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.
Reaping the economic and social benefits of labour mobility: ASEAN 2015
The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is moving towards closer economic integration among its Member States, including the free mobility of professionals and highly skilled workers. The freer flow of goods and capital will place path dependence, which encourages firms that already hire migrant workers to expand, in competition with wage convergence, which will reduce incentives for international labour migration. Most current AEC migrants are low skilled and most new migrants are likely to be low skilled. Governments need to acknowledge this reality and develop policies to liberalize and regularize the cross-border movements of labour. They cause mutual recognition agreements to promote the movement of professionals, and regulate the recruitment and employment of migrant workers, to ensure that migrant and local workers are treated equally. Demographic and economic realities suggest international labour migration within the AEC will increase making the implementation of the 2007 ASEAN Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers imperative, to ensure that labour migration promotes cooperation rather than conflict between AEC Member States.
Challenges and opportunities of international migration for the EU, its member states, neighboring countries, and regions : a Policy Note
The note aims at identifying key challenges and opportunities, including win-win solutions that would allow sending and receiving countries in and around Europe to benefit most from geographic mobility of people. The note (i) highlights demographic, economic and political gaps explaining international migration; (ii) explores the main options for the EU member states and reviews the experiences of traditional countries of immigration; (iii) investigates the implications of a pro-active recruitment approach, including the impacts on both sending and receiving countries; and (iv) sketches the institutional requirements and necessary changes to move toward win-win solutions, identifying areas of potential cooperation between sending and receiving countries. The paper concludes with a short summary and an outlook on open data and research questions.