A Synthesis
by
Professor Ronald Skeldon
Consultant
Mahidol University
Bangkok, Thailand
A Report Prepared under UNDP Technical Support Services 1
ILO East Asia Multidisciplinary Advisory Team (ILO/EASMAT)
ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific
Bangkok
July 1997
_________________________
* Unpublished document issued without formal editing by ILO. The responsibilities for opinions expressed in this document rest solely with the author and its inclusion here does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO of the opinions expressed therein.
Table of Contents:
1. The changing global international migration system
2. The range of Asian migration patterns
7. Of migration pressures and emigration
8. Supply factors and migration pressure
9. Demand factors and migration pressure
10. Migration as a relief of migration pressures
The changing global international migration system
The Asian and Pacific region has seen profound change over the last 50 years. From economies devastated by the conflicts of the Second World War, and in Northeast Asia from the later Korean War, have arisen the most dynamic growth areas in the world. That growth has been so rapid and so sustained that the levels of development in several parts of East and Southeast Asia have come to challenge, and even surpass, those of the so-called developed countries of Europe, North America and Australasia. An integral part of this transformation has been the increasing spatial mobility of populations across national boundaries. Not only has there been a growth in the volume of international migration but so too has there been an increase in the types and complexity of the migrant flows.
To meet the needs of countries in Asia facing these new and increasing population flows, the ILO has been involved in the development of frameworks that will allow a greater understanding of the macro-economic factors that are giving rise to the flows. The thrust of this work has been to seek to identify sectoral policies that might be able to reduce the Aemigration pressures@ in the sending countries or at least allow a more managed flow of labour from one country to another. There is an emerging feeling that, along with the acceleration in migration, has come an increase in exploitation of labour and, as this is an area of traditional concern to the ILO, an investigation into the root causes and consequences of international migration in Asia is particularly apposite at this time. Also, the migration may be seen as not contributing in a positive way to the development of either sending or receiving countries leading to increasing calls for its reduction or, at the least, for its more effective control.
This paper attempts to summarize the principal findings of four studies coordinated by the ILO and to put these in the context of more general research on migration and development in Asia. Two of the studies, on the Philippines (Saith 1995) and Indonesia (Nayyar 1995) were conducted by ILO/SEAPAT in Manila (with financial support from UNDP) and the other two studies on China (Huang 1996) and Viet Nam (Nguyen and Bandara 1996) were conducted by ILO/EASMAT from the office in Bangkok. The findings from these studies are purely exploratory at this stage but are sufficient to raise many of the main issues in the analysis of migration and development in the Asia and Pacific region. In particular, a primary objective was to see how rapid rates of economic growth, which have so typified the recent history of some countries in Asia, impact upon patterns of migration. For example, does this economic growth lead to reductions in emigration pressure in sending countries that will bring about a transition from emigration to immigration as has been seen in certain areas in northeast Asia (Abella 1994)?
International migrations are, of course, not new in the Asian and Pacific region. The great migrations of the Chinese peoples to North America and Australasia, from the middle of the nineteenth century, in search of gold, and as indentured and Afree@ labour for railway construction, agricultural work and other menial tasks involved hundreds of thousands of people. Japanese, too, moved to transpacific destinations, even if in smaller numbers. As the AGreat White Walls@ (Price 1974) of the exclusion acts were raised around North American and Australasian destinations, the migration flows of the Chinese turned to Southeast Asian destinations where there was a growing demand for labour in colonial, mainly British, possessions. Southeast Asia had been a traditional destination for Chinese migrants for centuries before, giving rise to an archipelago of trading posts throughout the region. Thus, as in so much of human migration, more recent migrations followed previous migrations.
Just as in the case of Asian migration to North America and to Australasia, the Southeast Asian destinations became progressively closed to Chinese migrants from the late 1920s when the world economy entered a prolonged recession. In the middle decades of this century, there were few destinations open to Asians, and Chinese in particular. However, from the 1960s the global situation changed completely. As the Asian economies embarked upon their path to economic prosperity, led by Japan and followed by the then newly industrializing economies, international migration too began again to become important. The immediate reason lay with the changing immigration policies of the main potential destination countries, the settler societies in North America and Australasia. Led by Canada in 1962 and followed by the United States in 1965, Australia in 1973 and finally New Zealand in 1978, their restrictive immigration policies were swept away allowing the entry of peoples of a wide variety of origins, cultures and races. From accounting for less than 10 per cent of migrants to these destinations in the early 1960s, Asia now, in the mid-1990s, supplies around 40 per cent of the annual intake of immigrants. The principal reasons for these changes in policy rest primarily in the rise of liberal parliamentary systems of democracy led by the United States in the post-Second World War period. These had almost been extinguished by fascism in the 1930-45 period, but their triumph meant that racist and discriminatory policies sat uneasily with the values of liberal democracies.
Thus, any examination of emigration pressures can but be incomplete without an analysis of immigration pressures which essentially revolve around those political and economic factors that affect the demand for migrants at potential destinations. The consideration of supply factors is but one aspect of a very complex process. The switch from a European-dominated migration system to the settler societies in the pre-1960s period to systems dominated by Latin America and Asia in the post-1960s period must be set against the global trends in fertility and population growth. In the traditional western and southern European destinations, fertility has over the last decades declined to unprecedented low levels in what has been termed the Asecond demographic transition@ (Van de Kaa 1987), where birth rates of the native populations are lower than death rates. The majority of European countries have moved from being exporters of population to being importers of migrants. Emigration pressures there have been transformed into immigration pressures. With low fertility affecting the populations of the settler societies, these turned to other source areas for labour and for settlers.
