Leading or following? International societies, Southeast Asia, and the issue of migrant workers

Abstract

Focusing both on the global domain and on Southeast Asia's regional international society, this article uses the English School's (ES) pluralist/solidarist spectrum to map and compare responses to the issue of migrant workers. This case suggests, firstly, that the complexity of the relationship between global and regional societies is exacerbated by the starkly diverging pluralist and solidarist streams within the former; secondly, that the informal, consensus-oriented methods of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, though often criticized, have proved useful at global level in moving dialogue forward in this contentious area; and thirdly, that regional international societies provide highly salient arenas for dealing with this issue, but still struggle with interregional difference and trans-regional challenges. The questions that the topic of migration foregrounds – the relationship between different levels of society, solidarist ambition, and regional potential – are questions on which the ES can already provide useful responses, but which also open up promising agendas for future work.