i

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK
OF ASIAN MIGRATIONS

Housing more than half of the global population, Asia is a region characterised by increasingly
diverse forms of migration and mobility. Offering a wide-​ranging overview of the field of Asian
migrations, this new handbook seeks to examine and evaluate the flows of movement within
Asia, as well as those into and out of the continent. It offers in-​depth analysis of both empirical
and theoretical developments in the field, and includes key examples and trends such as British
colonialism, Chinese diaspora, labour migration, the movement of women, and recent student
migration.
Organised into thematic parts, the topics cover:

• The historical context to migration in Asia

• Modern Asian migration pathways and characteristics
• The reconceptualising of migration through Asian experiences
• Contemporary challenges and controversies in Asian migration practices and policies

Contributing to the retheorising of the subject area of international migration from non-​west-
ern experience, the Routledge Handbook of Asian Migrations will be useful to students and scholars
of migration, Asian development and Asian studies in general.

Gracia Liu-​Farrer is Professor of Sociology at the Graduate School of Asia-​Pacific Studies,

Waseda University, Japan.

Brenda S.A. Yeoh is Professor in the Department of Geography at the National University
of Singapore, and Research Leader of the Asian Migration Cluster at NUS’s Asia Research
Institute.
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ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK
OF ASIAN MIGRATIONS

Edited by Gracia Liu-​Farrer

and Brenda S.A. Yeoh
iv

First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Gracia Liu-​Farrer and
Brenda S.A.Yeoh; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Gracia Liu-​Farrer and Brenda S.A.Yeoh to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known
or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​95985-​9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-​1-​315-​66049-​3 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Out of House Publishing
v

CONTENTS

List of illustrations viii

Acknowledgement ix
Notes on contributors x

Introduction: Asian migrations and mobilities: continuities,

conceptualisations and controversies 1
Gracia Liu-​Farrer and Brenda S.A. Yeoh

PART I
Asian migrations in the historical context 19

1 Colonial and postcolonial migrations 21

Sunil S. Amrith

2 The changing meanings of diaspora: the Chinese in Southeast Asia 33

Els van Dongen and Hong Liu

PART II
Asian migration regimes and pathways 49

3 Temporary labour migration 51

Michiel Baas

4 Intimate migrations: the case of marriage migrants and sex

workers in Asia 64
Maria Cecilia Hwang and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas

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Contents

5 Intra-​Asia higher education mobilities 75

Rochelle Yun Ge and Kong Chong Ho

6 Diaspora engagement and state policies of return migration in Asia 92

Elaine Lynn-​Ee Ho and Madeleine Lim Pei Wei

7 Ethnic return migration in East Asia: Japanese Brazilians in Japan and

conceptions of homeland 103
Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda

8 Conceptualising Asian medical travel as medical migrations 114

Andrea Whittaker

9 From Asia with money: the emigration of the wealthy 128

Gracia Liu-​Farrer

PART III
Reconceptualising migration through Asian experiences 139

10 Migration and the production of migrant mobilities 141

Weiqiang Lin and Marielle Stigum Gleiss

11 The infrastructural turn in Asian migration 152

Johan Lindquist and Biao Xiang

12 The cultural and economic logics of migration 162

Jamie Coates

13 Internal and international migration: separate or integrated systems? 173

Ronald Skeldon

14 Human trafficking or voluntary migration? Lessons learned from

across Asia 184
Pardis Mahdavi

15 Critical expatriate studies: changing expatriate communities in Asia

and the blurring boundaries of expatriate identity 196
James Farrer

PART IV
Challenges in Asian migration 209

16 Migration, poverty and source communities 211

Robert Cole and Jonathan Rigg
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Contents

17 Remittances, migration, and trade 223

Philip Martin

18 Transnational migrations and plural diversities: encounters in

global cities 238
Brenda S.A.Yeoh

19 Growing up in transnational families: children’s experiences

and perspectives 250
Theodora Lam, Shirlena Huang, Brenda S.A.Yeoh, and Jocelyn O. Celero

20 Non-​citizen political engagement 264

Erin Aeran Chung and Rameez Abbas

21 Irregular migration in Asia: are new solutions in sight? 277

Maruja M.B. Asis and Graziano Battistella

22 Mobilities on edge: migration at the margins of nation-​states 288

Juan Zhang

Index 299

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures
5.1 Number of Chinese government scholarships provided to
international students 82
8.1 Overlapping migration fields intersecting with medical migrations 115
17.1 Remittances and other flows to developing countries, 1990–​2014 227
17.2 Factor price equalisation with freer trade 231

Map
22.1 The China–​Vietnam borderlands 292

Tables
5.1 Percentage of Asian students hosted by leading host countries
in East Asia 76
5.2 Proportion of Asian students hosted in Asian universities 80
5.3 Reasons for migration 81
5.4 Government scholarship students divided by continents in
China (2009–​2011) 83
5.5 Comparison between Asian and non-​Asian students on the reasons
for studying in China 83
5.6 Students’ plan after graduation 85
5.7 Plan after graduation for international students studying in Singapore 86
5.8 International students’ social network in Singapore 87
17.1 International migrants in 2015 224
17.2 Migration humps: trade and low-​skill migration as complements 234
20.1 Selected non-​citizen populations in Asia 266
20.2 Modes of non-​citizen political engagement 267

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We would like to thank Leanne Hinves, our commissioning editor at Routledge, for inviting
us to embark on this project, and all the contributors for their enthusiastic support. We wish to
give special thanks to our capable research assistants,Wei Ning Law from National University of
Singapore and An Huy Tran and Mira Malick from Waseda University, who helped in the pro-
cess of the manuscript preparation. This book project is also supported by Waseda University’s
English academic research book publication grant.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Rameez Abbas is Assistant Professor in the College of International Security Affairs at the
National Defense University in Washington, DC, where she teaches courses on South Asian pol-
itics and international relations.  Among her publications is “Internal Migration and Citizenship
in India” in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2016). She holds a PhD in political science
from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Sunil S. Amrith is Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of History
at Harvard University, where he is also a director of the Centre for History and Economics.
He is an historian of South and Southeast Asia. Amrith is the author of Migration and Diaspora
in Modern Asia (2011) and Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of
Migrants (2013). He is currently working on the environmental history of modern India.

Maruja M.B. Asis is the Director of Research and Publications at the Scalabrini Migration
Center in Manila.

Michiel Baas is a Research Fellow with the Asia Research Institute of the National University
of Singapore. The overall theme in his work is the Indian middle class, focusing on IT profes-
sionals in Bangalore, Indian students in Australia, mid-​level skilled migrants in Singapore, and
new middle-​class professionals in urban India. In recent years he has published on questions of
migration and transnationalism, the body and masculinity, as well as racism and violence. His
ORCID (orcid.org) is: 0000-​0003-​4405-​146X.

Graziano Battistella is the Director of the Scalabrini Migration Center in Manila, and the
founding editor of the Asian and Pacific Migration Journal.

Jocelyn O. Celero recently obtained her PhD in International Studies at Waseda University-​
Graduate School of Asia-​Pacific Studies, Tokyo, Japan. Her dissertation examined the transna-
tional life trajectories of 1.5-​and second-​generation Japanese-​Filipinos.

Erin Aeran Chung is the Charles D. Miller Associate Professor of East Asian Politics in the
Department of Political Science and Co-​Director of the Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship

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Contributors

(RIC) Program at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She specialises in East Asian
political economy, international migration, and comparative racial politics. Her first book,
Immigration and Citizenship in Japan, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2010 and
translated into Japanese and published by Akashi Shoten in 2012. She is currently completing
her second book, Immigrant Incorporation in East Asian Democracies.

Jamie Coates is interested in how mobility and creativity shape perceptions of commonality,
self and political possibility. Empirically he has worked on Sino-​Japanese migration, media and
tourism, with particular focus on how these issues affect young Chinese efforts to reimagine
co-​ethnic and regional identities. He completed his PhD at the Australian National University,
and has since taught at the University of Sheffield in the UK, and conducted research at Waseda
University in Japan.

Robert Cole is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography at the National

University of Singapore. His research interests surround economic integration, agrarian change
and environmental issues in rural contexts of Southeast Asia, focusing on the Mekong countries.
His PhD research explores the role of transboundary production of agricultural commodities in
driving social change in the uplands of northern Laos.

James Farrer is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Graduate Program in Global
Studies at Sophia University in Tokyo, specialising in urban sociology in East Asia, researching
sexuality, nightlife, expatriate communities, and food cultures.

Rochelle Yun Ge obtained her PhD from Sociology at the National University of Singapore.
She was a visiting fellow at the Harvard-​Yenching Institute and worked in the University of
Macau. Her recent research interests are in the area of internationalisation of higher education
in Asia, including but not limited to educational organisation management, international stu-
dent mobilities, curriculum development and policy analysis.

Marielle Stigum Gleiss is Associate Professor of Social Sciences at the Department of Religion
and Society, MF Norwegian School of Theology in Oslo. Her research interests include the
politics of civil society engagement, migrant labour and discourse analysis. She has published
articles in China Information, Media, Culture & Society and the Journal of Chinese Political Science.

Elaine Lynn-​ Ee Ho is Associate Professor at the Department of Geography and Senior

Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Her research
addresses how citizenship is changing as a result of migration in countries like Singapore,
China and Myanmar. This research agenda considers four topics:  immigration and emigra-
tion in Singapore; transnational ageing and care in the Asia-​Pacific, international student
migration to China, and border mobilities between Myanmar and China. Her ORCID
is: 0000-​0002-​5400-​7668.

Kong Chong Ho is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Arts and Social
Sciences, National University of Singapore. Trained as an urban sociologist at the University
of Chicago, his research interests are in the political economy of cities, higher education, and
youth. Dr Ho is an editorial board member of Pacific Affairs and the International Journal of
Comparative Sociology. Recent higher education publications include “International Student
Mobility and After-​Study Lives: the portability and prospects of overseas education in Asia”,

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Contributors

Population, Space and Place (2016); and “The University’s Place in Asian Cities”, Asia Pacific
Viewpoint (2014).

Shirlena Huang is Associate Professor of Geography at the Faculty of Arts and Social
Sciences, National University of Singapore. She is also a member of the Steering Committee
of the Faculty’s Migration Cluster. Her research focuses mainly on issues at the intersec-
tion of transnational migration, gender and family, with a particular focus on the themes of
care labour migration and transnational families within the Asia-​Pacific region. Her ORCID
is: 0000-​0001-​8932-​6362.

Maria Cecilia Hwang is a PhD candidate in American Studies at Brown University in

Providence, Rhode Island. Her research interests include gender and migration, human traf-
ficking, and sex work.

Theodora Lam is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University
of Singapore. She obtained her PhD in Geography from NUS and her dissertation focused on
understanding changing gender subjectivities, web of care and relationships within the family
in the wake of transnational labour migration. Her research interests cover transnational migra-
tion, children’s geographies and gender studies, and she has also published on themes relating to
migration, citizenship and education. Her ORCID is: 0000-​0003-​0342-​5808.

Madeleine Lim Pei Wei is a research assistant and undergraduate at the Department of
Geography, National University of Singapore. Her graduating thesis considers the integration
experiences of Chinese migrants who reside in Singapore’s public-​housing estates, where social
mixing is mandated by state policy.

Weiqiang Lin is Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography, National University of

Singapore. His research interests lie at the intersection of mobilities, (air) transport, infrastructure
and transnationalism. He has published in a wide range of edited volumes and peer-​reviewed
journals, including Environment and Planning A, Environment and Planning D, Geoforum, Geopolitics,
Mobilities, Journal of Transport Geography and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. His
current research examines food logistics and their infrastructures in China and Singapore, as
well as their related politics. His ORCID is: 0000-​0002-​5484-​0860.

Johan Lindquist is Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Forum for Asian
Studies at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is a member of the editorial committees
of Public Culture and Pacific Affairs, has published articles in journals such as the Journal of the
Royal Anthropological Institute, Mobilities, Public Culture, Pacific Affairs, and International Migration
Review, is the Co-​Editor of  Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity  (2013), the author of  The
Anxieties of Mobility:  Development and Migration in the Indonesian Borderlands  (2009), and the
director of B.A.T.A.M. (2005).

Hong Liu is Tan Kah Kee Endowed Professor of Asian Studies at Nanyang Technological
University in Singapore, where he also serves as Chair of the School of Social Sciences and
Director of the Nanyang Centre for Public Administration. Prior to joining NTU in 2010,
he was Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore
and Chair Professor of East Asian Studies at the University of Manchester. His ORCID
is: 0000-​0003-​3328-​8429.

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Contributors

Gracia Liu-​Farrer is Professor of Sociology at the Graduate School of Asia-​Pacific Studies,

Waseda University, Japan, and leads the Migration and Citizenship Research Group at Waseda
Institute of Asia-​Pacific Studies. Her research mainly focuses on two areas: immigrants’ eco-
nomic, social and political practices in Japan, and how transnational labour mobilities change
meanings of work and organisational culture. Her ORCID is: 0000-​0003-​3241-​8703.

Pardis Mahdavi, PhD, is currently Chief Academic Officer and Acting Dean of the Josef Korbel
School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Before coming to Denver, she was
at Pomona College from 2006–2017 where she most recently served as professor and chair of
anthropology and director of the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College as well as Dean
of   Women. Her research interests include academic freedom, diversity and inclusion in higher
education, gendered labour, human trafficking, migration, sexuality, human rights, youth culture,
transnational feminism and public health in the context of changing global and political structures.
She has published four single authored books and one edited volume in addition to numerous
journal and news articles. She has been a fellow at the Social Sciences Research Council, the
American Council on Learned Societies, Google Ideas, and the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars.

Philip Martin is Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of

California-​Davis. He edits Rural Migration News (migration.ucdavis.edu), has served on sev-
eral federal commissions, testifies frequently before Congress, and works for UN agencies
around the world on labour and migration issues. Martin is an award-​winning author whose
research focuses on the impacts of migrant workers on labour markets in destination countries,
the effects of emigration and remittances on sending countries, and the recruitment business
that moves workers over borders. His most recent book is Merchants of Labour: Recruiters and
International Labour Migration (2017).

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the University
of Southern California. She writes on the labour and migration of women from the
Philippines.

Jonathan Rigg is Professor of Geography and Director of the Asia Research Institute at the
National University of Singapore. He has worked on migration and mobility since the 1980s
in Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as in Nepal and Sri Lanka. His most recent book is
Challenging Southeast Asian Development: The Shadows of Success (Routledge, 2016). His ORCID
is: 0000-​0002-​6563-​4640.

Ronald Skeldon is Emeritus Professor in Geography at the University of Sussex and

Professor of Human Geography in the Graduate School of Governance at Maastricht
University. After taking a BSc (Hons) at the University of Glasgow and a doctorate at the
University of Toronto with a study of migration in Peru, he became a Research Fellow at
the New Guinea Research Unit of the Australian National University. He then joined the
United Nations as a Census Advisor in Papua New Guinea before becoming a Population
Officer at the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok. For
many years he was on the faculties of the University of Hong Kong and subsequently the
University of Sussex. He continues to act as a consultant to international and research
organisations. He has published widely on issues around migration and development and
lives in Nairn, Scotland.

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Contributors

Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda is a Professor of Anthropology in the School of Human Evolution

and Social Change at Arizona State University. After receiving his PhD in anthropology in
1997 from the University of California at Berkeley, he was a Collegiate Assistant Professor at
the University of Chicago and then served as Associate Director of the Centre for Comparative
Immigration Studies at the University of California at San Diego. He is the author of Strangers
in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective (2003) and
Japanese American Ethnicity: In Search of Heritage and Homeland Across Generations (2016).

Els van Dongen is Assistant Professor of History at Nanyang Technological University in

Singapore, specialising in modern and contemporary China. Before joining NTU, she stud-
ied and conducted research in Belgium (University of Leuven), the Netherlands (Leiden
University), China (Central China Normal University and Peking University), and the United
States (Boston University). Her ORCID is: 0000-​0003-​2342-​0932.

Andrea Whittaker,  PhD, is Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Convenor of

Anthropology at the School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne. Specialising
in the field of medical anthropology, her current ARC Future Fellowship studies reproduc-
tive travel in Asia for surrogacy. Other recent research includes a project on medical travel in
Thailand and Malaysia and another on people living long term with HIV in rural and regional
Queensland. She is author of over 119 academic works and her most recent book is Thai in
vitro: Assisted Reproduction in Thailand (2015). Another book, International Surrogacy as Disruptive
Industry in Southeast Asia, is forthcoming.

Biao Xiang is a Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford, specialising in

migration and social changes in Asia. He is the author of Global “Body Shopping”, Transcending
Boundaries and numerous articles in both English and Chinese.

Brenda S.A. Yeoh is Professor (Provost’s Chair) in the Department of Geography as well
as Research Leader of the Asian Migration Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, National
University of Singapore. Her research interests include the politics of space in colonial and
postcolonial cities, and she has considerable experience working on a wide range of migration
research in Asia, including key themes such as cosmopolitanism and highly skilled talent migra-
tion; gender, social reproduction and care migration; migration, national identity and citizenship
issues; globalising universities and international student mobilities; and cultural politics, family
dynamics and international marriage migrants. She has published widely in these fields. Her
ORCID is: 0000-​0002-​0240-​3175.

Juan Zhang is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Social Science, the University of
Queensland. Her research interests include transnational mobilities, borders, labour migration,
and casinos in Asia. She has published in journals including: Current Sociology, Environment and
Planning D, Environment and Planning A, Gender, Place and Culture, among others. Her recent co-​
edited book is entitled The Art of Neighbouring: Making Relations Across China’s Borders (University
of Amsterdam Press, 2017). Juan serves on the editorial board of the journal Transitions: Journal
of Transient Migration. Her ORCID is : 0000-​0003-​3613-​6332.

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INTRODUCTION
Asian migrations and mobilities: continuities,
conceptualisations and controversies

Gracia Liu-​Farrer and Brenda S.A. Yeoh

Spanning a vast geographic area, Asia sustains nearly two-​thirds of the world’s population. In
this populous continent, people have never ceased to move across different boundaries looking
for a better life. Economic globalisation, demographic transformations and the expansion of
international education and tourism since the 1980s have resulted in even more rapid popula-
tion mobility. In particular, the attempts at creating integrated regional communities such as
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have further facilitated the movements of
people within Asia. People migrate –​sometimes permanently but more often than not provi-
sionally –​to work, to study, to marry, to retire, to escape insecure environments and to enjoy a
different climate and lifestyle.
In recent decades, given the wide array of social organisations, political regimes, economic
developmental pathways and cultural configurations in Asia, migration phenomena, patterns
and outcomes of mobility are necessarily complex. An increasing number of studies have
engaged in the new mobility patterns out of, into and within Asia. The field of Asian migration
has accumulated a vast scholarship over the years. This Handbook of Asian Migrations provides
an overview of this maturing field and contributes to outlining a conceptual framework for
understanding complex migration phenomena in Asia. It hopes to capture the new empirical
and theoretical developments that might serve as a departure for comparative migration studies
with other regions.
Theories of migration, and of international migration in particular, have been influenced by
the social experiences and political experiments of classical immigration countries, especially
those in North America. The specific political and social contexts in Asia, however, have pro-
duced migration phenomena that are fundamentally different from those observed in North
America, Europe and Oceania, thereby making it imperative for scholars working in an Asian
context to plough the field for new conceptualisations that are more useful in making sense of
grounded realities. There are several distinctive conundrums that shape migration in the Asian
context.
First, the region is replete with diversity and contradictions. It has the world’s richest and
poorest societies, and the most advanced and the least developed economies. The political
regimes in Asia range from liberal democratic secular states to totalitarian and religious funda-
mentalist governments. These extreme variations in development both drive and prohibit the
movements of people, and create complex patterns of mobility.

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Gracia Liu-Farrer & Brenda S.A. Yeoh

Second, Asian nations are torn between an anxiety for building strong national states
and an aspiration for creating integrated regional communities. In Asia, the former process
–​nation-​building –​is often hostile to population mobility, not only between states but also
within a country. The legitimacy of nation-​states is sometimes founded on the solidarity
and triumph of an ethnic majority. Nation-​building processes entail the reconstruction of a
dominant ethno-​national identity, and to ensure national security therefore means rendering
migrants, mostly ethnic others, as outsiders who have no place in the nation-​state. Given a
political history comprising largely postcolonial nation-​states, the institutional frameworks
for international migration did not develop until very recently in some Asian countries, and
are still non-​existent in others. As a consequence, despite the domestic demand for productive
and reproductive labour, or the international responsibility for humanitarian assistance, most
countries in Asia are reluctant to open their doors to foreign workers or refugees, let alone
allow them to settle or give them equal social rights. Those which have admitted migrants
in substantial numbers are struggling with thorny issues of the integration of immigrants.
How to deal with questions of ethno-​national identity when foreign workers and marriage
migrants who enter the nation-​state eventually stay and have children is a challenge many
Asian countries now have to face. Regional integration initiatives as seen in the formation of
ASEAN, on the other hand, demand lowering thresholds or removing barriers for the flow of
people as well as capital and goods, and has the potential for further increasing the mobility
of people across borders.
Third, a prominent feature of Asian migration stems from the contradiction between ris-
ing aspirations and desire for mobility among a broad spectrum of people on the one hand,
and the increasingly restrictive immigration regimes on the other. The ‘space’ between human
aspirations for mobility and stringent immigration control has been mediated by the rise of the
migration industry. At the same time, the development of flexible labour markets characterised
by sub-​contracting and the privatisation of migration management mean that intersections
between state and market actors are increasingly complex.
Almost all authors who contribute to this volume have done extensive and in-​depth field-
work about various migration phenomena in the Asian region.The results are grounded insights
into these diverse and distinctly Asian modes of migration. This introduction chapter lays out
the rationale for producing a handbook on Asian migrations, and provides a preview of the
contents included in this volume. Parts I and II on historical routes and contemporary pathways
survey the main characteristics of these migration phenomena, while Part III, on reconceptu-
alising migration through Asian experiences, showcases innovations in the field. Part IV then
discusses the challenges and controversies surrounding migration research and policies in Asia.
We conclude this chapter by discussing how studies in Asian migrations have contributed to
theoretical developments in the migration field in general, and some of the limitations of the
handbook.

Historical routes and contemporary pathways

Although in many ways contemporary migrations in Asia are unprecedented, the legacies of
earlier colonial population movements continue to exert influences. The patterns, routes and
issues of contemporary Asian migrations cannot be understood without examining the history
of Asian migrations, especially the mobility revolution from the mid-​19th century to the 1930s,
and the new legal and political regime that emerged through the upheaval of war and decolo-
nisation. In this handbook, two chapters provide the historical backdrop to the diverse strands

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Introduction

of contemporary Asian migration and seven chapters present the distinct migration pathways
in contemporary Asia.

Migrations in Asia’s history

Taken together,Amrith’s chapter on colonial and postcolonial migrations in Asia and van Dongen
and Liu’s chapter on the links between diaspora and migration explain how pre-​modern migra-
tions have established some of the main patterns and routes of migrations we see today. They
also provide insights into the shaping of the population geography of various regions in Asia, and
explore what migration means to both individuals and larger societies over time.
Focusing on two distinct migration populations, those from British India and China respec-
tively, Amrith shows that the mass migrations that took place from the mid-​19th century to
before World War Two were the outcome of larger global transformations. On the one hand,
the expansion of empires created labour demands in the frontiers of cultivation. On the other
hand, the migration revolution could not be possible without revolutions in technology. The
building of ocean liners, the extension of railways, and the linking of geographic places through
telegraph connections, have all facilitated the movements of people. Moreover, Asian migrations
have always been heavily mediated, and as Amrith shows, colonial migrations were predicated
on the work of brokers and intermediaries, such as the kangany system which recruited workers
through informal social networks.
In Asia, and China in particular, any positive value attributed to migration and mobility
is seen as a qualisign of a modern subjectivity (Coates, Chapter  12). Both Amrith’s and van
Dongen and Liu’s chapters provide historical explanations for why this is so. These chapters
demonstrate that it was through the movement of population that ideas were circulated. Asian
modernism was intimately associated with migration. Inasmuch as mass migration was to a
large extent brought on by the unstable economic and political situations in homelands as
well as the labour demands of colonial production, western ideas of nationhood and self-​
determination were also introduced through migrant populations. It is the former migrants
who were the harbingers of modern nation-​states in Asia. They naturally became symbols of
modernity themselves.
Focusing specifically on the unfolding migration history of the ethnic Chinese diaspora,
van Dongen and Liu provide further insights into the shaping of both migration pathways
and the cultural logic of migration through the conceptual lens of diaspora. The original
notion of ‘diaspora’ refers to ‘forced exiles with a shared group identity shaped by common
experiences of hardship, and a longing for a homeland in need of reconstruction’ (Chapter
2). In recent decades, in the same way that the notion of society and culture as bounded and
stable has been challenged, the idea that diaspora shares a group identity and desires eventual
return has also been questioned. This is further complicated by the fact that diaspora has also
become a ‘category of practice’ employed by states to claim populations beyond national
boundaries and ‘to appeal to loyalties’ (Brubaker 2005: 12, cited in van Dongen and Liu, this
volume, Chapter 2). From the pre-​modern era to post-​economic reform, Chinese migration
into Southeast Asia and migrants’ social interaction with different host nation-​states embody
the different meanings of diaspora. The emphasis on shared ethnic Chinese identity and the
labelling of overseas Chinese ‘huaqiao’ represent the Chinese state’s ostensible effort in court-
ing diaspora members in order to harness their economic power. These efforts on the one
hand elevate the status of overseas Chinese and, as a consequence, increase the desirability of
mobility in the mindsets of mainland Chinese. On the other hand, they also underlie state

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Gracia Liu-Farrer & Brenda S.A. Yeoh

policies that encourage one of the major migration patterns in Asia –​that of the ‘return
migration’, a topic we will return to later.

Contemporary migrations
One of the purposes of this handbook is to document the varied mobility regimes in con-
temporary Asia, aiming to capture different forms of migration that have taken place and the
institutional frameworks that facilitate or restrict them. Some of these migrations continue
historical patterns, while others have been produced in modern political and economic con-
texts. What often shows up in contemporary migration phenomena in Asia is the ambivalence
and anxiety of the nation-​states toward migrants, especially ‘the wanted but unwelcome ones’
(Zolberg 1987). Many industrialised states are scrambling to regulate migration by creating dif-
ferent schemes to classify people and exercise differentiated control. However, we see frequent
disjunctures between what the policies intend and what is taking place in actual practice. These
tensions take many different forms in the course of contemporary migrations in Asia.

Temporary labour and the many returns

While the so-​called ‘temporary labour migration’ is a key feature of contemporary population
mobility in Asia, it is also possibly one of the most problematic categories of migration. The
problems are multiple, ranging from the ethical to the conceptual. On the one hand, it is a highly
politicised as well as heavily mediated form of migration in host countries and economies such
as the Gulf States, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. While industries in these countries
struggle with labour shortage, labour migration, especially of the less-​skilled, is often seen as a
potential threat to social order, public security and national identity. In order to exercise control,
labour recruitment is often conducted through intermediaries, such as the kafala system in the
Gulf States (Babar and A. Gardner 2016), which has been criticised for labour rights abuse and
inhumane treatment of migrants. On the other hand, as Michiel Baas (Chapter 3) argues, there
are wide gaps between official discourses on ‘temporary labour migration’ and lived experiences.
In particular, temporariness is often an illusion which has to be maintained at a high human
cost using various use-​and-​discard measures. Similarly, who belongs to what kinds of ‘labour’ is
a subject of contention. The commonly used criteria, ‘unskilled’ or ‘skilled’, neither characterise
what the people are credentialed to do, nor describe the type of labour they actually perform.
Not only do the countries of immigration enforce migrants’ temporary sojourn and expect
eventual return to home countries, but sending country governments may also encourage tem-
porariness and actively design programmes to rein in their overseas citizens. From the perspec-
tive of sending countries, emigrants who return may bring back financial resources and human
capital. Ho and Lim’s Chapter 6 delineates three types of government return programmes in
Asian countries –​the management of labour migrants in unskilled and semi-​skilled work by
servicing as well as controlling them; the efforts to lure back highly skilled and capital-​bear-
ing migrants by providing incentives; and outreach efforts to encourage the return of ethnic
diaspora with the intention of reaping labour power or financial resources, depending on how
diaspora members are placed. Nonetheless, diaspora programmes are not necessarily successful,
and state-​sponsored return programmes are often disrupted by re-​emigration or may lead to an
under-​utilisation of human and financial resources.
The project of return, in the case of Japan and South Korea, is often manipulated by the
state into a side door for importing temporary low-​wage labour. Tsuda’s Chapter 7 uses the

4
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Introduction

specific example of nikkei (ethnic Japanese) Brazilians to illustrate the hypocrisy of such an eth-
nic project. Because Japan’s national identity clings to the myth of racial homogeneity, instead of
opening the door to foreign workers, the government used the legal admission of the nikkeijin
(ethnic Japanese people) as a solution to labour shortage. Meanwhile, official discourses con-
tinue to treat the policy as an opportunity for those of Japanese descent born abroad to explore
their ethnic heritage and visit their ancestral homeland. However, lacking cultural competen-
cies, these nikkeijin’s Japaneseness tends to be questioned and is often rejected. Their economic
roles as imported, unskilled, manual labour also marginalise them in Japanese society. As a result,
many are disillusioned by their experiences in their ancestral homeland and instead reorient
their homeland longing toward Brazil, where they were born.

Women in motion
Amidst sweeping changes in the constitution of migration flows from and within Asia in the
past decades, an important trend noted from the 1980s is that women are taking an increasingly
prominent part in contract labour systems. In some Asian countries, such as the Philippines and
Indonesia, women constitute the majority of emigrants (www.unpfa.org). These women are
not moving as dependents –​as wives or daughters –​but crossing borders as workers, students
and marriage partners. The feminisation of migration has much to do with labour and repro-
ductive demands resulting from economic globalisation, urbanisation and population ageing
(Oishi 2005).
For female migrants, mobility is often seen as a means of female empowerment, whether as
a conscious strategy or an unintended by-​product of the migration experience. Theoretically,
migration may improve women’s social position if it leads to increased participation in wage
employment, more control over earnings, and greater participation in family decision-​making.
However, while migration may potentially open up space for resistance, disruption and eman-
cipation, and in so doing reconfigure gender hierarchies so as to improve immigrant women’s
positions of power and status relative to left-​behind men’s, it may also leave gender asymmetries
largely unchanged or even further deepen some aspects of women’s subordination. For example,
while it has been noted that women migrants, through their work in foreign countries, learn
skills which they can then bring back to their own countries and households, the apparent ben-
efits of migration for individuals do not apply to all who have migrated abroad for work. Indeed,
de-​skilling often occurs in female migration streams that originate from developing countries
and flow to developed economies.
Economically advanced societies in Asia, especially in East Asia, face the problems of below-​
replacement birth rate and a rapidly ageing population. The imbalanced gender ratio in rural
areas also makes the import of foreign women a marital practice in Japan, Korea and Taiwan.
Focusing on those involved in sex work and cross-​border marriage, Hwang and Parreñas’s
Chapter 4 provides a critical review of the state of research on intimate migrations in the Asian
context. They argue that the US-​based radical feminist view to conflate intimate migrations
with human trafficking, and the subsequent moralistic condemnation of sex work and mar-
riage migration, does not capture the complexity of intimate migrations taking place in the
real world. Instead, they argue that as with all forms of migrations, intimate migrations often
involve complex motives –​from love and romance to monetary gains and self-​development.
A ‘hostile worldview’ in which the realms of intimate relationships and economic transactions
are clearly demarcated will only give rise to heightened regulations and further exacerbate
women’s vulnerability.

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New migration pathways

The fact that migration has become an important part of political economic change in Asia can
be seen in the flourishing of new patterns of migration. On the one hand, these new forms of
mobilities are endorsed by Asian states as development strategies; on the other hand, increasing
technological capacities and the establishment of migration infrastructure have made border
crossing of different types much easier. Education and medical treatments are increasingly com-
modified and, with the encouragement of the state, have become major channels of migration.
In its extreme, residency and citizenship themselves have become commodities up for sale, and
this has ushered in wealthy immigrants who treat foreign citizenship as a form of political insur-
ance and a luxury good.
Though Asian students still make up the main international student population on univer-
sity campuses in North America, Europe and Australia, Ge and Ho (Chapter 5) show that stu-
dent mobilities increasingly take place within the Asian region. Intra-​regional student mobility
is shaped by an infrastructure that incorporates both state programmes and business interests.
East Asian states, including China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and Singapore, regard the
internationalisation of education as an essential indicator of globalisation and an effective way
to absorb talent. These governments have thereby crafted favourable policies to attract foreign
students. Asian countries have also in recent years built regional education programmes, to
encourage student mobility within the regions and foster those regional identities, and thus
strengthen higher education in Asia. Accompanying these state policies, a study-​abroad industry
involving schools and various education brokers has proliferated to profit from growing inter-
national student mobility. Moreover, as Ge and Ho –​as well as several studies on Asian student
mobilities – have shown (see Liu-​Farrer 2014; Coates 2015) student mobilities often embody
complex logic.This youthful population increasingly sees mobility as a necessary component in
constructing a cosmopolitan self.
As with student mobility, transnational medical care has become a national development
strategy in countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. An increasing number of people
are crossing borders to seek medical treatments.Though mobilities related to medical treatments
are often short t​erm,Whittaker (Chapter 8) suggests the use of a migration lens to examine
this phenomenon because medical migrations are inseparable from other forms of popula-
tion movements, such as ‘the movements of expatriate workers, retirement migrants, diasporic
returnees, as well as the movements of forced migrants and refugees’. Similar to other forms of
migration, they are also a response to the gaps in economic development, living standards and
health system inequities between the source and destination countries. However, Whittaker
cautions that medical migrations take place within different frames of reference, and different
flows take on different social and cultural meanings. While medical travel is a status symbol
among some, for others it is a critique of the failed medical systems in their own countries. In
some parts of Asia, the intraregional medical migrations are embedded within historical regional
circuits related to flows of trade and cultural and linguistic ties.
As a pattern of international migration, the exodus of the rich in history is usually associated
with political purges and displacements during regime changes. In the mid-​20th century, rich
urban business people fled mainland China for Hong Kong and western countries for fear of
the Communist Party’s political persecution. Political reasons are considered at least part of the
driving force of the flow of affluent businessmen and their families out of Hong Kong before
the Chinese takeover in 1997. Liu-​Farrer (Chapter 9) explores a more recent version of rich
migration out of Asia and analyses the social meanings of such practice. She points out that
although many practical reasons exist for rich citizens to emigrate, the capacity to move, in a

6
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Introduction

world where citizenship and residency have increasingly become commodified, constitutes an
important element in the cultural formation of global elites. Within this cultural frame, physi-
cal mobility, or “motility” as Kaufmann et al. (2004) terms it, is seen as a form of capital itself,
and is conducive to the accumulation of other forms of capital –​economic, cultural or social –​
immediately or intergenerationally. However, rich emigration challenges several institutions.
The realisation of this form of migration often entails transnationally split households, and is
premised on a regression of gender roles. Moreover, while globalisation has already created
many challenges to nation-​state citizenship, the migration of the wealthy adds further question
marks to the meaning of citizenship.
Asian mobility pathways are still in the process of expanding. Changing political economic
dynamics as well as demographic makeup give rise to a proliferation of migration patterns and
channels as well as businesses that service them. Population ageing means more resourceful
retirees are moving around (Ono 2015). The growing economy has also attracted young peo-
ple from other parts of the world to come to Asia and move around within this region (Hof
forthcoming). Moreover, regional integration efforts are facilitating more active mobilities of
different types within Asia.

Reconceptualising migration through Asian experiences

Migration theories of western origins were first drawn upon to inform the research in Asia, and
the theoretical innovations in Europe and North America in the past two decades have supplied
more analytical tools to make sense of empirical observations in Asia. Nonetheless, the diversity
of migration patterns and complexity of mobility processes in Asia have brought up new ques-
tions and demand new conceptual frameworks to account for them.
This handbook, therefore, does not merely regard Asian migrations as an empirical variation
of global migration patterns and phenomena. By moving Asian experiences to the centre of
analysis, we aim to take the opportunity to rethink what migration means, how it takes place,
and what it entails. The chapters in this volume advocate a processural approach to migration,
looking at how mobility is structured, what takes place on the ground, and who are the different
actors involved in the production of mobility. Given newly emerging population and develop-
ment trends particular to Asian regions, these authors question the assumed economic logic of
migration that underpins the bulk of the theories on the motivations for migration, and prob-
lematise the artificial distinction between internal and international migration, between human
trafficking and voluntary migration, as well as between expatriates and migrants.