The migration towards the major settler societies represents but one component in an expanding and increasingly complex international migration system. The sudden demand for labour in the oil-rich countries of the Middle East from 1974 led to the influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants for the construction of infrastructure and related projects in those countries made newly wealthy through the dramatic rise in oil prices. Met first by a supply from countries in the Middle East itself the demand rapidly exceeded that capacity and the labour recruitment fields were extended to the countries of South Asia and then Southeast and East Asia. By the mid-1980s, between 400,000 and 500,000 workers were going every year from the countries of South Asia alone. The Gulf conflict altered patterns of movement, although it certainly did not stop migration to the Gulf States. International migration within Asia has also emerged as important as emigration areas seek out new opportunities and labour-deficit areas within Asia seek sources of supply. Here, too, political considerations loom large as nations struggle to come to terms with issues such as short-term labour turning to long-term settlers, citizenship and right of abode, and with illegal migrants and overstayers.
The range of Asian migration patterns
To analyse migration in Asia as a whole makes little sense as there is a great range of migration and development experience across the region. To consider the emigration pressures, emigration impacts and emigration patterns as if they were all the same from one country to another is quite wrong. The ILO, in its project on emigration pressures, chose four countries which exhibited a variety of development levels across Asia. Viet Nam and China fall into the World Bank=s category of Alow-income economies@ while the Philippines and Indonesia are classified as Amiddle income economies@. Although definitions are not directly comparable, the Philippines is by far the most highly urbanized population at over 50 per cent in 1994, with Indonesia=s population classified as 34 per cent urban, China=s 29 per cent and Viet Nam=s 21 per cent. The Philippines, however, has been the laggard of the group as far as recent economic growth is concerned. Between 1990 and 1994, its growth in per capita GNP was only 1.2 per cent per annum compared with 12.9 per cent for China, 8 per cent for Viet Nam and 7.6 per cent for Indonesia (table 1).
There are other fundamental differences among the countries apart from the basic economic indicators. China and Indonesia are geographically and demographically huge, with an enormous range of internal diversity. The Philippines, like Indonesia, is an archipelagic nation with all the local cultures that such geography encourages, but its history has been of a very different stamp. The Spanish colonial heritage and Spain=s recent close association with the United States have generated different linkages compared with Indonesia=s Dutch colonial history. Viet Nam only recently emerged as a single nation from virtually half a century of continuous conflict and its colonial experience too was very different under the French. China, although never directly colonized, was profoundly affected by outside forces, and, like Viet Nam was involved in a long revolutionary struggle which lasted for well over one hundred years (Fairbank 1986; Gray 1990).
China and Viet Nam are currently in the midst of processes of transformation from collectivized communist societies into, as yet undetermined, Asocialist market economies@. Viet Nam, small in population compared with China (or with Indonesia, but marginally larger than the Philippines) and with a French colonial history is, however, quite different from the giant of China which, until the mid-nineteenth century, was the world=s largest economy, and presently seems to be on a path to regain that position. The mix of migration types is quite different from one country to the other.
The Philippines is from many points of view the country of emigration par excellence. More than in the other three countries under consideration, emigration has become a way of life. Not only has the government promoted the migration of its nationals abroad as overseas contract workers who will contribute to the economy through the remittance of foreign exchange, but at an individual level throughout much of the archipelago, but primarily in Luzon, going abroad has become the accepted behaviour. People expect to go abroad and many will go permanently. The United States is by far the most important destination, although Filipinos are found in virtually every country around the world, as well as manning a significant proportion of the world=s merchant shipping. Although estimates vary, it appears likely that in total there were some 4.2 million Filipinos living and working overseas in the early 1990s (Yukawa 1996: 1), and virtually one family in six within the country was receiving income from abroad.
As the ILO study emphasized (Saith 1995), perhaps the dominant supply side factor behind any explanation of migration from the Philippines is the continued rapid growth rate of the labour force. Clearly, this is a direct product of previous high fertility and currently the growth rate of the labour force is higher than that of the population as a whole, at 2.9 per cent per annum compared with 2.3 per cent for the population as a whole. The continued high rate of population increase, even if it has declined by about one third over the last 25 years, means that it is unlikely that any relief of this particular pressure will be seen over the short term. Current ESCAP estimates of annual average population growth rates place the Philippines as the highest among the four countries under consideration, even if it is only marginally higher than Viet Nam.
The second characteristic that distinguishes the Philippines from the other countries under consideration refers to the composition of the emigrant flows. Migration from the Philippines occurs across a broad spectrum of skill levels, from the unskilled labourer through the skilled technician to the white collar service employee. There is also a balance between the sexes with women of all skill levels involved in migration. As Saith (1995) critically observes in his report, it is the Filipino=s facility with the English language, which itself is a product of prior American involvement and policy in the archipelago, that makes the migrants from the Philippines such a valuable commodity and gives them a competitive edge. Few countries can supply so much labour, at so many different skill levels, for so many occupations, which has the ability to communicate in an international language.
The migration from the Philippines has been overseen by the government through the Philippines Overseas Employment Administration created in 1982, although there has been a balance between government involvement and private enterprise. Present government policy, in fact, appears to favour the increased deregulation of recruitment in the belief that it is only through this means that illegal practices can be curtailed (Saith 1995). The government, while unquestionably encouraging international contract labour migration, would wish to play the role of monitor, leaving the bulk of the recruitment to private agencies. Unfortunately, abuses continue despite the fact that the other major government agency, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration provides Aan array of services for migrant workers and their families@ (Asis 1992: 73). Thus, the movement from the Philippines is a mix of government and private initiative, with the latter sector dominant.
The migration out of Indonesia, while quantitatively significant, does not have the same range of destinations, migrant types or quality as the migration from the Philippines. In the early 1990s, there were somewhere around 1.13 million Indonesians living and working abroad, both legally and illegally (Nayyar 1995). The number moving as settlers to the main North American and Australasian destinations was, however, minuscule compared both with its own vast population and with the movement from the Philippines. Migration from Indonesia is primarily made up of workers
entering menial occupations in the Middle East and Malaysia. The more skilled in Indonesia are not so competitive as few are proficient in the English language, and there are almost no migrants from Indonesia with professional expertise or technical qualifications (Nayyar 1995).
