Asia-Pacific Population Journal - Volume 20, Issue 3, 2006

We have come a long way since 1960 when the American sociologist, the late Dudley Kirk, called migration the “stepchild of demography”. In the intervening 45 years, that stepchild has become richly endowed indeed with, particularly since the late 1980s, a torrential outpouring of articles, books and research on the topic. Our empirical knowledge has certainly expanded greatly, but whether theoretical and conceptual understanding has seen equivalent refinement might be a matter of some debate. Unquestionably, today, migration has gained a much greater public awareness with government departments in countries in both the developed and the developing worlds, as well as several international organizations, moving the subject towards the top of the political and the policy agenda. Developing countries fear that the loss of their educated and skilled citizens will prejudice their chance of reaching higher levels of development. Developed countries need labour to do certain types of jobs but fear that importing labour will create both social stress at home and conflict with their development policy abroad by “poaching” the best and the brightest. International organizations try to work out how best to manage the flows in the interests of both countries of origin and countries of destination, as well as of the migrants themselves.

When the twentieth century came to a close, international migration had become part of the region’s economic, social and political fabric. As of 2000, there were 49.9 million international migrants in Asia and 5.8 million in Oceania, accounting for 29 and 3 per cent, respectively, of the 175 million international migrants worldwide. Excluding refugees, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that of the 86 million migrant workers worldwide (ILO, 2004:7) some 22. million were economically active in Asia and some 2.2 million in Oceania (27 and 4 per cent, respectively).2 Those numbers reflect the relentless migration that accompanied regional integration and the broader process of globalization on the move since the 1970s. By the end of the century, several migration systems had become firmly established in South-East Asia, East Asia, South South-West Asia, and North and Central Asia (Battistella, 2002; ESCAP, 2002). In the Pacific, migration from the Pacific Islands to core countries, notably Australia and New Zealand, has also been a recurrent pattern in the past decades. Thus in the Asian and the Pacific region, alike elsewhere in the world, international migration has become a structural reality, setting in motion the dynamics for further migration in the years to come. As noted by the participants of the Berne Initiative regional consultation for Asia, held in Guilin, China, on 29-30 July 2004, “The debate in Asia, of course, differs from the one in other regions of the world, not least of which is due to the predominant interest on the continent in the issues surrounding labour migration”.

Migration has always been a significant phenomenon across South Asia. The historic ties that link the various populations across the region, accentuated by the modern day dynamics of migration have given rise to multiple forms of population movement ranging from voluntary to involuntary, internal to external, long-term to temporary.

Any discussion of the mobility of labour across borders in a region as huge and complex as Asia is bound to do no more than provide a sketch of a few idiosyncrasies and peculiarities. With a combined population of 3.6 billion, the Asian and Pacific region accounts for almost three fifths of the world’s total population. The region’s land mass and innumerable islands have been partitioned into over 50 independent States, dividing people usually along lines of ethnicity, common language, religion and shared recent history. Each one is pursuing independent national policies for political and economic development with varying success, creating in the process differentials in standards of living within and between States that often drive people to move. Those differentials have been magnified by the forces of globalization which have spurred the economies of the region, but favouring the open and politically-stable countries more than others.

South-East Asia is part of a dynamic region in terms of labour migration comprised of source and destination countries highly significant within the broader patterns of human movement at the global level. The “import” and “export” of steadily increasing numbers of foreign workers in general and the feminization of migration in particular, has created a myriad of problems and challenges that

In a traditional viewpoint, migrants are both pushed by lack of opportunities at home and pulled by the hope of economic gain. A search for a better life is often underlying the movements. Development processes affect and are affected by migration flows. Migration can help to achieve this by associating people more closely with available economic opportunities, employment and services. This thesis remains relevant today. Both internal and international migration is on the whole contributing to development and poverty reduction (IOM, 2003). The monies sent back by migrants contribute more to national and local economies than trade in several countries. Registered remittances to the countries of origin were estimated at US$100 billion in 2004. It represents roughly one and a half times official development assistance (Newland, 2004). In addition, a large, unknown amount is transferred through informal channels or to countries that do not report statistics on remittances. A major reason to transfer money through informal channels is the still inadequately developed banking systems in countries of origin. The effects of remittances on development are often complex and contradictory, but seen in a positive light by a majority of researchers.

The situation of children of migrants in Thailand has not received the attention it warrants from government policy makers, government and other programme planners, international organizations and social researchers. This neglect has no doubt occurred because of a focus on the larger issues represented by the presence of migrants in Thailand, particularly regular migrants, irregular migrants, refugees and displaced persons. When the Ministry of Interior invited migrants from Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Myanmar to register in July 2004 to receive permission to remain in the country until 30 June 2005 in order to work or seek work, more than 93,000 persons under age 15 were registered. This number would be only a fraction of the total number of foreign migrants in Thailand yet it indicates that much of the migration from those neighbouring countries involves families rather than individual workers.

It is generally agreed that the problem of trafficking in persons is increasing, perhaps rapidly. This has not happened in a vacuum, however, but against the background of an unprecedented growth in programmes and policies to combat this problem.