Migration as a produced process

The classical push–​pull model of migration –​the regional economic and population imbalances
and the resulting wage differentials or employment opportunity discrepancies –​has never been
able to fully explain human mobilities anywhere in the world (Massey et al. 1993), and clearly
not in Asia, whether in historical times or at present. In fact, as Amrith points out in his analysis
of colonial and postcolonial migration in Asia, neither in India nor China –​the two countries
that sent out the largest numerical flows of migrants during colonial times –​‘was there an
inevitable link between political or environmental catastrophe and long-​distance migration’
(Amrith, Chapter 1).
One of the major contributions stemming from empirical observations of Asian migrations
is the attention given to the act of migration itself, emphasising that migration is an orchestrated
process, involving participation of a diverse set of actors with varying motivations. In this vein,

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Gracia Liu-Farrer & Brenda S.A. Yeoh

no concept disputes the image of simple push–pull dynamics and presents the reality of migra-
tion as a heavily mediated process better than that of ‘migration infrastructure’ –​‘the system-
atically interlinked technologies, institutions, and actors that facilitate and condition mobility’
(Xiang and Lindquist 2014, p. 124, and Lindquist and Xiang, Chapter 11). In their seminal
article expounding this concept, Xiang and Lindquist delineate five dimensions of migration
infrastructure: ‘the commercial (recruitment intermediaries), the regulatory (state apparatus and
procedures for documentation, licensing, training and other purposes), the technological (com-
munication and transport), the humanitarian (NGOs and international organisations), and the
social (migrant networks)’ (2014, p. 124). These five dimensions, they propose, involve complex
sets of actors interacting with each other with different motives and logics of operations.
In their contribution to this handbook, Lindquist and Xiang argue that migration infra-
structure has become increasingly central to contemporary migration, especially labour migra-
tion, transforming how people move. While in cases of colonial migrations, the mediators
tended to be humans and migrations were channelled through social networks that are sus-
ceptible to local contingencies, the infrastructure that has been instituted over recent decades,
especially since the 1990s, facilitates and regulates contemporary migrations in much more
precise, delocalised and systemised ways. However, the development of the migration infra-
structure, made up by intense state regulations, commercial brokerages and servicing as well
as humanitarian intervention, has not necessarily ‘enhanced people’s migratory capability in
terms of making independent decisions, exploring new paths, and cultivating transnational
social relations’ (Chapter 11). Rather, it becomes an ‘involution’, multiplying internally with-
out expanding in scope.
The ascendency of the idea of migration infrastructure reflects the overall shift in attention
of social scientific research to the actual engineering of action. On the one hand, this ‘infra-
structural turn’ is an acknowledgement that what is social is no longer separable from what is
technical, echoing Bruno Latour’s forceful argument for taking stock of all actors –​human and
non-​human –​in the production of social events (Latour 2005). On the other hand, it urges a
more careful examination of the previously ‘black-​boxed’ process of migration to identify the
different forces that condition its direction, scope and substance (Lindquist et al. 2012).
Lin and Gleiss’s Chapter 10, too, focuses on the formative processes of mobilities. Lin and
Gleiss take a deliberate look at three mechanisms that shape migrations in Asia –​political
economy, transport technology and border governance. Migration features as an important part
of the political economy in Asian countries. While receiving countries such as the Gulf States
and Singapore rely heavily, and sometimes solely, on migrants to supply productive or repro-
ductive labour, for the sending countries of Nepal, the Philippines and Bangladesh, remittances
from their overseas compatriots are a major source of state revenue.1 Demographic crunch and
labour shortage, as well as globalisation pressures, have made immigration an unavoidable reality
confronting even countries based on founding myths of homogeneity such as Japan and Korea.
Meanwhile, major emigration states such as China and India, seek to ‘harness the powers of
economic globalisation to their own advantage by mobilising, constraining and structuring the
flows of people across national borders’ (Chapter 10). State policies therefore play an active, and
in many countries, the primary, role in shaping migration.
It is also of little doubt that transport technologies  –​the methods and modes that move
people and things –​are an essential component of mobility. Lin and Gleiss demonstrated that
technological revolutions, from railway to air travel, have in different historical periods contrib-
uted to the expanding scope of human mobility, not only in its geographic reach and the speed
of travel, but also transforming the demographic profile of those who move and the purposes
for which people move. The extension of railways in the 19th and early 20th centuries not

8
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Introduction

only allowed people to move by connecting them to the outside world, but it also mobilised
workers from different corners of the world to work on its construction. Similarly, the flour-
ishing of low-​cost airplanes, for example, has facilitated the circulation of migrant labour and
made transnational living more attainable. Finally, Lin and Gleiss show that the border is the
site where the state demonstrates its power to intervene and regulate mobilities. Biometric
passports, finger-​printing and selective visa regimes not only allow the state to assert more effi-
cient control over population flows, but also make migrants’ encounters with the border highly
uneven experiences.

Complex logic of migration

For most of the 20th century, migration research tended to prioritise economic rationales in
the explanation of migration. In dominant thinking as reflected in the economic behavioural
push–pull model (Todaro 1969), the structural segmented labour market models (Piore 1979)
and the neoclassical economic model (e.g., Bojas 1989), labour markets are considered the
primary mechanisms by which flows of persons are induced (Massey et al. 1993). Migration is
primarily seen as an economic activity. However, migrants are human and migration is a social
action, and there is more to the motivations of migration than the search for higher wages or
better jobs. Since the 1990s, accompanying the acceleration of globalisation processes, a multi-
plication of mobility trends beyond those which are economically driven has become conspicu-
ous. As migration studies grapple with theoretical and methodological innovations exemplified
by the development of transnationalism perspectives (e.g., Basch, Glick-​Schiller and Szanton
Blanc 1993; Smith and Guarnizo 1998; Vertovec 2009) and the ‘mobilities paradigm’ (Sheller
and Urry 2006), empirically, too, attention is directed to migration patterns that apparently have
less to do with direct economic motives. These include lifestyle migration (e.g., Benson and
O’Reilly 2009; Benson 2016), medical tourism (e.g., Connell 2006; Heung et al. 2010), global
nomadism (D’Andrea 2007) and young people’s journeys to search for self and to pursue dreams
(Fujita 2009). In this context, as the phrase ‘worklife pathways’ indicates, cross-​border mobility
can become a way to access both employment opportunities and lifestyle choices, suggesting
the inseparability of life and work in people’s broader aspirations for self-​development (Krings
et al. 2013).
It should be noted that the aspiration for self-​development is not confined to freewheeling
movers who have the means for such lifestyle choices. The mobilities paradigm runs the risk
of dichotomising mobility and migration and ascribing them to different classes of migrants –​
mobility to those who are ‘wanted and welcomed’ skilled individuals versus migration to those
who are ‘wanted but unwelcomed’ low-​skilled labour (Faist 2013, p. 1642). More care needs
to be taken in examining the logic of migration, and scholars need to heed the caution against
aligning economic logic to labour migrants and cultural logic to more affluent migrants. Coates
(Chapter 12) avoids this dichotomising tendency by arguing that not only are economic and
sociocultural motivations inseparable in migration, but the distinction between what constitutes
economic logic and cultural logic is in itself problematic. Economic motives are themselves
cultural products. The separation of the two is the outcome of intellectual development in the
19th century dichotomising the economic and cultural realms in an effort to detach ‘objective’
and measurable conditions from subjective meanings. The prioritising of utilitarian rationales
and the dominance of economic theory, in turn, explain the singular focus on the economic
rationale of migration that dominated migration studies until the late-​20th century. Cultural
logics, on the other hand, tended to be applied to the adaptation and incorporation of immi-
grants in destination societies, largely due to the urban sociological tradition of immigrant

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Gracia Liu-Farrer & Brenda S.A. Yeoh

community research pioneered by Chicago School sociologists in the early-​and mid-​20th

century. However, as Coates shows using the example of Chinese migrants, ‘the mobility and
the economy are deeply imprecated within cultural imaginaries of desirable lifestyles and per-
sonhood today’ (Chapter 12). Mobilities, and the capacities to do so, constitute the modern
subjectivity. This applies to the migrants, or those waiting to migrate, in Chinese villages in
Fujian (Chu 2010), to medical tourists (Whittaker, Chapter 8), as well as to those Chinese mil-
lionaires who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase overseas residency permits
and citizenships (Liu-​Farrer 2016).
Aside from the increasing attention to the cultural logic of migration, some recent work
has also indicated what has been called an ‘emotional turn’. Emotional geography, as a subfield
of human geography, ‘attempts to understand emotion –​experientially and conceptually –​in
terms of its socio-​spatial mediation and articulation rather than as entirely interiorised subjec-
tive mental states’ (Davidson et al. 2012, p. 3). While emotional geographies are charted in a
wide range of research inquiries (see Davidson et al. 2012), its relevance to migration is self-​
evident. Why people move is strongly influenced by emotions. The social psychological theory
of migration decision-​making –​the argument that it is not absolute poverty that drives people
but the sense of relative deprivation that motivates outmigration (Stark and Taylor 1991) –​is
but one manifestation of the need to include the role of emotions. Homesickness or nostalgia
is another. Postwar return migrants from Australia to the UK, for example, were compelled by
a longing ‘for people and places’ and ‘ways of life’ in their home country, as well as ‘not feeling
at home’ in the destination country (Thomson, 2005, p. 118). Such emotional drivers of migra-
tion are pronounced in most forms of return migration in Asia. Although ethnic return is often
‘a project driven by enterprise rather than by nostalgia’ (Xiang 2013, p. 2) and a response to
state policies and economic incentives, such migration is also driven by a longing for the ethnic
homeland (Tsuda 2009, also this volume, Chapter 7). In Asia, as many immigrant destination
states have established their national identity around ethnic or racial myths of origin, migration
and settlement not only involve legal and economic rationales but also implicate a complex
emotional geography.

Contesting binaries, challenging terminologies

Building on empirical and theoretical developments in the field of Asian migrations research
in the past two decades, this handbook also highlights the methodological and conceptual gaps
in the field. One of the most glaring gaps in contemporary migration research is the separation
of population movements within nation-​state borders and those crossing them. Migration has
become almost synonymous with international migration (King and Skeldon 2010) whereas
the discussion of internal migration tends to fall under the purview of development, urbanisa-
tion and social inequality. While this separation has to do with the different migration regimes
governing the processes and outcomes of international and internal migrations, these two forms
of migration cannot be separated empirically (Hugo 2016). For example, Chinese migrant
labourers in Japanese factories are likely to have taken part in rural–urban migration before
crossing international borders (Liu-​Farrer 2013). In border areas where ethnic groups were
divided into different national subjects by newly created territorial boundaries, human traf-
fic continues despite the institution of the borders (Hugo 2016; Rungmanee 2016). Scholars
challenging the theoretical and conceptual separation of the two forms of migration (Hickey
and Yeoh 2016) have contested the normative distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘international’
(Rungmanee 2016; Huang 2016); and explored conceptual and methodological possibilities to
reconnect internal and international migration (Hickey 2016; Xiang 2016).

10
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Introduction

The inseparability of internal and international migrations is also demonstrated in many

accounts of migration phenomena described in this handbook, from large-​scale migration
taking place in history (Amrith, Chapter 1) to vibrant border mobilities (Zhang, Chapter
22). Skeldon’s Chapter 13 attempts a systematic evaluation of internal and international
migration linkages. He argues that one of the key reasons that encourages separate studies
of internal vis-​à-​vis international migrations is the separation of data sources, and thereby a
lack of reliable statistical data to establish the linkage. National census or large-​scale national
surveys on which migration research is often based do not usually provide detailed mobility
history, recording ‘only country of birth or last residence and not the specific place of ori-
gin, either by small geographic place or by urban or rural sector’ (Chapter 13). Nonetheless,
he proposes several scenarios for eschewing binaries and instead linking these two types
of migration systems. ‘Step’ migration is a process where rural migrants move to urban
centres to accumulate resources and then move across borders when such opportunities
occur. In contrast, instead of describing the individual migrants’ lifetime trajectory, ‘stage’
migration highlights the fact that the exit points of most international migrants are urban
centres, themselves destinations for domestic rural migrants. Moreover, international migra-
tion might lead to labour market demands in the urban areas and induce internal rural–
urban migration. Further, in Asia, return migration usually follows a J-​curve –​international
migrants rarely go back to the villages or towns they originally come from. Instead, they
concentrate in metropolitan areas of the home countries. These different patterns of migra-
tion show that internal and international migrations are inseparably linked.
Another controversial binary deserving more attention in the Asian context is between
human trafficking and voluntary migration. Human trafficking is a legally punishable crime
in many nation-​states and the target of international NGO efforts. However, as Mahdavi (this
volume, Chapter 14) points out, the concept of human trafficking used colloquially has become
‘both conceptually and juristically obtuse, while narrowly gendered, sexualised, and racialised
at the same time’. On the one hand, the victims of human trafficking encompass all women
who migrate into the sex industry; on the other hand, it omits male migrants and women not
in the sex industry who are nonetheless subject to force, fraud, and coercion in their migra-
tory experiences. Not only does this misrepresentation distort how trafficking is pursued and
prosecuted, ‘trafficking’ as an over-​determined category might blot out the actual complexity
involved in the production of this practice and the identities of persons experiencing challenges
in the course of migration.
Mahdavi is particularly critical of the effects of US-​led anti-​trafficking programmes, espe-
cially the annual US Trafficking in Persons (TIP) reports on migration policies and migrants
in Asian countries. Using the case of the United Arab Emirates and Japan, Mahdavi shows the
disconnections between the TIP recommendations and the realities on the ground in these
two countries, as well as the discontent of local officials toward such hegemonic sanction. Her
ethnographic fieldwork illustrates that migrants increasingly move and live in the in-​between
grey spaces of irregular migration and/​or employment.The anti-​human trafficking programmes
not only fail to assist migrants in vulnerable situations, but the regulations in response to TIP
tend to restrict their options further and, in reality, produce more irregularity, hence aggravating
their precarity.
In the Asian context, a third binary that becomes difficult to sustain in the age of expanding
global movement revolves around the term ‘expatriate’. A term originally applied by human-​
resource management to corporate employees on short-​ term overseas assignments, it has,
in recent decades, been appropriated by a plethora of mobile people, from European youth
searching for alternative career opportunities in Asia to western retirees enjoying life in sunnier

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Gracia Liu-Farrer & Brenda S.A. Yeoh

climates. One characteristic seems to be consistent: ‘Expatriates’ is frequently reserved to label

individuals moving between or from the developed western world, while ‘migrants’ is used to
refer to those moving out of less developed countries (Al Ariss and Crowley-​Henry 2013). In
Asian contexts, this racialised and class-​specific binary becomes unsustainable.
In his chapter, Farrer points out that the image of ‘a privileged, credentialed, highly mobile,
white, businessman’ (Chapter 15) leaves out large groups of people of different racial profiles
moving with varied motives, including Asians studying abroad in the west returning to Asia
on corporate packages. Instead of trying to define who is and is not an expatriate, Farrer
proposes an urban sociological approach to expatriate phenomena. He argues that ‘one is not
“an expatriate” by virtue of being a certain type of person but rather learns to be an expatriate
through socialisation into an expatriate community with its collective practices and outlooks’.
Returning to Eric Cohen’s original definition of expatriates, he examines how both the conti-
nuities and changes in the realms of institutions, geographies and norms solidify as well as transform
expatriate identity. While the institutions such as multinational firms and international schools
still shape and signify expatriate lifestyle, with changing global norms and Asia’s rising economic
power, these institutions have shifted their labour practices and cultural ideals, and are racially
diversified and increasingly characterised by the participation of local elites. Traditional expatri-
ate urban spaces of residence and entertainment have become ‘cosmopolitan canopies’ where
‘young expatriates find diverse roles supporting the cosmopolitan lifestyles of increasingly afflu-
ent Asian urbanites’ (Chapter 15). Finally, though struggling with institutional hurdles and gen-
der and racial biases, the social and cultural norms of the expatriate community may no longer
be self-​isolation. The prevalence of international marriages and mixed-​heritage children also
changes the racial composition of the expat community, bringing with it more social openness.

The challenges of migration in Asia

People’s mobilities circulate labour power, increase international linkages, facilitate cultural
exchanges. At the same time, they bring disruptions to social life, economic structures and polit-
ical systems in both destination and source countries.While individuals often migrate in pursuit
of a better life, geographic mobility and distance may unsettle families and brings unforeseeable
emotional consequences to individual members. This handbook examines issues that have gen-
erated considerable controversy and public anxiety around migration in Asia.
Since the dawn of the new millennium, there has been a recent swing towards a ‘new opti-
mism’ about migration and development. Championed by international organisations, much has
been written about the benefits of migration including transnational financial flows towards,
and investments in, countries of origin, the multiplier effects of remittances, and the sharing of
know-​how through circular migration. In these circles, migration is considered one of the most
effective means for alleviating poverty and is used as a strategy for development in many states.
The new economic theory of migration specifically posits that people move to supplement
household incomes, insure against financial risks, and bring much needed capital for local pro-
duction in the source communities (Stark and Bloom 1985). Both Cole and Rigg’s and Martin’s
chapters examine the economic and social impacts of migration on source regions, and explore
to what degree migration fulfils its developmental promise and potential. Through their survey
of empirical research centered in Southeast Asian region, Cole and Rigg (Chapter 16) argue
that the reason for the difficulty in reaching conclusive findings about the relationship between
migration and poverty, both in terms of causality and consequence, is because of four ‘indeter-
minacies’ –​those of analytic, scale, comparison and periodicity. In other words, the evaluation of
how migration affects source communities depends on what one investigates –​using a narrow

12
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Introduction

economic lens or taking in broader considerations of knowledge, skills and cultural practices –​
and where one looks –​at the individual, the household, or the larger community. The
­developmental outcomes are also context-​specific, depending on a range of conditions in dif-
ferent communities. Lastly, the effects of migration unfold as a process over different durations
of time. Cole and Rigg conclude in arguing that, in general, migration increases options for
the source communities and builds capabilities. Development is possible within the landscape
of human mobilities.
Approaching similar issues but as an economist and from a more global perspective,
Martin (Chapter 17) agrees with Cole and Rigg’s emphasis on context-​dependent outcomes.
Resonating with Lindquist and Xiang’s notion of an ‘infrastructural turn’ as well as Lin and
Gleiss’s emphasis on mobility process, he calls for a more detailed examination of the process by
which migration is managed in order to gauge the benefits of migration on source countries.
Martin separates the labour migration process into three stages –​recruitment, remittance and
return –​and argues that each of these stages involves multiple actors with diverse interests and is
prone to errors and abuse despite various regulatory efforts. Whether migration brings positive
outcomes, how remittances can be utilised to faciliate development, and in what ways return
migration can bring back economic resources and technological innovations, all depend to a
large degree on how these processes are managed.
A second set of issues that has generated considerable debate in the political realm relates to
migration and citizenship in both receiving and source countries. In western liberal democra-
cies, naturalisation and voting are used as important indicators of immigrants’ political incor-
poration. Nonetheless, the naturalisation rate in most destination countries has declined, and
so has voting rate (Putnam 2000; Chung and Abbas this volume, Chapter 20). A large body of
scholarship has developed in the recent decades that questions and theorises the variation in
citizenship acquisition rates, attributing the causes to immigrant characteristics (Borjas 1989;
Liang 1994), institutional conditions (Brubaker 1992; Favell 2001), and the establishment of
supranational rights regime (Soysal 1994) to the increasing expansion of citizenship rights (see
Kivisto and Faist 2009; Chung 2010). These observations and arguments are primarily framed
in the context of North America and Western Europe. Chung and Abbas (Chapter 20) argue
that, given the differences in terms of the history of national citizenships and patterns of immi-
gration regimes in Asia, the citizenship and electoral-​based evaluation of immigrant political
participation needs to be re-​examined. In the context of Asia, they point out that migrants are
actively engaged in many forms of political activism both within the national framework of the
receiving country –​such as participating in civic associations, engaging in collective action and
labour union participation –​and transnational political participation in their home countries’
politics –​from ethnic civic association to diasporic voting. They suggest a shift of focus from
investigating migrants’ political incorporation to political empowerment in order to understand
immigrants’ political interests and strategies in the changing political landscapes brought on by
global mobilities.
A related issue that has stirred political controversy concerns the phenomenon of irregu-
lar migration. Irregular migration, or undocumented migration, has often been considered an
undesirable side effect of migration. Clandestine migrants and visa overstayers are invariably
criminalised and politicised, and have become a top immigration control priority in many
countries. Asis and Battistella’s Chapter 21 debunks the myth of irregular migration in Asia and
argues that much of the so-​called irregular migration is a consequence of gaps and inconsisten-
cies of migration governance. So-​called ‘irregularity’ can result from misclassification due to a
lack of diligent screening of asylum seekers, the lack of due process to address migration that
is part of historical patterns  –​such as borderland mobility  –​or is facilitated by an irregular

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Gracia Liu-Farrer & Brenda S.A. Yeoh

migration industry. Moreover, they point out that irregular migration often emerges in the
disjunctures between a structural need for labour and receiving governments’ attempts to keep
the imported labour force temporary, especially in tying employment and stay of migrants to
their employers. In many Asian countries, such schemes that aid governments to keep track of
migrants often end up forcing migrants to endure difficult working conditions, or risk becom-
ing absconders or runaways when the conditions become unbearable. Importantly, Asis and
Battistella’s chapter questions the binary between regular and irregular migration. These are not
two distinct patterns; rather, the distinction reflects different access to legal channels of migra-
tion. In the course of migration, the status of migrants is subject to many uncertainties and
therefore prone to irregularity.
A third set of concerns in migrant-​receiving societies is inextricably tied to the question of
migrant integration and the effects of immigrant presence on the social fabric of the host socie-
ties. While much has been written on the effects of race-​based exclusion acts in historical time,
and the prevalence of skill-​based selective migration policies in western countries,Yeoh’s chap-
ter takes a different approach in exploring the influence of migration on Asian city life. Urban
diversity in Asia is first of all, as Yeoh points out, deeply influenced by the politics and paradox
of postcolonial encounters. Colonial migration, nation-​building projects and contemporary
mobilities have engendered complex patterns of ethnic and cultural fault lines and different
schemes of inclusion and exclusion. The boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are repeatedly
challenged and redrawn in postcolonial cities. Diversity politics is often manifested in ‘spaces
of enclavement’ that contemporary transnational migration has created. Both the desired high-​
skilled migrants and the ‘needed but unwanted’ low-​skilled migrants are, by choice in the case of
the former and by lack of choice for the latter, temporary dwellers in Asian cities.Yet, the spaces
they have carved out for themselves become part of the urban cultural landscapes, inspiring
conviviality while also instigating conflict. Finally, spaces of the home have also been reconsti-
tuted as a form of ‘contact zone’ between family members and familiar strangers. As a response
to declining fertility rates and population ageing in industrialised Asian states, marriage and care
migrations have become a major trend of transnational mobility and, along with this trend, eth-
nic and cultural diversities have become everyday realities in the domestic realm. In the spaces
of intimacy in homes, the politics of self and other reflects the larger structural inequalities of
gender, race, class, culture and citizenship.
A fourth strand of work investigates the way migration entails disruptions to family life.
The stories of family members who leave behind other members, including children, in
embarking on migration journeys are part and parcel of migration history in Asia. In the
contemporary era, population mobilities of increasing volume and diversity have resulted in
expanding numbers of split households and even broader varieties of family formations. The
chapter by Lam et al. (Chapter 19) employs the concept of ‘transnational family’ (Bryceson
and Vuorela 2002) to highlight migrant households’ strategies in adapting family life to the
dispersal of core members in order to ensure the family’s economic well-​being or elevate
its social status. In particular, to counter the view of children as passive receivers of the fate
of separation from one or both of their parents, Lam et al. focus on the active roles chil-
dren assume in migration processes. This is illustrated by middle-​class Asian children who
become educational migrants, bearing responsibilities for the family’s transnational capital-​
accumulation projects. Similarly, children of less privileged backgrounds and in marginal
circumstances, even those labelled victims of human trafficking, are not necessarily void
of agency in their migration decision-​making and mobility processes. Instead, migration
becomes a means to attain some degree of independence and social mobility under difficult
circumstances. Even children left behind by migrant parents are not simply deprived of

14
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Introduction

parental care and supervision as often presumed. Their experiences are much more complex
and contingent as they strive to take charge of their own well-​being, as well as that of other
household members including younger siblings.
Finally, as several chapters in this handbook infer, the borderland is one of the most con-
tested zones for migrants. Local struggles against state control over historical patterns of social
and economic life are often manifested in the persistent transgressive activities in borderlands.
Border-​crossing is part of borderlanders’ livelihood strategies, and in no small way an integral
part of the economic and social life there. Entrepreneurial transgressions and permissive politics
(Zhang, this volume, Chapter 22) are signs of constant negotiation between local interests and
state mandates. Zhang’s ethnographic depictions of border-​crossing activities on the Vietnamese
and Chinese borders show that local interests are in constant tension with the state’s border
regime. Borderlanders carefully negotiate state-​determined border spaces as they produce alter-
native routes and relations, and experiment with controversial zones of profit and morality. For
example, the sex trade and smuggling, though criminalised by the state and condemned by the
international human rights regime, are tolerated because they attract business interests and are
economically productive in the area. The borderlanders’ ‘counter-​topography’ and the ‘edginess
of the borders’ show the unexpected power and autonomy on the margins. As Zhang points out,
‘ “margins” do not suggest that they are marginal to contemporary experiences. Rather, they
provide alternative, off-​centre perspectives on a range of political questions –​who defines the
border, who navigates the border, who is policing the border, and who claims ownership of the
border –​that are central to debates on governance and mobility, security and citizenship, global
forces and local strategies’ (Chapter 22).

Conclusion
Asia has seen mass migrations in the past and is witnessing dynamic mobilities at present.
Because the postwar nation-​building process in many newly independent Asian nation states
made enforcing borders and controlling population movements a priority, the migration trends,
especially those of immigration, slowed down, and did not become a subject of social scientific
inquiries until the 1970s. Migration research began to thrive in the 1980s when more countries
relaxed entry and exit regulations and labour shortages started to emerge in the early industri-
alised Asian nations. By reviewing research in Asian migrations in the past three decades, this
handbook highlights the distinct characteristics and phenomena of population mobilities in
Asian contexts. Moreover, these contributions illustrate how an empirical focus on Asia has
contributed to theoretical developments in the field of migration.
Asian researchers, especially those in critical cultural studies, have in recent years proposed
the concept of ‘Asia as method’, arguing that ‘using the idea of Asia as an imaginary anchor-
ing point, societies in Asia can become each other’s points of reference, so that … the diverse
historical experiences and rich social practices of Asia may be mobilised to provide alternative
horizons and perspectives’ (Chen, 2010, p.  212). Researchers investigating the mobilities of
people in Asia have also felt the need to develop theoretical frameworks that match Asian expe-
riences. This is because, on the one hand, how and why people move are related to the political
economy, history, geography and sociocultural practices in the particular region. Theories and
concepts born out of North American and European experiences cannot capture local specifi-
cities. On the other hand, constrained by a lack of statistical data, migration studies in Asia have
been mostly qualitative and fieldwork-​based. As a result, for many researchers the grounded
realities have not been accurately represented in the academic literature and political discourses,
including those employed by international organisations. This handbook, as the first survey of

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Gracia Liu-Farrer & Brenda S.A. Yeoh

the field of Asian migrations, presents the empirical insights and theoretical innovations that
have emerged in the three decades of research on Asian migration.
This said, however, it is not our intention to declare that Asian migration phenomena are
unique to the region and the conceptual tools developed out of Asian experiences are only
applicable to Asian contexts. None of the phenomena or issues presented in this handbook are
exclusive to Asia. The conceptual advancements are also products of continuous engagement
with the theoretical developments in the migration and mobility research field in general.
Finally, given the vast geographic area covered and the immense complexity of migration
phenomena in Asia, this handbook has several limitations. The handbook cannot claim to rep-
resent ‘Asian migrations’ in terms of geographic representation. For example, there are too few
studies on the Middle East and South Asia –​both areas of intense mobilities.There are also gaps
in the coverage of themes. Many migration phenomena and issues are left out. The mobilities
of domestic helpers, retirees, institutional careworkers, academics, professionals and entrepre-
neurs are but some that we have not been able to incorporate into this volume. Importantly,
the handbook circumvents topics of forced migration. Refugees and internally displaced per-
sons are perhaps the majority of the people on the move in the Asian continent. Yet literature
on such complex movements warrants its own volume. Our decision, however, is to highlight
conceptual and thematic innovations that have emerged from empirical studies carried out in
different areas in Asia. By illuminating these developments from that part of the world that has
thus far remained in the shadow of global migration and mobility research, this handbook hopes
to contribute valuable insights to the advancement of migration research in a world in flux.

Note
1 World Bank. Migration and Remittances (3rd edition), siteresources.worldbank.org/​INTPROSPECTS/​
Resources/​334934-​1199807908806/​4549025-​1450455807487/​Factbookpart1.pdf.

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PART I

Asian migrations in the

historical context
20
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1
COLONIAL AND
POSTCOLONIAL MIGRATIONS
Sunil S. Amrith

Introduction
Asia has always been mobile. Even those agrarian landscapes that appear most settled  –​the
fertile paddy fields of the Ganges or Irrawaddy river deltas, for instance –​have been shaped
by a centuries-​long process of migration and land colonisation (Eaton 1993; Richards 2003;
Lieberman 2013). Merchants’ and pilgrims’ voyages across the Indian Ocean and the South
China Sea, or journeys along the overland ‘Silk Road’, stimulated the exchange of ideas
and material culture (Gordon 2007). Many routes intersected at the port cities of Southeast
Asia, which were trade emporia at the end-​point of the northeast and southwest monsoons
(Reid 1993).
In the 19th century the pace and quantity of migration –​within Asia, and Asia to other
parts of the world –​experienced a leap in scale. Mass migration met the needs of expanding
empires. Capital investment in plantation agriculture created a need for labour, as industrialisa-
tion spurred demand for natural resources. Transportation and communication advances made
long-​distance migration faster and cheaper. After a period of interruption and reversal during
the decades of decolonisation and the Cold War, transregional migration across Asia has grown
again since the 1970s, alongside vast internal migrations.
The social and gender composition of contemporary Asian migration differs from the pat-
terns of earlier movements of people, most notably in the much larger proportion of female
migrants today. Many routes of migration –​for instance, the vast migration of contract work-
ers from South Asia to the Gulf States –​are new. Nevertheless, the legacies of earlier colonial
migrations continue to shape contemporary Asia; the resurgence of migration across Asia in an
age of globalisation has reactivated social networks forged in an earlier imperial age of regional
connectedness.
This chapter explains the causes and pathways of Asia’s first mobility revolution, which took
place between 1850 and the 1930s. It examines the relationship between migration and Asian
modernity, as migrant networks channelled new political ideas and new cultural practices across
frontiers. It proceeds to examine the growing regulation of both immigration and emigration
in Asia in the aftermath of the economic depression of the 1930s. Through the upheaval of war
and decolonisation, a new legal and political regime emerged to govern Asian migration –​and
we still live with many of its institutions. The final section of the chapter considers the decline

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Sunil S. Amrith

and then the reorientation of Asian migration in the post-​independence era, culminating in the
resurgence of Asian migration from the 1980s. As such, this chapter aims to provide the histori-
cal backdrop to the diverse strands of contemporary Asian migration considered in the rest of
this handbook.

Asia’s first mobility revolution

The 19th century saw a global transformation in mobility. Between 1840 and 1940, three great
migrations reshaped the demographic and cultural balance of the earth (McKeown 2004): the
movement of Europeans across the Atlantic (and a smaller number of Asians across the Pacific)
to North America; the movement of Indians and Chinese to Southeast Asia; and the movement
of people from the interiors of China and Russia to the far northeast of Asia. Migrants travelled
under varying degrees of freedom and constraint, ranging from voluntary movement using fam-
ily networks, to the most restrictive forms of indentured labour not far removed from slavery.
While received wisdom would put European transatlantic migrants on the side of freedom, and
Asian migrant labour on the side of constraint, recent scholarship has painted a more complex
picture. Forms of bondage and dependence continued to constrain Europe’s overseas migrants
well into the 19th century (Zahra 2016); and Asian, especially Chinese, migration was very often
organised by families and through village networks, with little state involvement (McKeown
2004; Kuhn 2008; Look Lai 2009; Amrith 2011).
Mass migration was both a cause and a result of global transformations. C.A. Bayly (2004: 11)
observed that, from the middle of the 19th century, ‘contemporary changes were so rapid and
interacted with each other so profoundly, that this period could reasonably be described as the
“birth of the modern world” ’. Imperial states grew in power and capacity, and made greater
demands on their subjects; ideas travelled more rapidly and spread more widely than ever before;
industrialisation connected markets around the world.
New technologies and new forms of energy brought long-​distance travel within reach of
a far greater number of people. The steamship made ocean crossings faster as well as safer,
though it was not until the 1880s that steam triumphed over sail. New routes shaped patterns
of trade. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 brought Asian producers closer to European
markets. In the words of novelist Joseph Conrad, ‘The piercing of the Isthmus of Suez, like the
breaking of a dam, let in upon the East a flood of new ships, new men, new methods of trade’
(Conrad 1902: 168). News of prices and pacts, products and places, travelled even faster. By
1870, the British India Submarine Telegraph Company connected Bombay with the Red Sea.
A year later, telegraph connections spanned the Bay of Bengal. From Singapore, the line reached
through Saigon, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki, and up to the Russian port of Vladivostok
(Dick and Rimmer 2003).
The opening of new frontiers of cultivation produced an insistent demand for labour.
Asia’s frontier regions  –​for the most part, the forest frontiers of mainland and island
Southeast Asia –​had low population densities. Local peasantries did not find wage labour
on plantations attractive and many fought to preserve the freedom of smallholder cultivation
or subsistence production. The prior existence across Southeast Asia of small settlements of
Chinese and Indian merchants, together with communities of Chinese cultivators and min-
ers in the interior, meant that the structures and precedents were in place to draw labour
from the densely populated heartlands of coastal southern China and the eastern seaboard
of the Indian subcontinent. Revolutions in transport made this prospect a reality. Recurrent
and deep-​seated agrarian, ecological, and political crises in China and India intensified the
draw of migration as an avenue to family survival.

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Colonial & postcolonial migrations

In China, the mid-​19th century marked a period of unprecedented social and political
change accompanied by violence on a massive scale. The millenarian Taiping Rebellion (1851–​
66) led to the deaths of up to 20 million people over 15 years. The imperial aggression of the
Opium Wars culminated in the concession of treaty ports, which became the prime sites for
the recruitment and shipment of Chinese labour overseas.The impact of political instability was
intensified by a concurrent environmental crisis: a series of mega-​droughts, linked to excep-
tionally severe El Niño events in the 1870s and 1890s.
In India, the consolidation of British political control over the subcontinent uprooted some
social groups and immobilised others. Following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire
in the 1830s, Indian workers moved under contracts of indenture to meet the labour demand
from sugar-​producing colonies of the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean.The workers came from
rural districts of Bihar and Madras. At the same time, deepening colonial control limited the
options of groups that had previously been mobile. For weavers, artisans, professional soldiers,
and many others, British conquest brought economic ruin. Many urban residents were pushed
onto increasingly marginal lands. The acute vulnerability of large parts of South India to fam-
ine –​India was as badly affected as China by the droughts of the 1870s and 1890s –​was one
result of this enforced decline (Parthasarathi 2009).
In neither India nor China was there an inevitable link between political or environmental
catastrophe and long-​distance migration. The mechanistic language of the early social science
literature on migration, its picture of migration as subject to ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors, fails to cap-
ture the role of intermediaries and networks in making overseas migration a viable response to
local distress. In the late-​19th century the conduit between crisis and opportunity was provided
by what today we would call the ‘migration industry’.
From the 1840s, tens of thousands of Indian labourers a year arrived in Ceylon to work on
the coffee plantations. By the end of the 1850s, this had grown to nearly a hundred thousand
arrivals annually. Between half and three-​quarters of them returned to India each year. The
longer journey to Malaya involved smaller numbers until the 1880s, but by the end of that dec-
ade, 22,000 people arrived at the ports of the Straits Settlements from India. From the 1880s,
Burma was the third greatest destination for Indian labour, and would attract the most migrants
of all. By 1911, over 100,000 people each year arrived from India in each of these three destina-
tions across the Bay of Bengal (Amrith 2013; Peebles 2001; Adas 1974).
India’s migrants were recruited under a range of arrangements. The earliest migrants to
Malaya travelled to sugar and coffee plantations under contracts of indenture, in which labour
recruiters and brokers played the role of middlemen. Indentured workers on Malaya’s plantations
faced brutal conditions and mortality rates were high. The archives are pervaded by instances
of physical abuse and even torture. By the start of Malaya’s rubber boom, indenture gave way
to more informal means of procuring labour. Across all three countries to which Indian labour
travelled in large numbers, the most common mode of recruitment was the system known as
the kangany system (in Ceylon and Malaya) or the maistry system (in Burma). The kangany was
often an existing plantation worker who would return to his home village in India to recruit
more men on commission.The kangany’s ability to advance money to the migrants’ families put
him in a position to offer attractive terms to indebted agrarian families –​and debt provided the
bond that kept workers tied to their employers, even when they were not formally indentured
(Amrith 2013; Sandhu 1969).
Whereas Indian migrants tended to stay within the boundaries of the British Empire, Chinese
migrants travelled to a wider range of destinations across multiple empires. And while Indian
migrants tended to travel on British steamships to work on European-​owned plantations or in
the urban economy, Chinese migrants to Southeast Asia worked primarily for Chinese employers

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Sunil S. Amrith

and capitalists. The majority of Chinese emigrants departed from Hong Kong, Xiamen, Shantou
and Hainan Island. Between 19 and 23  million Chinese migrants travelled to Southeast Asia
between 1850 and 1940: 6–​7 million to Singapore and Malaysia; 4–​5 million to Java and the
outer islands of Indonesia; up to 4 million to Thailand; and another 3 or 4 million to Indochina,
the Philippines and other parts of the Pacific taken together. The regional concentration of
Chinese migration sharpened over time.Whereas 40 per cent of Chinese emigrants in the 1850s
travelled beyond Asia, between the 1880s and 1930 96 per cent of Chinese emigrants remained
within Asia (McKeown 2010).
In the era of mass migration after 1870, Chinese travelled to Southeast Asia under a wide
range of arrangements.What unites them is the importance of social networks and intermediary
institutions in making migration possible. Some of these networks and institutions were rooted
in the family and kinship. Other common forms included native-​place and surname associations
and, on a wider scale, dialect-​group and regional associations. These institutions also hosted the
religious and cultural rituals that made long-​distance migration less traumatic, and rendered
new destinations more familiar. The importance of social networks was such that where one
village had intensive emigrant connections, its neighbours might have none (McKeown 1999).
The most fortunate of the emigrants financed their own passages with family resources.
Since families viewed emigration as an investment, those with assets were willing to sell or
mortgage them in the expectation that emigration would prove fruitful. Another common
method was recruitment by an ‘old hand’, a system comparable with the kangany system used
to recruit Indian labour: here the recruiter would advance the cost of the passage, and often a
recruitment bonus, to the emigrants’ families; the emigrants were bound to work off these debts.
More common still was migration through the ‘credit ticket’ system, wherein an intermediary
took on the migrant’s debt of passage. Labour brokers in Singapore or Penang worked directly
with boarding-​house keepers in Chinese ports, based on the rapid transfer of information about
job openings and labour demand. Either on embarkation or upon arrival, the migrant would
contract himself to an employer, at least until he had worked off his debts. Labour brokers often
worked directly for the Chinese brotherhoods that controlled migrant labour in Southeast Asia.
The brotherhoods’ command of armed force ensured that the migrants did not escape their
control (Sugihara 2005: 268).
Migrants under the credit ticket system suffered many kinds of abuse and exploitation,
but the most unfortunate were those who had signed formal contracts of indenture directly
with European employers. Chinese labour brokers, again, made these transactions possible.
Labourers under indenture tended to come from the most disadvantaged backgrounds; they
had least access to the social networks that made migration possible. In all, close to 750,000
Chinese signed contracts of indenture in the late-​19th and early-​20th centuries. This rep-
resents a small proportion of Chinese migrants overall. Around 250,000 of the indentured
migrants went to the Caribbean and Latin America, where they suffered the most brutal
conditions faced by Chinese migrants anywhere, in some cases conditions very close to
enslavement. Within Asia, the plantations of Sumatra were the main destination for Chinese
indentured workers:  around 250,000 made the journey between 1880 and 1910. Up to a
quarter of the Chinese migrant workers to Sumatra’s plantation belt died before working
out their contracts. Malaria, malnutrition, frequent injuries, and a high rate of suicide made
Sumatra lethal for plantation workers. Until the turn of the 20th century, it proved cheaper
for planters to import new labourers from overseas than to care for the welfare of those
already in Sumatra. In general, indentured labour recruitment only flourished for destina-
tions which were particularly distant or unattractive, or where Chinese social networks were
especially thin (Kuhn 2008; McKeown 2004).

