Labour-sending Countries Research Articles

Assessing national policies on labour migration and health: data from IOM's Migration Governance Index

Abstract Much of the empirical research work on labour migration and health has been in low to middle income countries and labour sending countries, with little data from Europe. The IOM will explore current policy and practice, and evidence gaps, in Europe, and discuss their Migration Governance Index, which assess migration in relation to labour and health access https://www.migrationdataportal.org/overviews/mgi. The MGI helps governments, upon request, take stock of their migration policies and strategies to identify good practices and areas with potential for further development.

Remittances and social capital: livelihood strategies of Timorese workers participating in the Australian Seasonal Worker Programme

Social and financial remittances from the Australian Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP) have transformed the livelihood capabilities of participating households from Timor-Leste. Timorese workers generally participate in SWP for a six-month period, with many returning for subsequent seasons. Qualitative, multi-sited research investigated the livelihood strategies of 50 Timorese worker households over a three-year period. Their net earnings averaged between 4000 and 8000 USD per season, varying with the type of employment, living costs and their ability to save. Remittances assist in strengthening livelihoods by consolidating financial, physical, social, natural and human capital, improving the quality of life for returning workers, their households and communities. Remittances maintain and consolidate social relationships, and enable investments in entrepreneurial activities, education and house building. Migrant workers exhibited a strong preference for developing social capital, with many investments in other livelihood assets underpinned by a desire to strengthen social relationships, reflecting beliefs that this enhances livelihood resilience. While remittances have made greater direct contributions to livelihoods than economic production within Timor-Leste, at least for participating households and their immediate networks, this expenditure on social capital also suggests the broader structural limitations of using remittances in a ‘productive’ way (through capital accumulation) within labour-sending countries.

Debt and (un)freedoms: The case of transnational labour migration from Vietnam

Transnational labour migration in Asia is largely organised by sophisticated networks of commercial brokers who thrive on highly restrictive migration regimes and disparities in the distribution of labour and employment across the region. The commercialisation of migration brokerage has important implications for migrants’ mobility and wellbeing, not least because of the inflated cost of migration and the increased financial pressure on migrant families as a result. While there is growing attention to debt in the migration scholarship, broader debates on the migration and development nexus continue to underestimate the significance of the issue. Drawing on qualitative research on Vietnamese migrant workers in Taiwan and their families in Vietnam, this paper provides nuanced insights into how debt shapes the ways migrants navigate the transnational migration industry and reproduces inequalities in labour-sending countries. Debt might enable or constrain people’s agency and mobility, a relationship that is not static but fluid and context-specific. The study shows that debt is vital for our understanding of transnational contract labour migration in Asia and emphasises temporality and subjectivity in migrants’ experience of and response to debt.

Nepali Women’s Labour Migration: Between Protection and Proscription

With the increase in female migration, especially in the domestic sector, and accompanying reports of worker exploitation and abuse, labour-sending countries are grappling with the question of how to protect these workers. Drawing on a critical feminist policy analysis framework, this article analyses the policy and regulatory frameworks of Nepal related to female labour migration and examines their implications. Our analysis indicates that Nepal’s policy regime consist of a set of measures which are simultaneously liberal, protective and restrictive, and as such, they have not altered the structural conditions and economic reasons for women’s migration. Instead, women appear to be largely uninformed about government regulations, and most importantly, working conditions abroad are not affected by sending country policies, including the various migration bans put in place to protect women.

Should the Government Promote Global Education?

Purpose: Increased mobility of workers has made their competition intense. To increase employment opportunities, workers are attempting to build internationally transferable human capital and governments are responding to this situation by providing global education. This study attempts to find the effects of tertiary education’s globalisation by the government on the labour-sending countries’ human capital. Design/Methodology/Approach: This study employs an analytical method by solving the maximisation problem of a representative individual in the labour-sending country to derive the demand for education. Findings: Human capital increases by globalising education if the country’s initial human capital is larger than the threshold level; however it decreases if the initial human capital is smaller than the threshold. Accordingly, in the process of education’s globalisation, the disparity in human capital may widen among countries with large initial human capital and those with small one. Practical Implications: It is not necessarily appropriate for the labour-sending country’s government to conduct the policy of tertiary education’s globalisation. Originality/Value: This study reveals that global education may have negative consequences for the labour-sending country and that whether the government should conduct the policy of tertiary education’s globalisation must be determined by observing their economic condition.

Skilling Migrant Workers in South Asia: Rhetoric and Reality

With the proposition that skills could be a key enabler in improving migration outcomes, this paper seeks to address two issues: to what extent skilling migrant workers figure as a policy concern in labour-sending countries and what strategies are currently underway to enhance the skill of migrants? The paper focuses on three major labour-sending countries in South Asia: Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. It is argued that not only skilling migrant workers deserve stronger articulation within the administrative structures that manage labour migration, but it is also important to create efficient and effective skill delivery mechanisms, programmes and partnerships that are responsive to the requirements of international migrant workers.

Oligarchic rule and best practice migration management: the political economy origins of labour migration regime of the Philippines

ABSTRACTThe Philippine labour migration regime has been praised as one of the best examples of government-led migration management in the developing world, with some of the most extensive policies and bureaucratic organisations to manage and protect its citizens working abroad. However, not much knowledge has been accumulated that explains its origins or why it emerged in the Philippines and not in other large-scale migrant-sending countries. Contrary to current explanations that emphasise the economic benefits of labour migration and civil society mobilisation, this paper highlights the migration regime's compatibility with the political economy interests of the country's ruling elites. Bringing together the country's two important political and economic features, oligarchic rule and labour export, this paper suggests that the unique genesis of the Philippines’ migration regime casts doubts on the replicability of the Philippine model in other labour-sending countries as currently pursued by the international development community.

Does Migration Encourage Human Capital Formation in Labor-Sending Country?

This study investigates the effects of migration possibilities on the demand for education and human capital formation in the labour-sending country. The paper assumes that workers have to pay a pecuniary cost privately to receive education under budget constraints. It was found that higher migration possibilities result in an increase in the number of workers who demand education due to increases in its return. However, these workers lower the individual demand for education due to price increases. When the education supply is insufficient, higher migration possibilities may lower average human capital; that is, a brain drain may occur. This contrasts with the usual argument that emphasises the positive effect of migration possibilities. Restrictive immigration policies were found not to be completely detrimental to labour-sending countries since such policies may enhance the human capital formation.

Transnational labour migration and the politics of care in the Southeast Asian family

Recent increases in female labour migration in and from Asia have triggered a surge of interest in how the absence of the mother and wife for extended periods of time affects the left-behind family, particularly children, in labour-sending countries. While migration studies in the region have shown that the extended family, especially female relatives, is often called on for support in childcare during the mother’s absence it is not yet clear how childcare arrangements are made. Drawing on in-depth interviews with non-parent carers of left-behind children in Indonesia and Vietnam, the paper aims to unveil complexities and nuances around care in the context of transnational labour migration. In so doing it draws attention to the enduring influence of social norms on the organisation of family life when women are increasingly drawn into the global labour market. By contrasting a predominantly patrilineal East Asian family structure in Vietnam with what is often understood as a bilateral South-East Asian family structure in Indonesia, the paper seeks to provide interesting comparative insights into the adaptive strategies that the transnational family pursues in order to cope with the reproductive vacuum left behind by the migrant mother.