As in the Philippines, women figure prominently in the migrant flows from Indonesia, although it is the migration that goes through formal channels that is primarily female. Indonesian women are particularly favoured as domestic servants in the Middle East as they are Moslem and more acceptable to the cultural mores of countries such as Saudia Arabia. Much of the migration from Indonesia, however, goes through informal or illegal channels, and primarily to Malaysia, both Peninsular and East Malaysia. In this case, the cultural propinquity between Malaysia and parts of Indonesia, particularly eastern Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia, favours this migration. It is estimated that only one third of the emigration from Indonesia goes through formal channels and there are likely to be to be as many as one million Indonesians in Malaysia (Nayyar 1995). The issue of undocumented migrants in Malaysia, not all from Indonesia, but also including substantial numbers of migrants from Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Pakistan and Thailand is emerging as one of the Acritical@ issues in that country of 20.5 million.
The movement from Indonesia is also a much more recent phenomenon compared with that from the Philippines, having become prominent only in the last decade, whereas that from the Philippines began to evolve early in this century. The recency of this movement goes some way to explain differences between the flows from the two countries, and the experience of the Philippines in regard to the organization and recruitment of labour may be of value to officials in Indonesia.
In contrast to the previous two countries, the migration from China has been much more modest, particularly taking into account its vast population. Settler migration from China to North America and Australasia, although increasing, has been generally less than half of that from the Philippines, a country about one twentieth its size. The number of overseas contract workers, though again rising, is a fraction of that from the Philippines, perhaps 380,000 in the mid-1990s (Huang 1996) . Although found in over 100 countries, they are, however, concentrated in the Hong Kong and Macau areas. These workers from China are essentially male labourers, while those from the Philippines, as mentioned above, represent a broad spectrum of skills, with women as important as men, if not more important, in some of the flows.
Essentially, the recent flows from China date from the post-reform period which began from early 1979. Before that, international movements were tightly controlled and were directed more towards other socialist economies, with virtually none towards the West, with the exception of some migration to Hong Kong. The labour migration is controlled by state institutions, particularly the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC), the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, all under the umbrella of the State Council (Huang 1996). MOFTEC is perhaps the key institution as it organizes the management of international aid projects and issues licences to agencies to contract labour for these projects.
There is also increasing illegal migration from China that, in terms of total numbers, is more important than the legal flows. Unlike the illegal movements from Indonesia, those from China are seldom directed towards neighbouring countries. During the early 1990s, perhaps 100,000 people a year were entering the United States and thousands of others were going to European destinations (Skeldon 1996). While many attempt to leave by boat, the majority travel by air through a variety of complex routes that involve Southeast Asian countries, Russia, eastern European countries and Latin America. These routes are essentially the product of overseas Chinese networks and more particularly those of criminal syndicates, the triads. The majority of the illegal migrants originate in southern China, and principally in Fujian province, although there is also a significant flow of illegal migrants from the northeastern provinces into the Russian Far East, where there may be as many as one million Chinese living in Siberian border regions. With a payment of up to US$50,000 to the agents, in the case of illegal migration to the United States, this movement has become of major concern to destination areas where, controlled by criminal syndicates, the migrants often exist under tenuous circumstances, held in situations of debt servitude in sweatshop industries in the Chinatowns of New York and San Francisco, in particular. This situation is as much a product of the demand for labour in ethnic Chinese enclaves in core countries as it is to the tight control of emigration in the origin country itself.
The migration from Viet Nam has been complicated by the history of conflict in that country, and particularly following the victory of the socialist north in 1975, which unleashed a wave of refugee movement towards the United States and also to the countries of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. Between 1975 and 1993, almost one million Vietnamese were resettled overseas, the vast majority in the United States, with some 700,000 granted asylum and an additional 290,000 resettled under the orderly departure programme (United Nations 1996: 19).The programme has continued and is currently resettling about 50,000 per annum, although illegal migration overseas persists. Contract labour, while on a small scale compared with the Philippines and Indonesia, has occurred over the last 15 years. As in the case of China, this was initially to other socialist countries, primarily the western parts of the ex-USSR and to the then East Germany. More recently, it has been towards the countries of eastern Asia and the ILO study reveals that it is anticipated to reach about 50,000 per annum in the mid-1990s (Nguyen and Bandara 1996). Like the movement of labour out of the Philippines and Indonesia, but unlike that from China, labour migration from Viet Nam has included substantial numbers of women even if that proportion has fluctuated over time.
Of migration pressures and emigration
The critical question surely, then, relates to the extent to which migration can continue to develop from these countries. Will the rates of migration from Indonesia or China, in particular, ever approach those from the Philippines? In an assessment of emigration pressures, given the relative numbers of migrants from the four countries, is it therefore correct to conclude that such pressures have been higher in the Philippines than elsewhere? Or have these pressures been relieved in the Philippines but are building up in the demographic giants of Asia ready to explode and send waves of migrants to neighbouring countries and beyond? Clearly, the answers to such questions are of more than just academic interest to the countries around the Pacific rim.
As outlined above, by many standard indices, the Philippines is the most developed country of the four under consideration. It is the most urbanized, has the highest GNP per capita, measured by conventional means, but is behind Indonesia when that is calculated on the basis of purchasing power parity. It has a low rate of adult illiteracy and by far the highest proportion of its population going on to higher levels of education. Yet, it has the lowest rates of recent economic growth, even if there have been signs of an upturn at long last. The Philippines almost certainly has the least equitable distribution of wealth among the four countries with acute urban and rural poverty in many parts. Thus, its well-educated population, living under stagnant and deteriorating conditions in terms of proportional share of wealth, may indeed experience greater pressures to emigrate than in the other countries. The aspirations of Filipinos are higher, leading to a greater desire to emigrate to economies where prospects are better. The awareness of the Filipinos, with their higher levels of education and their global network of information provided by generations of previous migrants, will be much greater than in the other countries, thus creating pressures to move at a local level. Finally, as mentioned above, among the countries under consideration, it will be only migrants from the Philippines, with their much greater command of the English language who will be able to achieve the transition to more diverse and high skilled opportunities overseas.
