Building Labour Migration Policy Coherence in Myanmar

This working paper provides an overview of international labour migration governance in Myanmar, detailing the most relevant actors and policies at Union/National level and how they presently do or do not intersect, coordinate, and cooperate together. It also discusses where and how the governance of international migration can be more strongly linked to other policy domains, exploring to what extent labour migration policy is consistent with and contributing to national development plans and how it relates to other policy areas such as poverty reduction, rural development, social protection, women’s empowerment and others. By tracing out intersections and overlaps, both actual and possible, between different policies, policy areas, and the actors responsible for formulating and implementing them, this paper seeks to lay the groundwork for promoting greater policy coherence in the governance of international labour migration.

The paper includes a set of policy recommendations to strengthen and improve coordination between actors, to facilitate greater integration of migration into other policy sectors and to recommend pertinent topics for future policy briefs. The Annex provides Case Studies from a variety of different labour migration governance systems including The Philippines, Republic of Korea, South Africa and Ghana.

This paper is the second in a series to support the development of improved labour migration governance in Myanmar produced by the ILO Yangon supported by Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund (LIFT). The first paper, Country of Origin Complaints Mechanism for overseas migrants from Myanmar was published in 2016 and further papers will include a sequel to this paper looking at Policy coherence at the sub-national level as well as papers on Recruitment Processes, Social Protection and Domestic Work.