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The movement of Indians and Chinese to Southeast Asia represents one of the world’s great
migrations of the modern era, but many others were on the move alongside them. Within
Southeast Asia the same era witnessed the acceleration and expansion of mobility across the
Indonesian archipelago and across the Straits of Malacca (Tagliacozzo 2005; Kahn 2006), together
with a deepening of the centuries-​old circuit of Arab mobility between the Hadhramaut and
Southeast Asia (Ho 2006). Throughout the region, ‘a significant traffic in human labour existed
outside of the power of Europeans… Javanese, Boyanese, Banjarese, Dayaks, Kelantanese,Tamils,
and Chinese were all in motion’ (Tagliacozzo 2005: 243–​4).
Migration took place overland as well as overseas:  nowhere more so than in China
(Gottschang and Lary 2000). With the expansion of railway construction that made a previ-
ously remote region more accessible, the decades after 1890 saw a massive migration to the far
northwest. C. Walter Young (1932), an American traveller to Manchuria, wrote in 1931 that,
‘the magnitude of this migration [is] perhaps unprecedented in modern history and assuredly
unparalleled today’. Between 28 and 33 million Chinese migrants moved to Manchuria and
Siberia after 1850, together with approximately 2 million Koreans, and 500,000 Japanese. If
we include migration from Russia into Siberia, a further 13 million people can be added to
this migration to Asia’s far northeast. Between 8 and 10 million of the Chinese migrants to
Manchuria settled there permanently. Overland migration to Manchuria and overseas migra-
tion to Southeast Asia shared similar underlying causes, and similar conditions of possibil-
ity. They followed similarly circulatory paths; the majority of migrants to Manchuria, too,
returned home eventually. In contrast with emigration to Southeast Asia, however, Chinese
migrants soon constituted a clear numerical majority in Manchuria, which they did not any-
where in Southeast Asia.
Many went to work in mines and on the railways, but most Chinese migrants to Manchuria
went as cultivators. A relatively small proportion of the migrants owned land on a freehold basis;
many more leased their land, or worked as sharecroppers. Large parts of Manchuria were owned
by Chinese official organisations, private or semi-​private companies, and by large landowners.
By the 1920s, the soya bean had emerged as Manchuria’s most important cash crop, account-
ing for 80 per cent of the region’s exports. Family was the ‘engine of migration’ to Manchuria
(Gottschang and Lary 2000). Families in Shandong and Hebei sent young men to Manchuria as
part of a diversified strategy for family survival –​the expectation of return was almost universal.
Most Chinese migrants to Manchuria moved in small groups of kinsmen or fellow villagers.
They moved along existing family networks to destinations where uncles, cousins, or other local
people had preceded them. When this happened on a large enough scale, whole ‘villages across
the sea’ emerged, almost as branches of the original northern Chinese village in Manchuria
(Gottschang and Lary 2000).

Migration and Asian modernism

‘Migration’, the American demographer Kingsley Davis (1951: 107) wrote, ‘is the result of an
idea –​an idea of what lies somewhere else.’ Mobility in its many forms widened people’s social
networks and their imaginative worlds. Writing in the 1930s, the American-​trained Chinese
sociologist Ta Chen concluded that the influence of returned emigrants on their local socie-
ties in China was ‘exerted largely through the building of schools’, arising from their ‘profound
faith in education’. His is a fascinating and strikingly modern account of the social effects of
migration. ‘Money and ideas about the spending of money flow together through the same
channel,’ Chen (1940) wrote:  ‘The material contributions and the intellectual contributions
are intertwined.’

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Sunil S. Amrith

The circulation of ideas accompanied the movement of people across the South China Sea.
From the 1880s reforming Qing officials and revolutionary anti-​Manchu activists alike began
to see the overseas Chinese as a fruitful source of financial support and investment. For their
part, many Chinese in the diaspora began to see that a strengthened, modernised China with a
stronger voice in the world would improve their position as minorities overseas. The Chinese
government established its first overseas consulate in Singapore in 1878. Chinese commissions
of inquiry investigated the appalling conditions suffered by Chinese indentured workers in
Cuba, Peru, and Sumatra.
The Chinese diaspora proved a battleground of ideas for those with very different views of
China’s future. Sun Yat-​sen (1866–​1925) built his political movement from the support of over-
seas Chinese communities. In 1905, he formed the Tongmenghui (the Chinese Revolutionary
League) with the support of the Chinese student community based in Tokyo. Sun travelled
widely in Southeast Asia; in 1906, he formed the Singapore branch of the Tongmenghui. The
contacts and resources that Sun mobilised during his travels provided the lifeblood of the
Chinese revolutionary movement. Overseas Chinese support was crucial to several attempted
uprisings in the southern provinces in the first decade of the 20th century. Soon after the
revolution of 1911, overseas Chinese began to contribute their resources, finances, and skills to
building a new China.
In India, too, the development of mass politics drew heavily upon ideas, networks, and
resources from overseas. The movement for the abolition of indentured labour was one of
the most widely supported political movements in modern India; it preceded the rise of mass
nationalism, fuelled by news reports of the brutality to which indentured workers were subject
(Sinha 2015). The political strategies of the most iconic of India’s political leaders, Mohandas
Gandhi, were forged not in India but in South Africa –​where he spent two decades as a lawyer
and as leader of a movement for Indian rights (Hofmeyr 2014). The visit to Malaya in 1929
of South India’s leading campaigner for caste and social reform and leader of the Self Respect
Movement, ‘Periyar’ E.V. Ramasamy, marked a political awakening among Tamil migrant work-
ers in the cities and on the plantations. E.V. Ramasamy’s tour stimulated the development of
the Tamil language press in Singapore, and helped to disseminate a Tamil regionalism that was
distinct from Indian nationalism (Amrith 2013).
By the early decades of the twentieth century, the scale and pace of Asian migration gave
rise to new ways of imagining the world.Technology bridged distance. New ideas of citizenship
brought under debate the relationship between land, migration, and political representation.
Newspapers addressed, and in the process they created, new publics. Their debates, and their
readership, crossed colonial and national borders. The vernacular press in urban Southeast Asia
spoke of –​and spoke to –​​many ‘imagined communities’, not merely national ones (Anderson
1991). They appealed to constituencies defined in local, regional, religious and ethnic terms,
which were not always mutually exclusive. Port cities played a central role as sites of debate
and encounter. Texts circulated between them; translation and republication were common in a
world when ideas of copyright were still in flux (Hofmeyr 2014). Often debates over social and
religious reform transcended linguistic or cultural boundaries. The English-​educated elites of
many of these port cities forged an inter-​ethnic public sphere (Frost 2002; Chua 2012). Inter-​
Asian migration gave rise to a distinctive Asian cosmopolitanism –​but it had clear limits.

Migration and the state

In the modern world there has been a close connection between the history of migration and
the history of migration control (McKeown 2008). Historically, Asian states, and the Chinese

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Colonial & postcolonial migrations

state in particular, have been more concerned with controlling emigration than immigration,
though the official ban on the emigration of Chinese subjects that lasted into the 19th c­ entury
was rarely effective, and honoured mostly in the breach (Kuhn 2008). The acceleration of Asian
migration in the 19th century took place in a context of capitalist expansion and imperial
competition: the hunger for labour in Southeast Asia was such that very few restrictions were
placed on the entry of migrant labourers into countries like Malaya. Singapore and Malaya
did not introduce immigration control until 1930. Nevertheless, European empires in Asia
were concerned with distinguishing between different types of migrants for other reasons.
The British colonial government of India passed a set of complicated rules governing which
social groups of Indians could and could not leave the country (Amrith 2013). Concern with
political subversion or with smuggling encouraged many colonial states to guard their borders
more closely, and to try to distinguish between legal and illicit flows (Tagliacozzo 2005). Almost
all of the colonial societies of Southeast Asia distinguished between indigenous and migrant
populations –​even where migrants had settled for several generations. In the Dutch East Indies,
migrants from other parts of Asia were categorised as ‘foreign Asians’ and had different rights
from ‘natives’.
Nevertheless, in comparative perspective, what is most striking about the Asian context is
how late migration control became widespread: most Asian migrants before the 1930s travelled
without passports or visas. The global economic depression was a turning point. It brought the
inequalities of colonial capitalism to the fore, and raised new questions about inequality and
redistribution; this made the question of political institutions –​their inclusions and exclusions
–​more important than ever before. With prescience, John Furnivall, the Burma-​based British
scholar-​administrator, wrote in 1939 that ‘we can already see that 1930 marks the… close of a
period of 60 years, beginning with the opening of the Suez Canal, and, although less definitely,
the close of a period of 400 years from the first landing of Vasco da Gama in Calicut’ (Furnivall
1939: 428). The collapse of global commodity markets led to a reversal of the flows of migra-
tion that had become entrenched over 60 years. Colonial laws restricted fresh migration from
China and India to Southeast Asia –​as often through changes in labour recruitment regula-
tions as through explicit immigration restriction. Ethnic tensions flared up at a time of rising
unemployment –​for instance during the anti-​Indian violence in Burma that accompanied the
Saya San Rebellion of 1930–​32. Emergent nationalist movements in Southeast Asia demanded
further immigration restriction; the British Indian government retaliated, in 1938 and 1939,
with a unilateral ban on all labour emigration from India to Malaya or Ceylon (Amrith 2010).
World War Two brought the trauma of dislocation and forced migration for millions of
people across Asia. It also put an immediate end to patterns of long-​distance migration linking
India, China, and Southeast Asia, though many of those routes of migration were already under
strain –​subject to new immigration and emigration controls, and swayed by new forms of pop-
ulist anti-​immigrant politics –​even before the war.With decolonisation in the 1940s and 1950s,
paths of migration that had previously taken place within the boundaries of a single empire, for
instance the vast Indian migration to Burma, became international movements.

Postcolonial migration
The 1930s and 1940s marked a rupture, bringing an end to patterns of Asian migration that had
persisted for almost a century. Distinguishing migrants from locals, identifying and resettling
refugees and displaced peoples, became central to new states’ assertions of authority, and their
definitions of citizenship. Asia’s new states had to balance the demands of ethnic nationalism
with the fact that their boundaries were inherited from the imperial structures from which

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Sunil S. Amrith

they were created. The idea that nations each constituted the homeland of a particular major-
ity ethnic community was a common-​sense proposition in the mid-​20th century. Yet many of
Asia’s new nations were conspicuously multi-​ethnic, multi-​religious, and multi-​lingual. Given
the heterogeneity of Asia’s population, the new international borders both united and divided
people. New international borders left many ethnic groups without a state; they created ‘ethnic
enclaves included in larger … political units’, and left ‘pools of people as minorities on one or
both sides of the frontier’ (Cribb and Li 2004).The transformation of India and China –​the two
largest source countries of emigrants –​fed the epochal shift away from long-​distance migration.
With the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, overseas migration from China virtually ceased
for three decades; the main exception to this trend came in the continuing flow of Chinese to
Hong Kong. International migration from India continued, but on a significantly reduced scale
compared with the colonial era. India’s international migration sought new routes: first to the
old colonial centre, the United Kingdom, and later to the Middle East. The great migrations
from China and India that had shaped Asia’s capitalist development and its population geogra-
phy from the late-​19th to the mid-​20th centuries came to an end. But those earlier migrations
left a significant legacy. In every new nation in Southeast Asia there were significant Chinese and
Indian minorities. Their experiences in the postcolonial era were mixed; but for many of them,
their migrant origins were a source of disadvantage and discrimination long after their parents
or grandparents had made their journeys across the Bay of Bengal or the South China Sea.
In keeping with a wider global pattern, the decades between the end of World War Two
and the 1970s saw a decline in international migration within Asia. Economic integration in
general within East Asia, and between East and Southeast Asia, reached a low point; integration
between South and Southeast Asia fared worse still. For most of the Cold War, Prasenjit Duara
has argued, ‘the economic energies of Asian countries in the two camps were directed more
towards the nation and the supraregion than the region itself ’ – the ‘supraregion’, here, refers to
the geographically dispersed capitalist and socialist blocs (Duara 2015: 254).
However, in an era when virtually all postcolonial states believed in planning and when even
pro-​western and market-​oriented states intervened to shape their economies and societies, mil-
lions of people were mobilised to move within Asia’s new national borders in pursuit of ‘devel-
opment’. For instance, whereas in the age of empire the frontiers of migration for the young
men of Tamil Nadu lay overseas, after 1947 these patterns of movement were redirected within
India’s borders. In India and throughout Southeast Asia, millions moved to work in factories
and workshops; they moved to work in the offices of expanding government bureaucracies;
they moved to work in the informal economies that flourished at the interstices of regulation,
in neighbourhoods unmarked on maps; they moved to build the dams and power plants that
fuelled dreams of an industrial future. Above all they moved to Asia’s growing cities. Even in
China, where the government instituted the hukou system to inhibit population movements,
the violent mass mobilisation of the Great Leap Forward displaced large numbers of people,
and the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution sent millions of students and urban dwellers to the
countryside (Lary 1999).
After the reorientation of the middle decades of the 20th century, the 1970s marked another
turning point in the history of migration in Asia. Accelerated internal migration has led to
the growth of megacities that attract hundreds or thousands of new migrants every week  –​
alongside this growth, hundreds of smaller cities have developed, many of them within a very
short space of time. This mass movement is particularly evident in China, where earlier strict
controls over migration and settlement in urban centres have fragmented, leading to the largest
and most rapid urbanisation in history. Mumbai, Jakarta, Manila, and Dhaka are not far behind
Chinese cities like Guangzhou or Shenzhen in their capacity to attract migrants. At the same

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Colonial & postcolonial migrations

time, increasing prosperity and increasing inter-​regional inequalities have stimulated a resur-
gence in international migration in Asia. Some of the new routes of migration are entirely new;
others built on long historical connections, including many described earlier in this chapter.
Two main circuits of Asian migration established themselves from the 1970s: the first, from the
1970s, involved the migration of millions of short-​term contract workers from South Asia, the
Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand to the oil-​producing states of the Middle East. The major-
ity were men working in construction, though an increasing proportion of women made the
journey from the 1980s, to work in domestic service and in the leisure industry. The second
circuit of Asian migration, which took off during the 1980s, drew migrants from South Asia,
Indonesia, the Philippines, Burma, and Vietnam to the growing economies of Southeast Asia and
Northeast Asia: Singapore, Malaysia,Thailand, Japan and Korea.The migration of young women
for leisure industry and domestic work constitutes a significant proportion of this movement, as
does the movement of male construction and manual workers. Both streams of migration have
grown in scale over the past decade, and both involve large numbers of undocumented (‘illegal’)
migrants. There has at the same time been a marked ‘feminisation’ of several currents of mobil-
ity –​internal and international, skilled, and unskilled –​since the 1980s (Kaur 2004).
Alongside a resurgence in labour migration, the last three decades have also seen a move-
ment with fewer historical precedents: a vast movement of skilled professionals and hundreds of
thousands of students, together with significant and unprecedented marriage migration across
national frontiers. Intra-​Asian migration forms part of a continuum that includes movement to
the United States, Australasia, and Europe.

Conclusion
In many ways contemporary migration in Asia is without historical precedent; this can be seen
in the diversity and complexity of routes and kinds of migration; in the unprecedented speed
of long-​distance travel; in the instantaneous nature of the communications technologies that tie
migrants to their families and their homelands. In its gender composition, too, current migra-
tion is unprecedented. In the colonial era, by far the majority of Asia’s migrants were men; this
is no longer the case. But in other ways, understanding the long history of Asian migration con-
tinues to be important to illuminate our present condition. Historical analogies can be helpful
in understanding what is truly distinctive about recent patterns of migration; moreover, direct
historical continuities can be seen in some, though not all, routes of Asian migration.
There are plenty of analogies to be made between historical and contemporary migration
in Asia. In terms of the drivers of migration, there are parallels with an earlier era of imperial
globalisation in Asia. Internal and international migration today are consequences of processes
familiar to historians: sharpening inequalities between regions, and between the city and the
countryside; environmental pressures on agrarian regions, including but not limited to natural
disasters; the circulation of ideas and information giving rise to new aspirations and the search
for a better life far away.
In terms of the mechanisms of migration, too, there are important historical analogies to be
made. Today, as in the past, Asian migration depends very often on informal networks of infor-
mation, capital, housing, and emotional support. Contractors, ‘jobbers’, brokers, intermediaries,
play a pivotal role in facilitating both rural–urban and intra–rural migration in Asia, akin to the
kangany of the 19th century; similarly, migrants to China’s cities continue to depend on infor-
mal connections: networks of kin and fellow villagers. Now, as in the past, these networks are
fragile. They can unravel as quickly as they form. Migration scholars Stephen Castles and Mark
Miller (2009) see the ‘migration industry’ as a distinctive feature of Asian migration in global

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Sunil S. Amrith

perspective; as discussed earlier in this chapter, the migration industry in both China and India
has deep historical roots.
Another sort of analogy can be made in discussing the conditions that migrant workers face.
In the lack of autonomy that so many migrant workers in the Gulf and Southeast Asia experi-
ence, there are undoubtedly parallels with earlier forms of unfree labour. Activists for migrant
rights have at times drawn directly on an historical language of ‘indenture’ and even ‘slavery’
to describe the working conditions of migrants in both the Middle East and in Southeast Asia.
Such analogies can obscure as much as they illuminate; they tend to elide the significant changes
in the political, institutional, and geopolitical structures under which contemporary migration
takes place (Amrith 2011); yet they can assume political and discursive importance within activ-
ist movements to bring about improvements in migrants’ working conditions.
Contemporary Asian migration does not merely resemble past practice; there are direct
continuities inherent in the ways that particular places are connected. This can be seen most
evidently in the continuing centrality of port cities like Singapore and Hong Kong as hubs of
Asian connections –​as destinations and as transit points in migrants’ journeys. Both port cities
have adapted to global transformations, yet their basic outward orientation provides a continu-
ity with their colonial histories as free ports (Tagliacozzo 2007). Similarly, many of the regions
from which Asia’s migrants originate have deep histories of mobility: migrants from Bangladesh,
for instance, often come from regions which have long been connected, along riverine routes,
to Indian Ocean networks (Alexander, Chatterji and Jalais 2015). Many of the Tamil Nadu
villages that are home to the migrant construction workers who have moved to Malaysia and
Singapore since the 1980s have much longer histories of connection with Southeast Asia. Often,
migrant workers follow in the footsteps of their grandparents whereas their parents tended to
have more sedentary lives in the period of migration’s interruption in the mid-​20th century
(Amrith 2013).
All the while, new relationships are being forged between old diasporas and their newly
ascendant homelands, eager for capital, expertise, and connections. While countries like
Singapore aim to attract highly skilled Asian professionals (Yeoh and Lin 2012), their home
countries seek to draw them back. Following the example of Taiwan, China and India have both
made efforts, in the 21st century, to encourage their diasporas to invest in their homelands, and
to encourage migrant professionals to return. A significant number have begun to do so, as rapid
economic growth creates opportunities and boosts salaries. In 2004, the Indian government
instituted a partial concession to the ban –​in place since 1955 –​on dual citizenship. Tellingly,
the Indian government’s efforts were directed largely towards Indians in the West, with a more
ambivalent view towards working-​class Indians settled elsewhere in Asia (Sinha 2015). At the
same time, new forms of migration superimposed upon older ones –​’old’ and ‘new’ diasporas
are divided by class and experience as often as they are united by a shared culture.

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Kahn, J. (2006). Other Malays:  Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Malay World. Singapore:
NUS Press.
Kaur, A. (2004). Wage Labour in Southeast Asia Since 1840: Globalisation, the International Division of Labour
and Labour Transformations. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Kuhn, P. (2008). Chinese Among Others: Emigration in Modern Times. Singapore: NUS Press.
Lary, D. (1999). The ‘static’ decades: inter-​provincial migration in pre-​reform China. In F. N. Pieke and
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Lieberman, V. (2013). Strange Parallels Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.  800–​ 1830:  Volume 2.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Look Lai, W. (2009). Asian diasporas and tropical migration in the age of empire: a comparative overview.
Journal of Chinese Overseas, 5, pp. 28–​54.
McKeown, A. (2010). Chinese emigration in global context, 1840–​1950. Journal of Global History, 5 (1),
pp. 95–​124.
McKeown, A. (2008). Melancholy Order:  Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders. Cambridge
University Press.
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pp. 306–​337.
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Leiden: Brill, pp. 415–​435.
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New York: W.W. Norton.

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2
THE CHANGING MEANINGS
OF DIASPORA
The Chinese in Southeast Asia

Els van Dongen and Hong Liu

Introduction
Dispersed over all corners of the earth, the Chinese diaspora –​estimated to be around 60 mil-
lion –​is the largest in the world. It constitutes an important part of the Asian diaspora, not only
because of its size, but also because more than three-​quarters of the Chinese diaspora still reside
in Southeast Asia today. Due to geographical proximity and trading ties, the Chinese diaspora
has a long history in Southeast Asia, which was the main destination of emigrants from the
Southern Chinese provinces of Fujian and Guangdong until the 1950s. From then onwards,
re-​migration from Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to North America, Australasia,
Europe, and Japan led to a more geographically diverse Chinese diasporic landscape. Following
the start of economic reforms in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the late 1970s, places
of origin of Chinese emigrants also became more varied as the latter departed from everywhere
in China, and not merely from the traditional emigration areas (qiaoxiang) in South China. Even
though the Chinese diaspora is unique in many ways, it can also illustrate some of the broader
concerns and changing contexts pertaining to the Asian diaspora. These include questions of
identity and homeland ties; the various factors that contribute to divisions within diasporas; the
attempts of governments to incorporate diasporas; and the changing relationship between states
and diasporas in different historical periods and geopolitical contexts. Guided by such an under-
standing, this chapter provides an historical overview and theoretical framework of the Chinese
diaspora in Southeast Asia in the context of changing meanings of diaspora (identity, difference,
and homeland linkages) from the beginning of Chinese settlement in the region to the present.

Three meanings of diaspora and the Chinese in Southeast Asia

In its original meaning, the term diaspora refers to the ‘scattering’ of Jews and Armenians that
connoted suffering and oppression as ‘victim diasporas’ (Cohen 1997: 4). As such, the term
implies forced exile, a shared group identity shaped by common experiences of hardship, and
a longing for a homeland in need of reconstruction. Although multiple uses of the term have
marked its proliferation since the 1990s, we still find some reference to this original meaning in
literature on diaspora, such as in the emphasis on identity and collective memory, occurrences of
alienation in host societies, and the preservation of homeland ties among diasporic communities.

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Els van Dongen & Hong Liu

Scholarly literature of recent decades also includes new meanings of diaspora. In one sense,
the term has become integrated into broader attempts to deconstruct ‘bounded and static
understandings of culture and society’ against the background of newer paradigms such as
globalisation and transnationalism (McKeown 1999: 308). As a project of resistance, diaspora
exposes the limits of the nation-​state paradigm and focuses instead on interconnections at
both sub-​national and transnational levels. Here, the role of networks is particularly relevant in
what McKeown has referred to as a ‘diasporic perspective’ that pays attention to transnational
flows and connections (ibid.:  307). Diaspora in this sense also challenges the understanding
of movements as linear and uni-​directional, as in older conceptions of migration. Culturally,
diaspora signifies a revolt against a single narrative in favour of diversity, heterogeneity, or what
McKeown (1999) calls ‘diaspora-​as-​difference’.
In a third sense, however, the term diaspora has become a ‘category of practice’ employed
by states to claim populations beyond national boundaries and ‘to appeal to loyalties’ (Brubaker
2005:  12), reflecting the tendency of ‘nationalising transnational mobility’ (Ho, Hickey, and
Yeoh 2015: 153; Xiang,Yeoh, and Toyota 2013). As a political category, governments have used
the term to erase differences in an attempt to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. Since
it is in the interest of nation-​states to conceive of ‘their’ diasporas as homogenous groups that
can be managed and that share their loyalty to the ‘motherland’, the notion of difference so
central to diaspora-​as-​critique comes under threat in this third use of the term.
The homogenisation that underlies diaspora is not just specific to the political use of the
term; it also underlies its original meaning. Conceiving of diasporas as groups that share the
common experience of forced exile minimises internal differences, such as those of class, race,
religion, dialect, origin, occupation, or generation. Hence, scholars have warned of the dangers
of essentialisation and homogenisation when applying the term ‘diaspora’ outside specific his-
torical contexts (Ang 2003; Wang 2004). It is thus important not only to focus on the historical
experiences of the Chinese diaspora, but also on divisions within Chinese communities.
The tension between the diverse meanings of diaspora as group identity, difference, and
homeland ties, is also visible in changing research paradigms on the Chinese in Southeast Asia,
which continues to be a main geographical focus of research. Until World War Two, the Chinese
were perceived of as ‘unchanging’ sojourners in scholarship (Purcell 1951). The term huaqiao
(overseas Chinese) mostly appeared in official discourse and in scholarship to refer to the period
before World War Two, when Chinese bachelors from the southern provinces of Guangdong
and Fujian migrated to Southeast Asia with the intent of returning to China. Up to the 1960s,
the term ‘Nanyang Chinese’ (Nanyang huaqiao), which suggested the existence of a unified and
homogenous community, was commonplace in research. During the 1950s and 1960s, in the
context of the rise of nationalism and the Cold War, researchers mostly framed identity ques-
tions in terms of studies on the assimilation of the Chinese in several Southeast Asian countries
(Skinner 1957;Wang 1959).This nation-​state framework used in studies up to the 1980s gradu-
ally made way for a ‘diasporic perspective’ that focuses instead on transnational mobility, links,
flows, institutions, and networks (McKeown 1999).
During the 1980s, scholars also replaced the simplistic dichotomy of unchanging sojourners
versus assimilated nationals with an understanding of identity as a complex and multilayered
category, consisting of, among others, national, cultural, ethnic, and class identities (Wang 1985).
With the growing impetus of cultural studies since the 1990s, researchers further problema-
tised notions of ‘Chineseness’, multiculturalism, and diaspora as markers of cultural preservation,
‘separateness’ and ‘proto-​nationalism’ (Ang 2003). Since then, the ‘hybridity’ behind terms such
as totok (‘pure’ Chinese) or peranakan (ethnic Chinese of mixed origin) has been increasingly
acknowledged (Ang 2003; Coppel 2012). In recent years, scholars have also paid more attention

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The changing meanings of diaspora

to the question of ethnic minorities and changes in identification modes of these communi-
ties in a global context (Barabantseva 2011; Leo 2015). At the same time, questions pertaining
to agencies, interfaces, and marginality as a source of diasporic Chinese strength have been
addressed (Liu 2006; Liu and van Dongen 2013).
Whereas earlier criticism of the Chinese diaspora focused on its spatial quality of China-​
centredness or the denial of localisation, Shelly Chan has recently argued in favour of the use of
the concept of  ‘diaspora’ in a temporal sense. Diaspora, Chan argues, is less about deconstructing
the model of centre and periphery than it is about asking who is making claims about diasporas
and for what purpose at specific moments in time. Hence, both centre and periphery are con-
tingent forces, subject to shifting interests, perceptions, and values in time (Chan 2015).
Highlighting the tension between the various understandings of diaspora, and keeping in
mind Shelly Chan’s proposition regarding changing understandings of diaspora at different
‘moments’ in time, our overview discusses five main periods or ‘moments’ that have defined
the evolution of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. They are (1) the early history of the
Chinese traders in the Nanyang and colonial expansion (15th-​19th centuries); (2) the mass labour
migration movement after the 1850s; (3) the nationalist movement of the early 2​ 0th century;
(4) the period of decolonisation and the Cold War; and (5) the period of China’s reform and
opening-​up (post-​1978) in the era of globalisation and neoliberalism. Each period manifests
changes in diaspora as homeland ties, dynamics of difference, and the perception of the Chinese
state regarding the role and relevance of the Chinese diaspora. If we understand diaspora as a
field of competing interests across time and space, constructed and shared by diasporic commu-
nities, host societies, and the homeland, diaspora remains a useful category of analysis.

Early Chinese traders and colonial expansion

Individual Chinese traders reached the south of the Malay Peninsula and mainland Southeast
Asia as early as the Qin and Han dynasties (221 BCE–​220 CE), but it was only with the growth
of commercial activities in Southeast Asia in the 13th century that Chinese communities arose
(Wade 2009; Zhuang 2001). Under the Yongle Emperor (1360–​1424), Zheng He’s maritime
excursions in the 15th century (1405–​1433) served to formalise relations with Southeast Asia
under the tribute system. Even though overseas trade was banned during the mid-​15th century,
in 1567, a partial lifting of the ban led to a de facto legalisation of trade and the increase of private
junk trade.
Before the arrival of the Portuguese and the Spanish in Southeast Asia in the 16th century,
the Chinese were already active as commercial middlemen in the region. During the early
colonial period, they worked as artisans and labourers, and as ‘tax farmers’ under colonial rulers.
Under this system, the Chinese secured licences to collect taxes on local goods and services for
the colonial authorities, with opium, spirits, gambling, and pawnshops becoming lucrative areas
(Kuhn 2008; Skinner 1996). This system built on the local system of indirect rule of ‘officers’ in
pre-​colonial Southeast Asia, the so-​called kapitan system, in which top merchants operated as
leaders of Chinese communities.
As traders, mostly Hokkien [Fujian] merchants from South China engaged in private trade,
exchanging Chinese goods such as ceramics and silks for Southeast Asian products such as spices
and sandalwood. A  vast business network connected the Hokkien traders from the Kyushu
Islands to the Malay Archipelago and crossed communities in Korea, Kyushu, Ryukyu, Taiwan,
and Manila. These networks were based on family, native places, lineage, guilds, and personal
ties, consolidated through practices such as the adoption of sons from within the clan or
sworn brotherhoods (Chin 2010: 174, 193, 196). Already during this early period, the Chinese

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Els van Dongen & Hong Liu

community was far from homogenous. In the early urban settlement of Spanish Manila, for
example, it consisted of Chinese leaders who acted as middlemen, rich merchants who provided
products for the famous Manila-​Acapulco galleon trade, small merchants and artisans residing in
the Chinese quarter (the Parián), and labourers offering food and services (Kueh 2014).
In the 17th century, Chinese trade in Southeast Asia expanded.Tin and gold mining and the
growing of pepper and gambier arose in the region to meet Chinese demands. By the 18th cen-
tury, the Chinese also gradually became engaged with setting up the rice trade between China
and Southeast Asia. Some of these early labour migrant communities in Borneo, Riau, Bangka,
and Johor set up ‘kongsis’ or partnerships between labourers, headmen and capital providers, or
‘taukehs’ that made them self-​ruled and quasi-​autonomous (Trocki 2005). Other forms of com-
munity arrangement during this period included the ‘bangs’, organisations based on dialect and
with complex internal hierarchies that cut across class divisions, and that provided recruitment
and offered patronage (Kuhn 2008).
Each of the main dialect groups had its own niche occupations, influenced not only by the
skills of the respective emigrants but also by networks and conditions in the host societies. The
Hokkien, maritime traders since the 1500s, were present in Taiwan, the Philippines, Java, Malaya,
Borneo, and Siam. The Cantonese specialised in, among others, trade and cash crops, and could
be found in great numbers in Malaya.The Teochiu [Teochew] people, mostly based in Thailand,
were known for shipbuilding, but also worked on plantations and engaged in businesses such
as the rice trade. The Hakka migrated to Malaya (West Borneo) and Singapore, where they
engaged in mining, forestry, and agriculture (McKeown 2010; Wang 1991).
The Qing government continued Ming policies of prohibiting migration and treat-
ing migrants as ‘outcasts and deserters’, partly because of their actual support for the Zheng
Chenggong (Koxinga) regime in Taiwan (Yen 1978: 7). Although emigration remained banned
until 1893 (with bans on trade instated and lifted during the 18th century), the first half of the
19th century witnessed a rapid expansion of Chinese communities in Southeast Asia (Wade
2009; Wang 2009). Because of the trading ban, the demands of trading itself, and the depend-
ence on the winds for return, the early communities of Chinese traders in Southeast Asia were
temporary and forced sojourners (Chin 2010: 157; Wang 1981: 120). Given the rapid growth of
communities, evictions and massacres of the Chinese communities already took place in Manila
(1603), and Batavia (1740) (Kuhn 2008).
Since those who migrated were male (mostly bachelors) and huaqiao who had the intent
to return to China, a dual family system emerged. Maintaining a family in their place of ori-
gin, they married local wives. Because of this practice, ‘creolised Chinese societies’ such as the
Mestizos in the Philippines and Peranakans in the Malay peninsula and the Indonesian archi-
pelago, developed in a stable fashion in the 17th and 18th centuries (Skinner 1996). Merchants
of these communities, rooted in both local and Chinese cultures, made suitable revenue farmers.
By the end of the 18th century, the economic position of the Chinese in Southeast Asia was
secured through tax farming and strategies such as trade peddling and giving advance credit
(Kwee 2014). Whether in European colonies or in monarchies not under colonial rule, the
Chinese in Southeast Asia benefitted from the protection of weak patron-​states and the exist-
ence of occupational niches (Kuhn 2001).
During this early period, it was the socio-​economic visibility of the Chinese traders and
middlemen –​as opposed to their physical visibility in other geographical contexts –​that led
to discrimination (Wickberg 1994:  70) and the preservation of homeland ties. However, as
explained, differences within this group identity were already manifest, as the early ‘sojourners’
were not merely traders, but also labourers and artisans. Whereas Safran has identified ‘pariah
capitalism’ as a trait of the Chinese diaspora, Wang Gungwu has warned against a singular

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The changing meanings of diaspora

understanding  of  the Chinese diaspora with ‘business acumen and wealth’ as such (Safran
1991: 89; Wang 2004). Moreover, trading networks during this early period defy nation-​state
approaches and reflect the second meaning of diaspora, emphasising the role of co-​ethnicity in
the construction of these networks (Curtin 1984). Finally, the Chinese state’s primary strategy
was to prevent migration rather than to obtain the loyalty of its diaspora.