Emigration pressure is defined as a measure of the difference between those wishing to move and those able to move. More analytically, it is the result of an excess supply of people willing to migrate relative to the demand at particular destinations (Straubhaar 1993). Where there is little awareness of opportunities outside the country or local area, there will be little incentive to move as there is little basis upon which to compare local conditions. Thus, development, to the extent that it fosters higher levels of education and promotes linkages to a global economy through trade, and international flows of capital and expertise, is likely to promote emigration pressures. This is born out by the fact that in virtually every case that has been studied, not only in the four countries under consideration but worldwide, it is not the poorest who migrate. The poorest regions of the Philippines, for example, were not significantly represented as origins of international migration (Saith 1995). A certain amount of financial resources are required in order to move, in order to cover the cost of the move, for example. More important, however, is that the relatively wealthy (and the word Arelatively@ must be emphasized as in any area the relatively wealthy may be poor in the terms of another area) have access to the resources that allow them to remove children from their household labour force and send them to school. Education becomes an important factor in spreading awareness and in creating pressures to migrate. Yet, it is not a sufficient cause: the network of community and family linkages developed through prior migrations is perhaps of even greater significance.
What stimulated the initial migrations pushes the analysis into a historical search, perhaps futile, for ultimate cause. Suffice it to say that the factors were unlikely to be primarily local but can be understood more in terms of the demand for labour in expanding core or colonial economies. The recruitment of labour to work on plantations, railways or, later, in labour-intensive manufacturing ventures often creates the formative linkages that generate later migrations. These linkages are at the core of what is known as chain migration whereby migration gives rise to still more migration. Yet, such an interpretation must be largely unsatisfactory as, clearly, the logical end-point of such a system must be massive outmigration and eventual depopulation. In places, this has indeed occurred but more usually with reference to subnational patterns of internal migration where rural depopulation has resulted as urbanization has intensified. Occasionally, population decline can also occur at national levels where we are dealing with small isolated populations, as in the cases of some of the Pacific islands. Nevertheless, in the majority of cases, the pattern of migration can change and emigration can evolve into immigration, just as areas of immigration can be transformed into areas of outmigration. Emigration pressures can change into immigration pressures and vice versa.
One important aspect of the linkages is the relationship between internal and international movements although this, as yet, is a little understood dimension of population migration. As seen above, few of the international migrants from the Philippines came from the poorest parts of the country although many of the internal migrants appear to have come from these areas. They may, however, come from the wealthier groups in these areas as has been observed in other parts of the world (Skeldon 1990).A hierarchical structure may exist to the spatial and social patterns of migration with the gradual incorporation of progressively poorer regions and poorer groups in progressively more long-distance movements. The largest cities in a country accumulate internal migrants who become potential international migrants for later movement overseas. The data from the Philippines are certainly not inconsistent with this hypothesis, although international moves from the other countries covered in the project have not evolved to a point where more definitive conclusions can be drawn.
Supply factors and migration pressure
Understanding what controls these shifts in migration is obviously of great interest to policy makers in many parts of the world, including Asia. There have been shifts in Asia which, very generally, can be interpreted as a trend from emigration towards immigration as economies have moved from labour-surplus to labour-deficit, the so-called migration transition (Abella 1994; Fields 1994). These shifts have been identified, to varying degrees and with considerable variations, for the most developed areas, particularly Japan, which passed the transition from labour-surplus to labour-deficit shortly the Second World War, Taiwan (China), which passed the point about 1970, the Republic of Korea about 1975, and Thailand and Malaysia about 1985 (Manning 1995; see also the essays in Abella 1994). None of the countries examined in the ILO cases is anywhere near any-turning point, even the most developed, Indonesia or the Philippines (Amjad 1996b; also Manning 1995).
Although there has been a downturn in fertility in the four countries under consideration the continued rapid rates of increase in the labour forces are emphasized in all the case studies owing to the momentum of demographic change: there is a lag between the onset of fertility decline and a slowing in the rate of growth of the labour force. Fertility is lowest in China and has shown the steepest decline over the last decades. Its growth in labour force is also relatively low at 1.1 per cent per annum in 1990-94, down from 2.2 per cent per annum in 1980-90. Yet, its sheer numbers and the increasing internal migration since the reforms initiated from 1979 have ensured that there are enormous numbers looking for work in the major towns and cities. The rapid rate of development over the last 15 years has increased the emigration pressures simply through the concentration of large numbers of young people at particular points within China, mainly the large cities and the southern development regions. In addition, the reforms have brought prosperity to some that has provided them with money to pay brokers to smuggle them out of the country illegally as outlined above. Again, development fosters the pressures to emigrate.
The growth rates of the labour forces of the Philippines, Indonesia and Viet Nam are all much faster than the growth rates for the populations as a whole. There is only one universal law that applies to migration and that is that the vast majority of people who move are young adults. Thus, the cohorts in these countries, which are likely to generate the greatest number of migrants, are still increasing in size, creating a sustained pool of potential migrants. Emigration pressures, in the context of rapidly developing economies, are certainly not going to abate in the face of rising numbers of those in the age groups most likely to migrate. A sustained reduction in fertility that feeds a slowing in the rate of growth of the labour force is thus required before a transition is likely to occur. That is, a migration transition is likely to be intimately related to a demographic transition.
