OPEN ACCESS Family, Migration & Dignity Special Issue Immigration regimes in Southeast Asia: impacts, costs and issues Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand Supang Chantavanich ABSTRACT Immigration in the Southeast Asian region took place many decades ago when no official boundaries existed and crossborder migration was not a known issue. Chinese labourers were sent into Malaysia and Thailand to work as waged workers in the mining industry and on the construction of water and land transportation routes in 19th Century. Indonesian workers were also employed in the rubber plantation in Malaysia. At the end of the 20th Century, new waves of immigrant workers from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos came to be labourers in Thailand. Countries like the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand also sent their nationals to work overseas, making Southeast Asia one of the highest human mobility hubs in the world. Immigration regimes in the region have emerged within such context. Focusing on the impacts, costs and issues of immigration with special reference to the family will be the theme of this paper. I will discuss the various impacts of immigration on both sending and receiving countries as well as address the related issues. http://dx.doi.org/10.5339/ qproc.2013.fmd.17 2013 Chantavanich, licensee Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY 3.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Cite this article as: Chantavanich S. Immigration regimes in Southeast Asia: impacts, costs and issues, QScience Proceedings 2013, Family, Migration & Dignity Special Issue http://dx.doi. org/10.5339/qproc.2013.fmd.17
2 of 6 pages INTRODUCTION: IMPACTS AND COSTS OF IMMIGRATION We can identity two major types of impacts, i.e., the impact on place of origin and the one on destination. Impacts on place of origin include brain drain, feminization of labour, impacts on family, remittances and recruitment costs. Each of them will be discussed separately. Brain drain is an issue in countries of origin like the Philippines where more than 8 million of their population emigrate overseas for employment. Figure 1 shows the proportion of Filipinos who are employed at home and abroad by level of education. Figure 1. Filipinos employed at home and abroad by educational attainment Source: Alburo and Abella. Skilled Labour Migration from Developing Countries: Study on the Philippines. ILO. 2002. It is obvious that those with a college education are the biggest group of workers employed abroad. As a result, the most educated people are not contributing to the development of their own country, while those who stay are less skilled. Feminization of labour migration is another characteristic of some Asian countries. An increasing number of women who migrate for work can be observed in Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. In the Philippines, 46% of 4.8 million migrant workers are female while 68% of the 2.55 million Indonesian and 75% of the 1.2 million Sri Lanka migrant workers are women. The significant number of female migration has an impact on family in country of origin. Studies in places where women migrate for work indicate both positive and negative impacts of female migration. In Indonesia, women s family finance improves a lot especially in cases where the woman migrated to work in Saudi Arabia. However, negative impacts seem to be more significant; women leave at an early age (under 21) making them vulnerable. There were cases of abuse, harassment and torture by employers, and women have health problems because of poor working conditions. Impacts of emigration on a migrant s family are significant. Research indicated both positive and negative consequences but negative ones are more obvious. Negative impacts include family disruption, distant family relationship or lack of closeness, and husbands of female migrants entering into gambling, drinking and womanizing (Sukamdi 2001). Kannika (2001) also mentioned cases of divorce and separation among Thai migrants, and there were cases of pregnancy while living abroad as well as abortion. However, those people could make use of their social network to help solve family problems. Some Filipino migrants
3 of 6 pages learned how to keep better family relationships and parenthood transnationally, leading to strong ties and closeness within family (Asis 2001). Another type of female migration that is not directly related to family, but shows an increasing trend, is marriage migration. Starting from female migrants entering into Europe as guest of their European boyfriends (mainly Germany and the Netherlands), the flow become a mail-ordered-bride business, which mixes in with transnational prostitution and sex trafficking. Recently, Southeast Asian young females are invited to get married to Asian men, e.g., Vietnamese girls marrying Korean men. Recruitment cost has a profound impact on migration for employment. Since demands for overseas jobs increase steadily, recruitment services have become a profit-making business whereby many licensed and non-licensed recruitment agencies are offering services. Job seekers from Southeast Asia have to pay a high recruitment fee. For example, Thai workers who want to go and work undocumented in Japan need to pay as high as US$ 16,600 for a job with no work contract. Korea and Israel are two other popular destinations where migrants pay US$ 5,000 in recruitment fees. The costs become higher when host countries increase their restrictive immigration regulations resulting in workers dependency on recruitment agencies to overcome such restrictions, sometimes by using irregular methods to travel and work in a destination country. Table 1 shows recruitment costs in Bangladesh and Thailand. Bangladesh to Recruitment costs (US$) Saudi Arabia (male) 4,000-5,400 UAE, Libya 2,700-3,400 Thailand to Qatar 2,700 Japan 16,600 Korea 5,000 Taiwan 3,300 Singapore 2,600 Israel 5,000 UAE 3,300 Table 1. Recruitment costs (in US$) in Bangadesh and Thailand Source: Tasneem Siddhiqui. Bangladesh. 2011. ARCM. Thailand. 2012. Remittance constitutes another significant issue in the country of origin. Workers go for overseas job with the intention to have income, some savings and to send remittance back home. Workers family and households receive such remittances and use them for various purposes: buying new plots of land, repairing homes, investing in some family business, spending for childrens education, or just using it for household daily expenses. Ten Asian countries received a remarkable amount of remittances in 2010. In billions of US Dollars, China (51.0), Philippines (21.3), Vietnam (7.2), Indonesia (7.1), Thailand (1.8), Malaysia (1.6), Cambodia (0.4), Mongolia (0.2), Myanmar (0.2) and Samoa (0.1) all reaped significant financial benefits from migrant remittances (World Bank, 2011). This contributes to national revenue as a percentage of GDP. Asian countries that received high amounts of remittance in relation to GDP in 2011 are the Philippines (11.7%), Vietnam (7.01%), Mongolia (4.6%), Cambodia (3.0%), Indonesia (1.3%) and China (1.0%). It is obvious that remittance becomes an important source of national revenue for many countries. However, World Bank statistics on remittances only reflects the transfer of money through formal channels