Mass labour migration after the 1850s

Since the mid-​19th century, labour migration and the migration of those of lower socio-​eco-
nomic backgrounds further complicated the picture of the Chinese diaspora as a socio-​economi-
cally privileged class; migration was an economic survival strategy. The scale of labour migration
from South China increased massively, facilitated by the emergence of large-​scale transoceanic
shipping between the 1870s and the 1920s. Domestically, population pressure (between 1790 and
1850, the Chinese population rose from 300 million to 420 million), price increases, inflation, the
uprisings of the Taiping and Muslim rebellions, and the rise of warlordism are commonly listed as
push factors (Hoerder 2012: 23). Regionally, following the Treaties of Nanking (Nanjing) (1842)
and Tientsin (Tianjin) (1856) that ended the Opium Wars, the treaty ports of Guangzhou, Xiamen,
Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai were opened for trade and British Hong Kong was founded in
1842. Whereas earlier migration had taken place through merchant networks in Fujian or miners
from Guangdong, now Hong Kong emerged as a centre of migration (McKeown 1999: 313–​314;
Sinn 2013). Here, the second meaning of diaspora as networks, connections, and flows stands out.
From Hong Kong and these newly opened treaty ports, coolies and labourers were shipped
to the New World (the British West Indies, Cuba, and Peru) and Australasia to fill the void of
the abolished slave labour.They worked in the plantation economy or as labourers in the service
of industrialisation. Although the coolie agencies in these ports, as well as in Hong Kong and
Singapore, were mainly foreign-​owned, some were Chinese-​owned; in addition, many relied on
Chinese ‘coolie brokers’ (ketous) and subordinate brokers (Yen 2013: 75). Ending in the 1870s,
but continuing until the 1920s in Southeast Asia, the Chinese coolie pattern was short-​lived;
coolies only constituted one eighth of the 2.5 million Chinese migrants during the 19th cen-
tury (Hoerder 2012: 25–​26; Wang 1991).1
In Southeast Asia, colonial expansion and the increasing European demand for Southeast Asian
products saw Chinese trade and retail business thriving, with the Chinese replacing existing trad-
ers. On the production side, a rising number of Chinese worked in mines and on plantations to
deliver products for the Chinese, regional, and European markets (Kwee 2014: 292; Trocki 2005).
From the late 1​ 9th century until the 1940s, European imperialism connected China and India more
closely with Southeast Asia. Labour market integration and colonial policies led to mass migration of
Chinese and Indian workers, with one estimate of Burma, Malaya, and Thailand receiving more than
15 million Chinese and Indian immigrants during this period. Under the indenture system, Chinese
labourers worked in plantations in Malaya, Sumatra, British North Borneo, and Sarawak, where they
cultivated rubber, coffee, palm oil, tobacco, sugar cane, and coconuts (Kaur 2014: 167–​171).
With the arrival of the British in Southeast Asia and the foundation of the Straits Settlements
(Penang, Singapore, and Malacca) in the 18th and 19th centuries, these places attracted both
the intermediate Chinese merchant class, and migrants from China.The intermediate merchant
elite consisted of Peranakan or Straits Chinese, who were the offspring of Chinese immigrants
to the Malay archipelago and local women. Starting in the early 19th century, direct colonial
administration signified the decline of the tax farming system in Southeast Asia and the role of
the Chinese intermediate elite in this system (Kuhn 2001). This decline of the old elite would
also impact community organisations.

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Els van Dongen & Hong Liu

Concerning group identity and relations with the homeland, with mass migration since the
mid-​19th century, native-​place organisations (huiguan) based on the intersecting ‘segments’ of
dialect, locality, and surname (Crissman 1967) in both North America and Southeast Asia served
to assist the migrants upon arrival. These ‘adaptive organisations’ (Wickberg 1994), hierarchi-
cally organised and with wealthy community members as leaders, helped the new arrivals with
services such as housing and employment. The organisational principles of the huiguan reveal
the importance of kinship and family relations in the migration system, as well as the crucial
role of language in networks. Dialect groups engaged in specific niche occupations, as noted
above, and chain migration of those from the same local area and/​or kinship group to the same
destination occurred.
Apart from these native-​ place organisations, a number of other organisations also had
important functions in colonial Southeast Asia, such as the secret societies and the trading
guilds. Chambers of commerce replaced the trading guilds that functioned as umbrella organi-
sations of the huiguan, trade associations, and other associations during the late 1​ 9th century. As
such, supra-​dialect organisations were already in place as mass migration transformed the older
intermediate communities. The voluntary organisations were also instrumental in the sending
of remittances to the hometowns, or qiaoxiang, which served as one of the most important and
tangible linkages between the Chinese diaspora and China, contributing to the emergence of
transnationalist capitalism (Liu and Benton 2016; Wickberg 1994).
As for the attitude of the Chinese state toward the Chinese diaspora, an important shift took
place during this period. The Chinese government engaged in the protection of the Chinese
emigrants, with the first Chinese consulate being established in Singapore in 1877 (Yen 1978:
7). The question of the nationality of the Chinese overseas first emerged during this period,
namely in the 1868 Burlingame Treaty between the Qing government and the United States.
The Qing government did not recognise naturalisation of Qing subjects in the United States
or after their return to China, thereby confirming that Chinese were huaqiao (overseas Chinese)
who were legally, politically, and culturally tied to the Qing government (Shao 2009: 9). The
Chinese state now recognised the existence of Chinese communities outside China, consider-
ing them as Chinese nationals who belonged to the Chinese state.

The early ​20th century: the call of the motherland

During the early 20th century, the question of group identity and homeland ties and diaspora
in the sense of states seeking to claim populations intersected most clearly.The ‘formalisation’ of
institutions that confirmed homeland ties entered a new stage during this period, with an impe-
tus from the Qing government.When Chinese consulates were established, the latter attempted
to promote Chinese consciousness through cultural activities and Chinese schools. For example,
the second consul in Singapore, Tso Ping-​lung, who arrived in 1881, promoted interest in the
Chinese classics through the literary society, the Hui Hsien He (the Society for the Meeting of
Literary Excellence). He also encouraged wealthy merchants to set up Chinese language schools
(Yen 1978: 8). Apart from the already existing huiguan and Chinese schools, a third vehicle for
the promotion of nationalism was the circulation of newspapers.
The latter allowed for virtual connections between émigrés and their hometowns in the
form of qiaokan or overseas Chinese magazines. Through these magazines, the hometowns
sought to involve migrants in the development of the hometown, with education being an
important aspect of this. However, the qiaokan mostly encouraged loyalty towards the native
place rather than the creation of broader ‘imagined communities’ during this period (Hsu 2000).
Apart from qiaokan, revolutionary newspapers, books and periodicals were published in Tokyo,

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The changing meanings of diaspora

Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore and circulated through local branches of the Tongmenghui
(Revolutionary Alliance) and affiliated organisations. To reach illiterate audiences, the revo-
lutionaries used newsletters to spread cartoons with revolutionary content, set up ‘reading
clubs’ (shubaoshe), first in Singapore and Malaya between 1908 and 1911 and later throughout
Southeast Asia and North America, and ‘drama troupes’ (Yen 1978: 16, 18–​19).
In the context of mounting local nationalisms and anti-​Sinicism, in terms of diaspora as
group identity and difference, during this period, there was a tension between identification
with what Kuhn has referred to as the ‘primary community’ based on dialect, kinship, and native
place, and the ‘secondary community’ based on supra-​dialect, supra-​kinship and pan-​Chinese
principles (Kuhn 2008: 170–​171). The Chinese state played an important role in this process as
new migrants arrived from China, and as cultural and political identification became a central
issue. In combination with a new wave of migration, especially with female migration being
permitted, communities that consisted of Chinese of ‘pure’ Chinese heritage born in China
expanded. Both the Chinese and intermediate communities such as the Babas were therefore
faced with choices regarding identification: they could preserve their distinct identity, integrate
further into the host societies, or pursue ‘re-​Sinification’. The latter meant adopting Chinese
language and customs and identifying with the social and political interests of the Chinese com-
munity at large, a choice that was sometimes driven by local community leaders rather than the
Chinese state (McKeown 1999). Here, diversity existed in the form of the distinct identification
choices that members of Chinese communities made, with dialect and kinship divisions coexist-
ing with pan-​Chinese nationalism.
Identification choices were complicated by the presence of reformers and revolutionar-
ies who competed with the government for the support of the Chinese diaspora. Between
1900 and 1911, revolutionaries led by Sun Yat-​sen, reformers under Kang Youwei, and the
Qing government alike courted the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia and elsewhere to
support their causes. With the Qing government failing in its protection of the Chinese
overseas against exclusion laws that emerged in the settler societies of North America, New
Zealand, and Australia, the revolutionaries exploited anti-​Manchu sentiment in overseas
Chinese communities (Yen 1978: 8). Here, again, the term huaqiao served to unite the
Chinese diaspora and to win their hearts and minds. Southeast Asian Chinese played an
important role in Sun’s efforts, with the Singapore branch of the Revolutionary Alliance
founded in 1906. It became the Nanyang headquarters of the Alliance in 1908, but due
to limited support, Sun Yat-​sen relocated the headquarters to Penang in 1909 (Wang
1981:133). Even so, the majority of huaqiao in Singapore and Malaya did not support the
revolutionaries (Duara 1997;Yen 1978: 13–​14). In 1909, China proclaimed a nationality law
based on jus sanguinis or right of blood. Under this law, all those born of Chinese parents
were Chinese.
The identification with China was the strongest during the 1930s. The 1911 Revolution
was thwarted by the attempts of Yuan Shikai to restore the monarchy. The Beiyang gov-
ernment in Beijing and Sun Yat-​sen’s Kuomintang in Guangzhou competed for legiti-
macy in a country torn apart by warlord factions. After unification in 1927, and especially
after the Japanese occupation during the 1930s, Chinese communities abroad chose ‘re-​
Sinification’: they increasingly identified with China as a nation-​state rather than just with
their hometowns, and sent massive amounts of remittances to China (Clammer 1975: 13;
Hsu 2000). Singapore played an important role in this ‘Nanyang Chinese nationalism’ dur-
ing China’s war with Japan. It was home to the headquarters of the biggest global overseas
Chinese relief fund organisation, the Federation of China Relief Fund of the South Seas,
which raised almost C$200 million [Chinese currency during the Republican era] and

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Els van Dongen & Hong Liu

which also organised the sending of voluntary troops, technicians, and labourers to support

China’s anti-​Japanese endeavours (Koh 2013: 1).
Overall, the three meanings of diaspora intersected in the question of political and cul-
tural identification with ‘China’ during this period. The presence of consulates and efforts by
competing political forces to reach out to the Chinese communities influenced the institu-
tionalisation of group identity. Diversity was a question of the degree of identification, as the
influx of new migrants from China transformed existing intermediate communities who had
lost their socio-​economic niches. Finally, the Chinese government now actively claimed its
diaspora and made efforts to obtain its economic, political, and cultural support.

Decolonisation, the Cold War, and re-​migration after 1949

With decolonisation in Southeast Asia, the ‘pillars’ of the Chinese communities (voluntary
associations, schools, and newspapers) were eradicated in some nation-​states and preserved
in others. Assimilation policies of different degrees, depending on factors such as the relative
size of the communities and the nature of the political system, were put in place in vari-
ous countries of Southeast Asia. Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand implemented strong
assimilation policies, with community organisations being dismantled and newspapers and
schools shut down. In Thailand, which had not been colonised, cultural assimilation policies
such as the ‘Thai-​ification’ of Chinese schools, political repression, and economic nationalist
policies had already been in place since the early ​20th century (Skinner 1957). Countries with
Chinese communities that constituted a large percentage of the total population, applied less
drastic policies that allowed for the preservation of group identities. In Malaysia, for example,
Chinese secondary schools continued to exist, but they were subject to government control
(Suryadinata 1997: 11–​13). Even though the relevance of national assimilation policies during
this period challenges the use of the concept of diaspora in favour of ‘ethnic Chinese’, the
former remains relevant for this period because it was the perception of a unified Chinese dias-
pora, more loyal to China than to the host societies and in this sense a problem, that strongly
influenced these policies.
Cultural assimilation was often coupled with economic policies directed at benefitting
indigenous entrepreneurs. For example, in Indonesia, the benteng system, which restricted the
import of certain goods to indigenous entrepreneurs only, was introduced during the 1950s.
In 1959, the ethnic Chinese were also prevented from engaging in retail trade outside cities.
In the Philippines, the Filipino First Policy (1948–​1972) led to the nationalisation of several
industries, and Malaysia pursued its New Economic Policy (NEP) (1970–​1990) to increase the
Malay share in economic activity. Differences within diaspora regarding cultural and political
identification with China were hence intensified during this period.
As for the claiming of the Chinese diaspora by the Chinese state, after 1949 a contradictory
policy of engagement and disengagement took shape. Initially, the PRC continued to engage
with the Chinese overseas, returnees, and dependents, and gave preferential treatment to these
groups because it relied on remittances for efforts of economic development and industrialisa-
tion. However, in the context of the Cold War and the spread of Communism in Southeast
Asia, the Chinese in the region came to be regarded as a ‘fifth column’ serving China’s interests
(Wang 1981: 279). This perceived lack of political loyalty to the host countries was conjoined
to suspicion caused by economic dominance rooted in the historical socio-​economic status of
the middlemen (Suryadinata 2007: 4).
The Nationality Law of 1909 had proclaimed all Chinese overseas as the subjects of China,
and the law of 1929 continued this ius sanguinis principle. With colonial administrations mostly

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The changing meanings of diaspora

relying on the principle of ius soli or place of birth as a basis for nationality, the resulting de facto
dual nationality became a predicament during the period of decolonisation (Kratoska 1993).
In response to this, the Sino-Indonesian Dual Nationality Treaty of 1955 ended this ambiguity.
Chinese nationals abroad were asked to choose a nationality, and they were usually encouraged
to take up local nationality. Huaqiao who intended to return to China were separated from
huaren, who chose host country nationality. Even though the treaty was not always applied, the
disengagement with the ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia continued throughout the 1960s and
1970s.
Between 1949 and 1961, about half a million Chinese arrived in or returned to the PRC,
driven by patriotism towards China and tensions in Southeast Asian countries, such as anti-​
Chinese movements (Fitzgerald 1972). In 1965–​1966, thousands more arrived in China when a
coup in Indonesia was followed by an anti-​Communist purge that also targeted ethnic Chinese.
The ‘returned overseas Chinese’ (guiqiao) were given a distinct legal status and many were seg-
regated from local Chinese on overseas Chinese farms (huaqiao nongchang), and in special vil-
lages and schools, resulting in a ‘unique form of ethnicity’ (Ford 2014: 240). As class struggle in
the PRC intensified, the ‘foreign relations’ of the ‘disobedient’ returned overseas Chinese were
considered problematic; they were labelled as members of an exploitative class in the early 1960s
(Chan 2014: 233). During the Cultural Revolution (1966–​1976), policies towards the Chinese
overseas were discontinued and relatives of the Chinese overseas were persecuted because of
‘capitalist’ associations (Fitzgerald 1972). Hence, regarding the Chinese state claiming ‘its’ dias-
pora, this period witnessed the tension between engagement for the purpose of remittances and
disengagement because of the perceived ‘capitalist’ ideology of the Chinese diaspora.

Economic reform and the new migrants since 1978

Even though diaspora as a community intent on returning has become more problematic since
the start of the reform era, questions of group identity have received a new impetus with
the arrival of ‘new migrants (xin yimin)’ from all over China globally. With the liberalisation
of migration laws in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, the latter became
primary destination countries, but migration to Southeast Asia also continued. These ‘new
migrants,’ estimated to have reached about 9 million worldwide, consisted of students who had
remained abroad after graduation and of professionals, but also of chain migrants and irregular
migrants. An important difference with the older generations of migrants was that these ‘new
migrants’ were mostly highly educated Chinese nationals with vast transnational networks.
In Southeast Asia, due to growing land connectivity and investment from China, mainland
Southeast Asia in particular has witnessed the influx of new migrants. During the early 1990s,
with support of the Asian Development Bank, the Great Mekong Sub-​region (GMS) countries
of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar,Thailand,Vietnam and China entered into an economic coopera-
tion programme. Here, hydraulic projects and mining attracted a new wave of Chinese labour
migration in countries such as Cambodia and Laos, which historically had smaller Chinese
communities because of their inland location (Tan 2012). Consequently, a gradual restoration
of the key institutions of the Chinese communities, such as schools, newspapers and commu-
nity organisations, followed in these mainland Southeast Asian countries, even though China’s
interests and agents were largely driving this restoration (Nyíri 2012).
In maritime Southeast Asia, the number of new migrants from China has been smaller
in comparison, but here, too, the older communities have been faced with more economic,
political, and cultural influence from Mainland China. This has prompted a new wave of ‘re-​
Sinicisation’ or a renewed emphasis on Chinese identity in intermediate communities such as

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Els van Dongen & Hong Liu

the Mestizos in the Philippines and the Peranakans in Indonesia. Apart from the celebration of
Chinese ancestry, Chinese rituals and holidays have also been reinstated in certain Southeast
Asian countries, even though these are manifestations of a totok (‘pure’) and not a Peranakan
Chinese culture from a local perspective (Hau 2014). As such, there are certain parallels with
the early 2​ 0th century, when the rise of nationalism and the arrival of new migrants confronted
Chinese communities in Southeast Asia with political and cultural identification choices that
transcended identification based on dialect, class, or native place. However, during the late ​20th
century, Mainland Chinese capital was an important driver behind these choices.2 Nevertheless,
the local support for this renewed emphasis on ‘Chinese’ identity signifies an important shift
from previous historical periods during which this identity was suppressed.
Adapting to new needs, voluntary organisations have transformed themselves into trans-
national and even global organisations. Although membership of some of these organisations
has remained based on kinship or locality, it has become more open in practice and oriented
towards business networking both with China and within the Chinese diaspora. New types of
organisations have emerged, such as professional or alumni organisations. These organisations
have set up regular large-​scale events, often with the support of hometown governments in
China (Liu 1998). New migrants have also set up their own organisations. Hence, during this
latest period, diaspora as group identity has centred around the question of the relation between
the older and newer communities and the renewed influence of Mainland Chinese culture on
the existing communities.
The family structure itself has also undergone massive changes. For some of the new
migrants, education has become a migration strategy, with children being placed at prestigious
universities in the West. New types of ‘astronaut families’, in which family members are spread
between continents and shuttle back and forth to combine business with family reunions, have
emerged (Waters 2005). Discourses on transnationalism have gone hand in hand with notions of
‘flexible citizenship’ shaped by strategic considerations and ‘deterritorialised’ forms of belonging
(Ong and Nonini 1997; Ong 1999). Here, diaspora as the erosion of fixed and static boundaries
appears most manifest. Even Chinese talent migration policies have made increasing room for
contributions of highly skilled Chinese from abroad. In this ‘temporal-​spatial stretch’, policies
have facilitated contributions from abroad and the transnational circulation of talented Chinese
(Leung 2015). Diaspora as homeland ties has equally been transformed in the internet era,
which permits ‘transmigrants’ to become multi-​local and to ‘manage and mirror their physical
mobility in a globalised world’ (Ip and Yin 2016: 166).
In spite of the seeming erosion of boundaries, however, the Chinese state has become once
again proactive in claiming its diaspora. Although the PRC relaxed its emigration restrictions
during the early 1980s, it also promulgated the 1980 Nationality Law of the People’s Republic
of China, which reiterated the no-​dual-​nationality principle of the 1955 Sino-​Indonesian Dual
Nationality Treaty. During the first stage of economic reform (1978–​1994), China particularly
sought investment from the Chinese diaspora, with the majority of investments coming from
the Chinese in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia (Smart and Hsu 2004). Since
2000, it has focused on the development of high-​tech industrial development parks and knowl-
edge-​intensive development models, with highly skilled Chinese being the focus of policies.
Hence, the Chinese state continues to play a significant role in regulating mobility patterns
through a well-​established system of diaspora policies and institutions (Liu and van Dongen
2016). We should also note that, in this process, China is becoming an immigration country in
addition to a country of origin of ‘new migrants’ (Li and Yu 2015).
As China emerges as the second largest economy in the world and takes on a more asser-
tive foreign policy, the age-​old question of identification and of divisions within the Chinese

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The changing meanings of diaspora

diaspora has resurfaced. For the first time in modern history, a rising China defines the dynamic
relationship with its diaspora. It has shaped Chinese communities in the neighbouring coun-
tries, where China’s presence is much more visible and impactful. Hence, ‘re-​Sinicisation’ at the
turn of the 21st century has been driven primarily by the Southeast Asian Chinese communities
as a strategy to ingeniously respond to the opportunities presented by a rising China.The revival
of Chinese culture and ethnic pride and the multi-​dimensional efforts by the Chinese state
also play a significant role in facilitating this process (Liu 2016). In the meantime, the Chinese
diaspora’s engagement with China has evolved in the different national and regional contexts
of firmly established Southeast Asian states, thus exercising a much stronger degree of political,
economic and cultural control over their ethnic Chinese populations. Re-​engagement with the
Chinese in Southeast Asia, driven by economic interests and based on Mainland understandings
of ‘Chineseness’, ignores the complex identity processes of those who belong to different gen-
erations, classes, dialect groups, and places of origin, and who have been subjected to a variety
of identity politics in their countries of residence.

Conclusion
The tension between the three meanings of diaspora in the five main ‘moments’ discussed
above reflects not only the changing nature and interests of the Chinese diaspora, but also the
changing nature and interests of the Chinese/​Southeast Asian states. Firstly, group identity, even
though based on a set of stable organisational principles, altered in tandem with both policies in
China and in the host societies. Initially condemned by the Chinese state as traitors, the bach-
elor communities of Chinese ‘sojourners’ set up trading partnerships, utilised vast networks, and
gradually secured their socio-​economic position during the early colonial period. With mass
migration, they set up native-​place and other organisations, schools, and newspapers, which
received support from the Chinese state during the height of political and cultural identifica-
tion with China at the turn of the 20th century. During the period of decolonisation and the
Cold War, Southeast Asian governments suppressed the same community organisations for fear
of being extensions of the Chinese revolution of 1949. Since the start of reform and opening up
in the late 1970s, ‘re-​Sinicisation’ efforts or the explicit cultural identification with ‘Chineseness’
reflect the tension between local and Mainland understandings of ‘Chineseness’. Changes in the
relation between Chinese communities and the homeland are also manifest in shifts in migra-
tion patterns.These evolved from the willingness to return to China permanently, not only dur-
ing the early period but also in the case of returnees during the Cold War, to complex patterns
of re-​migration and temporary migration.
Secondly, that diaspora is not a singular and static entity is clear throughout the various
historical periods. Merchants, artisans and labourers already constituted part of the Chinese
diaspora during the early colonial period. They furthermore organised themselves based on the
intersecting principles of dialect, native place and surname, even though supra-​dialect organi-
sations were already present. Class distinctions are equally important, as petty merchants and
labourers complicate the image of the socio-​economically established middlemen. Specific con-
nectivities, networks, and flows demonstrate the relevance of thinking of ‘diaspora-as-difference’
in addition to the broader strokes of homeland ties as discussed above. Variations in political
and cultural identification and the tension between local and trans-​local identification marked
the early ​20th century, when the Chinese government actively reached out to Chinese com-
munities in Southeast Asia. With decolonisation, local policies in Southeast Asian countries
with regard to community organisations, Chinese language schools and newspapers further
influenced differences regarding political and cultural identification with ‘China’. Since the

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Els van Dongen & Hong Liu

reform and opening up, the arrival of ‘new migrants’ in Southeast Asian countries adds another
layer of dynamics regarding identity-​as-​difference. Finally, we should note that increasing vari-
ation in channels of migration, types of employment, places of origin, motivations for migration,
class backgrounds, and religious diversity add to the lack of the existence of   ‘a’ Chinese diaspora.
In spite of this diversity and fluidity, however, the Chinese state has long laid claim on ‘its’
diaspora, even though the markers of belonging and unbelonging have shifted over time. At
first unwilling to accept migration and considering its diaspora as traitors, the claiming took
the form of preventing emigration. The Chinese state first actively reached out to its diaspora
during the late 19th century, with a peak during the early 20th century. During this period,
the Chinese diaspora was part and parcel of the struggle for ideological legitimacy between
the CCP and the KMT. After decolonisation, the Chinese state engaged in a precarious bal-
ancing act of engagement for the purpose of remittances and disengagement because of ideo-
logical distrust. Since reform and opening up, this ambiguity has made room for a full-​fledged
charm offensive and the promotion of a Mainland understanding of  ‘Chineseness’, driven by
economic investment and, more recently, regional infrastructure projects under the ‘One Belt
One Road’ initiative that was launched in late 2013 to economically and strategically connect
China with its neighbouring countries alongside the maritime Silk Road and Central Asia. It
remains to be seen what the long-​term implications of the dynamic interaction between older
communities, new migrants, and the renewed Sino-​Southeast Asian connectivity in the context
of a rising China will bring. The latest diasporic ‘moment’, in short, has yet to run its course.

Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank the editors of this volume for their constructive comments, and
Wang Gungwu for his insightful feedback to the panel on ‘Beyond Fixed Geographies: Diaspora
and Alternative Conceptions of Southeast Asia’ at the SEASIA conference in Kyoto, 12–​13
December 2015. Els van Dongen and Hong Liu received funding from Nanyang Technological
University (M4081271, M4081020) respectively for this research. The authors are responsible
for any remaining errors in this chapter.

Notes
1 According to McKeown (2010, 2011), the overall figure of 2–​8 million Chinese migrants for this period
is too low because it is mostly based on a limited number of Chinese and English sources that count
contract labour and ‘coolie’ migrants only. Based on Chinese-​language sources, he argues that more than
20 million Chinese left South China between the 1840s and the 1930s.
2 We thank Wang Gungwu for bringing this point to our attention.

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PART II

Asian migration regimes

and pathways
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3
TEMPORARY LABOUR
MIGRATION
Michiel Baas

Introduction
Temporary labour migration might be one of the most easily recognised forms of migration
because of its immediate association with disenfranchised migrant workers. Yet, the ostensible
straightforwardness of its three inherent components –​temporary, labour and migration –​also
makes it one of the most illusive ones. Although the focus in many studies is indeed on migrant
workers with temporary work visas, undertaking hard labour over long hours and with limited
rights, other studies take a much broader approach and include virtually any person migrat-
ing to another country for the purpose of finding employment. While both strands of research
have their obvious reasons for doing so, the primary aim of this chapter is to disentangle the
three different components that make up the concept and, by doing so, argue that each in
their own way –​temporary, labour and migration –​builds on problematic assumptions. These
assumptions tend to replicate the way receiving nations organise and manage their inflow of
migrants through highly specific categories. By taking a critical approach to the way migration
research is generally organised along the lines drawn by migration regimes of receiving nations,
this chapter seeks to contribute to a growing awareness that this is ultimately an inadequate
way of understanding migration. Although the analysis will specifically zoom in on the case of
Singapore, other Asian nations that receive a large number of migrants organise their inflow in
a similar matter. Moreover it can be argued that increasingly this way of organising migration
is replicated outside the Asia region as well (see Asis and Battistella, this volume, Chapter 21).
In order to better understand what temporary labour migration actually entails in terms of
theory, policy and practice, this chapter is organised around the three components that create
the illusion of a coherent whole. In the first section, the chapter engages with the ostensi-
ble temporal aspect of migration and seeks to put forward the argument that labelling labour
migration as ‘temporary’ draws on an inherently contradictory assumption. At a macro level
temporary labour migrants form a more or less permanent presence in most developed Asian
nations, which contrasts rather ironically with ‘labour migration’ at an individual/​micro level
which tends to be ‘permanently’ temporary.
The second section aims to unpack the meaning of labour when we speak of ‘labour migra-
tion’. It is here that we will encounter a problem in the literature on labour migration itself;
some studies define it in terms of low-​skilled and low-​waged, while others include all migrants

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seeking employment in another country. Investigating the way ‘labour’ itself is interpreted will
take us deeper into the way migration itself is actually organised across the Asia-​Pacific region.
Labour may reference ‘work’, but it often also points at a particular hierarchy whereby certain
migrants are privileged over others.
In the final section the implied or assumed meaning of ‘migration’ itself will be unpacked.
In the most general interpretation of migration it is imagined to describe a cross-​border tra-
jectory whereby a migrant moves from one country to the next. While numerically this may
be unjustified –​there are many more internal than international migrants –​it continues to
define the way migration is understood by the public at large, impacting both politics and
policy, and it guides the vast majority of academic research into migration (see Skeldon, this
volume, Chapter 13).The ‘question of migration’ is not simply one of internal vs. international,
though. What constitutes migration references a political process of inclusion and exclusion
as well as othering, whereby the idea of the ‘migrant’ needs to be reiterated on a regular basis.
Globalisation and the potential for ‘transnational’ lives are crucial to understanding this, but
perhaps even more so the way migration programmes are continuously fine-​tuned to control
and regulate the inflow and temporary/​permanent stay of migrants even further. Based on this,
the chapter suggests that an increasing number of migrants actually never quite ‘migrate’ in the
classical sense any more.
In short, what this analysis will finally reveal is that the three elements that ‘define’ temporary
labour migration are not only problematic in themselves but also as an allegedly coherent phe-
nomenon. In the conclusion, this chapter will make some suggestions for future research and
will suggest that we need to start adopting a more critical stand to the way we conceptualise the
idea or question of migration itself.

Temporary migration
Temporary becomes permanent
In recent years there has been growing awareness that the temporal dimensions of migration
deserve our specific attention (Robertson 2016; Robertson and Ho 2016), especially since an
increasing number of migrants can be characterised as ‘permanently’ temporary or their path-
ways as ‘continually’ circular (see also Zapata-​Barrero et al. 2012). While previously permanent
residency permits and dual citizenship statuses were observed to facilitate transnational lifestyles,
the fact that a growing number of migrants have no access to (eventual) ‘permanency’ has pro-
duced a different kind of transnationality characterised by marginality, inequality and exploita-
tion. The way migrants negotiate, engage with and experience the various temporal aspects of
their individual trajectories, often faced with the structural constraints imposed by the architec-
ture of a particular migration programme, has thus become a pressing concern.
Receiving nations in the West as well as the East have been organising, streamlining and
managing their inflow of various migrants via skilled migration programmes for decades. An
important difference, though, is that while Europe and North America have gradually shifted
towards immigrant incorporation –​thus offering routes towards permanent residency –​migra-
tion in Asia continues to be premised on the idea of exclusion (Lian et al. 2016: 3) and differ-
ence. This means that Asian migration programmes tend to be more hierarchically organised
than their western counterparts, with migrants categorised in highly specific groups on the basis
of education, skill and wage levels. These categories not only correspond with specific rights in
terms of staying on (for instance in case of job loss), eligibility for permanent residency, or fam-
ily reunion, but also determine who is allowed to apply for the particular visa he or she qualifies

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for. In the case of low-​skilled migrants, the procedure often requires the involvement of specific
professionals, such as brokers or agents, who charge a considerable fee for their services. The
intermediation by such professionals is another feature that sets Asian migration programmes
apart from their western counterparts (see also Battistella 2014: 14; Lian 2016: 4). A brief history
of how these programmes developed over time illustrates their divergent trajectories.

Migration programmes in the West

In the West, migration programmes typically emerged during and after World War Two. The
agriculture-​based Bracero Program in the US, for instance, facilitated temporary labour migra-
tion between the US and Mexico commencing in 1942. While it was initially intended to alle-
viate wartime labour shortages, the programme in fact ran until 1964. The H-​2 Visa Program,
which was instituted in the 1950s, initially also aimed to facilitate low-​skilled migrants to
find temporary employment in the US by giving them so-​called ‘non-​immigrant visas’. In the
mid-​1980s this programme was split into two different sections: H-​2A and H-​2B. The H-​2A
continues to facilitate low-​skilled migration (particularly for agricultural work) while the H-​
2B has become synonymous with high-​skilled migration. While the influx of low-​skilled and
often illegal (Latin American) migrants finding employment in the US continues to feature
prominently on the political agenda, the H-​2B visa does so as well, especially where it concerns
US-​based companies recruiting foreign personnel –​for instance from India for the IT indus-
tries –​who are held to compete (unfairly) with local professionals.
European nations have a less-​r igid division in terms of skills in their migration programmes.
Initially, however, these programmes were strongly oriented towards low-​skilled personnel who,
post-World War Two, were in great demand with fast-​g rowing West European economies that
experienced severe labour shortages in manufacturing, construction and the service industries
(Castles and Ozkul 2014: 2). Besides spontaneous migrants who were regularised once they
found jobs, many immigrants initially hailed from the former colonies (ibid). This changed
with the emergence of so-​called guestworker programmes in the 1960s. Germany’s Gastarbeiter
arrived throughout the 1960s and 1970s under its Gastarbeiterprogramm. Other European nations
such as Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden ran parallel pro-
grammes. While in the Netherlands these gastarbeiders initially mainly hailed from southern
European nations such as Italy, Portugal and Spain, from the 1960s onwards migrants would
increasingly arrive from Morocco and Turkey.
It has been noted that, like comparable schemes in Western Europe, the German guest-
worker programme eventually failed to achieve its aims. Although most migrants only came
with the intention to work for a few years, others stayed on longer and eventually started
bringing over dependents. In addition to this they managed to gain longer-​term residence
rights and access to Germany’s welfare system. When Germany ended its formal agreement
with Turkey for labour recruitment because of the 1973 oil crisis, it found that many migrant
workers stayed on because of a lack of job opportunities back home. Family reunions and
the formation of ethnic enclaves heightened the sense of a certain irreversibility about the
situation (as discussed in Castles and Ozkul 2014: 32). At present the Turkish community in
Germany is roughly 2.8 million and, although not only the product of post-World War Two
migration, it cannot be denied that its guestworker programme played a crucial role in facilitat-
ing this. Other Western European nations also became home to significant groups of former
migrants. For instance, in the Netherlands the Turkish and Moroccan communities are now
the two largest ethnic communities, closely followed by those from the former Dutch colonies,
Indonesia and Surinam.1

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In Western Europe, temporary labour migration thus often resulted in the formation of ethnic
communities in the host nation. Although this was initially the product of so-​called ‘non-​return’ –​
meaning that the scheme under which these migrants had entered the country had intended it to
be temporary –​at present most European nations offer routes towards citizenship. Until the 1990s
this was a relatively straightforward affair; however, in more recent years additional requirements
regarding minimum income, guaranteed length of employment and knowledge of local culture
and language have been added. Concerns over the formation of ethnic enclaves, issues of non-​
integration and ‘Islamisation’ seem to have fuelled these developments the most.

Migration programmes in the East

In Asia labour migration programmes can be traced back to the colonial days of indentured and
semi-​indentured labour flows, something both colonial authorities and the private sector were
heavily invested in (Hugo 2009; Amrith, this volume, Chapter 1). It’s a little-​known fact that,
in terms of the scale of movement of people, this was actually comparable to movement across
the Atlantic at the time (Amrith 2014). In the century after 1840, some 20 million Chinese and
30 million Indians moved to Southeast Asia to work on its plantations and in its rapidly devel-
oping cities (Amrith 2014: 1569). Furthermore, it has been estimated that in the 1911–​1929
period alone, the combined migration to Burma, British Malaya and Thailand was more than
twice the number of migrants who headed for the United States (Lian et al. 2016: 4)2. This
development was directly related to the free and open immigration policy that British, Dutch
and French colonial powers practised between the 1850s and 1930s because of labour shortages
and other needs of local colonial economies. The multi-​ethnic/​racial composition of countries
such as Malaysia and Singapore continues to reflect that many stayed behind and went on to
form permanent communities in the countries they migrated to.
While the oil crisis of 1973 marked the end of guestworker schemes in countries such
as Germany, the oil boom of the early 1970s actually triggered the emergence of the first
Asian migration schemes (Wickramasekara 2014:  58). Fuelled by economic growth, nations
in the Gulf embarked on ‘ambitious modernisation programmes’ which required the inflow
of large numbers of labour migrants who primarily hailed from Asia (ibid). Similarly, the rapid
development of Malaysia and Thailand also necessitated significant numbers of labour migrants
during this period. However, as Wickramasekara writes, apart from Hong Kong other East
Asian nations did not operate migration schemes for low-​skilled labourers, although there was
certainly demand there as well (ibid: 58–​59). Taiwan only liberalised the inflow of low-​skilled
workers in the early 1990s, while South Korea did this even later in 2004 (ibid: 59).
What stands out when it comes to Asian migration schemes and programmes is that they were
and continue to be guided by economic considerations in which profit maximisation is key.This
is mainly reflected in how they consider different groups of migrants as inherently unequal and
place them in a hierarchical schema in terms of their rights in and obligations to the host nation.
Most concretely this becomes clear when we look at the maximum number of years a migrant
can be employed in a particular country, or the way eligibility for permanent residency or citi-
zenship is organised. The case of South Korea illustrates this clearly. Its migration programme in
its earliest form –​the Industrial Trainee System, launched in 1994 –​allowed its ‘trainees’ (who
were in fact mainly low-​skilled contract workers) to stay for a maximum of three years (Castles
and Ozkul 2014: 39). In 2005 the South Korean government replaced this programme with its
Employment Permit System, which recognised migrants’ labour rights –​something it previously
didn’t –​but is again capped in terms of the length of stay in South Korea (ibid). In a similar vein,
Singapore limits the maximum number of years a low-​or semi-​skilled migrant worker is allowed

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Temporary labour migration

to be employed in the city-​state. Basic skilled construction workers, for instance, can only be
employed for up to ten years, while higher skilled ones are permitted to stay as long as 22 years.3
Furthermore, the categories of construction and foreign domestic worker also come with spe-
cific age-​limits. In terms of eligibility for permanent residence both countries also entertain
specific rules.While South Korea restricts this to so-​called ‘special talent’ –​excelling in a specific
field such as science, management, education, cultural arts, or athletics –​Singapore excludes its
Work Permit holders (thus low-​skilled workers) from eligibility.