The relationship between development and fertility decline is clear but it need not be direct. Several countries at relatively low levels of development have much lower fertility than might be expected, for example, but there are no countries at high levels of development which have high levels of fertility and extremely rapid growth rates of their labour forces. Those countries of East and Southeast Asia that have undergone a migration transition have all pursued intensive programmes of industrialization that have developed into economies that are based on export- oriented industrialization.
Demand factors and migration pressure
More recently, the industrial economies of East Asia have evolved into, at least in the cases of Japan, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan (China) and Hong Kong, predominantly tertiary economies based upon service activities as their industrial economies have Ahollowed out@ with the industries moving overseas to areas where labour is cheaper. Rather than experiencing increasing unemployment, however, the expanding tertiary sector has been able to absorb domestic labour and generate a demand for additional places that can only be met through importing labour from overseas. The labour-deficit economies of Japan, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan (China), Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and, increasingly, Thailand have created immigration pressures within the region over the last 15 years. Intra-Asian migration is, for the first time, taking on an importance that has come to rival the migrations to destinations outside the region. Integrated migration systems are evolving within Asia with sources of demand and supply linked in a functional division of labour.
Emigration is not going to slow so long as a growing demand for immigration exists. This immigration is not, of course, a demand for permanent settlers, or people who might become citizens, but simply for labour to fill particular needs. Ideally, from the point of view of the country of immigration, they should be workers on contract who can be hired and fired according to the dictates of the market. In addition, after they have finished their contract, these workers will return home. Thus, the costs of reproduction, and of support of the retired workers, are borne by the countries of origin. To some extent, these costs are to be offset against the remittances that are repatriated during the workers= contract overseas. The ideal, of course, varies from the reality, and from the point of view of both the receiving and the sending countries.
The fear amongst virtually all countries is that guest workers will turn into settlers as has been the experience of both France and Germany over the last 30 years. There are, however, two classes of worker: the highly skilled technocrat, the white collar worker, often employed by a transnational company; and the blue collar, unskilled worker. Generally, countries are little concerned about the former, who are seen to support the drive towards development and will return to their country of origin, or move on, after the termination of their contract. The majority of these workers come from more developed parts of the world, the core countries of the West, but also increasingly from Asia itself, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Taiwan (China) mainly, but from countries such as India and Malaysia too. Of the four countries under consideration, the Philippines is the only one to supply numbers of workers in this category owing to the long tradition of education in the English language. Nevertheless, we still know remarkably little about this increasingly significant flow, although for one attempt to assess its importance in the region see Garnier (1996) and, for a more global assessment, see Findlay (1995). All of the four countries examined in the ILO project are more noted as recipients than as senders of skilled labour.
Studies of the networks of these highly skilled migrants are sadly lacking, although this lack is to some extent due to the fact that they are not of policy concern to host countries. Of much greater concern are the unskilled workers, who generally come from poorer countries and who will be much less willing to return home after completing their contract. No country in Asia permits easy settlement of non-nationals, even if the treatment of ethnic Chinese in Chinese areas is a partial exception. The supply of imported labour is subject to tight control and even to subterfuge. For example, training schemes and language courses are used by Japanese and Korean employers to bring in workers by another name. The closest to allowing settlement in Japan is to permit nissei from South American countries to bring in their families and to register for eventual settlement and citizenship. All other migrants are tightly controlled in theory, although there is a growing problem of overstayers in almost all the developed Asian economies: those who enter legally as visitors but stay on after their visa has expired.
Given tight state control, illegal migration is relatively unimportant in most of the developed economies, a control that is facilitated by the island environments of Japan and Taiwan (China). Illegal migration is, however, a major flow to satisfy the labour shortages in Malaysia, where as seen above there may well be in excess of a million migrants. The vast majority come from Indonesia and from Sumatra where the peoples have close cultural affinities with those in Malaysia. In Thailand, too, the Laotians are able to blend into the culturally similar Thai environment, although hundreds of thousands of Burmese are becoming a much more Avisible@ minority. Again, in total, there could be upwards of a million illegal migrants in Thailand.
Thus, illegal movements, whatever their form, smuggled migrants, overstayers or those recruited through informal labour networks, are a growing policy concern in the Asian region. They are of concern to the countries of origin mainly in terms of the potential for abuse and exploitation at destination areas. They are of concern to destination countries primarily because large numbers of illegal migrants imply that countries have lost control of their boundaries with unregistered populations subject neither to tax nor to protection. A contrary, perhaps cynical, point of view might hold that in economies dominated by free markets it is to the advantage of entrepreneurs to keep down wages by having a large labour force which can be hired and fired dependent upon the vagaries of the international economy. Here surely lies an important role for agencies such as the ILO which traditionally has sought the protection of workers. It must be of concern that none of the countries which are the leading importers of contract labour from the Philippines are signatories to the ILO conventions on international migrant rights (Saith 1995).
One very important aspect of the protection of migrants relates to the increasing participation of women in the international migration flows. Women make up significant proportions of the migration flows from both the Philippines and Indonesia among the countries studied in the ILO project and also from Sri Lanka and Thailand among other flows in Asia. While the flow from the Philippines does include numbers of professionals or semi-professionals, such as nurses and medical personnel, by far the most important component relates to the movement of domestic servants to the main cities in the rapidly developing economies such as Hong Kong, Singapore and the cities of the Middle East. Their numbers are essentially a function of the emergence of the new wealthy of Asia, the very product of development. The transition to service economies has improved the status of women in certain middle income groups in Hong Kong and Singapore where well-paying employment is on offer. Late marriage, small families, dual career households and single-female-headed households have come to challenge traditional forms of the Asian family in these areas. Domestic servants have come not only to symbolize the new wealth but also to be an indispensable element in the new family structures and economies.
