The current economic crisis highlights the risks migrant workers face that need to be carefully considered in improving the management of migration flows.  Balancing the costs and benefits is a continuing challenge for both sending and receiving countries.  ASEAN countries experience a wide range of problems in managing labour migration, requiring empirically based research to guide public policy choices.

The project seeks to build knowledge and understanding of existing policy and institutional arrangements for managing labour migration and its development impacts in order to inform policy discussions, regulatory design and implementation decisions in these areas.

The project will provide assistance to the Philippines Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), and their research partners in Cambodia (Cambodia Development Research Institute, CDRI), Indonesia (SMERU Research Institute), Malaysia (Institute of Malaysian and International Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, IKMAS), Singapore (Singapore Institute of International Affairs, SIIA), and Thailand (Thailand Development Research Institute, TDRI), to undertake joint research on issues relating to the management and regulation of international migration in ASEAN.  It aims to build knowledge and strengthen research to policy linkages to inform policy and institutional arrangements that manage international migration.

Project has three main parts:

(a) organization and stock-taking review 

(b) the conduct of research

(c) dissemination 

The focus of the study will be in understanding existing policy and institutional arrangements in managing international migration and remittance flows and their development impacts with the objective of informing future discussions and decisions in these areas. The specific research issues for the cooperating countries include:

1. Hastening regularization of irregular international migrants in the GMS (Cambodia)

2. International migrant workers in a decentralized Indonesia: a review of local regulations on migrant workers

3. Protecting international labour migrants: The Philippine experience

4. Managing unskilled and semi-skilled worker inflows in Singapore

5. Regional cooperation initiatives and bilateral agreements in managing of international migration (Thailand)

6. Policy on Irregular Migrants in Malaysia: An Analysis of its Implementation and Effectiveness