Ethics, concerns and awareness

A growing body of studies engages with the ethical dimensions of temporariness and restric-
tiveness of migration, especially in terms of the way specific migration schemes exclude low-​
skilled migrants from basic rights or simply treat them ‘differently’. Scholars have noted how
this may facilitate or even encourage exploitation and abuse (e.g. Hugo 2009; Dauvergne and
Marsden 2014a). Concern is also voiced over working and living conditions, health and safety
standards and quality of accommodation provided. The latter is not only about hygiene stand-
ards and comfort but increasingly also about segregation from local inhabitants, as migrant
dormitories are more and more constructed in isolated areas on the outskirts of cities. While
studies on migrant workers in the Gulf stand out in terms of their association with the above-​
mentioned issues (e.g. Ahmed, A. 2010; Bindhulakshmi 2010; Buckley 2012; Jureidini 2003;
Prakash 1998; Rahman 2010; Rajan and Narayana 2011; Timothy and Sasikumar 2012), there
has been a growing body of work on Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan as well.
In the case of Singapore a particular focus of research has been on foreign domestic workers
(e.g. Yeoh and Huang 1998, 1999, 2000; Parreñas 2000, 2001; Yeoh and Annadhurai 2008).
However, more recently the living conditions of construction workers have come under scru-
tiny as well (e.g. Rahman 2004; Rahman and Fee 2005; Rahman and Kiong 2013; Yaw and
Ofori 1997, 2001).
What stands out in the analysis is that the ‘temporariness’ of arrangements in terms of labour
contracts and working permits contribute to an innately unequal and unstable relationship between
migrant, employer and the state. As mentioned earlier, considerations of profit maximisation play a
crucial role here; both employer and the state benefit from the system’s flexibility and hierarchical
organisation. In the case of Hong Kong and Taiwan this has led to increased political participation
and protests by migrant workers in recent years (see also Constable 2009), while Singapore’s Little
India Riot of 2013 could possibly be understood within this context as well.
While so far the focus has been on the temporalities of labour migration, it is now time
to move on to the element of ‘labour’ itself. As the next section will show, the notion of
labour is imbued with a particular fuzziness and characterised by ambiguity. With migra-
tion programmes strongly bifurcated between low-​skilled and highly skilled migrants, the
inevitable question is whether these seemingly polar opposites actually represent the skills
of the individual migrants.

Labour migration
The fuzziness of labour
The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that there are currently 105 mil-
lion persons working in a country other than where they were born.4 These migrants make

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Michiel Baas

up 90 per cent of the total number of international migrants worldwide. As the ILO fur-
ther elaborates, only an estimated 7–​8 per cent of migrants are refugees or asylum seekers,
some of whom are also regularly employed. The labour mobility that organisations such as
the ILO speak of basically encapsulates virtually all migrants, and thus does not differenti-
ate between the various categorisations that nation-​states themselves use. This also contrasts
with the popular notion of ‘labour’, which tends to reference work that is of the low-​skilled
and low-​waged variety. Within migration literature, this interpretation of labour reverberates
in the bulk of studies on labour migration, though there is certainly no clear consensus on
what ‘labour’ actually means. Graeme Hugo’s (2009) study distinguishes six types of tempo-
rary labour migrants in Australia who, in terms of skills, wages and temporalities, could not
be more different from each other. Besides low-​skilled contract and seasonal workers, Hugo
includes highly skilled professionals as well as those coming in as international students or
on so-​called Working Holiday Maker visas. His approach is an attempt to cover the whole
gamut of different types of migrant ‘labour’ which resonates with the migration infrastructure
of countries as diverse as Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore or South Korea. However, the
study of migration itself continues to be strongly bifurcated between low-​and highly skilled
migrants in its focus. In doing so, studies tend to reflect the way receiving nations organise
and manage the inflow of migrants themselves. A brief return to the Singaporean case will
prove illuminating in this regard.
While low-​skilled migrants by far outnumber highly skilled ones in Singapore, the city-​state
mainly envisions itself as a destination for highly skilled or so-​called ‘talent’ migrants, and has
thus implemented a whole range of policies and other initiatives to attract them to its shores
(e.g. Shachar 2006; Yeoh and Eng 2008; Ho 2011; Yeoh and Huang 2011). The use of the term
‘talent’ is particularly interesting here, denoting a whole interplay of factors ranging from skills
and education to the notion of being ‘global citizens’. The latter is clearly also imbued with the
idea of high mobility, which is adorned with an aura of cosmopolitanism and success and infused
with a considerable amount of symbolic value or capital (Yeoh and Eng 2008: 236). This kind of
symbolism seems partly a by-​product of the rhetoric of the global war for talent itself, which has
led to the emergence of a new type of global meritocracy. Influenced by this, the Singaporean
government, as well as other Asian nations, has changed its social and economic policies with the
aim of attracting the ‘best and brightest’ (Ng 2011: 262). For such talent migrants a wide variety
of nomenclature has effloresced in recent years, ranging from elite transnational subjects and astro-
nauts to frequent flyers, globalites and transnational nomads (for a more wide-​ranging discussion
of this, see Baas 2017).
What stands out in the Singaporean case is the alternative trajectory that is envisioned for
both low-​and highly skilled migrants. While low-​skilled ‘workers’ strictly come in as tem-
porary labour, highly skilled ‘professionals’ are afforded more permanent pathways. Besides
envisioning these highly skilled migrants as important to the country’s ambition to remain
globally competitive, they are also imagined to provide a solution with respect to certain
demographic concerns brought about by an ageing population and low fertility rates. Both
these problems are experienced by other Asian nations such as Japan and South Korea as well,
something which has received significant scholarly interest in recent years. As we will see
below, not only does the bifurcation between low-​and highly skilled migrants in migration
studies divert from the way local populations engage with questions of migration, it also does
not always adequately reflect the actual level of education, skills and/​or income of migrants
themselves. In short, what we need to engage with more critically is migrant categorisations
themselves.

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Temporary labour migration

The ambiguity of skills

As noted, Graeme Hugo (2009) identifies multiple categories among the broader spectrum of
temporary labour migration. While this in itself introduces a more diverse perspective to the
idea of labour, it is also indicative of a problem which is obfuscated by the very bifurcation
between low and high. As I have argued elsewhere (Baas 2017), there is a growing group of
migrants who could be conceptualised as the ‘mobile middle’; skilled migrants who actively
negotiate the constraints and test the flexibilities of a skilled migration programme in order to
work and potentially stay on permanently in a particular country. In Singapore this mobile mid-
dle sees itself represented in a mid-​level skilled visa category, which is currently also the fastest
growing one. However, the designation of mid-​level skilled often does not adequately capture
the skills, level of education and income of those who make up this middle ground between
various more clearly defined categories.
In Singapore those who fall in the category of mid-​level skilled migrant in terms of income
(S$2,200–​S$4,500 per month) and education/​skills can apply for a so-​called S-​Pass. This work
visa not only facilitates mid-​level skilled migration to Singapore but also functions as a bridging
category for those migrants whose skills/​education and proposed salary do not squarely meet
the criteria of those intended for low-​or highly skilled migrants. Some of the Indian migrants
I interviewed for my research, for instance, were highly educated, but the salary packages they
had been offered were lower than what was required for a so-​called Employment Pass (or
E-​Pass).This E-​Pass is primarily oriented towards highly educated migrants. Other migrants had
been awarded an E-​Pass based on a salary which in reality they did not make; their employer
required them to return a portion of their salaries in cash every month. While this chapter does
not intend to discuss the legalities of such arrangements, what it brings to the fore is that the
low-​vs. highly skilled bifurcation does not necessarily always reflect the way ‘migration’ gets
organised or works out in practice.
Thus, in the case of Singapore, the ambiguity of skills is partly resolved by the mid-​level
skilled category, which caters to a diverse range of migrants who do not fit into the neat com-
partmentalisation that the other categories represent. The category of international students
functions as another example when it comes to how education/​skills and employment are
not always neatly aligned. Recent scholarship on international students from Asia, for instance,
clearly indicates that in order to finance their study abroad and/​or pay for their daily expenses,
international students are almost exclusively involved in work of the low-​skilled variety (e.g.
cleaning work, waiting tables or driving taxis) (see Baas 2010; Liu-​Farrer 2012). At the same
time, international students are typically equated with high-​potential or talent migrants and in
the case of Australia, for instance, the country directly recruits its highly skilled migrants from
the pool of freshly graduated international students. Yet, as Liu-​Farrer also points out, consid-
ering them as ‘skilled’ migrants is problematic, since having completed a tertiary education is
the main qualifier for this (2012: 161). Moreover, as Liu-​Farrer writes, ‘international students
are often recruited for a plethora of political, economic, and cultural initiatives, from produc-
ing international peace and supplementing the shrinking domestic student pool to enriching
campus life’ (ibid). As such, they are generally left out of studies of labour migration altogether.
The question of ‘labour’ is thus indicative of a particular fluidity which studies of migra-
tion often have a hard time adequately capturing. Mid-​level skilled migrants are one such
category; slotted in-​between two more recognisable groups of migrants, they are in fact a rap-
idly growing group in Singapore. The inclusion of other categories of migrants, most notably
that of international students, further muddies a clear definition of what can be understood as

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Michiel Baas

temporary labour migration. The primary question that the final section will engage in, then,
is that if both ‘temporary’ and ‘labour’ are in themselves problematic in terms of what they
are assumed to stand for, what does this tell us about commonly held ideas of migration itself?

Migration and im/​mobility

Paradigmatic shifts in migration research
Like most fields of scholarly inquiry, that of migration has gone through various paradigmatic
shifts over time, influenced by research findings as well as changes in the geopolitical, sociocul-
tural and economic landscape across sending and receiving nations. What stood out in earlier
research was the deeply functionalist approach with a weighty neoclassical focus that sought
to explain migration via various push and pull factors (Arango 2000; Castles 2000; Fog and
Sorensen 2002). Key in this was not only to explain but also to predict migration, and as such
various socioeconomic indicators would be employed to understand what motivated migrants
to leave their homes for ‘better’ destinations elsewhere. Migration thus described a process from
A to B which in its conceptualisation was imbued with a particular inevitability. In line with
this, an eventual return ‘home’ was chiefly conceptualised in terms of either failure to make it
or (at best) retirement after having faced hardships overseas (e.g. Cerase 1974; Gmelch 1980;
Rhoades 1979). Questions of integration and assimilation initially also built upon this notion
of permanency; temporary migrants (guestworkers) were observed to stay on permanently over
time and by doing so posed a challenge by, for instance, not integrating or assimilating into local
cultural norms and values (e.g. Brettell and Hollifield 2000). Especially in Europe this led to sig-
nificant public debates about ‘national culture’ to which newcomers are perceived to be a threat.
The 1990s introduced an important shift in thinking about migration with the concept
of transnationalism, which was held to challenge the legitimacy of the nation-​state itself. The
argument which became increasingly prominent was that a growing number of migrants could
be observed to maintain multiple ties and connections between home and host country, living
‘transnational lifestyles’ across and beyond nation-​state boundaries (see for instance Vertovec
1999; Guarnizo and Díaz 1999; Glick-​Schiller 1999). Studies of globalisation were particularly
of influence here, as it became clear that these transnational lifestyles were made possible by the
arrival of budget carriers as well as technological advances such as the availability of cheap call-
ing cards and (later) the emergence of online media.
An inevitable consequence for migration studies was that it had to refocus its attention on
the multiplicity of migrant lives and thus move away from earlier models that were utilised to
investigate migrant trajectories. Important in the early phase of the study of transnationalism was
to establish this optic as a ‘new’ approach to understanding current-​day migration (Kivisto 2001).
In the two decades since, studies have now advanced to the stage of arguing that increasingly
migrants leave ‘home’ with the idea of transnational lifestyles in mind (e.g. Baas 2010). The role
of social media cannot be denied here: more than ever before migrants are able to access and
compare information about various migration programmes, strategies and opportunities online,
envisioning a life across and beyond borders for themselves. Consequently, migration is increas-
ingly referred to as transnational migration or, as we will see below, as transnational mobility.

Mobilities paradigm
The introduction of the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ by Mimi Sheller and John Urry (2006) has
confronted the study of migration with new questions about how to understand the mobile

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trajectories of migrants across the globe. Introduced as a fundamental recasting of social science
by drawing attention to the constitutive role of movement within the functioning of social
institutions and practices, it is important to underline that this new paradigm is not simply about
asserting that the world is more mobile than ever (Sheller and Urry 2006). Rather, it seeks to
highlight that the complex character of mobility systems draws upon the multiple fixities or
‘moorings’  –​often on a substantial physical scale  –​that produce fluidity elsewhere (Sheller
2011). From this it follows that the systems which regulate or lubricate mobility are deeply
infused with notions of il/​legalities that are constructed upon sociocultural and political ideas
of belonging and what the nation-​state is imagined to stand for.What is crucial to this new way
of thinking about (transnational) mobility is that its focus is not necessarily only on questions
of movement but also, perhaps even more importantly, on the power of discourses, practices and
infrastructures that both facilitate as well as obstruct, pause and even bar movement (Sheller
2011: 2).
The new mobilities paradigm’s influence on migration research cannot be denied, especially
in terms of refocusing its orientation towards questions of who gets to migrate, under what condi-
tions, and how discussions in receiving nations about this often centre on deeply neoliberal notions
of benefit and profit. Aihwa Ong’s (2006) conceptualisation of neoliberalism as exception, through
which she addresses the way governing activities are recast as non-​political and non-​ideological,
thus mainly requiring a technical approach, has been instrumental in rethinking what migration
actually entails in this respect.What follows from this is that denying citizenship to some migrants
while fast-​tracking the applications of others depends on one’s marketable skills and ultimately
usability for the receiving nation.With the fine-​tuning of migration programmes, especially those
of countries such as Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore that are highly dependent on a sizable
inflow of variously skilled migrants, this has partly resulted in a refocus within migration research
on questions of ‘immobility’, rather than the idea of frequency and fluency of mobility that seems
to imbue transnational lifestyles. As Cresswell (2012) notes, this immobility is characterised by
notions of stillness, waiting and being stuck, in effect not moving forward. Increasingly this ‘not
moving forward’ within the context of the system itself is about not being eligible for a more per-
manent residency status and thus also about denying –​even in the very long term –​certain groups
of migrants to ever have equal rights to other groups of migrants and local citizens.
Migration has thus increasingly become about the opposite of what it was inherently and
historically layered with. From a perspective that initially drew heavily on push-​and-​pull models
and described a one-​way trajectory in which non-​return was assumed, the study of migration
has increasingly become about describing transnational lifestyles in which frequent mobility
seems key and notions of settling locally (integrating, assimilating) are gradually eroded to make
way for lifestyles that appear to exist betwixt and between country of origin and destination.
More recently, however, we have come to realise that with the fine-​tuning of migration rules
and regulations, limited mobility or immobility have become undeniable elements in many
migration trajectories as well. One could even argue that for an increasing number of migrants,
migration, as previously observed, is not what characterises their trajectories at all. It is here that
we need to return to the concept of temporary labour migration itself, because while for a large
group of migrants in the Asia-​Pacific region it does capture the pathways they are on, at the
same time the very opposite could also be argued.

Conclusion
A number of recent publications have engaged with the question of temporary labour migra-
tion in terms of ethics and ideology (e.g. Lenard and Straehle 2011; Lenard 2012), especially

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Michiel Baas

with regards to the idea of a triple-​win of which the International Labour Organization is an
advocate. The first two wins are for the migrants and economies of receiving nations, while the
third is for the economy of the sending nation (Dauvergne and Marsden 2014a: 227; see also
IOM 2008: 92). Essentially it links questions of migration to those of development, while also
engaging with notions of (in-​)equality, constraints and opportunities. Such discussions about
the ethics of temporary labour migration are rarely about all labour migrants; instead their focus
is on a very particular labour migrant who is defined largely in terms of the category he or
she falls into with respect to a particular migration regime.Yet as we have seen in this chapter,
temporary labour migration is a troublesome concept.
The concept of temporary labour migration is indicative of two problems which together
point at a more general problem within migration research. First of all the concept reflects a way
of thinking about migration that is in essence too narrow and too oriented towards capturing
particular groups of migrants within highly specific categories. The second problem is directly
linked to this in that the concept fails to connect with the on-​the-​g round experiences of tem-
porary labour migrants. In fact the migration experience is often permeated by contradictions
produced by the very terminology used. Temporary can be a permanent status, but also a ‘tem-
porary’ phase on the road to a permanent status. Furthermore, while at a macro level ‘labour’
includes all migrants seeking employment in another country, in practice receiving countries
treat variously skilled migrants in completely different ways. Highly developed nations in the
Asia-​Pacific region that are on the receiving end of a significant number of migrants –​even
more so than elsewhere, perhaps with the exception of the Middle East –​have implemented
migration architecture that treats different groups of migrants in a deeply hierarchical fashion.
This is reflected in regulations regarding the maximum age of migrants and possible length of
their employment, the eligibility to apply for permanent residence permits, the freedom to
switch employers, and even reproductive rights. Natalie Oswin (2014) captured it well by argu-
ing that in Singapore migrant workers are put on a different trajectory of life and death from
higher-​skilled migrants and the local population.
Finally, there is the issue of migration itself. As the recent paradigmatic shift in terms of a
renewed focus on mobilities has indicated, our focus as migration researchers should be much
more oriented to the notion of immobility, of migrants not ‘migrating’ as such. I would argue
that an increasing number of migrants actually are not migrants at all, but should perhaps be
thought of as cross-​border workers who simply move to another country temporarily without
ever going through an actual and more traditional migration process. The creation of migrant
enclaves in Hong Kong, Singapore, and also in the Middle East is indicative of this. Housing
migrants far from city centres, in dormitories that may have all the facilities that a migrant
would require for his day-​to-​day needs, but which at the same time are oriented towards segre-
gating him from ‘local’ daily life, is an undeniable element in this. It is here that the question of
the future of migration itself presents as one that ought to feature prominently on the research
agenda for years to come.

Notes
1 Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek: statline.cbs.nl/​StatWeb/​publication/​?DM=SLNL&PA=37325&D1
=0&D2=a&D3=0&D4=0&D5=a&D6=l&HDR=G2,G3&STB=G1,G5,T,G4&VW=T (checked 19-​
09-​2016). Turkish: 397.471; Moroccan: 385,761; Indonesian: 366,849; Surinamese: 349,022.
2 Please note that it concerns ‘gross’ migration here, meaning that a significant number of these migrants
did in fact return. This chapter does not engage in discussions of how much the ‘net’ migration eventu-
ally turned out to be.
3 This rule does not apply to Malaysians.

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4 See:  International labour migration. A  rights-​ based approach, available here:  www.ilo.org/​wcmsp5/​
groups/​public/​–​ed_​protect/​–​protrav/​–​migrant/​documents/​publication/​wcms_​208594.pdf (visited
15-​09-​2016).

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4
INTIMATE MIGRATIONS
The case of marriage migrants and
sex workers in Asia

Maria Cecilia Hwang and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas

Introduction
Intimate migrations refer to cross-​border movements that fulfil the intimate needs of individu-
als, particularly those that pertain to the emotional and sexual realms, which can include migra-
tion for marriage, sex work, or romance.1 Building upon a narrower definition of intimacy, we
distinguish this type of migration from those of domestic workers. Eileen Boris and Rhacel
Parreñas (2010) formulate an expansive definition of intimacy and include care and domestic
work in their definition of ‘intimate labour’. In so doing, they consider the meeting of personal
needs to be an intimate matter, which is a logic that agrees with that of V   iviana Zelizer who
sees intimacy as entailing the sharing of ‘knowledge and attention that are not widely avail-
able to third parties’, including ‘such elements as terms of endearment, bodily services, private
languages, emotional support, and correction of embarrassing defects’ (Zelizer 2005: 14–​15). In
our definition of intimate migrations, we make a distinction between the personal and intimate
needs of individuals. Met by domestic and care workers, and family members, personal needs
involve the work of care and reproduction. In contrast, we narrowly define intimate needs to
refer to one’s sexual and emotional desires.
The intimacy sought through intimate migrations includes the pursuit of love, marriage, and
romantic partnerships, and can be fleeting or long-​lasting. Intimate migrations fulfil the inti-
mate needs of the migrant or other individuals. V   arious historical flows of women’s migration,
including those from and within Asia, fall into the category of intimate migration, including
those of Asian migrant women who crossed borders as sex workers (Warren 2003; Y   ung 1995)
or brides (Gardner 2009; Glenn 1986; Luibhéid 2002). Likewise, although the contemporary
feminisation of migration has been characterised by the rise in women’s migration as workers,
including those who pursue sex work (Cheng 2010; Cheng and Kim 2014; Chin 2013; Parreñas
2011), many women continue to migrate as family members, whether as wives, fiancées, or
daughters (Choo 2016; Constable 2003; Faier 2009; Freeman 2011; Friedman 2006;Thai 2008).
In other words, many are primarily intimate migrants.
Despite its prevalence, intimate migration is a highly stigmatised process. Cross-​border mar-
riages are typically accused of constituting not just ‘fake marriages’ (Freeman 2011; Friedman
2006) but also of being abnormally unequal heterosexual partnerships that can result in
abuse of women (Constable 2003). Indeed, cross-​border marriages are often correlated with

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domestic violence or human trafficking in dominant discussions (Constable 2003; Freeman

2011). Similarly, dominant narratives in policy debates and popular media reduce sex work to
human trafficking (Hoang and Parreñas 2014).
In this essay, we look at the experiences of intimate migrants, whom we note are predomi-
nantly women. Our discussion seeks to explain the stigma surrounding intimate migrations, its
underlying logic, and lastly, legal regimes that impact the lives of intimate migrants. We begin
by providing an overview of contemporary intimate migrations from Asia and a summary
of the prevailing debates on such migrations. As we illustrate, intimate migrations are often
viewed with moral suspicion.Then we follow with a discussion on the impacts of stigma on the
experiences of intimate migrants, drawing attention to the heightened surveillance of intimate
migrants, and address the politics of gender in these migration and citizenship regimes.

The vulnerabilities of intimate migrants

There are two prevailing groups of intimate migrants: sex workers and wives.The former group
encompasses not just those who engage in prostitution but a wide range of workers who receive
payment to sexually arouse or stimulate clients in a variety of ways. They include Filipino
migrant hostesses in Japan (Parreñas 2011) and South Korea (Cheng 2010; Choo 2016) and sex
workers who circulate the global cities of Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, and Shanghai (Chin 2013).
Migrant wives include those traditionally considered ‘foreign brides’ or ‘mail-​order b​ rides’ such
as women from Asia, Latin America, or Eastern Europe who enter relationships with western
men (Constable 2003; Johnson 2007; Schaeffer 2012), Filipino women who seek marriages
with Korean farmers (Choo 2016) and Japanese rural men (Faier 2009), and Vietnamese women
who are wedded to men in Singapore (Yeoh et al. 2013) and Taiwan (Bélanger and Wang
2013). Many also marry co-​ethnic men, such as Vietnamese brides who marry members of the
Vietnamese diaspora or Viet Kieu (Thai 2008); ethnic Korean women of northeast China or
Chosǒnjok who marry South Korean men (Freeman 2011); mainland Chinese women who
marry older Taiwanese men (Lu 2012; Friedman 2006); and finally Indian women who pur-
sue arranged marriages with members of the Indian diaspora (Abraham 2000; Charsley et al.
2012). Migrant wives meet their spouses through a variety of channels, including social net-
works established by pioneer migrants (Bélanger and Tran 2011). However, expanding ‘intimate
industries’ (Parreñas, Thai, and Silvey 2016) have also facilitated the introduction of such cou-
ples through romance tours (Freeman 2011) or cyber chat rooms that make possible ‘virtual
romances’ (Constable 2003).
Intimate migrants represent some of the most vulnerable migrants across the globe today.
Migrant sex workers, as they engage in an occupation that is either criminalised or not consid-
ered legitimate work in many countries, are relegated into shadow economies and remain out-
side the purview of labour regulations. While many secure work independently (Hwang 2017),
they also frequently rely on middlemen who potentially could take more than half of their
earnings (Chin 2013; Chin and Finckenauer 2012). These intermediaries need not be members
of organised crime but small-​scale operators of brothels, spas and saunas or clubs, or they could
be agents, fake husbands or jockeys (Chin and Finckenauer 2012; Hilsdon and Giridharan
2008). Although popular media representation tends to focus on migrant sex workers who are
coerced and trafficked into prostitution, recent empirical studies find that many migrant sex
workers voluntarily engage in prostitution and had likely done so prior to migration (Chin and
Finckenauer 2012).
Also in a vulnerable position are foreign spouses, most of whom are women (Donato
and Gabaccia, 2015), because of the relationship of unequal dependency constituted

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Maria Cecilia Hwang & Rhacel Salazar Parreñas

by  the  legal  status of their migration. Across the globe, foreign spouses are rarely granted
citizenship immediately upon marriage but are instead relegated to a temporary status that
is conditional to their continued marriage to their citizen-​spouse before they can gain
eligibility for permanent membership. The length of conditional residency varies. It is for
instance two years in the United States, three years in Japan, and five years in Germany.
During this time, the foreign spouse is a legal dependent of the citizen-​spouse, which results
in a status of unequal dependency that in turn leaves the foreign spouse vulnerable to abuse
(Iglauer 2015). Indeed, many scholars have observed higher rates of domestic violence in
foreign marriages than in other marriages (Abraham 2000; Choo 2016). As one writes, ‘for-
eign women who marry American men are between three and six times more likely to be
victims of domestic abuse than American women’ (Kusel 2014:173). A similar problem has
been cited in South Korea where foreign women represent a disproportionate number of
domestic violence abuse victims (Iglauer 2015). Historically, in the United States abuse vic-
tims had no legal recourse as they risked facing deportation if they left their marriage before
the end of their conditional residency. Yet, even with recourse, women are often unaware
of their legal rights, as many are forced to live in isolation from local communities by their
husbands (Choo 2016).

Radical feminists’ view on intimate migrations

Though one group of intimate migrants pursues marriage and the other sex work, they
are frequently lumped together as sex-​traffic victims in the literature on human traffick-
ing (Cheng 2010). The collapsing of these two categories of intimate migrants speaks of
the dominance of radical feminist thought in policy debates and popular narratives sur-
rounding intimate migrations, especially in the United States (see also Mahdavi, this volume,
Chapter 14). After all, it is radical feminists who theoretically argue that marriage is a form
of prostitution, meaning the contractual subjugation of women by men (Pateman 1999),
and who likewise assert that prostitution is nothing but a reflection of men’s dominance and
ownership of women (Mackinnon 1991). Reflecting the dominance of radical feminist views
on cross-​border marriages, claims of trafficking of not just sex workers but of foreign brides
as well are common not only in popular media but also in scholarly literature. For example,
legal scholar Jane Kim (2010) insists on such depictions of foreign brides in China, referring
to them as nothing but ‘marriage slaves’.
Based on an unverifiable source, specifically drawing from a United States Congressional tes-
timony of one person, Kim (2010) asserts that close to 50 per cent of North Koreans in China
are women who are trafficking victims. Attempting to elicit moral panic, she claims,

Of the tens of thousands of North Korean refugees hiding in China, in 2008, it was
estimated that a disproportionate number, nearly two-​thirds of the refugee population,
were women. Of these women, 70 to 80 percent of North Korean refugee women are
trafficked into forced marriages, commercial sex exploitation, and exploitative labour.
More recently, North Korean refugee women have also been forced into Internet
stripping. Attributing increased incidents of trafficking to the increasing profitability
of selling North Korean women, an aid worker estimated in 2010 that women make
up 80 percent of North Korean refugees in China and that more than 90 percent of
North Korean refugee women become victims of trafficking
(Kim 2010:455).

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Intimate migrations

While we doubt the veracity of Kim’s claims, we quote her at length to provide an example
of the prevailing view on foreign brides and the reduction of their experiences to nothing but
abuse. If not a trafficked person, then they are victims of domestic violence.
Despite the prevalence of such claims, there remains a concerning lack of reliable data on
sex trafficking. Still, there is a preponderance of academic writings on the subject. In a recent
survey of the literature on gender and migration, Donato and Gabaccia found that ‘one-​third
of scholarly articles appearing after 1983 that address the feminisation of migration focus exclu-
sively on the sexual trafficking of migrants or on women working in the sex industry’ (2015:
36). One central reason we question the reduction of international brides to trafficking victims
is the contrary depiction of their marriages provided in empirically grounded research.
The adverse reaction against intimate migrations and the unverifiable claim that they would
likely lead to abuse is due not only to the influence of radical feminist thought and anti-​prostitu-
tion beliefs, but also because of negative sentiments against the purchase of sex. Indeed, from South
Korea to Germany to the United States, prospective husbands pay a few thousand US dollars to
marriage broker firms to help arrange the migration of their wives. Such payment is dismissed as
immoral because it defies the ‘hostile worlds view’ (Zelizer 2000, 2005) on intimacy and economy.
By ‘hostile worlds view’, Zelizer refers to the ‘rigid moral boundaries between market and inti-
mate domains’ (2000: 823). The intersection of love and money –​and of intimate social relations
and economic transactions –​is said to result in moral contamination, because intimacy and the
private sphere are shaped by sentiment and solidarity while economics and the public sphere
are motivated by calculation and efficiency. To put it simply, the ‘hostile worlds view’ assumes
that love and money are mutually exclusive. In this perspective, sex for money would be morally
wrong while sex for love would be considered proper. T   he moral stronghold of the ‘hostile worlds
view’ over mainstream views on intimate migrations, and the anti-​prostitution sentiment that it
espouses, eliminates the need for evidence in unsubstantiated cries of the human trafficking of
intimate migrants. It also allows for the prevailing negative views on intimate migrations to linger,
which, in turn, unavoidably shape the experiences of intimate migrants.

Grounded approach to intimate migrations in Asia

While grounded empirical studies on migrant sex workers remain few, there is a burgeoning
literature that relies on ethnography (Parreñas 2011) and interviews (Chin, 2013; Chin and
Finckenauer 2012) to provide a broad description of their experiences. The difficulty of access
has required these researchers to be more creative than usual. In their study of Chinese migrant
sex workers, Ko-lin Chin and James Finckenauer (2012) managed to access interviewees in ten
cities by paying their way into brothels as potential customers. Parreñas (2011) likewise faced
the challenge of access, and gained the trust of potential interviewees among Filipino migrant
hostesses in Tokyo. While she met scores of them visiting their workplaces, and also restaurants
and places of worship they frequented, not one would agree to sit down for an interview. After
three months of failed attempts to secure even one interview, Parreñas decided that the best
way to gain entrée was by working alongside them. Working at the bar opened doors for her.
While her initial approach yielded a zero per cent response rate, all those she approached after
she started working as a hostess agreed to an interview. Explaining this drastic shift, Parreñas
learned that hostesses avoided talking to those unfamiliar with their work because of the effort
involved in having to undo the misinformation guiding their questions.
Diverging from a moralistic and reductionist approach to denounce intimate migrations,
these ethnographic and in-​ depth studies illustrate that, though women involved in these

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Maria Cecilia Hwang & Rhacel Salazar Parreñas

migrations are indeed vulnerable to exploitation and violence, these cross-​border movements
can also be avenues for women to experience love and romance (Constable 2003), self-​g rowth
(Choo 2016; Faier 2009), mobility (Thai 2008), and cosmopolitan aspirations (Chin 2013),
despite the insecurities that may arise from their migration. Scholars highlight the experiences
of marriage migrants as workers (Piper and Roces 2004) and their economic contribution to
sending communities in the form of remittances (Bélanger, Tran, and Le 2011). Likewise, the
work of young scholars like Catherine Man Chuen Cheng (2016) spotlights both the unpaid
reproductive labour that migrant wives perform for the families of their spouses and their
economic contribution arising from their paid labour in receiving communities. Challenging
reductionist discourses, these empirical researches pay attention to the vulnerabilities of intimate
migrants without denying their agency.

Regulating intimate migration

Regulating marriage migrants
Historically, the migration of brides and wives had been closely regulated by destination
countries, especially in North America and Europe, and Asian women in particular had faced
harsher immigration restrictions. In the United States, the passage of the Chinese Exclusion
Act in 1882 and of the Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1907 virtually halted the migration of
Chinese and Japanese labourers respectively, yet exceptions were made for the brides of
Chinese merchants and Japanese men already in the country (Gardner 2009; Luibhéid 2002).
However, Chinese and Japanese women were subjected to stringent immigration control so
as to ensure that they were bona fide wives and not labourers or prostitutes whose immigra-
tion was prohibited under the Page Law of 1875. Eithne Luibhéid (2002) documents the
onerous bureaucratic process migrant Chinese women had to undergo before they could
even sail to the United States, including a series of investigations conducted by the American
Consul in Hong Kong, the Tung Wah Hospital Committee, and finally the British Colonial
government. Upon arrival on US soil, women then faced immigration officials who exam-
ined them through racialised and gendered markers of respectability such as their ‘bound
feet’ for Chinese women (Gardner 2009; Luibhéid 2002). In trying to distinguish ‘real’ wives
from prostitutes and deny entry to the latter, US immigration developed regulatory tech-
niques –​including the collection of biographical details, photography, and the compiling of
case files – ​based on constructs of race, gender, sexuality and class, that would inform the
subsequent regulation of other migrants (Luibhéid 2002).
Within Asia, many contemporary examples of state monitoring of marriage migrants from
Asian countries bear resemblance to earlier forms of distinguishing bona fide wives from eco-
nomic migrants, including sex workers. In her ethnography on Chinese marriage migrants in
Taiwan, Sarah Friedman (2015) illustrates the border regime that women have to confront at
Taiwan’s gates, and in particular the intrusive interrogation that they have to undergo in order
to prove the authenticity of their marriages to Taiwanese men. Implemented in the early-​21st
century amidst soaring numbers of international marriages involving Taiwanese men, such
regulatory practices of identifying ‘sham’ marriages create and reinforce normative under-
standing of the constitution of ‘real’ marriages. However, focus on marital fraud also reveals
bureaucratic and social anxiety over the co-​mingling of intimate and instrumental motives
behind these marriages. Of particular concern to Taiwan’s bureaucrats is that migrants use
marriage as a migration loophole to engage in illegal employment and particularly for sex
work. As Friedman explains, ‘The ubiquitous expression “sham marriage, actually prostitution”

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Intimate migrations

(jia jiehun zhen maiyin) made the association of sham marriage with sex work virtually unques-
tionable during the early years of the 21st century when the interview system was being
established’ (2015: 60).
That women are ‘likely to become’ or are in fact economic migrants in guise as marriage
migrants animated many receiving countries to impose more stringent immigration require-
ments for marriage migrants. In South Korea, for instance, anthropologist Caren Freeman
(2011) documented how the government promoted and subsidised the brokering of marriages
between Chosǒnjok women and South Korean farmers to remedy the growing bride deficit
in rural areas. The South Korean government envisioned these unions as a form of ‘marital
diplomacy’ that would unite the Korean diaspora across nation-​state borders. As Freeman (2011)
notes, in addition to recruiting wives, the government initially instituted an open-​door policy
that also invited Chosǒnjok migrants to work in South Korea’s factories under the industrial
trainee programme. However, as the word Chosǒnjok became synonymous with ‘illegal migrant
workers’ in the 1990s, not only did the government begun to view Chosǒnjok migrants with
suspicion in general but Chosǒnjok wives, first idealised as innocent brides, were later demon-
ised in popular narratives as opportunistic women who use marriage with unsuspecting Korean
farmers for ulterior –​often economic –​motives. Thus, in 1998, the new nationality law also
imposed a longer naturalisation waiting period for foreign spouses, from six months to two
years. Such a prolonged ‘graduated citizenship’ process (Yeoh et al. 2013) has in fact become
the norm in destination countries’ immigration policies. In 1996, the United States Congress
passed the Immigration and Marriage Fraud Amendments, requiring a two-​year Conditional
Permanent Residency status for foreign spouses before they can obtain a Permanent Residency
(Constable 2003). Likewise, a spousal visa in Japan requires yearly renewal for three years before
the migrant spouse becomes entitled to permanent residency (Parreñas 2011).
Many destination countries’ contemporary policies on international marriages are premised
on principles of coverture, which regard women as dependents of their spouses for financial and
legal support while awaiting entitlement to permanent residency and naturalisation (Constable
2014; Yeoh et al. 2013). In Singapore, the entry of Vietnamese women is restricted to a visi-
tor’s pass until their husbands sponsor their permanent residency. Until then, they are barred
from working and are not entitled to citizenship rights, including access to health care (Yeoh
et al. 2013). Migrant women’s legal dependence upon their husband places them in precarious
migration status, as a husband’s refusal to sponsor an application for permanent residency, or
the dissolution of a marriage prior to obtaining residency or citizenship, can render migrant
women deportable. As Nicole Constable (2014) notes in her study on domestic workers who
become wives and mothers, an abusive husband or a divorce can then propel women into an
undocumented status. Thus, contemporary immigration policies on marriage migration serve
to exacerbate women’s dependency on their husband and consequently leave them susceptible
to abuse.
Although most empirical research focuses on the regulations imposed by receiving coun-
tries, the lack of a sending-​country perspective is partially remedied by research conducted
in the Philippines and Vietnam. Pressured to address the problem of human trafficking and
the exploitation of migrant women, the Philippines has instituted policies regulating the
emigration of brides (Constable 2003). In 1990, the Philippine Congress passed the Republic
Act 6955, also known as the Mail-​Order Bride Law, which prohibits the recruitment of
Filipino women for marriage to foreign men. Today, Filipino women who seek to migrate
as fiancées or spouses must attend pre-​departure orientation and guidance counselling with
the Commission on Filipinos Overseas. While these emigration requirements aim in part to
make women aware of the risks involved in ‘mail-​order bride’ migration (Constable 2003),

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Maria Cecilia Hwang & Rhacel Salazar Parreñas

they also compound the bureaucratic hurdles that marriage migrants endure, as those who
fail to complete these requirements are disallowed from leaving the country. The regulation
of marriage migrants by the Philippine government reflects a gendered pattern of policing
by migrant-​sending countries, whereby women are closely monitored while men face lit-
tle restrictions on their mobility (Oishi 2005). In Vietnam, the state remains ambivalent in
its approach to regulating marriage migration. As Bélanger (2016) illustrates, although local
state officials recognise the economic benefits of marriage migration, they are nonetheless
required to endorse the central government’s position in defining it as a form of human
trafficking.