In East Asia, an English-speaking amah or domestic servant is an asset to help with the education of the children, which clearly favours the Filipina as the servant of choice. In the Middle East, a good Moslem girl is a requirement of the riche and the nouveau riche who favour migrants from Indonesia or from the southern Philippines. As long as the numbers of the new rich continue to grow, which will be the result of concentrated and sustained development within the region, then the numbers of domestic servants will continue to increase. Even with the transition of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in July 1997, it is unlikely that the more than 150,000 Filipinas will be replaced, at least initially. There is virtually no unemployment within the enclave and it would be necessary to replace the Filipinas with domestics from China. However, the potential source areas would be quite distant within China, given the booming economy in neighbouring Guangdong province, and girls (or boys) from these more distant areas would be unfamiliar not only with English (to teach the children of middle-class Hong Kong Chinese families) but also with the local Chinese language and with the whole way of life of modern Hong Kong.
With their command of English, many of the Filipina domestic workers have completed secondary school or even have tertiary qualifications or previous work experience in the Philippines. There is thus a deskilling of the Filipina workforce and a loss of potential skills for the country of origin. The migrant enters a world of drudgery or, at best, repetitive unchallenging work. Yet, the domestic worker in Hong Kong, for example, earns 4-5 times what she could earn in the Philippines and that country benefits from the remittances sent back to families at home (AMW 1991). Again, given the basic economic reality of the situation, these flows of domestic workers can only be expected to increase over the near term.
There is also a secondary and perhaps more notorious flow of Aentertainers@ who enter the demi-monde in the boom cities of East Asia in Japan, Taiwan (China), the Republic of Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, and in the major cities of Europe and North America. Almost by definition these migrants are illegal and their movement is controlled by criminal syndicates. As with the domestic servants, however, their numbers are but likely to increase with the continued development of Asia as they serve the growing affluence of its middle-income populations. Domestic servants, who are scattered throughout middle income-housing areas, and Aentertainers@, whose mobility is tightly controlled, are as groups isolated from the wider communities they serve. They are readily exploited and are seldom aware of their rights. These groups of women are among the most difficult to protect and it is incumbent upon the international community, with the support of agencies such as the ILO, to seek to develop ways and means to inhibit trafficking and to offer protection to these women by regularizing their status in destination areas.
It is clearly unrealistic to expect the volume of migration in the region to decrease given the supply and demand pressures. Attempts to restrict free movement, as we have seen in the case of China, only lead to increases in illegal movements. The Philippine experiment in deregulation is one option but, although perhaps reducing the numbers of undocumented emigrants, it certainly offers no guarantees against exploitation for the migrants. In destination areas, the regularization of imported workers is a primary requirement. Thailand, for example, has recently decreed the issue of special identity cards to those who have entered illegally but which will entitle them to stay up to two years if employed. This will allow at least some monitoring of entrants who may import diseases which have been under control in the destination society, but endemic in the origin. Filariasis is said to be in danger of being reintroduced into Thailand by migrants from Burma, for example.
Another example of attempts to regularize the import of foreign labour has been that of Taiwan (China). However, in this case, the pressure to regularize was brought by employers who wished to import labour legally in order to solve labour shortages. From 1991, when an initial 15,000 workers were allowed in, numbers increased markedly to reach some 200,000 legal workers by early 1996 (Lee and Wang 1996). Such schemes give rise to as many problems as they solve, however. The high fees demanded by brokers encourage many workers to flee their allocated employer to seek a readily available job in the Agrey@ labour market. Perhaps as many as another 250,000 workers, who entered legally but who either left their original employ or simply overstayed a tourist or some training visa are estimated to be in the area. There are also problems between employers who are keen to employ cheap labour, and emerging unions which fear for the jobs and wages of their members. The current labour unrest in the Republic of Korea over the wish to have more flexible labour markets is similarly related to the perceived dangers of a freer flow of workers into the country. The rapid economic development in East Asia has unleashed a series of pressures that will be virtually impossible to control. The transition to labour-deficit economies means that to stop the flow of labour will be self-defeating. Some responsibility can certainly be passed to employers by encouraging them to automate but in the transition towards a more service economy certain activities cannot be automated. Governments are going to have to accommodate to the new migration flows rather than arrest or reverse them. The thrust of any policy initiatives must therefore be focused on the welfare of both migrant and local workers. One clear policy direction must be, however, to reduce the costs and bureaucratic procedures of formal recruitment. It is the ease, flexibility and cheapness of informal recruiters that encourages so many to opt for the undocumented rather than the formal route, as is illustrated particularly in the case of movement from Indonesia to Malaysia (Nayyar 1995; Hugo 1993) and in runaway workers in Taiwan (China).
Migration as a relief of migration pressures
The question whether the migration from source areas to destination areas in any way relieves the pressures in either area is of importance to policy-makers. The argument thus far has been that the migration, once started, has been a self-sustaining process until demographic supply factors and economic demand factors change to redirect the flows. The role of remittances is an interesting facet in this matrix of change. For example, would the volume of remittances sent back by migrants help to alleviate conditions in source areas, and perhaps stem migration; or would remittances be seen by both governments and individual potential migrants as a rational use of available manpower and a way to achieve higher standards of living? If the latter, then indeed migration should lead to further migration. If the former, then the kinds of change introduced through migration may ultimately act to slow the flows.
Globally, remittances probably exceeded $US71.1 billion in 1990, which means that, in terms of value, they were second only to oil in international trade (Russell 1992). That value also represented the amounts flowing through official channels so the real value would have been much more substantial. At national levels among the countries under consideration, remittances represent about 12 per cent of foreign exchange earnings for the Philippines, 6 per cent for Viet Nam and 1 per cent for Indonesia. Although remittances represent only a fraction of earnings in the vast Chinese economy, the government does see that country=s huge manpower as a potentially important resource to be mined through overseas contracts (Fang 1991). In Asia, Pakistan is the country most dependent upon remittances, which accounted for about 12 per cent of GDP in the early 1980s.
