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.
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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).
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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
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