Regulating migrant sex workers

Although Asian women have historically migrated to engage in sex work (Warren 2003; Yung
1995), they have become a ubiquitous presence in many parts of the world in recent decades as
a consequence of economic globalisation (Chin 2013). However, it remains impossible to obtain
a definitive estimate on the scope of sex work migration, given that most sex workers cross
nation-​state borders through clandestine channels (Chin 2013; Hwang 2017; Parreñas 2011).
Sex work is commonly conflated with prostitution in mainstream discussions. However, many
scholars have shed light on what Ronald Weitzer refers to as the ‘polymorphous paradigm’ of
sex work, meaning the ‘constellation of occupational arrangements, power relations, and partici-
pants’ experiences’ (2012:16). Empirical studies show that sex workers from Asia provide a wide
range of sexual services including ‘commercial flirtation’ (Parreñas 2011), ‘girlfriend experience’
(Choi 2017), escort services, and sex.
Contemporary policies on prostitution in destination countries vary, ranging from crimi-
nalisation to legalisation. In Hong Kong, prostitution is not a criminal offence but the strict
regulation on practices associated with sex work, including soliciting and operating brothels and
vice establishments, makes it virtually impossible for most sex workers to engage in sexual com-
merce without breaking other laws (Lee 2007). Finally, Singapore has long tolerated red-​light
districts where sex businesses operate and attract a sizeable number of clientele (Weitzer 2012).
Despite the expansion of sexual commerce and the ubiquity of migrant sex workers in vari-
ous parts of the world, there remain no avenues for them to legally migrate and work, leaving
murky channels for migration the only option for women. There are a few exceptional cases
of authorised migration for sex workers, including Filipino entertainers who work in US mili-
tary camptowns under E-​6 entertainer visas (Cheng 2010). Similarly, until 2005, thousands of
Filipino hostesses migrated to Japan as contract workers on entertainer visas. Many followed a
‘circular migration’ pattern whereby they work in Japan for up to six months and return to the
Philippines after the end of each contract (Parreñas 2011). In Hong Kong, immigration poli-
cies allow a small number of nightclubs to employ women –​mostly from the Philippines and
Thailand –​as dancers on six-​month work visas (Emerton and Petersen 2003). And while these
dancers are known to engage in prostitution, nightclubs are able to circumvent the law through
a ‘bar fine’ system where clients pay for women’s time but not for the provision of specified
sexual services (Emerton and Petersen 2003).
Facing virtually no legal channels to migrate, most sex workers from various Asian coun-
tries migrate using illicit means. They migrate as tourists (Chin 2013; Chin and Finckenauer
2012; Parreñas 2011), students (Chin 2013; Choi 2017), marriage migrants (Chin and
Finckenauer 2012; Mix and Piper 2003) and business travellers (Chin and Finckenauer 2013);
some obtain illicit work visas for other forms of employment (Chin 2013; Hilsdon and
Giridharan 2008). However, while these channels allow women to enter and legally stay in

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destination countries, many –​including tourists and students –​also become ‘illegal’ migrants

by working without permit. As such, when arrested, they face penalties for violating both anti-​
prostitution and immigration laws (Lee 2007).
Sex workers utilise both formal and informal ‘migration industry’ actors (Hernández-​
León 2013) to migrate and work in the sex industry. For instance, hostesses on entertainer
visas in Japan are required to work with middlemen brokers to secure employment (Parreñas
2011), while sex workers in Malaysia work under ‘syndicates’ who help them navigate the
complicated process of migrating as tourists and students (Chin 2013). However, Maria
Hwang’s research on Filipino sex workers who circulate as tourists in Asian cities like Hong
Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Macau, illustrates that women also migrate indepen-
dently using their own financial resources, knowledge about migration, and social networks
(Hwang 2017).
Yet, the ‘non-​citizen’ status (Goldring and Landolt 2013) of sex workers leaves them vul-
nerable to labour exploitation. As Parreñas (2011) illustrates, the ‘indentured mobility’ of host-
esses on entertainer visas places women under the control of migration brokers, allows them
no labour market flexibility, and can consequently confine them to abusive labour conditions.
During her research in Japan, Parreñas also encountered migrant hostesses who ran away from
their clubs in order to escape abusive workplace conditions. However, by becoming undocu-
mented migrants, they also become susceptible to other forms of migrant vulnerability, includ-
ing deportation and dependency on the individuals who assist them.Yet even when migrant sex
workers maintain valid immigration status, many remain vulnerable to deportation by working
without permits.  As Maggy Lee (2007) shows, Chinese sex workers who migrate to Hong
Kong on a ‘Two-​Way Permit’ or visitor’s visa are routinely arrested, imprisoned, and deported; as
a result, Hong Kong, where the crime rate is one of the lowest, now holds the largest proportion
of female prisoners in the world (Walmsley 2006, as cited in Lee 2007).
The global campaign on human trafficking has done little to alleviate the vulnerability of
migrant sex workers. On the contrary, the dominant influence of radical feminists in crafting
anti-​trafficking policies has only hampered the migration of sex workers despite the absence of
empirical evidence linking sex work migration and human trafficking (Chin and Finckenauer
2012; Parreñas, Hwang, and Lee 2012; Weitzer 2007). In Japan, the government’s crackdown on
sex trafficking resulted in a 90 per cent decline from 2004 to 2006 in the number of Filipino
hostesses employed as overseas contract workers (Parreñas 2011: 4). In recent years, independent
sex workers from the Philippines who migrate to Asian global cities such as Hong Kong find
their mobility increasingly restricted by the anti-​trafficking emigration policy of the Philippine
government (Hwang 2017). Although anti-​trafficking advocates may view these policy changes
as a reflection of progress in the global campaign against human trafficking, Rhacel Parreñas
offers a dissenting voice, arguing instead that these policies pose a ‘setback to the emancipation
of women’ who are stripped of their livelihood (2011: 4). And as many feminists have cautioned
us, policies designed to curtail human trafficking only serve to restrict the mobility of women
(Chapkis 2003; Sharma 2005).

Conclusion
This chapter analyses the concept of ‘intimate migrations’ from the perspective of marriage
migrants and sex workers, the majority of whom are women. We draw upon an interdisci-
plinary body of scholarship that interrogates the experiences of Asian women who migrate
to traditional destination countries in the West but also to developed economies in Asia. We
examine the stigma surrounding intimate migrations and in particular its conflation with

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Maria Cecilia Hwang & Rhacel Salazar Parreñas

human trafficking and migrant women’s exploitation. In doing so, this chapter illuminates the
moralistic logic of the ‘hostile worlds view’ (Zelizer 2005) that shapes both emigration and
immigration policies that disproportionately affect migrant women. As we illustrate, stigma on
intimate migrations results in the heightened regulation of women’s mobility, which serves to
exacerbate women’s existing vulnerability due to migration and citizenship regimes in sending
and destination countries. Finally, the conflation of intimate migrations with human traffick-
ing, and in particular the trafficking of women, has left the lives of other intimate migrants
under-​examined. As the work of Masako Kudo (2009) on Pakistani husbands of Japanese
women and of Parreñas (2011) on transgender hostesses in Japan illustrate, expanding our
analysis to include the experiences of not only women but also men and transgender migrants
allows us to understand the gendered politics of intimate migrations across and beyond gender
binaries.

Note
1 Deborah Boehm first introduced the concept of ‘intimate migrations’, defining it as ‘flows that both
shape and are structured by gendered and familial actions and interactions, but are always defined by the
presence of the US state’ (2012: 4).

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5
INTRA-​A SIA HIGHER
EDUCATION MOBILITIES
Rochelle Yun Ge and Kong Chong Ho

Introduction
This chapter introduces intra-​Asian higher education mobility as a relatively new trend, which
is an outcome of the dynamic economic changes occurring in East Asia, propelled by state poli-
cies towards higher education, and sustained by a strong interest among Asian youths to move
overseas in search of education and a broader experience. While reviewing pertinent literature
in this field, this chapter uses findings from a unique mixed-​method study, conducted in nine
universities spread across five Asian countries, to illustrate diverse higher education migration
experiences in East Asia.

Significance of higher education migration in East Asia

East Asia (Northeast and Southeast Asia) has, over the past decade, experienced a rapid growth
of international students in higher education (Table  5.1). Among the East Asian countries
with a significant presence of foreign students, China leads the group, followed by Japan and
Malaysia.With the exceptions of Malaysia, which experienced a decline, and Japan, with a mod-
est increase of 3.19 per cent, all other countries saw a significant double-​digit growth in student
numbers, with China having an almost 50 per cent increase and Taiwan a doubling of interna-
tional student numbers. In the cases of Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia, the number of inbound
international students has already exceeded the outbound group (British Council 2008).
The growth in international students in this region has been bundled with an assortment
of goals and anticipated impacts tied to a new government emphasis on internationalising
higher education (Altbach 2004; Mok 2007; Yonezawa 2007; Ishikawa 2009). In the case of
South Korea, Byun, Jon and Kim (2013) evaluated the initial success of the Brain Korea 21
strategy, which strengthened the research capacities of a selected number of top Korean uni-
versities, focusing on attracting international faculty and students (specifically with the Study
Korea Project). Seoul National University exerted a push towards more independent gov-
ernance. Similarly, the Project 985 in China has been linked to a push towards the interna-
tionalisation of major Chinese universities, emphasising their empowerment as well as their
research impact (Zhang, Patton and Kenny 2013). Singapore’s case represents a third example
of how key Asian government initiatives are aimed at strengthening the research capacities of

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Rochelle Yun Ge & Kong Chong Ho

Table 5.1  Percentage of Asian students hosted by leading host countries in East Asia

Year 2009 Year 2012/​2013 % Increase

Number of int’l Percentage of Number of int’l Percentage of

students Asian students students Asian students

China 238,184 67.9% 356,499 62.93% 49.67%

Japan 131,599 93.2% 135,803 93.45% 3.19%
Malaysia 57,842 70.4% 40,471 68.38% -​30.03%
South Korea 50,030 95.4% 59,472 93.33% 18.87%
Singapore 40,401 -​ 48,938 -​ 21.13%
Taiwan 39,533 -​ 79,730 -​ 101.68%
Thailand 16,361 87.2% 20,309 85.27% 24.13%

Note: Except the figures for China and Taiwan, data were retrieved from a UNESCO statistics release:
stats.uis.unesco.org/​unesco/​TableViewer/​tableView.aspx. The definition of international (or internation-
ally mobile) students, according to UNESCO, refers to ‘students who have crossed a national or territorial
border for the purpose of education and are now enrolled outside their country of origin’: glossary.uis.
unesco.org/​Glossary/​en/​Term/​2242/​en.
Data for Taiwan was retrieved from the website of the Ministry of Education, Republic of China
(Taiwan): depart.moe.edu.tw/​ED4500/​cp.aspx?n=1B58E0B736635285&s=D04C74553DB60CAD. The
figure includes both long-​term and short-​term overseas Chinese and foreign students.
The source for the China figures was ‘Statistics of International Students in China, 2011’ (‘laihua
liuxuesheng jianming tongji’ in Chinese). The figure includes both degree and non-​degree international
students. The data is also available from the website of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic
of China: www.moe.edu.cn/​publicfiles/​business/​htmlfiles/​moe/​s7567/​list.html.

universities  and  research institutes,  while at the same time attracting academics, researchers
and students to staff the expanded research infrastructure (Sidhu, Ho and Yeoh 2011, 2014).
Malaysia, on the other hand, has been pushing international education programmes in order to
establish itself as a regional education hub aimed at attracting fee-​paying students to its private
universities (Padlee, Kamaruddin and Baharun 2010; Knight and Sirat, 2011). As an Islamic
country, Malaysia has also become an attractive higher education venue for students from the
Middle East (Sirat 2008;Yusoff 2011, Graf 2016).Thailand, a relative late-​comer to international
education, is making efforts both in quality and human resource development, and has managed
to attract a substantial number of students from other ASEAN countries (Pimpa 2011).
An important feature of international students in East Asia is that they tend to be over-
whelmingly from within the same region. In all of the seven cases represented in Table 5.1, the
share of international students from within Asia is more than 65 per cent. The regional student
support for East Asia universities is understandable. Centuries of migration within Northeast
and Southeast Asia have resulted in sustained ties between societal segments in receiving and
sending countries, allowing students from these countries to fit in easily (British Council 2008;
Ge and Ho 2014: 210 [see Table 6]; Ho 2014a: 179). Intra-​region trade continues to remain
very strong, creating a strong familiarity and social ties among the business communities of these
countries.The short distances between host and home countries also allow for regular visits (Ho
2014a: 179).
Foreign students support the internationalisation efforts of Asian universities and their
respective countries in a number of ways. There is considerable evidence to suggest that inter-
national students in science and technology fields have immediate importance for the research

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Intra-Asia higher education mobilities

capacities of the university and to the host economy after they graduate. The experience from
the United States shows that international students are more likely than local students to opt
for science and technology programmes (She and Wotherspoon 2013: 2). Meanwhile, PhD stu-
dents in science and engineering have a positive impact on total patent applications and patents
awarded to the universities, industries and other enterprises (Chellaraj, Maskus and Mattoo
2005: 25). Even as academic research positions shrink, graduate students and post-​doctoral
students in biomedical sciences continue to gravitate towards non-​academic research careers
(Fuhrmann et.al. 2011: 244; Gibbs et.al. 2015: 6). During their stay in the host country, foreign
students play a sociocultural role by increasing global awareness for domestic students (Elkin,
Devjee and Farnsworth 2005). And after graduation, they are seen as potential ambassadors for
the host country (Byun and Kim, 2011).
Thus, as universities and countries see international students as important resources in higher
education, our research attention must focus on the economic and cultural factors which shape
the international students’ mobility (Pimpa 2003; Liu-​ Farrer 2009). This attention should
include aspects of the university system (e.g. reputation, facilities and programmes) that are
attractive to university students (Joseph and Joseph 1997; Mazzoral and Souter 2002; Price,
Matzdorf, Smith and Agahi 2003;Veloutsu 2004). And as these students spend years in the host
countries, research focus should include the nature of the adjustment process, for example, the
relationships international students form with other students, their use of city amenities, and
their relationship with local residents in the host environment (Al-​Sharideh and Goe 1998; Sam
2001; Kashima and Loh 2005; Sawir, Marginson, Deumert, Nyland and Ramia 2008).
Lastly, we should look at international student mobilities from a life-​course perspective.
International students are, in most cases, single young people who move for study at a point
in their life course when they are in a position to discover, create and define their individual
identities. The overseas study period is significant because it coincides with their transition to
adulthood. As Hopkins (2006) discovered, conceptions by youths about being an adult and
going to university include a mixture of responsibilities (such as making decisions and achiev-
ing goals) and having fun (including social life, drinking, making new friends, etc.). The latter is
also emphasised by Waters, Brooks and Pimlott-​Wilson (2011:456) who argue that “the accu-
mulation of cultural capital… are placed alongside a desire for excitement, fun and adventure.
Furthermore, an overseas education can also be seen as a means of ‘escape’, escape from manifold
pressures and expectations within the UK system and escape to a new life abroad.”
It is important to highlight that this critical period occurs within a context where youths
are away from home, family and friends, and are therefore driven to make new contacts, experi-
encing a new cultural context in which friendships are formed and for a substantial amount of
time defined by the duration of their study. Giddens (1991) as well as Patiniotis and Holdsworth
(2005: 85) argued that the study abroad period represents a fateful moment in youthful lives
precisely because the journey takes the student away from established practices and domains,
requires them to negotiate unknown terrains, and has significant implications for their futures.
For this group of students, the study abroad period intensifies a ‘do-​it-​yourself ’ biography
(Prazeres 2013: 814). For this group of students, their journey abroad to study also implicates
their transition to work, in terms of their imagination of a working future after college.

The New Asian education migrants

As we are looking at international students in higher education, it is important to link stu-
dent migration to the labour market. A set of factors operating in East Asia has conspired to
make international students an important source of skilled labour. Several Asian countries have

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experienced dramatic decline of fertility rates in the last three decades. As this has translated
into lower numbers of youths entering the labour force, low fertility countries such as South
Korea and Singapore have started to allow skilled migrants to augment the domestic labour
force. International students, as potential human resources, are looked upon favourably by the
host governments. As international education often results in host country friendships, familiar-
ity with the host language and cultural adaptation, international students often graduate with a
more intimate knowledge of the host society along with a local social support system. The host
government thus often regards student migrants as potential skilled immigrants with recognised
credentials and better chances to integrate into the society. As foreign students tend to choose
universities in countries where they would also like to work after graduation (Baruch, Budhwar
and Khatri 2007), universities play a significant role as a broker organisation to ease youths into
the country and eventually into the labour force (Liu-​Farrer 2009; Hawthorne 2010).

Characteristics of the New Asian education migrants

Several unique characteristics of international students over other types of migrants are worth
highlighting. First, the involvement of universities and governments in educational migration
shows that the process is more often than not a well-​organised one. Meanwhile, as suggested
by Table 5.1, intra-​Asian student migration is the dominant mode. Therefore there is a stronger
possibility that the networks of students and graduates and home schools are well developed
as sources of information and advice to new cohorts of students seeking to study abroad. The
chances of prospective students knowing contacts from friends and family who are based in the
host country are also high. Knowledge and information about the host country and institution
are often provided by their home schools and/​or the senior students who have either already
been in the host country or returned home, as well as from contacts among friends and family
sources. They arrive with the approval of the host government and, in the case of scholarship
holders, there is an orchestrated process in place to facilitate the student’s insertion into the host
university and society. As education migrants, international students move to the host country
with a clarity of purpose defined for them by parents, former teachers and scholarship agencies,
although not necessarily fully endorsed by them.
Second, as highlighted in the earlier section, this group of migrants is made up of youths
for whom studying abroad is often the first time they have left home for a significant period
of time. As Waters, Brooks and Pimlott-​Wilson (2011: 456) pointed out, the migration decision
might well be prompted by considerations of escape from as well as escape to. The ‘escape to’
framework may additionally suggest a time perspective of deferment by keeping the future at
bay (Brannen and Nilsen 2002: 520), a distinct opposite to the conventional student time per-
spective of preparing for the future.
Another significant characteristic of youth migrants is that they are in a crucial period of
identity formation. The international students are open to new behaviours and beliefs. Their
transition to adulthood is experienced in the host country, and more immediately within the
host institutions. It creates the possibility for university to be a key institution in the host soci-
ety to incorporate diversity and multiculturalism as part of its education mission. The context
of peer learning, dormitory living, and a common student identity also encourage pairing and
marriage formation. Rosenzweig (2008: 61) noted that students who completed education in
a high income country had advantages in the host country’s marriage market, citing his earlier
study (Rosenzweig, Irwin and Williamson 2006:  77) that found, from the New Immigrant
Survey of new legal immigrants to the United States, that 56 per cent of student stayers became
an immigrant by marrying a US citizen. Such a situation provides significant transformative

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experiences which are noteworthy milestones in a student’s life course. This implies a higher
possibility for systematic integration into the host society. It is especially so for intra-​Asia move-
ment, as the important rationales for Asian students to study in another Asian country are the
considerations of geographical proximity and cultural similarity (Ho 2014a: 179).
Third, this group of education migrants is highly mobile. Moving overseas for education is
likely to be the first time for many to be overseas for an extended period of time. While there,
they are also likely to develop a strong education background and use the host country as a
stepping stone to move on to other countries after graduation. Universities that adopt English
as the medium of instruction are especially favoured by students who plan to eventually work
in English-​speaking countries. Graduates not only have the option of remaining in the host
country after graduation, but also have high possibility of returning home or going to third
countries (Collins, Ho, Ishikawa and Mah 2016).

Types of university contexts and the students’ post-​education trajectories

The new Asian higher education takes place in a wide variety of campuses. Out of this variety,
we highlight three types which are significant for the mobility of their students.
First, at the apex of the higher education sector in East Asia, are flagship national universities
which have been restructured as global universities and which, as a result of this new mission,
attract a variety of international students. As major universities of their respective countries, they
have a disproportionate share of their country’s higher education budget and corresponding
international student shares compared with other universities in the country. Being located in
the major cities in Asia adds to the attractiveness of these universities for international students
(Ho 2014b). Given the rigour of education and training, international students from such flag-
ship universities are likely to be in great demand in their home countries, host countries and
third countries because of the portability of their degrees.
The second type of educational institutions offers cross-​border or transnational higher edu-
cation. These occur because providers see the operation of education services overseas as a way
to make money, and host country governments see imported higher education programmes as
one way of keeping youthful talent at home (Ziguras and McBurnie 2011). For example, from
the viewpoint of higher education development in China, hosting transnational programmes is
a way to build domestic capacity, facilitate internationalisation of programmes and curriculum,
and provide local students with international exposure (Huang 2007). In the Singapore case,
however, the attraction of these transnational education-​providers is part of a state policy to
build a hub for education services (Olds and Thrift 2005). Given their transnational nature, the
programmes are almost always taught in English. The students come from such transnational
campuses, particularly those in branch campuses of overseas universities, are likely to use such
experiences to move to other countries after study.
The third type of campus is that provided by private universities. There is considerable
variety of such campuses in East Asia. In Japan, private universities can draw on financial
support from affiliated primary and secondary schools (Yonezawa 2007: 485). Since the
1980s, China has introduced private higher education institutes. Besides vocation-​based
private institutes, new systems include extensions of public universities and foreign local
university partnerships, the latter valued for the potential to transfer foreign expertise in
teaching and research to the host country (Ennew and Yang 2009). Ortega (2015) described
how private universities in the Philippines adopted a flexible education and training system,
with flexible faculties and facilities, in order to train and graduate students with skill-​sets in
high demand overseas, and which met the entry standards in these job markets. While these

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universities currently get the bulk of their enrolment from local students, they are increasingly
working with labour brokers from other developing countries to train their students in the
Philippines for similar employment niches (Ortega 2016). These students are likely to exhibit
a two-​step mobility pattern of moving from home country to the Philippines to study, and
then on to a third country after study.
Given the inherent difficulties of describing the enormous diversity of university con-
texts in East Asia. This is the flagship university, which has been the focus of key government
higher education policies. Our chapter introduces the cases of China, a rising global political
and economic power with a strong higher education focus; South Korea, a high-​technology
newly industrialised country and also a growing cultural power due to its media industries;
and Singapore, a cosmopolitan global city state. These three diverse cases will be used to illus-
trate how students enrolled in these universities make their selections, their adjustment process
within the host countries, and their future plans after graduation.

Three modes of insertion, adjustment and mobility

The dominant mode of intra-​Asian educational mobility is associated with a variety that is
defined by the different host society higher education policies, the very different strengths
of their flagship universities, the key attractions of the major cities which these universities
are located in, and the varied motives of the region-​based students who select these univer-
sities. In this section, we draw on the three cases from a unique multi-​sited mixed-​method
research project entitled ‘Globalising Universities and International Student Mobilities in East
Asia’ (GUISM).1
Table  5.2 shows the profiles of international students who studied in China, Korea and
Singapore.While the majority are Asian students, China hosts the highest percentage of students
from outside Asia, indicating a rising global attraction. Singapore’s status as a regional education
hub is reflected by its recording of the highest proportion of Asian students.
The three countries are different in terms of percentage of Asian students and, more impor-
tantly, where they were drawn from. Geographical and cultural proximity and well-​established
economic ties have led to a neighbouring country pattern for Asian education migration.Among
the top three source countries for the demonstrated cases, South Korean and Vietnamese stu-
dents make up the first two major groups in China; in return, Chinese students make up half
of the international students’ population in South Korea; Singapore attracts a large group of
Malaysian students.

Table 5.2  Proportion of Asian students hosted in Asian universities

% of Asian students Top three home countries

China 62.4% Korea,Vietnam, Indonesia/​US

South Korea 78.4% China, Malaysia, Japan
Singapore 97.9% China, Malaysia, India

Note:  Result from the GUISM project:  National University of Singapore represented the Singapore
figure (n = 474), Renmin University and Sun Yat-​sen University were selected to represent China’s case
(n = 735), and the sampled universities in South Korea were Seoul National University and Korean
University (n = 1002).

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Table 5.3  Reasons for migration

Reasons for China South Korea Singapore

destination selection (mean) (mean) (mean)

Educational 2.81(b) 2.79(b) 3.02(a)****

Cultural 2.59(a) 2.46(a) 2.19(b)****
Financial 2.37(b) 2.27(c) 2.45(a)***
Social 2.21(b) 2.23(b) 2.32(a)*

Note: The groups a, b and c are based on the ANOVA result. *p < .05, ***p < .005, ****p < .001

China’s inbound student mobility is characterised by G-​to-​G (government-​to-​government)

ties with Asian countries such as Vietnam and non-​Asian countries like the United States. The
US has become a large source country for China since 20072, and the number continues to
increase. In 2009, President Barack Obama announced the ‘100,000 Strong’ initiative which
aimed to have 100,000 American students studying in China by 2014.3 Malaysian students in
South Korea share a similar story. The following quote from a Malaysian student’s biographical
interview for the GUISM project suggests the important role of government scholarships in
encouraging its students to study in South Korea and Japan:

Actually, (in) Malaysia, we have the Look East policy, it’s like learning from Japan and
Korea, these two countries… They are from different schools but all on government
scholarship. (Female Malaysian student, Seoul National University).

In addition, ethnic and cultural similarities influence where students move to. Overseas Chinese
choose to study in China and Taiwan, and ethnic Korean students from China choose to study in
South Korea.The multi-​ethnic composition of Singapore draws students from China and India.
Study abroad represents the fulfilment of many objectives for young people. Among these
three countries, reasons associated with education quality, reputation of the university, pro-
gramme and staff, are the primary consideration for migration (See Table 5.3). Singapore shows
its advantage in both educational quality and social reasons such as religious tolerance; while
China and South Korea excelled in their cultural attractions, as local customs, host language
and cultural heritage were cited as key reasons for students choosing these countries. Moreover,
the relatively lower cost of studying in Asia also features, compared with the more expensive
traditional education destinations such as the US and the UK.

China: a rising global economic and political power

China’s central government has worked systematically to develop the number of international
higher education students. The target number of international students, as well as the intention
of increasing student diversity, has been clearly stated in the official document entitled ‘The
Scheme of Studying in China’ (‘Liuxue Zhongguo Jihua’ in Chinese), issued by China’s Ministry
of Education in 2010. In this document, the Chinese government showed its ambition to attract
500,000 international students by 2020, with a yearly increase rate at around 7 per cent.4 State
government support on international student migration is also associated with national agendas.
According to Xiuqing Zhang, the head of the Department of International Cooperation and
Exchanges at the Ministry of Education (MOE), the main purpose of issuing the ‘Studying in

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Rochelle Yun Ge & Kong Chong Ho

Figure 5.1  Number of Chinese government scholarships provided to international students

Source: statistics released bythe China Association for International Education (retrieved on May 24,
2016): www.cafsa.org.cn/​research/​show-​1662.html.

China’ scheme, and recruiting large numbers of international students, is to ‘expand the inter-
national influence and enhance soft power of China’.5 Having achieved a significant level of
economic and military power, the Chinese government has begun to emphasise the need to
increase China’s soft power (Hunter 2009: 385; Mok and Ong 2014; 151–​152;Yang 2015: 24).
International students are seen as potential cultural ambassadors for the host country, as they
have better opportunities to develop a deeper involvement in the host society via language
learning and longer-​term stay. Moreover, their student status allows them to be more openly
received by the Chinese since they are seen as being in the country to learn. Policies adopted
by the Chinese government to target certain types of international students in terms of the pro-
grammes and home countries can be seen as a reflection of the intention of the host country in
expanding its own influence and network. Broad and systematic policies that focus on attracting
degree students and diversify international students show the ambition of the Chinese govern-
ment in promoting its soft power on a global scale.
Over the years, the Chinese government has increased the number of scholarships to encour-
age international students to study in China (See Figure 5.1). Among these scholarship students,
those from Asia have remained the largest group, while the strong ties between China and Africa
are reflected in the highest proportion of scholarship recipients among African students (See
Table 5.4). The efforts of the Chinese government are reflected in students’ perceptions. The
survey results of the GUISM project show that ‘Good relationship between Chinese and home
country government’ is the top social reason for educational migration. As was mentioned in
the earlier section, there is an embedded government-​to-​government (G-​to-​G) tie of educa-
tional migration in China’s case, and many of the international students in the GUISM survey
mentioned that they are funded by either Chinese or home country scholarship.
The rise of China, both economically and politically speaking, has led to a growing
interest in the country. For both International students, GUISM survey statistics show that
‘being in China’ and ‘learning Chinese language’ are important considerations for interna-
tional students who choose China as their educational destination. International students are

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Table 5.4  Government scholarship students divided by continents in China (2009–​2011)

2009 2010 2011

Number of Proportion of Number of Proportion of Number of Proportion of

scholarship scholarship scholarship scholarship Scholarship scholarship
students students (%) students students (%) Students students (%)
Africa 4,824 38.8 5,710 34.8 6,316 30.4
Oceania 391 14.4 439 11.6 482 11.0
Europe 3,022 8.4 3,283 7.8 3,619 7.7
America 1,599 6.3 1,761 6.5 1,960 6.1
Asia 8,409 5.2 11,197 6.4 13,310 7.1
Total 18,245 7.7 22,390 8.4 25,687 8.8

Note: The data excludes the scholarships provided by local government or other sources.
Source: Statistics of International Students in China, 2009 and 2011. (‘laihua liuxuesheng jianming tongji’ in
Chinese).

Table 5.5  Comparison between Asian and non-​Asian students on the reasons for studying in China

Non-​Asian Asian
(n = 239) (n = 461) t df
Learn more about local customs and way of 3.32 2.93 5.51**** 698
life
(SD) (0.86) (0.89)
Rich heritage 3.15 2.71 5.99**** 698
(SD) (0.94) (0.91)
Good relationship between home country and 2.51 2.74 -​2.81*** 396.19
China
(SD) (1.10) (0.88)
Good job prospects upon graduation 2.59 2.79 -​2.41*** 398.04
(SD) (1.12) (0.90)

Note: *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .005; ****p < .001

The table was made based on data collected by the GUISM project with Renmin University and Sun
Yat-​sen University representing China’s case (n=735).

attracted to China by its cultural factors, including aspects such as local customs and China’s
rich heritage, remain a significant attraction, especially for non-​Asian students (See Table 5.5).
For Asian students, the growing economic links between China and other East Asian countries
will continue to have a significant impact on the intra-​Asian higher education mobility.Young
people tend to follow the established economic ties and seek job opportunities between the
host and home country. Liu-​Farrer’s (2009: 198) reference to ‘bridge software engineers’ where
‘bridge’ not only refers to software skills, but also language and communication skills (and, we
will add, a strong familiarity with host culture and customs), applies to a range of other disci-
plines, allowing these students to be effective bridges between host and home business enter-
prises in a variety of fields.

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South Korea: cultural and economic power

International student migration in South Korea has risen with the growth of the Korean cul-
tural economy. The past decade has witnessed the growth of Korean popular cultural industry
worldwide, a trend known as the ‘Korean wave’. It has, in particular, gained immense popularity
in East Asian countries (Shim 2006). The growing Korean cultural power plays an important
role in attracting international students from other Asian countries. They are largely influenced
by cultural products through which they picture the country’s image and develop a willingness
to study in Korea. The following quote from a Chinese student provides a typical example:

Because in these few years, Korea has had a great influence on China, so a lot of girls
started to like things from Korea, for instance their drama series. I was also influenced
by this and felt that Korea was quite a good place, so I came over.
(Female Chinese student, Seoul National University)

The terms ‘girls’, ‘drama’, ‘influence’ and the phrase ‘Korea was quite a good place’ in the passage
allow us to think of three interlinked points which shape student mobility. Beech (2014: 171–​
173) used Edward Said’s idea of imaginative geographies to describe post-​colonial discourses of
power and superiority, linking the imperial power and its colonies, which in turn shape imagi-
nations of where to go for further studies. While Beech and Said referred explicitly to political
power, we make a similar argument for the cultural power of the Korean media industry in
constituting an imaginary among its audience and the media source country. And since these
are cultural products, this imaginary is more significantly shaped by desire (Collins, Sidhu, Lewis
and Yeoh, 2014). The Korean cultural industry is especially appealing to youth, not just because
of their propensity for cultural consumption; it is youth’s propensity for excitement, fun and
adventure (Waters, Brooks and Pimlott-​Wilson 2011:456) in the context of cultural consump-
tion that motivates them to move.
The effect of cultural economy not only has an impact on the students’ pre-​migration
decision-​making, but also on their post-​graduation career. Many international students have
seen the market for Korean cultural products in their home country. They can take these as
business opportunities after obtaining sufficient knowledge and networks in Korea during their
study. For instance, there has been a trend among Chinese students who studied at and gradu-
ated from Korean universities to sell Korean cultural products, such as fashion items, food and
cosmetics. The local Chinese media have already depicted this phenomenon as an emerging
entrepreneurial form among internationally migrated youth.6 Such businesses continue to rein-
force the growth and expansion of Korea’s cultural influence in Asia.
Among the international students in Korea surveyed in the GUISM project, those who came
from China accounted for over 45 per cent of foreign enrolment. At the same time, Korean
students are also the largest group of international students in China (33.5 per cent). This pat-
tern of student mobility between the two countries highlights another characteristic of higher
education migrants in Asia: that by studying in the host country and returning home, these
students have become an effective bridge between home and host countries, especially when
this pattern occurs between neighbouring countries like China and South Korea. As Liu-​Farrer
(2011) observed, the thickening of economic ties between two countries created occupational
niches for international students as bridges between home and host countries. These niches
can be in the host country, when such workers utilise their language, communication and skills
to help the host country companies manage a variety of economic and business transactions
originating from their home country. Likewise, occupational niches in the home country allow

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Table 5.6  Students’ plan after graduation

Type of job Location Percentage of Percentage of Korean

Chinese students students who study in
who study in Korea China

Government Home country 25.8% 26.9%

Host country 5.6% 5.4%
Third country 4.8% 4.9%
Family business Home country 6.5% 16.5%
Host country 1.9% 5.2%
Third country 2.2% 1.5%
Branch of home country Home country 16.1% 17.1%
company Host country 7.9% 12.0%
Third country 7.3% 6.5%
Branch of host country Home country 15.6% 9.3%
company Host country 15.4% 11.7%
Third country 7.2% 4.2%
Multinational company Home country 23.0% 18.4%
Host country 16.4% 18.4%
Third country 18.0% 13.8%
Start own business Home country 13.2% 16.9%
Host country 4.0% 11.9%
Third country 5.6% 4.2%

Note: The table was made based on data collected for the GUISM project. In this table, the group of
Chinese students studying in Korea and the group of Korean students studying in China were compared.
As listed in the table, these international students were asked to choose among eight types of job for their
plan after graduation. They were also asked to indicate where they planned to apply for the jobs they
selected.

international students to return home to assume beachhead positions which facilitate the host
country to enter home country markets.
Student future plans detailed in Table 5.6 suggest a reinforced between-​country tie as a result
of educational migration –​Chinese students in Korea and Korean students in China tend to work
in their home and/​or host country after graduation. For both groups of students, training in the
host country and the intention to return to a job with home country government accounts for
the most popular future career path, implying established and strengthening government rela-
tions between China and Korea. The well-​established economic ties between China and South
Korea have been reflected in their consideration that the host country education would lead to
‘good job prospects after graduation’. In particular, the two groups of students’ prefer to work in
branches of Korean companies either in the home or host country corresponds with the percep-
tion of the economic power and presence of Korean firms in East Asia.
This idea of being the ‘bridge’ and ‘middle man’ is also captured in biographical interviews.
The students see their Korean education and experience as advantages, and that learning the
host country language and absorbing its culture are essential features which will make them
more competitive when they return to their home country, as the following account illustrates:

I think it would be to work in a company first… and to choose multinational com-

panies in places that are preferable, be it Korea or China. For instance, companies in

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Rochelle Yun Ge & Kong Chong Ho

Korea such as Samsung, LG and the likes that have branches in China as well. Or to
return to China to look for a job that is related to the Korean language that I’ve learnt,
such as the Korean companies in China and the likes. It should be like this. (Male
Chinese student, Seoul National University).7

Singapore: a cosmopolitan educational destination

The Singapore government has systematically restructured its two national universities to
become global universities, building on their existing strengths in offering English educa-
tion, recruiting international faculty and students, and strengthening research capacities (Ho
2013). These state-​driven efforts have paid off, as international student surveys indicate that
they pay more attention to this new high-​quality internationally relevant education. They see
English as the instruction language, the reputation of the university, and degree recognition
as some of the most important features of Singapore’s higher education (Yeoh, Foong and Ho
2014: 73–​75).
Singapore has developed a cosmopolitan environment as a global city-​state. whose cultural
and religious tolerance are also praised by international students in Singapore. As a small city-​
state, Singapore has ensured an openness to skilled labour to augment its small domestic labour
force (Ong, 2007) and this in turn has made Singapore a popular after-​study work destination
for international students. One aspect of Singapore’s foreign talent policy is the provision of
scholarships and study loans to international students, with an obligation to work in Singapore
after graduation. With each batch of youthful higher education migrants, a significant number
(especially from China, Malaysia, India and Indonesia) stay on to work in Singapore. This cre-
ates a critical mass of co-​nationals, making it easy for newcomers to fit into existing co-​national
networks. The social networks they establish in the host country also become a significant
factor that affects their intentions of staying in Singapore after graduation (See Table 5.7 and
Table 5.8).
Being a global city, Singapore is at the same time a stepping stone, as transnational students
and workers stay for the period of their education and contract respectively, and gain skills and
experience before venturing to other countries. The reputation of Singapore universities also
makes their degrees portable, especially within East Asia, enabling graduates to move easily and
to consider countries (third countries) other than their host and home countries. Compared
with China and South Korea, more Asian students who study in Singapore harbour an intention
to work in a third country after graduation.

