Patterns and governance of labour migration in ASEAN: regional policies and migration corridors

Abstract

Labour migration in Southeast Asia continues apace with globalisation, the greater integration of Southeast Asian economies in the world economy and regional demographic transformations. Since the 1870s, the region's further incorporation into the international economy interconnected with the spread of capitalism and imperialism and demand for Asian mineral and tropical commodities for the West's industrial requirements. The European colonisers' economic policies hence presaged the transformation of the existing geography of production and development of specific Asian labour systems. Both colonial establishments and Chinese entrepreneurs recruited mostly Chinese, Indian and Javanese male migrants for wage labour in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.