4 of 6 pages like banks. An unknown but high amount of remittance is also sent through informal channels like middlemen, brokers and agents. IMPACTS ON PLACE OF DESTINATION Once immigrants are in host countries, various impacts will emerge, i.e., increasing dependency on foreign workers, economic gain due to ample labour supply, immigrant settlement and community, welfare and protection programs and initiatives addressing the issue of child immigrant. Here, we will discuss impacts that are most relevant to the focus on family. Migrant s settlement and attempts to become long-stayers are well recognized in most destination countries. First, immigrants have a tendency to stay near each other due to their existing networks in host countries. Preferably, they want to stay as family units rather than as individuals. Such settlement is advantageous for them because they can benefit from the social networks in their daily life, e.g., use of their own language in most communication channels, send children to a day care center or schools, purchase products like food and other materials imported from their country of origin. This leads to the emergence of an immigrant ethnic enclave or community (Massey et al. 1993). On the host country s side, its segregation policy for immigrants in its urban planning may exist or not depending on the awareness of local government. In a mixed settlement pattern, sometimes, social tension can be sensed by local people who live near migrant communities and this leads to what we call native unease, as in this example: Sometimes discontent may arise from rather more symbolic changes to the built environment. In the Berlin district of Pankow, residents rebelled against plans for a mosque, which was finally built despite years of opposition. It s a relatively modest building, hidden behind a Kentucky Fried Chicken, but the people involved in the protest whom the mayor of the borough describes as predominantly moderates are convinced the new house of prayer won t be of any benefit to their neighbourhood. (Paul Scheffer. Immigration Nations. 2011) Immigrants in receiving countries always need some kinds of social protection, especially healthcare, education for children and housing. Most host countries in Southeast Asia do not provide free healthcare service and education to migrants with no legal status. In Singapore, immigrant workers are not allowed to marry either local or immigrant partners female migrant workers who get pregnant will be sent back home. In Thailand, undocumented migrant workers have limited access to free medical service and the universal healthcare scheme. But all children can go to local schools or to learning centers established by NGOs or by migrants themselves. None of them can benefit from the national low-income housing scheme (Chantavanich and Vungsiripaisal 2005). Many United Nations conventions ILO conventions addressing the disadvantaged status of immigrants are not ratified by all Southeast Asian nations. The last impact on host countries is the existence of a significant number of child immigrants and the challenge that lies in the protection of such a group. Some of them became child workers, and those under the worst form of child labour were vulnerable to exploitation. In a coastal province of Thailand, where immigrants outnumber the local population, 70 percent of children who are working in the province are migrant children. Those under the worst form of child labour suffered from dangerous working conditions, carried heavy loads, and faced a lack of work safety equipment and excessively bad treatment by employers and supervisors
5 of 6 pages (included scolding, beating and forced overtime). A percentage of (6-24%) migrant children are under such conditions according to a case study in Thailand (Chantavanich, et al. 2007). Access to schooling is also limited. Many children preferred to work than to go to school because they could earn income. ISSUES IN THE IMMIGRATION REGIME: A NEED FOR PROTECTION POLICY As immigration in the ASEAN region becomes more widespread, there is an increased focus on the protection policy of migrants. Three areas of such policy cover genderized work and the family, family reunion and child immigration. Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka send their female workers into the global labour market because of some market preferences. Such preferences can be both positive and negative to women. They can be selected by employers because of their gender qualities, but they can also be vulnerable. Genderized work translates as jobs that require female qualities to fulfill, e.g., caring, special attention, perseverance, refinement. Asian women are selected into genderized work as described by Castles and Miller: Asian female workers are considered as docile, obedient, willingness to give personal service employed in a typically female job, domestic work, entertainment, restaurant and hotel staff, as well as assembly-line work in clothing and electronics. (Castles and Miller 2009) Asian female workers certainly have to leave their family at home. Issues lie in the many questions such as: Who will look after children? Who will do the housework? How will husbandwife and mother-child relationships be affected by female migration? It is essential for the immigration regime to protect the family institution around female workers at the stages before, during and after their mobility. A closely-related issue is family reunification. Migrants, both male and female, should be assisted and encouraged to have family reunions, either in host or destination countries. Many international laws and family reunification rights confirm such needs, for example: CRC 1989 art. 9 Child s Right to Family Reunification ICPRMW 1990 art. 44 Protection of the Unity of the Families of migrant workers ASEAN s Declaration on the Protection of Migrant Workers ILO conventions also address the issue of family, children and genderized work as follows: C 143: Migrant Workers (Treatment for Worker and Family) 1975 C 156: Workers with Family Responsibilities 1981 C 182: Child Labour C 189: Decent Work for Domestic Workers At the regional level, the ASEAN Declaration on the Protection of Migrant Workers indicates the responsibility of both receiving states and sending states in protecting migrant workers, but no specific section outlines the plan around female and child migrants or family reunification. The region seems to express a lack of readiness to address such issue. Child workers in the last issue challenging the immigration regime globally. As children are easily controlled, receive lower wages, typically lack awareness of their rights and are eager to earn income, employers can be very exploitative. Families can protect children to a certain extent. But the major protection mechanism must come from the host countries and their respective civil society groups. In Thailand, most cases of police raids into the work places where child workers were employed resulted from telephone calls made by people who lived near the factories
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