Table 5.7  Plan after graduation for international students studying in Singapore

Where to work Mean

#1 Popular location Host country 1.42

#2 Popular location Home country 1.20
#3 Popular location Third country 0.77

Note: The table was made based on data collected for the GUISM project. International students were
asked to choose among eight different types of job and indicate where they planned to apply for these
jobs. Among the eight types of jobs, on average there were 1.42 types that students wanted to apply for
in host country Singapore, followed by 1.20 types of job in home country and 0.77 types of job in a
third country.

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Table 5.8  International students’ social network in Singapore

Country of origin Number of friends (mean)

Home country friends 4.71

Host country friends 1.26
Third country friends 1.03

Note: The table was made based on data collected for the GUISM project.
International students were asked to list the nationality of their top seven
closest friends.

Concluding remarks
The growth of international students in Asia has developed in tandem with the internationali-
sation of flagship universities and the spread of transnational education, as well as the recruit-
ment strategies of other home-​grown private universities. In particular, East Asian countries have
become emerging players in terms of their share in international student populations. National
governments in East Asia have also continued to play an active role in encouraging, guiding and
facilitating inbound student migration, often via political and economic agendas. Taking the
three countries presented in this chapter as examples, the Chinese government, which largely
sees educational migrants as potential ambassadors who will facilitate trade and cultural ties,
developed a broad and systematic strategy to attract students driven by different motivations; the
South Korean government announced plans to expand its foreign student enrolment to 200,000
by 2023 with the considerations of its low birth rate as well as soft growth in the national econ-
omy; Singapore has long considered locally trained international students as foreign talents for
the country’s economic development. With strong state agendas towards attracting international
student migration, competition for students will increase significantly in the future. Cooperation
between universities in the form of partnerships to strengthen teaching and research, and also to
facilitate student exchanges to strengthen learning and cultural exposure, will also increase as East
Asian universities become increasingly active in their plans to become internationally relevant.
The use of English has been increased in university programmes in Asia, as universities attempt
to attract more international students and make their degrees more portable.
The phrase ‘learn to move, move to learn’8 is an apt description in understanding inter-
national students. In the process of study abroad, these youths learn to move when they hear
of opportunities through friends, acquire new ambitions as they go through school, gradu-
ate with a degree which is portable and facilitated by a new, useful language, and a social
network they can count on. In particular, as students acquire the host country language and
become fluent in the host country’s culture and customs, they naturally move into employ-
ment and business niches which allow them to act as effective bridges between home and
host countries.
Intra-​Asian student mobility within East Asia is likely to develop in tandem with the
economic dynamism of the region, as new education migrants are attracted by after-​study
work opportunities and are incentivised by the offer of scholarships. The growing region-
alism encouraged by regional institutions such as ASEAN and ASEAN plus three (Akhir
2016) creates thickening of economic, political and cultural ties, and these facilitate intra-​
Asia student flows. As students move within Asia for education, they are likely to remain in
Asia after study.

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Notes
1 This research project was conducted from September 2009 to November 2012. Over 4,000 inter-
national students hosted by nine universities (National University of Singapore, Tokyo University,
Osaka University, Asia Pacific University, Renmin University, Sun Yat-​sen University, Seoul National
University, Korean University and National Taiwan University) in five Asian countries (Singapore, Japan,
South Korea, China and Taiwan) were surveyed. About 198 international students, 86 university officials
and 86 alumni were interviewed. See Ge and Ho (2014) for a more detailed discussion of the research
design.
2 Information regarding the number of American students has been released on the website of China’s
Ministry of Education: www.moe.edu.cn/​moe_​879/​moe_​329/​moe_​1798/​tnull_​35559.html.
3 Information retrieved on 21 May 2016 from the website of the Embassy of the United States in
China: beijing.usembassy-​china.org.cn/​100k-​strong.html.
4 Information retrieved from the website of the Central People’s Government of PRC (translated by the
authors) on 19 April 2013: www.gov.cn/​zwgk/​2010-​09/​28/​content_​1711971.htm.
5 Information retrieved from the website of Education in China on 4 May 2013:  edu.china.com.cn/​
2010-​09/​30/​content_​21045439.htm.
6 Refer to the article published by China News entitled ‘Overseas purchase as emerging entrepreneurial
form among international students: cheers and worries’ (‘liuxuesheng haiwai daigou cheng xinxing chuangye
xingshi: rangren huanxi rangren you’ in Chinese) on 28 October 2014: www.chinanews.com/​hr/​2014/​
10–​28/​6725844.shtml.
7 That said, there is every potential for relations between the two countries to sour, and the worsening ties
may in turn affect the decisions of students to study or to stay. In a paper we are currently developing
on after-​study lives, we present the biographies of Chinese students whose plans to study in America
were adversely affected by the Tiananmen incident and who subsequently chose to study in Japan. At
the time of this chapter’s final revision in March 2017, the decision to allow the installation of United
States missiles in South Korea has led to a spat between China and South Korea, affecting economic
activities between the two countries.While such incidents may lead to tensions which may last for vary-
ing periods of time, these have the effect of reducing the size of occupational niches and in turn affect
the time-​sensitive job search decisions of graduates.
8 We attribute this phrase to Brack (2004) who used it as the title of her 2004 book. Ai-​hsuan Ma, who
worked with us on the GUISM project, used the phrase with regard to international students in one of
the research group discussions.

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6
DIASPORA ENGAGEMENT
AND STATE POLICIES OF
RETURN MIGRATION IN ASIA
Elaine Lynn-​Ee Ho and Madeleine Lim Pei Wei

Introduction
Countries across Asia have adopted migration-​for-​development as a strategy to mitigate unem-
ployment in home countries and extract remittances to boost their national revenue. Under this
approach, diaspora-​centred development connotes a set of strategies that focuses on engaging
the diaspora in order to derive benefits for development in the country of origin (see Hickey,
Ho and Yeoh 2014). Emigration was once seen as traitorous to the countries that migrants left,
or resulting in a brain drain for countries that need human capital to drive development. Under
diaspora-​centred development, a growing number of migrant-​sending countries across Asia and
beyond now recognise the benefits to be derived from emigration, such as through migrant
remittances or the knowledge and skills that migrants accrue from their stint abroad and sub-
sequently transfer to the countries they have left. But migrant-​sending states also encourage
return migration as a means through which the savings, knowledge and skills that emigrants
have acquired can be channelled to national development alongside enabling family reunifica-
tion. Diaspora strategising allows migrant-​sending states to engage emigrants while they are
overseas and also to prompt them towards or prepare them for return migration.
Under neoclassical models of migration, return is frequently explained as the outcome
of a failed migration experience in which labour migrants did not yield the benefits they
predicted. Another model, the new economics of labour migration (NELM) approach,
on the other hand, tends to portray return as the outcome of a successful stint abroad.
Neoclassical models and the NELM approach posit contrasting interpretations of return
migration (Cassarino 2004). Since the 1990s, a paradigm shift in migration policies has trans-
formed understandings of migration-​and-​development, emigration and return migration.
A new field of policy initiatives in migrant-​sending countries, popularly referred to as ‘dias-
pora strategies’, aims to better leverage the transfer of resources from diaspora populations
to their ancestral lands (Ho and Boyle 2015). State agendas to promote return migration
are implemented through diaspora strategies that seek to strengthen the national loyalty of
migrants, induce return, prepare migrants for return, and mobilise the resource they have as
returnees. Even if migrants remain abroad for good, it is in the interest of the sending state
for migrants to hold on to the myth of return and longing for the ‘homeland’ (Bauböck
2003; Kalm 2013).

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This chapter examines three manifestations of ‘return’ migration observable in Asian coun-
tries: first, the return of labour migrants in unskilled and semi-​skilled work; second, highly
skilled and capital-​bearing (i.e. high net worth) migrants; and third, diasporic descendants
who were born and bred abroad but subsequently re-​migrated to the ancestral land. Through
discussion of the aforementioned migration streams, the chapter draws out patterns of re-​
migration (associated with circular migration or transnational sojourning) that complicate
policy and policy perceptions premised on the view that emigration and return migration
function as linear journeys resulting in immigrant settlement elsewhere, or permanent reset-
tlement once returnees move back to the country of origin. The chapter also underlines the
different modalities of diaspora engagement evinced in selected Asian countries depending on
the characteristics of emigrants and the goals such states expect to achieve through managing
emigration and return migration. These countries are chosen to allow the penultimate section
to develop a discussion on the interconnected aspects of the different migration streams fram-
ing this chapter.

Return and reintegration policies for labour migrants

Several countries in Asia are known as key exporters of labour migration to other countries,
within Asia as well as internationally. Academic research has focused more on the labour export
policies of source countries and the working conditions of labour migrants in destination
countries. In comparison, the return migration of labour migrants following a stint abroad is
considerably less studied. Labour migrant workers generally return under the following con-
ditions: involuntary return due to a crisis, abuse or contract termination, or voluntary return
due to the completion of a work contract or the achievement of the migrant’s goals. Return
migrants may face problems such as unemployment, underemployment, debt, social alienation
and family conflict. Despite the years spent abroad, return migrants face challenges transferring
the skills they have acquired abroad to a different cultural context in their countries of origin,
whether it is through participation in the domestic labour market or when setting up their own
businesses.
The Philippines and Indonesia are both countries in Asia that experience significant out-​
migration, with high rates of their nationals going overseas to work in unskilled or semi-​skilled
jobs. Yet neither has implemented mechanisms for systematically collecting data on return
migration. There is a paucity of data on the magnitude of return migration and the rate of re-​
migration, the characteristics of returnees, and the circumstances under which they return. But
both the Philippines and Indonesia have started programmes to manage the return outcomes
of labour migrants.
Within Asia, the Philippines has been a forerunner in systematically facilitating the labour
migration of its nationals and putting in place pre-​emptive and corrective measures to address
the challenges faced by Filipino labour migrants abroad. In 2015, 2.4 million Filipinos worked
abroad, one in every three as labourers or unskilled workers (Philippines Statistics Authority
2016). State-​level agencies such as the National Reintegration Centre for Overseas Filipino
Workers (NRCO) and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) oversee and
run programmes concerning return and reintegration. The reintegration programme is incor-
porated into the different stages of migration, starting from the pre-​departure phase to the
period when the migrant is abroad and followed by return migration.
Filipino migrant workers pay a membership fee to the Overseas Workers Welfare
Administration (OWWA) fund, which provides welfare services and protection for members
and their families while the migrant is abroad, as well as when he or she returns. For return

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Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho & Madeleine Lim Pei Wei

migrants, the OWWA runs a reintegration programme, which encompasses psychosocial wel-
fare (e.g. family counselling and stress management) and economic welfare (e.g. livelihood
projects, community-​based income-​generating projects, skills training and credit lending) (ILO
2012). It also extends loans for returnees to set up livelihood programmes through entrepre-
neurship (Agunias and Ruiz 2007). The NRCO runs programmes focusing on personal, eco-
nomic and community reintegration. It partners government agencies, including the OWWA
and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), as well as banks and non-​
governmental organisations (NGOs) to deliver services concerning economic reintegration
(ILO 2012).
Indonesia has an estimated 4.3 million nationals registered as currently working abroad (i.e.
documented migrants). Its reintegration programmes target the returnees, prospective migrants
and their families (Gould et al. 2015: 6). Government agencies such as the Ministry of Social
Affairs’ Directorate of Social Protection for Violence Victims and Migrant Workers (PSKTK-​
PM) and the National Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers
(BNP2TKI) conduct programmes that seek to protect, assist and counsel migrants at the initial
stage of return, before referring them to other institutions that can better provide relevant ser-
vices. Returnees undergo social and cultural reintegration (i.e. community assistance and capac-
ity building) and a series of activities aimed at enhancing their access to economic resources
(i.e. capital, skills improvement and job training) so that they can find suitable employment and
establish their own businesses (Gould et al. 2015).
These government agencies work with other ministries such as the Ministry of Women
Empowerment and Child Protection, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry
of Home Affairs, along with NGOs or businesses and donor institutions such as the TIFA
Foundation, Australian Aid, the Japan Sustainable Development Fund (JSDF), the World Bank,
the International Organisation for Migration and the Bank of Indonesia, to ensure not only
the protection and welfare of migrants abroad, but also the economic and social reintegration
of returning migrants (Bachtiar and Prasetyo 2014). NGOs also organise programmes that deal
with specific issues. For instance, through community-​level activism, the Women’s Solidarity
for Human Rights advocates for better protection of migrant labourers abroad, improved gov-
ernment regulation of migrant workers’ conditions, increased awareness about migrant issues
and lends professional legal assistance and counselling to returned migrants in need (Gould
et al. 2015).
To provide returning migrants with a safe and reasonably priced transport option, Indonesian
authorities established ‘Terminal 3’ in 1999, to receive returning Indonesian migrant workers
at the international airport. Returning migrant workers, in particular females, are identified by
their bodily comportment and the special documentation they carry as migrant workers, and
are then redirected to coaches that ferry them to the address on their passport.While this meas-
ure is meant to ensure safe passage home for migrant workers who have been abroad for years,
it also prevents returning migrants from going to Jakarta or another locality where migration
brokers there might arrange for them to undertake a new work stint abroad immediately, and
often illegally.This state policy curtails the freedom of returning Indonesian migrant workers to
choose a destination apart from the address stated in their passports. The government-​arranged
coach journey also exposes returning migrants to a different set of vulnerabilities, such as when
coach drivers extort bribes from them or work in collusion with money exchange and street
vendors who sell goods and services to them at exorbitant prices before guaranteeing them a
safe journey home (Kloppenburg and Peter 2012).
Of the reintegration programmes designed by state agencies and partner organisations in
both Indonesia and the Philippines, financial literacy and technical assistance dominate the

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services offered to returning migrants.These are meant to develop alternative livelihood options,
to ensure that remittances are spent on productive activities and so that migrant workers are
less likely to re-​migrate. But a comprehensive reintegration programme should also focus on
wage employment programmes and provide a choice to re-​migrate or work at home (e.g. see
SMERU 2015). Reintegration policies tend to be presented as initiatives of individual organi-
sations, and are often sporadic and insufficient (Bachtiar and Prasetyo 2014).Yet in totality, the
multiple organisations involved result in a duplication of work among agencies, and a complex
bureaucratic maze that returnees have to navigate in order to access service delivery.
Moreover, re-​migration remains a popular choice amongst returned migrants. Re-​migration
means they can continue to channel remittances for longer-​term family goals. On a personal
level, returning migrants also experience changes in their identities and subjectivities, such as
gender roles in the family or lifestyle expectations after living overseas, which makes adjusting
to life back home difficult (Soco 2008). Female migrants who took on work in the sex industry
may experience discrimination or judgement. For a variety of reasons, re-​migration provides a
route for migrants to aspire towards a better future for themselves or their families, and should
remain an option to them. Patterns of re-​migration also characterise the journeys of highly
skilled and capital-​bearing migrants courted by countries of origin. We discuss this in the next
section.

Courting the return of skills and capital from abroad

Within Asia, state polices in China and India that promote return migration have received
considerable international attention not only because these policies signal a change in attitudes
towards return migration (from traitorous to a means of promoting development), but also in
view of the ambitious and wide-​reaching effects of such policies of return. Both countries have
developed what Raj (2015: 160) refers to as ‘emigrant infrastructure’, encompassing a range of
‘institutional, policy, juridico-​legal [sic] practises and engagements between the nation, state,
government, non-​state groups and institutions, as well as the imbrications of capital or com-
mercial interests with emerging or extant emigrant populations’.
The Chinese state influences return migration and resettlement decisions through pro-
grammes and legal frameworks that extend special recognition to the overseas Chinese, their
dependants and returnees. In 1955 the Chinese state issued a decree that accorded special
recognition to Chinese returnees as guiqiao on account of their co-​ethnicity and ties to the
ancestral land (Ho, 2015), but contemporary diaspora engagement policies now place greater
emphasis on the return of the overseas Chinese who can contribute to driving economic
development. Central to such diaspora engagement are the ‘new Chinese migrants’ (xinyimin)
who left China to study since the start of reforms in 1978. To entice the return flow of human
capital, the Chinese state introduced initiatives such as the ‘100 Talents’ programme (bairen jihua)
in 1994 and subsequently the ‘1000 Talents’ programme (qianren jihua) in 2008. Other promi-
nent programmes for returning academics and scientists have been set up through partnerships
with private foundations. In order to spread the word about return policies and programmes,
policymakers disseminate information through ‘ritualistic’ conventions (Xiang 2011) in China
and abroad. Such initiatives attest to the Chinese state’s goal to harness global mobility as an asset
for the country (Barabantseva 2005; Liu 2011).
A less prominent constituency of returnees are those who gave up Chinese citizenship to
naturalise abroad before deciding to return to China. Unlike the highly skilled and capital-​
bearing individuals courted by the Chinese state, these returnees on foreign citizenships had
emigrated to countries such as Canada, the US and Australia, but experienced challenges to

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integration such as de-​skilling and social isolation, or desire for family reunification back in
China. More of such returnees who had emigrated to Canada, Australia and New Zealand are
converging in China today. This led to the relaxation of Chinese visa regulations in recognition
of their desire to return to China to be reunited with family members or to work in China
(Ho 2015). Yet such returnees often intend to re-​migrate to their country of immigration in
the future, which they perceive as ideal destinations for their children’s education or for retire-
ment; their return to China is only temporary (Ho 2011; Ho and Ley 2013). They identify as
persons of Chinese ethnicity who claim birthright and cultural belonging to China, yet their
legal status identifies them as foreigners in China. Chinese authorities grapple with how to
situate this group of co-​ethnics in wider framings of emigration, return migration and onward
re-​migration.
Just as with China, the Indian state organises conventions targeting highly skilled and capital-​
bearing Indians abroad (Mani and Varadarajan 2005) so to extend symbolic membership, dis-
seminate information about employment or investment opportunities in India, and to promote
return migration. These overtures are meant to harness the skills and capital assets of Indians
abroad, including the transfer of human and financial capital to India during return migration,
so as to advance national development (Chacko 2007). While China’s overtures towards the
Chinese diaspora remain at the level of policies and programmes, the Indian state has enacted
far-​reaching legislative changes as part of its diaspora strategising. An earlier classification known
as ‘Persons of Indian Origin’ (PIO) affords bearers of this status a PIO card, which grants special
rights including visa-​free travel in or out of India, and to work or study in India. Persons of
Indian Origin are foreigners who bear another country’s nationality but can prove their ances-
tral ties to India (up to four generations). Subsequent changes to India’s citizenship law in 2005
now allow foreigners of Indian descent who hold another country’s citizenship to apply for the
Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI).
Since India bars dual nationality, both the PIO and OCI statuses function as a type of long-​
term visa that enables foreigners of Indian descent to maintain legal and material ties with the
ancestral land, which includes facilitating temporary or long-​term return.
Despite the reference to ‘citizenship’, holders of the OCI card do not enjoy political rights
such as voting or to stand for elections (similarly for the PIO card). Nonetheless, such schemes
give overseas Indians and returnees bearing these cards an advantage over others, as their quasi-​
citizen statuses make them attractive employees for multinational corporations with operations
in India. Also, both PIO and OCI cardholders are entitled to the economic and educational
privileges that Non-​Resident Indians enjoy, including a reserved quota for higher education.
In 2015, the PIO scheme was replaced by the OCI scheme, which is deemed more desirable
and fuss-​free.
Unlike the PIO which is applicable for up to fourth-​generation descendants and their
spouses, the OCI restricts eligibility for this status to overseas Indians up to the third generation.
Spouses of co-​ethnics are not eligible for the OCI status. PIO cardholders enjoy visa-​free travel
to India for a period of 15 years from the date of issue of the PIO card, but OIC cardholders
are granted multiple entry and life-​long visas for visiting India. Both PIO and OIC cardholders
enjoy the freedom to work, study and live in India, but PIO cardholders have to reside in India
for a minimum of seven years before qualifying to apply for citizenship. On the other hand,
OCI cardholders enjoy a shorter route to citizenship. They are eligible to apply for Indian citi-
zenship if they have been OCI cardholders for the previous five years and have resided in India
for at least one of those five years (India Bureau of Immigration 2015).
The policy overtures made by China and India to promote return migration are clearly not
limited to first-​generation emigrants but extend to diasporic descendants as well. We examine

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next the policies in other Asian states that aim to encourage the ‘return’ of diasporic descendants
so as to fill specific labour gaps in the economy, while also prioritising co-​ethnic and ancestral
ties that diasporic descendants bear (also see Tsuda, this volume, Chapter 7). It is questionable,
however, whether such ethnically privileged migration policies catering to diasporic descend-
ants should be considered ‘return’ or a type of immigration, since these diasporic descendants
were born abroad, hold a foreign nationality and had not lived in the ancestral country previ-
ously (Ho 2013).

Diasporic descendants and ethnically privileged ‘return’

Several states in Asia provide special schemes to allow for the ‘return’ of diasporic descendants
to fill specific gaps in the labour market. Ethnically privileged migration provides special entry,
residency and working rights to diasporic descendants who are able to prove their ancestral ties
to the country of immigration (Ho 2013). Both Japan and Korea have implemented such poli-
cies to fill labour shortages in low-​waged work shunned by nationals.
In 1989 the Japanese government revised the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition
Act (1951) to include a new visa category, known as the long-​term resident visa (teijusha), which
enables foreign nationals of Japanese ancestry to enter and reside in Japan for one to three years
(these visas are renewable). Through this visa scheme, diasporic descendants can live in Japan,
bring their families, have their children educated in Japanese schools and switch employers eas-
ily, since the visa is based on their ancestral ties rather than occupation. This visa attracted Latin
Americans of Japanese ancestry (nikkeijin) to Japan, where they took up jobs in low-​waged and
low-​skilled sectors.
Interviews with Japanese government officials suggest that they assumed nikkeijin immi-
grants would integrate more easily into Japanese society than immigrants of other ethnicities
(Yamashiro 2012). In 2009, the Japanese government amended the Immigration Control Act
to make it simpler for nikkeijins and other long-​term resident visa holders to remain in Japan,
increasing their permitted period of stay in Japan from three to five years, and easing the hurdles
of re-​entry permits (Immigration Bureau of Japan 2009). However, policies to attract highly
skilled foreigners such as the 2012 Points-​Based System have not made direct appeals to co-​
ethnics based in industrialised countries, although they are generally well e​ ducated and highly
skilled (Oishi 2012). Therefore, most co-​ethnics continue to use the long-​term resident visas
when returning to their ancestral land.
The South Korean state follows a route similar to the Japanese state. In 1999 the South
Korean government instituted the Act on the Immigration and Legal Status of Overseas Koreans
(known as the Overseas Korean Act). A  special visa provided under this law allows overseas
Koreans to legally reside in Korea regardless of employment status, and access rights to medical
care and purchase property, while avoiding the obligation of military service (Yamashiro 2012).
The Overseas Korean Act is couched in language that suggests it targets overseas Koreans resid-
ing in industrialised countries such as the United States, Canada and Japan.
Diasporic descendants who take on work in low-​skilled and low-​waged sectors, such as eth-
nic Koreans from China (joseonjok), enter Korea through a different migration scheme that was
part of a wider temporary guestworker programme known as the Industrial Technical Training
Programme (ITTP).The ITTP provided a separate quota for the intake of the Chinese-​Koreans
on account of their co-​ethnicity, which was considered more acceptable to Korean society
because of their linguistic ability (Seol and Skrentny 2009). However, due to a lack of protec-
tion under Korean labour laws, the joseonjok experienced degrading work conditions and social
exclusion. This led non-​governmental and migrant worker rights organisations to campaign

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Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho & Madeleine Lim Pei Wei

against the ITTP. In 2004, the Employment Permit System (EPS) replaced the ITTP, and under
this the H-​2 visa is a preferential scheme for ethnic Koreans from 11 countries, China included,
through which short-​term employment visas are obtainable (provided applicants pass a language
test) (Seol and Skrentny 2009).
Diasporic descendants who return to Japan or Korea, particularly if they belong to the
low-​waged 3D sector (dirty, dangerous and difficult), experience integration struggles in socie-
ties that uphold cultural homogeneity. Despite co-​ethnic relations and the concomitant privi-
lege that diasporic descendants have over other foreigners, they embody distinct cultural habits
and speak the native language differently from Koreans or Japanese who are born and bred
locally (in Korea or Japan respectively). The joseonjok (for Korea) and nikkeijin (for Japan) are
socially excluded because they remain identifiable as foreign-​born co-​ethnics to the locally
born Korean and Japanese citizens. As co-​ethnic immigrants who take on low-​paying and low-​
skilled work, they also tend to live in residentially segregated cheap housing districts and face
difficulties due to unstable employment, poor working conditions and access barriers to good-​
quality education for their children (Tsuda 2003; Seol and Skrentny 2009). Even highly skilled
returnees experience difficulties of integration because of expectations of cultural homogeneity
and conformity in Japanese and Korean societies. Membership and the social acceptance of co-​
ethnics remain incomplete even if the state grants them citizenship. Nonetheless, state policies
in both countries are starting to provide a variety of migrant support services to deepen the
integration of co-​ethnics from foreign backgrounds. For example, the Japanese government has
established National Strategic Special Zones to attract and house international schools to ease
transition for foreign and returning families (Oishi 2014).

Connections and convergences across migration streams in Asia

Our final case of Vietnam illustrates the multidimensional faces of return migration within the
sending country, as well as the connections forged between selected Asian countries through
the management of migration and return. Vietnamese state policies seek to manage both the
return migration of contemporary labour migrants (including those who depart through bilateral
trainee programmes) as well as to court highly skilled and capital-​bearing diasporic descend-
ants from developed countries. Several legal documents govern the labour export policy of
Vietnam. Of these, comprehensive legislation was passed in 2006 (known as the Law on Sending
Vietnamese Contract-​Based Workers Abroad) and it contains provisions regulating sending agen-
cies, contracts and fees, along with guarantees for labour migrants, and policies extending sup-
port to return migrants. At the same time, the Vietnamese state affords official recognition to
co-​ethnics abroad as an integral part of the nation through passage of Resolution 36-​NQ/​TW
in 2004, which creates favourable conditions for overseas Vietnamese (or the Viet Kieu) to return,
visit their ancestral land and relatives, and pay tribute to their ancestors (Furuya and Collet 2009).
Vietnam is a useful case to illustrate the connectedness of migration streams or the rationale
behind migration policies in Asia. With respect to labour migration, both Korea and Japan are
key receiving countries of Vietnamese labour migrants. Return migration outcomes are deter-
mined by the nature ofVietnamese labour migration to these countries and the state mechanisms
put in place to manage such migration. For example, Ishizuka (2013) reports that Vietnamese
labour migrants who find employment abroad through illegal migration brokers are likelier to
incur high pre-​departure costs and experience subsequent difficulties that lead to high desertion
rates (i.e. runaway workers). Upon returning to Vietnam, such workers often face unemploy-
ment problems. Despite the 2006 Law on Sending Vietnamese Contract-​Based Workers Abroad
that extends support to returning migrants, in reality such protection is absent at the local level

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(ibid). In other words, the challenges of managing the return migration of labour migrants in
Vietnam resonate with those faced by the Philippines and Indonesia. Comparing how Vietnam
responds to these challenges through state level bilateral programmes or working with the pri-
vate sector may provide insights for other Asian countries.
With Korea, the Vietnamese state has established a bilateral programme to send workers
through the Korean Employment Permit Scheme (EPS) so as to minimise desertion rates
amongst Vietnamese labour migrants. Reflecting sustained concerns of desertion, the Korean
government did not renew the memorandum of understanding for this partnership when it
expired in 2012 until later in 2014 (Vietnam Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2014). In comparison,
Japan receives Vietnamese labour migrants through the Japanese Industrial Training Programme
(ITP) and the Technical Internship Program (TIP). Unlike the bilateral programmes between
the Korean and Vietnamese states, labour migration from Vietnam to Japan is handled primarily
through private migration brokers. Ishizuka (2013) highlights that private migration brokers
may be better suited to provide services that benefit both migrants and potential employers,
such as by delivering culturally appropriate pre-​departure training, involving employers directly
in the selection process after applicants are trained, and providing job placements for returning
migrants.
With the support of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Vietnamese
state has also set up the Migration Resource Centre (MRC) to provide information and sup-
port services to returning Vietnamese migrant workers. Nonetheless, the broad policy brush-
strokes observable in the Vietnamese case should not be taken at face value as ‘best practices’ for
Asian countries. Ground-level observations, particularly ethnographic studies, of return migrant
experiences in Vietnam are fewer compared to equivalent research that has been conducted in
the Philippines and Indonesia. There remains a pressing need to assess the realities of policies as
experienced by migrants, returnees and their families in the Vietnamese context.
Another set of useful insights can be found through comparing ethnically privileged migra-
tion policies in Vietnam with those evinced in Korea, Japan, China and India (as discussed in the
previous sections).Through earlier cohorts of refugee exodus and labour migration, generations
of Vietnamese have settled overseas and their children bear foreign nationality status (Viet Kieu).
Whereas Japan and Korea’s policies on the nikkeijin and joseonjok respectively have focused on
encouraging the ‘return’ of diasporic descendants so as to fill labour shortages in the domes-
tic economy’s low-​paid and low-​skilled sectors, the goal of the Vietnamese state is to entice
capital-​bearing overseas Vietnamese to invest and open businesses in Vietnam. In this respect,
the policies promoting the ‘return’ of highly skilled and capital-​bearing diasporic descendants
to Vietnam are similar to the policies that have been advanced by China and India, including
through diaspora strategising.
For example, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) has signalled its intentions to
reform and create new systems of incentives and rewards to maximise overseas Vietnamese
brainpower for national development. The CPV also seeks to tap on Viet Kieu experts and
intellectuals to advise state agencies on management, the transfer of technology, and national
arts and cultural development. Domestic agencies and institutions are strongly encouraged
to work with these highly skilled overseas Vietnamese, and seek collaboration with them
to lobby for Vietnamese interests in countries where they reside. With these policy goals in
mind, the CPV has advanced policy changes to help overseas Vietnamese to resolve issues
concerning property purchase, inheritance, marriage, family, and more, so as to facilitate
their return migration. In 2015, a visa exemption for the Viet Kieu was introduced to stream-
line administrative procedures. Under this scheme, the Viet Kieu are entitled to stay for up
to six months in Vietnam with an additional visa extension for another six months. It allows

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Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho & Madeleine Lim Pei Wei

Viet Kieu to return home without entry visas, opening up legal channels for reintegration in
Vietnamese society (Anh et al. 2003).

Conclusion
This chapter has considered three manifestations of ‘return’ migration and how state poli-
cies seek to prompt or manage return outcomes. It focuses attention on the ‘return’ of labour
migrants, highly skilled and capital-​bearing emigrants, as well as diasporic descendants. The
chapter argues that diaspora strategising provides a means for migrant-​sending countries to
reach out to emigrants and diasporic descendants so as to influence return migration decisions.
As part of the migration-​and-​development nexus, ‘return’ migration across the three migration
streams is promoted by state policies with the view that it will facilitate national development
through the transfer of human capital and financial assets to countries of origin, or to meet gaps
in the domestic labour market.
The chapter also shows that in some cases, return and reintegration planning are already
incorporated into pre-​departure programmes for labour migrants such as in the Philippines and
Indonesia. Even so, such labour migrants might face challenges to do with directing their savings
and skills to sustainable livelihood outcomes through entrepreneurship or paid employment, and
psychological adjustments upon their return. The process of return and reintegration must be
managed effectively to enhance the positive impacts of migration on development, and to protect
the rights and interests of migrants who experienced negative outcomes (IOM 2015). The case
of Vietnam brings into view some of the interconnected aspects of labour migration policies and
return migration policies across migrant-​sending and migrant-​receiving countries, particularly
how the mechanisms of labour migration can promote or deter positive outcomes during return
migration.The case of Vietnam also highlights the convergences in ethnically privileged migration
polices mooted in countries such as Korea and Japan, even if such policies have been tailored to
meet the specific labour market needs or economic sectors that these countries want to develop.
Discussion of the three migration streams framing this chapter also signals that the notion
of ‘return’ is complicated by the re-​migration patterns demonstrated both by labour migrants
and highly skilled or high net worth migrants discussed, as in the preceding sections. When
it comes to labour migration, state policies of return still focus on reintegration meas-
ures, despite patterns of re-​migration evinced amongst labour migrants in the Philippines,
Indonesia and Vietnam. State policies of return, such as in India, China and Vietnam, have
been more ready to acknowledge and support the re-​migration intentions of the highly
skilled and high net worth migrants who hold citizenship status in other countries. At the
same time, applying the label ‘return’ to the case of diasporic descendants reinforces a slip-
page premised on national imaginaries, even though such migrants may not have lived in the
ancestral land previously (Ho 2013). The re-​migration routes highlighted across the different
migration streams discussed in this chapter suggest that ‘return’ has to be studied with an
openness to the ongoing geographical journeys that migrants chart across their life course
(Ho and Ley 2013).

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7
ETHNIC RETURN MIGRATION
IN EAST ASIA
Japanese Brazilians in Japan and
conceptions of homeland

Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda

Ethnic return migration refers to later generation descendants of immigrants who ‘return’ to their
countries of ancestral origin after living outside their ethnic homelands for generations (Tsuda
2009).This type of migration is quite significant in East Asia, especially in Japan and South Korea,
which rely on ethnic return migrants for the bulk of their unskilled immigrant labour force. Close
to a million second-​and third-​generation Japanese and Korean descendants scattered across Latin
America, Eastern Europe and China have return-​migrated to Japan and Korea since the late 1980s.
China and Taiwan have also been receiving ethnic Chinese descendants from various Southeast
Asian countries. There has even been limited ethnic return migration to various Southeast Asian
countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam (Tsuda 2009: 1–​3).
Although such ethnic return migration may appear to be more ethnically driven than other
types of international migration, most of the migrants are not returning to their ethnic home-
lands to reconnect with their ancestral roots or explore their ethnic heritage. Instead, they are
generally migrating from less-​developed countries to more economically prosperous ances-
tral homelands (often in the developed world) in search of jobs, higher incomes, and a better
standard of living. Nonetheless, when faced with economic pressures, these migrants choose to
return to their ethnic homelands instead of migrating to other countries because of the nos-
talgic attachment and ethnocultural affinity they feel toward their countries of ancestral origin.
In addition, ethnic return migration has been made possible because homeland governments
have adopted immigration and nationality policies that reach out to their diasporic descendants
born and raised in various countries abroad and enable them to return to their ethnic home-
land (see Skrentny et al. 2007; Joppke 2005; Tsuda 2010; Ho and Lim, this volume, Chapter 6).
Governments have extended the right of ethnic return partly in recognition of their historical
ethnic connections and obligations to their diasporic peoples, but also for economic reasons,
such as to fill labour shortages and encourage investment from descendants overseas.
As John Skrentny et al. (2007) note, nation-​states in East Asia (Japan, South Korea, China,
Taiwan) have invited back their diasporic descendants mainly for economic purposes (see also
Joppke 2005: 158–​9). Japan and South Korea have imported large numbers of ethnic return
migrants in response to acute unskilled labour shortages caused by decades of economic pros-
perity coupled with low fertility rates. South Korea and China (and to some extent, Southeast

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Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda

Asian countries) have encouraged wealthy and high-​skilled ethnic descendants in the diaspora
to return-​migrate in order to promote economic investment from abroad and to tap their
professional skills. These countries (especially Japan and South Korea) have decided to allow
diasporic return for economic reasons because they assumed ethnic return migrants would find
it easier to culturally assimilate and socially integrate (compared to racially and culturally differ-
ent foreigners) and not disrupt their ethnic homogeneity.
In contrast to ethnic return migrants to Europe and Israel, who are given citizenship before
or upon ethnic return (Cook-​Martín and Viladrich 2009; Iglicka 1998: 1008; Joppke 2005: 245–​
247; Skrentny et al. 2007), those in East Asia are generally given only preferential visas, since
they are being imported primarily as immigrant workers for economic purposes. The Japanese
government issues indefinitely renewable short-​term visas to ethnic return migrants, and China
has even offered permanent residence to its high-​skilled ethnic returnees (Skrentny et al. 2007).
In South Korea, ethnic Koreans from China and the former Soviet Union have been offered
only a limited number of work visas (industrial trainee visas in the past and, more recently, a
five-​year work visa). Because most of its diasporic descendants are located in neighbouring
China, the Korean government has been concerned about a flood of Korean Chinese labour
migrants and has therefore not adopted a more open policy toward them.This has caused many
of them to immigrate illegally, but with the tacit consent of the Korean government which has
conveniently looked the other way (Lim 2006: 241).

