Foreword

Summary

Driven by demographic changes, and reinforced by intensifying globalization, international labour mobility has been on the rise in recent decades in the Asia-Pacific region. Demographic and economic projections show that labour migration in the region will, if anything, have to accelerate over time. It seems that, after trade and investment, labour mobility constitutes the final frontier for regional integration among the Asia-Pacific economies. Economic analyses show that the international movement of labour benefits both the net labour origin economies and the net labour destination economies, not to mention the migrant workers themselves. In reality, however, such flows are associated with political and social problems in both types of economies. Individual governments react and respond, often in ways that increase business costs, forego overall net benefit from labour movements, fail to protect migrants from exploitation, and fail to support the kind of educational and socialization efforts that would smooth the integration of migrants into new home communities.

Despite demonstrative needs for immigration in some Asia-Pacific economies, heavy dependence on migrant remittances in others, and heated domestic political debates over migration, to our knowledge, there has been no major region-wide discussion of the issues associated with international labour mobility in the Asia-Pacific region. The present volume seeks to fill this gap by offering synthesis papers stemming from the studies on international labour migration in twenty Asia-Pacific economies which were jointly undertaken by the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) and the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) in 2007-2008 under the theme of Demographic Change and International Labour Mobility in the Asia-Pacific Region: Implications for Business and Regional Economic Integration.

The twenty case studies covered Japan, Republic of Korea, China, Hong Kong, China, Chinese Taipei, Mongolia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, United States, and Canada. These case studies were prepared by experts who were identified by the respective committees of PECC. These were presented in a joint PECC-ABAC conference held in Seoul, Korea, on March 25-26, 2008, which was organized by the Korea National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation (KOPEC).