Strengthening social protection for ASEAN migrant workers through social security agreements
Looks at specific actions that ASEAN countries can take to strengthening the social protection of migrant workers within the region. Argues for the importance of agreements between countries to coordinate their social security systems in order to ensure that migrant workers and their families have access to the programs of the countries in which they are working.
Protecting and Integrating Migrant Workers in ASEAN Social Security Systems
This paper considers how social security systems in Southeast Asia may be adapted in order to improve the level of protection and integration of low-skilled migrant workers and to facilitate the mobility of workers, without negatively affecting the economic situation in the region. This involves a discussion of existing unilateral, bilateral and multilateral arrangements within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Best practices within ASEAN countries, such as the Philippines, and examples of bilateral agreements involving ASEAN countries containing social security provisioning, are examined against the backdrop of the developing international and regional standards framework. The role of countries of origin in providing social protection for migrant workers and the portability of benefits is also briefly discussed. It is submitted that a co-ordinated, integrated yet streamlined approach may be able to provide solutions and options for excluded categories of migrant workers and their family members, including informal economy workers and undocumented migrants. All of this needs to be supported by suitable regulatory and institutional arrangements which inform and facilitate the adoption of key interventions at a national, bilateral and regional level to enhance the social security position of ASEAN migrant workers and, to the extent required, their families.
Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History
This book explores the history of the Dominican Republic as it evolved from the first European colony in the Americas into a modern nation under the rule of Rafael Trujillo. It investigates the social foundations of Trujillo's exceptionally enduring and brutal dictatorship (1930-1961) and, more broadly, the way power is sustained in such non-democratic regimes. The author reveals how the seemingly unilateral imposition of power by Trujillo in fact depended on the regime's mediation of profound social and economic transformations, especially through agrarian policies that assisted the nation's large independent peasantry. By promoting an alternative modernity that sustained peasants' free access to land during a period of economic growth, the regime secured peasant support as well as backing from certain elite sectors. This book thus elucidates for the first time the hidden foundations of the Trujillo regime.