Unfair and Unjust: Temporary Labour Migration Programmes in and from Asia and the Pacific as Barriers to Migrant Justice

Abstract

Temporary labour migration programmes (TLMPs) are the most available option for regular migration available to low-wage migrant workers from Asia and the Pacific, and widely promoted by States and international actors as a development solution. This is in spite of longstanding evidence that such programmes carry considerable risks to the rights and well-being of the migrants on the programmes and for their families including in their access to justice. Many are consistently excluded by policy or practice from access to justice and remedies for human rights abuses whether in or outside the workplace. This chapter concurs that enhancing remedy for migrant workers is important, but we seek to go further in advocating for a comprehensive rights-based approach to labour migration that considers the migrant as fully human, with life and rights beyond the workplace. Building from an understanding of social justice as a societal organising principle that centres fairness in relations between individuals within society, this chapter takes an intersectional lens to argue that TLMPs are fundamentally unfair from both a human rights and social justice perspective and calls for systemic policy reform of labour migration pathways along these migration corridors.