shtml
US Department of State. (2017). Trafficking in persons report 2017. Washington, DC: US Department of State. https://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2017/
Wickramasekera, P. (2002). Asian labour migration: Issues and challenges in an era of globalisation (Working paper). Geneva: ILO. http://www.ilo.org/asia/publications/WCMS_160632/lang%2D%2Den/index.htm
Wong, C. H. (2013, August 31). Singapore strike: The full story. The Wall Street Journal. https://blogs.wsj.com/indonesiarealtime/2013/08/31/singapore-strike-the-full-story/
Wong, D., & Wen, O. P. (2013). The globalisation of tertiary education and intra-Asian student mobility: Mainland Chinese student mobility to Malaysia. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 22(1), 55–76.
World Bank. (2014). Migration and remittances: Recent developments and outlook (Report no. 92655). Washington, DC: World Bank. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/585901468326375808/Migration-and-remittances-recent-developments-and-outlook
Yeoh, B. S. A., & Lin, W. (2013). Chinese migration to Singapore: Discourses and discontents in a globalising nation-state. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 22(1), 31–54.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gerard, K., Bal, C.S. (2020). Labour Migration in Southeast Asia: The Political Economy of Poor and Uneven Governance. In: Carroll, T., Hameiri, S., Jones, L. (eds) The Political Economy of Southeast Asia. Studies in the Political Economy of Public Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28255-4_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28255-4_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-28254-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-28255-4
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)