Labour migration for development: best practices in Asia and the Pacific

The Asia-Pacific region has 59 percent of the world’s working age population and increasing levels of labour mobility. The dominant mode of international labour migration is temporary low-skilled contract migration. The objective of this paper is to examine the various types of temporary labour migration programmes in the Asia-Pacific region and assess the lessons learned from those experiences. The importance of those lessons is twofold. On the one hand, there is a large number of such programmes which are in need of significant reform if they are to reach their potential to facilitate development in origin areas. On the other hand, new programmes are emerging as the demographic and economic gradients between high income and low income economies widen.