Labour migration in Southeast Asia: migration policies, labour exploitation and regulation

Kaur, Amarjit

doi:10.1080/13547860903488195

Cited by 70 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…3 Kaur (2010) and Chin (2002) provide good overviews of the history of government policies towards the use of foreign workers in Malaysia. 4 See Tables A1-A3 in the Appendix for a list of all the variables, descriptions, and summary statistics.…”

Section: Acknowledgementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foreign workers and productivity in an emerging economy: The case of Malaysia

Jordaan

2017

Review Development Economics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Many developed and developing countries are experiencing large and growing levels of international migration of labor. However, the large majority of research on the economic impact of inflows of migrant workers on host economies focuses exclusively on developed countries. In this paper, we address this gap in the literature by examining migrant-induced productivity effects in the emerging economy of Malaysia. Importantly, the Malaysian case is typical for many Asian economies where, next to high skilled foreign workers, large numbers of migrants consist of low skilled workers that are employed in host economies on a temporary basis. Using detailed industry level data for the period 2005 to 2009, we find that both high skilled and low skilled foreign workers generate positive productivity effects in Malaysian manufacturing industries. Furthermore, our results identify a strong presence of industry heterogeneity, as the effects of foreign workers, in general, and low skilled foreign workers, in particular, are pronounced in labor and assembly intensive modern industries with a strong export focus. This indicates the importance of foreign workers for the contemporary international competitiveness of the Malaysian manufacturing sector. As such, our findings provide important new input to the debate on the role of low skilled foreign workers in processes of development of the Malaysian economy.--

show abstract

Section: Acknowledgementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foreign workers and productivity in an emerging economy: The case of Malaysia

Jordaan

2017

Review Development Economics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Precarious work and indentured migration characterise the labour migration of these low‐valued, transient workers in Singapore as elsewhere in Southeast Asia (Devasahayam ; Hewison and Kallenberg ; Kaur ; Transient Workers Count Too, TWC2, ; Yea , ). Yet what these characterisations fail to adequately convey is the paradoxical nature of such policies in an era also characterised by heightened international human rights concerns for refugees and trafficking victims.…”

Section: Seeing Like the Singaporean Statementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, broader labour market dynamics in Singapore mitigate against workers leaving exploitative work situations. Central to the organisation of international labour migration in the contemporary period in Asia is the role of brokerage arrangements in which agencies and individual recruiters—and in the Singaporean case bosses of companies themselves—extract enormous fees for the placement of workers and arrangement of their documentation and transportation (Devasahayam ; Kaur ; Lindquist et al ; see also Peck and Theodore on the similar role of “temp agencies” in the United States). Because migrant workers rarely have the savings to pay these costs up front, they either sell assets (especially land, and sometimes family jewellery) and/or borrow excessive sums from friends, relatives, informal moneylenders and banks.…”

Section: “Untrafficking” Labour In Singapore's Victim Identification mentioning

confidence: 99%

Trafficked Enough? Missing Bodies, Migrant Labour Exploitation, and the Classification of Trafficking Victims in Singapore

Yea

2015

Antipode

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Critical geographical research has recently drawn attention to representations of vulnerable or exploited groups that articulate racist or neo‐colonial imaginations, including where these geographical imaginations are implicated in the classification and characterisation of groups for legal purposes. In the case of vulnerable groups of migrants such practices can be invoked to create distinctions that justify the socio‐spatial exclusion or containment, thus oftentimes having profound implications for real people who must manoeuvre the consequences of classification. The paper builds on this strand of inquiry by exploring the imaginaries surrounding trafficking victimhood and the implications of classification for temporary labour migrants in Singapore into “trafficked” and “non‐trafficked” categories. I argue that in the Singaporean context government interest in maintaining the current labour/migration regime is equally as significant as racist and neo‐colonial imaginations and intersect with the latter in productive ways to sort vulnerable migrants into categories of trafficked and non‐trafficked.

show abstract

“…The guest worker programme integrated two basic principles. Workers would be admitted under a work permit system and would then be bound to particular employers and localities (Kaur 2010a,b). Importantly, this policy change coincided not only with labour shortages but also with considerable fragmentation in the Malaysian labour market.…”

Section: Malaysia's National Development Strategy Oil Palm Migrant mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Migrant workers were provided with visit passes for temporary employment in Malaysia distinguished by employment category, and these were used to regulate their admission and place of residence. Migrant workers were not allowed to bring dependents with them and the overall objective was to ensure that their employment remained temporary (Kanapathy , 4; Kaur 2010a,b).…”

Section: Malaysia's National Development Strategy Oil Palm Migrant mentioning

confidence: 99%

Plantation Systems, Labour Regimes and the State in Malaysia, 1900–2012

Kaur

2014

Journal of Agrarian Change

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Plantation production systems, plantation labour regimes and a foreign workforce typified European investment in the largeMalaya's broader incorporation into the international economy in the late nineteenth century and the country's development path under British rule was connected with the demand for Empire commodities and the Industrial Revolution in the West. Rubber became the leading agricultural commodity and its expansion was connected to the plantation mode of production, new agricultural techniques and capitalist ecological intervention in agriculture. The plantation system differed from previous production methods because it originated from outside the region, and was organized and managed by Western (predominantly British) enterprise. It was characterized by unified management of huge units, whose viability was dependent on substantial capital investment and mobilization of large amounts of labour. The Amarjit Kaur, Professor of Economic History, UNE Business School, University of New England, Armidale NSW 2351, Australia. E-mail: akaur@une.edu.au Acknowledgement is made to the anonymous reviewers.

show abstract

Labour migration in Southeast Asia: migration policies, labour exploitation and regulation

Cited by 70 publications

References 6 publications

Foreign workers and productivity in an emerging economy: The case of Malaysia

Foreign workers and productivity in an emerging economy: The case of Malaysia

Trafficked Enough? Missing Bodies, Migrant Labour Exploitation, and the Classification of Trafficking Victims in Singapore

Plantation Systems, Labour Regimes and the State in Malaysia, 1900–2012

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About