It is at the local, family and individual levels that remittances can have their greatest impact. There is a debate between those who see remittances used primarily for consumption, which leads to increasing imports and thus a deterioration in the balance of payments, and those who see remittances used for savings and investment and thus positive for development. The evidence seems to suggest that there is validity in both points of view. It is deceptive to separate uses into the clearly separate compartments of consumption and investment. For example, expenditure on a new house, a common use of remittance money, is often seen as consumption. Yet, it generates local employment for artisans, which requires investment in the construction industry, and is likely to have a significant component of local materials. Even such apparent symbols of conspicuous consumption as lavish weddings are likely to stimulate local agricultural production, employment for musicians, caterers, and so on and are thus not without a positive feedback effect on the village economy.
The consensus from the microlevel studies on the use of remittances indicates that the majority of the migrant workers spend their money Aprudently@ (Gunatilleke 1986: 129) and that remittances have an important role to play in promoting local manufacturing and in generating employment. They would seem to increase wealth differences within any community with those who have a family member overseas being better off than those who do not. Thus, the emigration is likely to alleviate rather than exacerbate poverty. What remittances also appear to do is to provide groups of people with resources who would otherwise be beyond the limits of assistance provided by the state. In effect, the migration extends power to those outside the circle of traditional elites and, from detailed studies made in Pakistan, Aundermines the centre@ in the sense that the process occurs largely with the state as an interested but ineffectual observer (Addleton 1992). The migration fosters small-scale grassroots development rather than large-scale centralized government projects.
The impact that migrants have on their communities of origin is not simply economic. Knowledge brought back by returning migrants, as well as new attitudes, can affect not only business and agricultural practices but also family size. Migration may thus be an important factor in the spread of ideas about the small family norm and facilitates the transition towards a lower fertility and, ultimately, a lower population growth society. These ideas, speculative as yet, point to the key role that migration can play in the transformation of societies. Thus, migration is not simply a reaction to changing economic conditions but also a proactive agent of societal and economic change within a complex interacting system. Not all areas will be affected equally by migration, though. In some areas, migration may lead to further migration until depopulation occurs: in others, nodes of dynamic development will evolve as emigration shifts to immigration: and in others, dynamic areas which were characterized by population concentration will shift towards deconcentration as urban costs and pollution increase and production technologies change. These ideas are pursued at greater length in Skeldon (1990; in press, 1997).
The financial flows at the microlevel have their counterpart at the macrolevel. A major policy concern has been the possible impact of aid on migration flows: whether through overseas development assistance (ODA) the critical variables in the origin areas can somehow be altered in order to slow or even to reverse migration flows. Over the long term, international programmes to promote or support family limitation are likely to have an impact on labour force growth. However, short-term impacts of international aid are less clear. See the review in Bohning and Schloeter-Paredes (1994). The primary goal of ODA is to promote development and all the indications that we have from available studies show that increased migration is associated with economic development over the short term, even if over the long term, and by that is meant over several generations, economic development can indeed reduce migration pressures (Teitelbaum 1993). The other, and perhaps more sobering, fact is that the volume of remittances sent back, through official channels only, from migrants in developed countries to their countries of origin in the developing world was in 1988 over half of the total value of ODA in that year (Russell 1992). Migrants make a more significant direct impact on the transfer of financial resources than does ODA, and it would appear that it is not in the interests of either migrants or of the countries themselves to substitute aid for migration, particularly in the context of a world in which there is increasing aid Afatigue@ and real reductions in assistance from developed countries.
In the four countries under consideration, migration, both internal and international, is increasing. The massive concentrations of populations in the major cities of these countries are creating a potential pool of migrants for emigration if they cannot be satisfactorily absorbed into the economic fabric of the urban sectors. The recent emergence of what have come to be termed Agrowth triangles@, but are in effect transnational mega-urban regions, can but accelerate these trends. Migration, both internal and international, appears an inevitable development of free market economies. There are, nevertheless, still formidable barriers to be overcome in order for the majority of nationals of Asian countries to leave their countries. Among the countries under consideration, only in the Philippines, with its long history of colonial association, its widespread command of English and the large number of private brokers, does emigration become a viable option for virtually anyone with the wish and the resources to move. Virtually the whole world is the labour market for the Philippines. In the cases of China and Viet Nam, two countries emerging from the constraints of central planning, emigration was until recently forbidden and even today it is still, for the most part, under strict government control. The alternative is to leave illegally, often with the assistance of criminal syndicates, but in this case migrants may be held as virtual bonded labour at the destinations until the balance of their passage costs has been paid, a process that may last indefinitely given exorbitant rates of interest. It would seem to be in both the interest of governments and migrants that procedures shall be liberalized and flows facilitated. In an era of global markets, only the free flow of labour has not kept pace with the flows of capital, goods and information.
The case of Indonesia clearly indicates the process. While the government nominally controls the export of labour, much of that to neighbouring Malaysia is illegal and parts of Indonesia have, in effect, become the de facto labour markets for that country. A transnational labour market has been created in that region. It is possible that nodes will evolve within the countries that will serve as nuclei of attraction for regional and global migration, but all the evidence suggests that, in the four countries under consideration, such development is not likely to occur in the medium term. These countries are likely to continue to be the suppliers rather than consumers of international migrants for the foreseeable future.
The question remains whether the development of these countries is likely to be prejudiced by the loss of their manpower. With the exception of the Philippines, the emigrants appear to be made up mainly of labourers or those engaging in fairly low-level occupations, even if they do not come from the poorest rungs in their respective societies. Even where more highly educated and skilled personnel are involved, this does not mean that a Abrain drain@ will inhibit the development of the economy. Large migrations of students and the skilled took place from Taiwan (China), the Republic of Korea and Hong Kong during their formative and rapid stages of economic growth. Also, the massive migrations from Europe across the Atlantic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries coincided with some of that continent=s most rapid periods of growth. On the contrary, the arguments forwarded in this paper point to the positive developmental role of the migrations in integrating areas into broader markets and in diffusing more progressive ideas and techniques.
Given the importance of considering both origin and destination areas in the analysis of migration, the discussion of a concept such as emigration pressure remains somewhat problematic. Whether there is pressure to migrate in the area of origin depends upon the possibilities available at the potential destination. The idea of pressure seems to imply that there is an imbalance between the population in an area and the capability of that area to support the population. That is, emigration pressure appears to be a cognate of population pressure and of optimum population theory. However, in the context of a migration system incorporating origins, and a series of different destinations, intermediated by a series of immigration barriers, it is unlikely that any meaningful measure of pressure can be made. Emigration pressures have to be measured against immigration pressures, and both are in a state of constant flux. The pressures brought about by labour deficits will establish networks that create self-reinforcing migration flows from particular origins that may reduce immigration pressures, but accentuate emigration pressures. The four studies in this report focus more fully on those supply and demand functions that affect the supply of labour rather than the nebulous concept of pressure.
From a policy point of view, pressure is also problematic. As the governments in the origin areas are pursuing policies independently from those in the destination areas, migration is not readily amenable to policy intervention. Migration thus undermines the centre, that is, national governments, in more ways than discussed above at the local level: it erodes the centre at the international level too. The most appropriate ways forward for action are not in the areas of restriction of migration by individual governments - such measures are almost certain to fail over the long term - but in accommodating the existing migrant flows. These measures should be focused primarily on the protection of migrant rights and on the elimination of illegal flows and human trafficking. Given the increasing participation of women in the observed flows, a strong gender perspective needs to be incorporated into the policy initiatives.
The basic policy implication to be drawn from the four ILO studies is the likely continued rise in the volume of international migration in and from the countries under consideration. This is consistent with the conclusions of other global assessments of migration (Castles and Miller 1993; Weiner 1995; Stalker 1994; Skeldon in press, 1997). The only certain policy initiative that can effectively stop international migration is to separate a country from the global economy as did China during most of the Maoist period, but even this strategy does not guarantee success as the resultant political isolation, by prejudicing particular groups, may unleash a wave of asylum seekers or economic migrants as in the case of Viet Nam in the 1980s or Myanmar today. The vast majority of countries in the region appear committed to open reforms which are predicated upon some kind of linkage to the international economy which, in turn, implies the continuation and acceleration of population migration.
Given the above, policies that seek to accommodate rather than to restrict are much more likely to meet with success. Policies that restrict are much more likely to result in illegal movements trying to bypass the restrictive measures. There is no question that the thrust of the most important policy initiatives must be directed towards illegal migration and ultimately towards combating the exploitation of migrant workers (Amjad 1996b). These policies might be termed Apolicies of selective intervention@ (Saith 1995) and can take a variety of forms:
- the development of government-to-government institutions in order to coordinate registration of nationals for protection and the monitoring of cross-border trafficking
- the development of government-to-private sector institutions in order to reduce the potential for exploitation by recruitment agencies
- particular attention given, perhaps through consular offices, to the monitoring of female overseas contract workers in order to limit their potential for abuse by employers
- the enhancement of information diffusion organisms to make overseas workers more aware of their rights and responsibilities in the destination societies
- greater efforts internationally to ensure that as many destination areas as possible become signatories to the relevant international covenants and protocols regarding international migrant workers and that these are honoured
Given that there is little scope for permanent settlement of migrants within the Asian region, policy initiatives need to be put in place that will facilitate the reabsorption of migrants into the society and economy of the countries of origin. Such policies could be focused on:
- the health of the returning migrants
- education and information to help the migrants readjust and to contribute to the development of the home society
- investment and business advice and support
A final area of policy initiatives refers to statistical information. Given the recency of so much of the migration in the region, we still understand so little of the types and volumes of migration within the region and from the region to other parts of the world. The statistical base required for adequate policy formulation is sadly lacking throughout much of the region. This can be at least partially explained by the prominence of illegal or undocumented flows - hence the need to focus so much attention in this area - but few countries maintain detailed registers of legal immigration or emigration. In this area, again, international agencies can provide technical and practical support to improve the statistical information base and to move towards making definitions of migrant types consistent from country to country.
In the past, population migration has proven singularly intractable to policy intervention. To some extent, this can be explained by the multi-faceted nature of the migration process that does not lend itself to ready policy intervention. In part, however, it can also be explained by the tendency to associate migration policy with restriction and control. Migration, in the most developed countries in the world, is seen as a basic human right. Irrespective of whether one accepts this point of view or not, it does appear counterproductive always to plan for the limitation or restriction of population movements. The results of the ILO studies emphasize that migration is not going to cease and therefore governments must plan accordingly. Policy initiatives should therefore be more focused, less sweeping in their intent, selective rather than all encompassing interventions. The adoption of such a strategy is more likely to generate success.
Because of the perceived difficulties of dealing with migration and because migration touches upon sensitive issues of national sovereignty, international agencies at present in the Asian region appear to have consigned this issue to the Aback burner@: there is a transnational vacuum at present in Asia, with no agency willing to move in to take the lead. However, as migration is emerging as one of the leading concerns of the late twentieth century it is incumbent upon these agencies to play a more proactive role in this area both in terms of information and data and in the rights of workers. The ILO, because of its traditional concern with the protection of workers and of workers rights, is well placed to make a major contribution in this important area. ILO Convention No. 97 of 1949 and Convention No. 143 of 1975 specifically call upon governments to respect the basic human rights of all migrant workers irrespective of sex and to prevent the trafficking in humans (Amjad 1996a). Clearly, much remains to be achieved, but the most salient point to emerge from the ILO studies, and other research reviewed in this paper, is that migration is not going to decrease in the future: it will increase in volume and complexity. Given that population migration is such a powerful force for economic, social and political change, governments need to be prepared and to plan accordingly.
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