Homeland marginalisation
Although ethnic return migrants share a common bloodline and ancestry with the host popula-
tion, their privileged status as ‘co-​ethnics’ does not lead to the expected social pay-​off in their
ethnic homelands. In fact, they often have the same problems as other immigrants in the host
society and become ethnically and socioeconomically marginalised minorities in their coun-
tries of ancestral origin (see Tsuda 2009: 325–​333).
In contrast to ordinary labour migrants, who view the receiving society as mainly a place
of economic opportunity, ethnic return migrants often expect an ethnic homecoming of sorts,
and indeed they are initially admitted as ethnic compatriots and brethren by homeland gov-
ernments. Yet, despite this official welcome, few ethnic return migrants experience the warm
reception they anticipate in their ancestral homelands. Most ethnic return migrants simply lack
the linguistic and cultural competence necessarily for acceptance as ‘co-​ethnics’ in their ances-
tral homelands because they have been living for generations abroad and have become culturally
assimilated to their respective countries of birth. Therefore, when they ‘return’ to their ethnic
homelands, despite their shared bloodline, their ethnic heritage is seemingly denied on cultural
grounds by their ancestral compatriots when they are identified as foreign nationals. The cul-
tural marginalisation and social exclusion that return migrants experience is especially acute in
more ethnically homogeneous East Asian societies like Japan and South Korea, with restrictive
ethno-​national identities that demand not only shared racial descent, but complete linguistic
and cultural proficiency for national inclusion and even social acceptance.
Most ethnic return migrants are also socioeconomically marginalised since they are fre-
quently offered only low-​status, unskilled immigrant jobs that are shunned by the majority
populace. Because many of them are from relatively well-​educated, middle-​class backgrounds
before migrating, ethnic return migration involves considerable loss of social status and declass-
ing. Not only must they toil as unskilled, manual labourers in difficult, stigmatised jobs, they must
also psychologically cope with a serious decline in status from former, respected middle-​class
occupations to degrading working-​class jobs, which can have negative effects on self-​worth and

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esteem. Because of their marginalisation as immigrant minorities, many ethnic return migrants
remain socially unintegrated in their homelands. In some cases, they are segregated in immi-
grant ethnic communities and interact primarily amongst themselves in their own languages,
often resisting attempts by mainstream society to culturally assimilate and socially incorporate
them (see e.g. Song 2009; Tsuda 2003b: 155–​219).
Therefore, despite their ethnic affinity with their ancestral homeland, the ‘homecomings’
of ethnic return migrants are quite ambivalent, if not negative experiences, as they become
culturally foreign immigrant minorities confined to low-​status jobs and subject to social seg-
regation. In fact, they often experience levels of ethnic and socioeconomic marginalisation
equivalent to ordinary labour migrants. Such negative ethnic receptions are disappointing, if not
dismaying, for many of them and shatter their previously favourable, romantic images of their
ethnic homelands. Because ethnic return migrants have prior expectations of ethnic belong-
ing in their country of ancestral origin, most of them are quite surprised, even shocked by
their ethnic rejection and social exclusion (Cook-​Martín and Viladrich 2009; Song 2009;Tsuda
2003b: 155–​219, 2009: 329). As their previous idealised and nostalgic images of their ancestral
country are seriously disrupted, they become culturally alienated immigrant minorities who are
strangers in their ethnic homeland.
Therefore, ethnic return migrants are often forced to reconsider the meaning of homeland.
This is especially important because they technically have two homelands: the ethnic homeland,
where their ethnic group originated, and the natal homeland, where they were born and raised.
Unlike other types of immigrants, who are often part of the majority society in their natal
homeland, most ethnic return migrants were ethnic minorities in their country of birth because
of their foreign descent. However, when they migrate to their ethnic homeland, they become
minorities all over again because of their foreign cultural upbringing, causing some of them to
feel that they are a people without a homeland.
Quite often, the negative homecomings and sociocultural alienation that most ethnic return
migrants experience challenge their previously idealised and nostalgic affinity for their ethnic
homeland. As a result, their country of ethnic origin comes to no longer feel like a homeland
(cf. Christou 2006: 1048; Fox 2003: 457; Tsuda 2009: 342), and instead, they may redefine their
natal homeland as the true homeland (see Pilkington 1998: 194; Capo Zmegac 2005: 206;Tsuda
2009: 242–​247). Although they did not initially regard their country of birth as a ‘homeland’ per
se, when they are separated from it through migration and are confronted by a negative ethnic
reception abroad, they become homesick and develop positive nostalgic sentiments for their natal
country as the place where they truly belonged. In this manner, homelands are often discovered
through migration and physical absence, causing ethnic return migrants to prioritise their natal
over their ethnic homeland. In East Asia, ethnic return migrants who have such experiences
include Korean descendants from China and Japan residing in South Korea, and Japanese-​descent
nikkeijin from South America residing in Japan.The next section will examine the experiences of
Japanese Brazilians in Japan and their reconsideration of the meanings of homeland.

Ethnic return migration to Japan

Economic versus ethno-​national pressures in Japan’s
immigration policymaking
In East Asia, Japan is the country that has relied on ethnic return migrants the most in order to
meet its labour needs. During the height of the country’s economic bubble in the late 1980s, the
Japanese government allowed a large number of Japanese descendants born and raised in South

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Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda

America (called nikkeijin) to return-​migrate to Japan in order to work as unskilled immigrant

labourers. The government also assumed that because the nikkeijin were co-​ethnics, they would
not be as ethnically disruptive as other types of immigrants.
By the late 1980s, the shortage of unskilled labour in Japan was so acute that it threatened
to paralyse many small and medium-​sized businesses, especially in the manufacturing sector.
From an economic perspective, therefore, Japan definitely needed to liberalise its closed-​door
immigration policies toward unskilled foreign workers. However, the Japanese government was
very worried that an influx of a large number of culturally and racially different immigrants
would disrupt Japan’s cherished ethnic homogeneity  –​which is seen as fundamental to the
country’s social unity and stability –​leading to social conflict and ethnic discrimination (see
also de Carvalho 2003: 82–​83; Tsuda 2010). Nonetheless, economically oriented government
ministries representing business interests (such as Labour, Construction, International Trade and
Industry, Fisheries, and Transportation) were responsive to the demands of labour-​deficient
Japanese industries and advocated for a more open immigration policy.
However, the hard-​line Ministry of Justice opposed lifting Japan’s long-​standing ban on
unskilled foreign workers. The ministry (responsible for criminal prosecution and enforcement,
federal litigation, legal registration and protection, as well as immigration control and naturalisa-
tion) is known to be one of the most conservative and restrictive of all ministries, and strongly
believes that Japan’s supposed ethnic homogeneity and cultural purity is critical for domestic
security and social stability.
As a result, the Ministry of Justice wrested control over immigration policymaking from
other ministries and agencies and did not give in to economic pressures. In addition to main-
taining Japan’s ban on unskilled foreign workers, it wanted to crack down on illegal immigra-
tion by implementing sanctions against employers who hire illegal foreign workers. Because
the Ministry of Justice emerged at the top of the bureaucratic hierarchy in terms of immigra-
tion policymaking, its restrictive position was directly reflected in Japan’s revised Immigration
Control and Refugee Recognition Act, which was implemented in 1990 and continued the
prohibition against unskilled immigrant workers while imposing tough new penalties on
employers and labour brokers who knowingly hire and recruit illegal immigrants. In this man-
ner, despite the strong economic need for immigrant labour in Japan, the ethno-​national con-
cerns of the Japanese state took precedence in immigration policymaking because of the nature
of its bureaucratic system.
Although the Japanese government officially adopted a closed-​door immigration policy, it
was not as unresponsive to the economic demand for foreign workers as it initially appeared.
As a concession to labour-​deficient Japanese employers, who complained that they would be
forced out of business if they could not employ foreign workers, the Ministry of Justice created
various loopholes, or ‘side-​door’ policies that enable the legal importation of large numbers
of unskilled foreign workers under visa categories officially intended for other purposes (e.g.
Tsuda and Cornelius 2004: 452–​457). The most significant of these side-​door policies is the
legal admission of the Japanese-​descent nikkeijin from South America, which consists mainly of
Japanese Brazilians.
In addition to appeasing labour-​hungry Japanese employers, the Japanese government also
felt that nikkeijin immigrants would not be as ethnically and socially disruptive as other foreign
workers because they were Japanese descent co-​ethnics, thus simultaneously allaying its ethno-​
national concerns. Government policymakers assumed that the nikkeijin would be culturally
similar and assimilate more smoothly to Japanese society in contrast to racially and culturally dif-
ferent foreigners (de Carvalho 2003: 113; Komai 2001: 104). In other words, Japanese Brazilians
and other South American nikkeijin were seen as the perfect solution to Japan’s immigration

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dilemma: an effective way to deal with the labour shortage without threatening Japan’s ethnic
homogeneity.
A Justice bureaucrat I interviewed who was involved in the immigration debate described
the situation as follows:

Kettoshugi (the principle of blood/​lineage) and the privileging of foreigners with

blood ties with Japanese was a fundamental concern of the Ministry of Justice from
the very beginning when thinking about immigration policy because of concerns
about preserving Japan’s ethnic homogeneity. So admitting the nikkeijin was not seen
as a problem in this respect and they were the most acceptable out of all foreigners
(Tsuda 2010: 627).

Not only did the nikkeijin allay the ethno-​national concerns of the Japanese state, the govern-
ment was also able to obtain a much-​needed immigrant labour force, thus meeting its eco-
nomic labour demands without contradicting, at least on the level of official appearances, the
fundamental principle of Japanese immigration policy that no unskilled foreign workers will be
accepted (see also de Carvalho 2003: 151). Although it is evident that the government viewed
the legal admission of the nikkeijin as a convenient means to alleviate a crippling labour shortage
and reduce the influx of illegal foreign workers (Kajita 1994: 172; Kondo 2002: 424), officials
from various ministries claimed that this was not the true intent of the policy and did not offi-
cially recognise the nikkeijin as unskilled foreign workers. Instead, the policy was ideologically
justified as an opportunity provided by the benevolence of the Japanese government for those
of Japanese descent born abroad to explore their ethnic heritage and visit their ancestral home-
land (see Kajita 1994: 170; Kondo 2002: 424).

Ethnic homecomings and the meanings of homeland among

Japanese Brazilians in Japan
Japanese emigration to Brazil began in 1908 and continued in significant numbers until the
early 1960s. Many of the emigrants were farmers suffering from difficult conditions in Japan’s
rural areas, which were plagued by overpopulation, declining agricultural prices, and increas-
ing debt and unemployment. Although most Japanese emigrants went to Brazil as temporary
migrant workers with dreams of returning to Japan in several years with considerable wealth,
most of them ended up settling permanently in Brazil. Their Japanese Brazilian descendants
today are of the second and third generations who have become culturally assimilated and
socioeconomically well-​integrated in Brazilian society.
However, in the late 1980s, Brazil suffered from a severe economic recession that threatened
the livelihoods of even the middle-​class Japanese Brazilians. In response to Japan’s open-​door
policy toward the South American nikkeijin, thousands of Japanese Brazilians therefore moved
to Japan as ethnic return migrants. By the early 1990s, there were well over 150,000 Japanese
Brazilians living in Japan and the number increased further by the late 2000s. In 2011, there
were 210,032 Brazilians registered as foreigners in Japan (Ministry of Justice 2012).1
Before return-​migrating to Japan, the Japanese Brazilians felt a relatively strong transna-
tional attachment with their ethnic homeland. The Japanese Brazilians are generally well-​
regarded by mainstream Brazilians for their educational and socioeconomic achievements in
Brazil, as well as their affiliation with the highly respected First World country of Japan and
the positive cultural stereotypes about the Japanese that accompany it. In turn, the Brazilian
nikkeijin take pride in their Japanese descent and cultural heritage, and identify rather

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Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda

strongly with positive images of Japan and Japanese culture. While acknowledging their sta-
tus as Brazilian nationals, they maintain a transnational ethnic identification as ‘Japanese’ in
Brazil and believe they have retained many positive aspects of their ethnic heritage (Tsuda
2003b: 65–​82).
As a result, when Japanese Brazilians return-​migrate to Japan, they are quite disconcerted by
the ethnic exclusion and socioeconomic marginalisation they confront, in turn prompting them
to strengthen nationalist sentiments as Brazilians and rethink the meaning of homeland (see
Tsuda 2009: 242–​7). Although they have been officially welcomed by the Japanese government
as co-​ethnic Japanese descendants, they are ethnically excluded in Japan and treated as foreigners
because of their Brazilian cultural differences. When talking about their migrant experiences,
they frequently say ‘we were considered Japanese in Brazil, but are seen as Brazilian foreigners
here in Japan’. Their previous assumptions of cultural commonality with the Japanese come
under serious questioning as they realise that their supposedly ‘Japanese’ cultural attributes,
which were sufficient to be considered ‘Japanese’ in Brazil, are woefully insufficient to qualify
as Japanese in Japan, or even to help them gain social acceptance. In the words of a Brazilian
nikkeijin:

We think we are Japanese in Brazil, but in Japan, we find out that we were wrong.
If you act differently and don’t speak Japanese fluently, the Japanese say you are a
Brazilian. To be considered Japanese, it is not sufficient to have a Japanese face and eat
with chopsticks.You must think, act, and speak just like the Japanese
(Tsuda 2009: 243).

Many Japanese Brazilians therefore realise that, in Japan, they are culturally much more Brazilian
than they ever were ‘Japanese’, leading to a nationalisation of their ethnic identity. For instance,
although they frequently adopt a quieter and more restrained, if not shier, ‘Japanese’ demeanour
in Brazil, they discover that in Japan, their manner of walking, dressing, and gesturing is strik-
ingly different from the Japanese. Remarkably, virtually all nikkeijin I interviewed claimed that
it is extremely easy to tell the Japanese Brazilians apart from the Japanese on the streets because
of such differences. For instance, consider the following statement:

I can see a [Japanese] Brazilian coming from a mile away with about 90 per cent cer-
tainty… The Brazilians walk casually with a more carefree gait and glance around at
their surroundings and they are dressed casually in T-​shirts and jeans. The Japanese are
more formally dressed and walk in a more rushed manner. The Brazilians also gesture
much more than Japanese and walk around in groups, whereas the Japanese are usu-
ally alone
(Tsuda 2009: 243).

The shift in ethnic identity among the Japanese Brazilians, from an initially stronger Japanese
consciousness in Brazil to an increased nationalist awareness of their Brazilianness, is also a
response to their experiences of social alienation in Japan. Because of their strong personal
affiliation with their ethnic homeland, many expect to be socially accepted by the Japanese in a
manner consistent with an ethnic ‘homecoming’ of Japanese descendants. As a result, when such
expectations are unfulfilled and they experience ethnic rejection as culturally alien foreign-
ers and socioeconomic marginalisation as low-​status, unskilled migrant workers in Japan, the
Brazilian nikkeijin feel quite alienated, as shown by their numerous reactions of disillusionment
and even dismay.

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A good number of my Japanese Brazilian informants were surprised, if not ‘shocked’, by their
ethnic and social marginalisation in Japan. In the words of one of them:

In Brazil, we were always proud of our Japanese ancestry and our ties to Japan and
thought of the Japanese people in positive ways. Although I don’t speak Japanese that
well, I  thought the Japanese would accept us because we are Japanese descendants.
Coming to Japan and being treated as a foreigner despite my Japanese face was a
big shock for me, a shock I’ll never forget. I think it’s unfair that we are not socially
accepted here simply because we’ve become culturally different
(Tsuda 2009: 244).

A number of times, the Brazilian nikkeijin referred to their social segregation in Japan as ‘dis-
crimination’; some even used the more ethnically charged term ‘racism’. For example, consider
the comments of an older nikkeijin man:

The Japanese always keep us separated from them because of the prejudices that they
have. I was offended when I first saw this social separation. There are some Japanese
who simply don’t like us and don’t trust us because we are Brazilian. If you don’t
understand Japanese culture and act just like the Japanese, they discriminate against
you and you can’t enter their group. The Japanese are racists, so even the [Japanese]
Brazilians experience discrimination here
(Tsuda 2009: 244).

The social alienation that Japanese Brazilian ethnic return migrants experience in Japan there-
fore completely undermines their previously favourable images of, and nostalgic attachment to,
their ethnic homeland of Japan. As Japan comes to take on a quite negative meaning for them,
many of them emotionally distance themselves from the country and no longer experience it
as an ethnic homeland. Homeland is not simply a place of origin –​it must be imbued with
positive emotions as a place of desire and longing to which the individual feels a strong sense
of attachment and identification (cf. Al-​Ali and Koser 2002: 7). Therefore, even though Japan
technically remains the country of ethnic and ancestral origin for the Japanese Brazilians in an
objective sense, it is no longer associated with the feelings of affiliation and fondness that make
homelands subjectively meaningful.
As the Japanese Brazilians are alienated from their ethnic homeland of Japan, they strengthen
their nationalist attachment to Brazil as the natal homeland where they truly belong and origi-
nated. In this manner, their country of birth is reconceptualised in nationalist terms as the true
homeland in contrast to their country of ethnic origin. A common sentiment is encapsulated
in the following words:

We come to Japan and realise Japan is not our country. It is the country of our parents
and grandparents. Although we are Japanese descendants, we don’t belong here. We
can’t enter Japanese society because the Japanese don’t accept us. Instead, our country
is Brazil. It is where we were born and where we grew up
(Tsuda 2009: 245).

However, Brazil does not become the true homeland for the Brazilian nikkeijin simply because
they have been denied their ethnic homeland in Japan. In order for a country of origin to
become subjectively meaningful and significant as a real homeland, and therefore as a source

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Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda

of nationalist identity, it must be viewed in a positive and desirable manner. For the Japanese
Brazilians, Brazil emerges as the true homeland through the migration process because it is
imbued with positive meaning and affect when contrasted with the negative social experiences
they have in Japan (see also Linger 2001: 266–​267).
When they return-​migrate and are confronted by the exclusionary nature of Japanese soci-
ety, they begin to value and appreciate the ethnically receptive and inclusive nature of multi-​
ethnic Brazil to a much greater extent than before. The supposedly cold and impersonal nature
of Japanese social relationships causes many of them to reminisce (almost nostalgically) about
the emotionally warm and affectionate social relationships they had in Brazil. Others (espe-
cially Japanese Brazilian women) also note the gender inequality prevalent in Japan, both at the
workplace and in spousal relationships, in contrast to Brazil, which is portrayed as a society of
more equality and mutual respect among the sexes. Other aspects of the Japanese which are fre-
quently brought up for specific criticism are the excessive dedication to work and company at
the expense of fulfilling family or social lives, group conformity and obedience, and the overly
restrictive and structured nature of their lives, which many Brazilians nikkeijin again contrast
with the more favourable social experience of Brazilians’ ability to enjoy life. In this manner,
as they discover negative aspects of Japan and distance themselves from their previous ethnic
identification as ‘Japanese’, the Japanese Brazilians simultaneously rediscover and reaffirm the
positive aspects of Brazil that they had previously taken for granted, which produces a renewed
appreciation of their status as Brazilian nationals.
As Brazil is favourably reconstituted in this manner by the Japanese Brazilians abroad, it no
longer remains an affectively neutral place of birth, but becomes an emotionally charged, almost
idealised object of desire worthy of a true homeland. As a result, many of them ironically feel a
greater sense of nationalist loyalty and identification with Brazil in Japan than they ever did in
Brazil. Some of my informants (especially those who had been living in Japan for several years)
recalled their natal homeland with rather fond memories. Although the Japanese Brazilians were
frequently critical of many aspects of Brazilian society back home, I observed a notable ten-
dency among them to praise Brazil in Japan, even to an exaggerated extent. Brazil is still char-
acterised as a country with serious political, economic, and social problems, but other aspects
of Brazil are spoken of highly and contrasted favourably with Japan, such as its people, culture,
material living conditions, natural resources and agriculture, sports heroes, and food. One of my
informants spoke about this positive reassessment of Brazil in the clearest terms:

Brazilians always think other countries are much better. The Japanese Brazilians saw
Japan in this way too. But now, I realise we were wrong. We didn’t know what we had
in Brazil. There is no better place than Brazil to live, especially because we were born
there and have no cultural problems.The people are better there and so are the condi-
tions of living. I value Brazil much more now
(Tsuda 2009: 246).

Some Brazilian nikkeijin in Japan even used affect-​laden terms such as patriotism and love to
express their renewed, emotional affiliation to their natal homeland. ‘In Brazil, I never gave too
much value to the country, but now I do,’ a woman interviewee said. ‘I feel more patriotism
towards Brazil.’ Another declared: ‘My sentiments for my homeland of Brazil and my love for
the country will never leave me no matter how long I stay in Japan.’ Others expressed similar
feelings.
A number of Japanese Brazilians make a point of asserting their Brazilian nationalist identi-
ties in their daily behaviour. This ranges from constantly identifying themselves as Brazilian

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foreigners to avoid being mistaken as Japanese, to more overt, if not defiant, demonstrations of
their cultural Brazilianness by wearing ‘Brazilian’ clothes, speaking Portuguese loudly in pub-
lic, dancing samba in the streets, and ‘acting Brazilian’ in other ways (Tsuda 2003b: 263–​287).
This greater sense of Brazilian national allegiance and pride among the nikkeijin in Japan is also
symbolised by the prominent display of the Brazilian flag in their ethnic stores and restaurants,
although the flag is hardly ever displayed in Brazil. During the 2002 FIFA World Cup (held
in Japan and Korea), thousands of Japanese Brazilians waving the Brazilian flag and dressed in
national colours showed up in stadiums all over Japan to cheer on their national team, causing
the American TV broadcasters to wonder why so many ‘Japanese’ were so fervently rooting for
the Brazilian team.
In this manner, the dislocations of migration can produce a form of deterritorialised national-
ism where national loyalties to natal homelands are articulated outside the territorial boundaries
of the nation-​state. In fact, countries of birth are often discovered and articulated as homelands
in the process of migration and travel (see also Clifford 1997). Absence from a place of origin
often causes it to become the object of nostalgic desire and longing, and to be reconceptualised
as a homeland. Migrants’ encounters with foreign societies frequently disrupt the taken-​for-​
granted nature of their own country, causing them to re-​evaluate it in a much more favourable
light when compared with the negative experiences of social rejection and alienation abroad.
This produces a greater sense of national allegiance and identification toward the country of
origin as the true homeland.
Because of the alienation that the Brazilian nikkeijin experience in their ethnic homeland of
Japan and their heightened sense of national loyalty toward Brazil, it is not surprising that few
initially wish to live in Japan long-​term or permanently and many eventually return to Brazil.
However, a good number of them end up re-​migrating to Japan for economic reasons, initiating
a pattern of circular migration. When the Japanese Brazilians return to Brazil, they experience
considerable difficulty re-​establishing themselves occupationally and economically. Since most
either quit their jobs in Brazil or closed their private businesses before migrating, few are able to
resume their previous occupations. Many Japanese Brazilians find that their savings accumulated
in Japan are quickly depleted if they cannot find a steady source of income in Brazil. As a result,
when they return to Brazil, they eventually end up confronting the same problems of economic
insecurity, insufficient job opportunities, and low wages that caused them to migrate to Japan
in the first place. For many of these individuals, re-​migration to Japan to earn more money
becomes the only option. Therefore, once they migrate, some Japanese Brazilians are caught in
a self-​perpetuating cycle in which they become dependent on circular migration for financial
survival. This leads to a liminal existence where they are economically marginalised in Brazil
and socially marginalised in Japan.

Conclusion: home and homeland

Although governments in East Asia have encouraged their diasporic descendants scattered
abroad to return to their ethnic homeland of ancestral origin, this chapter has demonstrated
that the homecomings of these ethnic return migrants are an ambivalent experience involving
ethnic and socioeconomic marginalisation. Instead of strengthening their affiliation with the
ethnic homeland, ethnic return migrants are often alienated from it, and rediscover their natal
homeland as their true country of origin and belonging.
Therefore, we must be careful to distinguish the concept of homeland from the concept of
home. Although they are often conflated and used interchangeably in the literature (based on
the assumption that home is located in the homeland) (e.g. see Espiritu 2003: 2, 11; Parreñas

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Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda

2001: 55–​56), the two places do not always correspond for migrants. Homeland is a place of
origin to which one feels emotionally attached whereas home is simply a stable place of resi-
dence that feels secure, comfortable, and familiar (see also Constable 1999: 206–​207; Markowitz
2004: 24; Stefansson 2004: 174). While it may often be the case that homeland is where indi-
viduals feel at home, home and homeland are not always the same place.
For many ethnic return migrants, their ancestral homeland definitely does not feel like
home. However, this has not prevented them from settling in the host society and eventually
making it into a new home because of economic and social reasons, even if it remains an inhos-
pitable place where they are not socially well integrated. Although ethnic return migrants in
East Asia are temporarily admitted for economic needs, a good number have prolonged their
stays in an attempt to achieve their financial goals, called over their family members, and are
becoming immigrant settlers (see Tsuda 1999). As noted above, even some Japanese Brazilians
who return to Brazil end up remigrating to Japan, increasing the chances that they will settle
there in the future.
The settlement of ethnic return migrants is causing another disjuncture between home and
homeland. Although the ethnic homeland does not feel like a homeland to many of them, it
has definitely become a home over time, as many have decided to settle long-​term with their
families and have grown accustomed to life in these countries. For instance, Japanese Brazilians
in Japan have created very cohesive immigrant ethnic communities with a wide range of ethnic
businesses, various services, organisations, and churches, and an active ethnic media, all supported
by extensive transnational economic, political, and social connections with their sending coun-
tries (see Tsuda 2003b: Chapter 4). Although they remain socially alienated in the host society,
they feel well situated and comfortable living in these self-​contained immigrant communities,
where they can conduct their daily lives amongst family and compatriots in culturally familiar
settings without much contact with mainstream society, while remaining actively in touch with
their countries of birth. As a result, they have created a home away from the natal homeland.
Undoubtedly, the immigrant host society does not have to be experienced as a homeland for
it to be considered as a home. In fact, immigrants around the world have shown a remarkable
ability to create homes in alienating, foreign places (see Constable 1999: 208; Markowitz 2004:
25), and ethnic return migrants are no exception, enabling them to resist the negative effects of
their social alienation and homesickness abroad (Tsuda 2003a).

Note
1 The statistics can be found online via www.e-​stat.go.jp/​SG1/​estat/​List.do?lid=000001111183.

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Stefansson, A.H. (2004). Refugee returns to Sarajevo and their challenge to contemporary narratives of
mobility. In L.D. Long and E. Oxfeld, eds., Coming Home? Refugees, Migrants, and Those Who Stayed
Behind. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp.170–​186.
Tsuda, T. (1999). The permanence of ‘temporary’ migration: the ‘structural embeddedness’ of Japanese-​
Brazilian migrant workers in Japan. Journal of Asian Studies, 58 (3), pp. 687–​722.
—​—​—​. (2003a) Homeland-​less abroad: transnational liminality, social alienation, and personal malaise. In
Lesser, J., ed., Searching for Home Abroad: Japanese Brazilians and Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, pp.121–​161.
—​—​—​. (2003b). Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland:  Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational
Perspective. New York: Columbia University Press.
—​—​—​, ed. (2009). Diasporic Homecomings:  Ethnic Return Migration in Comparative Perspective. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
—​ —​ —​ . and Cornelius, W. (2004). Japan:  government policy, immigrant reality. In W.A. Cornelius,
T. Tsuda, P.L. Martin, and J.F. Hollifield, eds., Controlling Immigration:  A Global Perspective, 2nd edn.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp.439–​476.
—​—​—​. (2010). Ethnic return migration and the nation-​state: encouraging the diaspora to return ‘home’.
Nations and Nationalism, 16 (4), pp. 616–​636.

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8
CONCEPTUALISING ASIAN
MEDICAL TRAVEL AS
MEDICAL MIGRATIONS
Andrea Whittaker

Increasing numbers of people across Asia are travelling across national borders for health
care. Stereotypical depictions of medical travel typically describe the movements of wealthy
western patients travelling large distances to seek health services in developing countries.
But as many authors have noted, such descriptions do not capture the complexity of medical
travel and its articulation with other forms of mobility (Connell 2013). Medical travel is not
a singular phenomenon, but one that varies depending on region, country of origin, destina-
tion, financial status, type and status of the medical treatment required, legal status of patients,
language and cultural affinity, distance travelled, citizenship and social support (Whittaker and
Chee 2016). There are divergent motivations, experiences and circumstances under which
such movements take place (Roberts and Scheper Hughes 2011; Whittaker, Manderson and
Cartwright 2010).
This diversity of medical mobilities is reflected in the terms used across the public health and
health services, tourism, geography, ethics, migration studies, anthropological and sociological
literature: ‘international medical travel’, ‘cross-​border care ‘, medical tourism’ or ‘transnational
healthcare practices’ (for example, Bell et al. 2015; Kangas 1996, 2007; Whittaker 2008; Connell
2011, 2013; Snyder, Dharamsi and Crooks 2011; Ormond 2013b; Ormond and Mainil 2015;
Lunt et al. 2015; Stan 2015). The various terms chosen to describe this mobility reflect both
the empirical realities described by various authors in particular destinations or associated with
particular medical procedures, and also the disciplinary background and focus. Each term brings
a particular analytic lens to our understanding of the phenomenon. Work on medical travel has
tended to be largely descriptive, documenting north/​south disparities and equity issues involved
in the trade; the push and pull factors that influence patient motivations and decision-​making;
the risks associated with patients going abroad, and returning home for follow-​up care; and
the advantages and disadvantages for sending and receiving countries’ health systems and com-
munities (for summaries see Johnston et al. 2010, Crooks et al. 2010; Connell 2013; Hopkins
et al. 2010; Whittaker 2008, 2015b). There is an emerging literature which I review within this
chapter that is focused on Asian settings, which adds to our understanding of the complexities
of such travel and its relationships with other flows of people.
Viewing medical travel within a framework of migration allows us to view the continuities and
ruptures of medical travel with other kinds of global mobilities and migrations. Anthropologists
Elizabeth Roberts and Nancy Scheper-​Hughes (2011) first used the term ‘medical migrations’

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Conceptualising Asian medical travel

for considering travel in the pursuit of biomedical treatments, body interventions or biologi-
cal logics. They suggest that ‘migration’ refers to the ‘directed, regular or systematic movement’
(2011: 4) of people, technologies and biological materials which are involved in or used in the
health services trade. The use of the term medical migrations ‘emphasise(s) their production
within particular political-​economic configurations of globalised bio-​medicine, which involve
the disparate and unequal distribution of health and sickness, health care, and the maintenance
of borders between bodies, social collectivities (classes, castes, races), polities and nation-​states’
(2011:  4–​5). Mobile patients cross not only geographical boundaries, but traverse different
health systems, regulatory systems and economic disparities in health care resourcing between
their home and destination countries.
In this chapter I respond to Roberts and Scheper-​Hughes’s (2011) call for a consideration of
medical travel as a form of migration, describing its common characteristics with other trans-
national movements and how it articulates with other forms of migration. I concentrate upon
movements for biomedical health care, although smaller trades have long existed across Asia
for traditional medicines and healers, Chinese or Ayurvedic treatments (Golomb 1985;Vafadari
2015).The various relationships between medical migrations in Asia and other movements may
be conceptualised as in Figure 8.1.
In this figure each circle represents a transnational social field overlapping with movements
for medical care. In reality the boundaries between these various fields are not neatly defined
but blurry and dynamic, and at times overlapping. They are intersected by national bounda-
ries, geographical space and social networks, and structured by state policies governing the

Retirement

Expatriate
Tourism work
migration

Medical
Other trade, migrations
education and Forced
social network migrations
flows

Diasporic
Medical staff return
migrations

Figure 8.1  Overlapping migration fields intersecting with medical migrations

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Andrea Whittaker

movements of people, the growth of trade in health services and the education of medical staff.
The spaces of clinics and hospitals are transnational spaces also intersected by economic status,
and ethnic and cultural differences (Whittaker and Chee 2015).
Arjun Appadurai (1990:6–​7) describes globalisation’s flows through the concept of ‘scapes’.
He identifies five global flows: ethnoscapes (flows of people, both temporary and permanent),
mediascapes (flows of images), technoscapes (flows of technology and information), finanscapes
(flows of capital) and ideoscapes (ideological flows). These concepts have proved productive for
authors describing forms of medical travel such as reproductive travel (i.e. Inhorn and Shrivastav
(2010) on ‘reproscapes’) and cosmetic surgery travel (i.e. Holliday et  al. (2015) on ‘beauty-
scapes’). In this chapter I  primarily explore the ‘ethnoscapes’ associated with medical travel,
the various flows of people that intersect within the international medical travel trade in Asia.
Although not discussed here, medical technologies, other care workers, body tissues such as
organs or ova, capital, media images and new imaginations of bodies also move across these
fields to service and facilitate the trade.
In the first part of this chapter I describe the major medical hubs that have developed in Asia.
I then explore how intra-​regional medical travel to access quality medical services is becoming
pervasive in many parts of Asia. These movements trace similar paths to other migratory flows
for trade, education and work, and carry cultural meanings and values associated with care
for family and kin members. Finally, I  explore how Asian medical migrations intersect with
other forms of migration such as: the movements of expatriate workers, retirement migrants,
diasporic returnees seeking medical care in familiar surroundings, as well as the movements
of forced migrants and refugees, or those forced to travel due to failing health systems in their
home countries. In addition, these migrations are implicated in movements of medical staff (and
technologies) across the region (Beladi et al. 2015) and linked to existing networks of people
travelling for education. In the final part of this chapter I consider the regular and systematic
movements of people within the region for medical care across these various categories. This
chapter synthesises material from a range of ethnographic studies in the region and also draws
upon fieldwork undertaken by the author, the collaborating researcher (Chee Heng Leng) and
research assistant (Por Heong Hong) on medical travel in Malaysia and Thailand (see Whittaker
and Chee 2015, 2016; Whittaker, Chee and Por 2015 for details).

Major medical hubs in Asia

A number of Asian countries such as Thailand, Singapore, India and Malaysia have developed
trades in health services through deliberate intervention of their states as national projects (Chee
2010; Connell 2011; Toyota Chee and Xiang 2013; Whittaker 2008; Wilson 2010). The region
hosts a number of major private hospital groups with sophisticated medical technologies and
expertise, and markets itself as providing high-​quality services at lower costs than in Europe
or the US. Each also attracts substantial intra-​regional trade. In their marketing, every country
emphasises their expertise available for particular procedures. For example, Malaysia Health
Care promotes Malaysia’s expertise in cardiology, ophthalmology, orthopaedics and plastic sur-
gery, as well as diagnostic and health screening packages. Indian websites emphasise expertise in
cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery, joint replacement, orthopaedic surgery, gastroenterology,
ophthalmology, transplants, and urology. Thailand tends to advertise its expertise in cosmetic
surgery (Aizura 2009), cardiac procedures, dental work, cataract removal and bone-​related pro-
cedures. Other Asian nations like South Korea, famous for its plastic and cosmetic surgery (Yu
and Tae 2012; Holliday and Elfving-​Hwang 2012),Taiwan and the Philippines are also emerging
medical travel destinations.

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Conceptualising Asian medical travel

Thailand is a leading medical hub in Asia, drawing upon a skilled medical workforce, exten-
sive tourism infrastructure, and service industries (Wilson 2010: 119). A study of patient records
from the five largest private hospitals in Thailand found that a total of 104, 830 patients defined
as ‘medical tourists’ visited in 2010, accounting for 324,926 separate visits and generating
US$180 million (Noree et al. 2014). The source countries for patients are diverse. In 2010 the
top three countries of origin of patients to Thailand in 2010 were the United Arab Emirates
(UAE) (accounting for 20 per cent of total foreign patients) (see Whittaker 2015a), Bangladesh
and the US, followed by Myanmar, Oman and Qatar, then the UK (Noree et al. 2014).
Singapore planned to make the country into an international medical centre since around
1986 (Pocock and Phua 2011; Phua 1995). The Singapore state supports medical tourism
through Singapore Medicine, a multi-​agency government-​industry body carrying out promo-
tion and marketing, led by the Ministry of Health and supported by the Singapore Economic
Board and other government agencies. The major flows of patients to Singapore are from
Malaysia and Indonesia although the country has undertaken to further diversify source coun-
tries. Singapore has less competitive prices than neighbouring Malaysia and Thailand, but is
known for its high-​tech medicine and surgical expertise. The significance of medical tourism
to the private hospitals is reflected in the percentage of foreign patients, which is about 30 per
cent in the Parkway hospitals, and 30–​40 per cent in Raffles Medical Hospital in Singapore
(Chee 2008, 2010).
The estimated number of patients travelling for care to India is 450,000 a year, generating
US$350 million annually (Smith 2012). India draws a significant proportion of its patient cli-
entele from neighbouring South Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and the
Maldives (see Knoll 2015), or from the non-​resident Indian diaspora (Connell 2011: 70), but has
also been an important destination for government-​sponsored medical travel from the Middle
East and Gulf Cooperative Council (see Kangas 2007). A number of major medical corpora-
tions such as Apollo, Max and Fortis dominate the Indian market for medical travellers. These
benefit from ‘soft’ forms of support from the Indian government, including tariff reductions for
expensive equipment, discounts on land prices to hospitals, and regulatory relaxations as well as
a 2002 National Health Policy that explicitly encourages medical tourism, state medical tourism
councils and a visa category for foreign patients and their accompanying caregivers (Solomon
2011: 108).
Malaysia has positioned itself as a medical tourist destination offering inexpensive, high-​
quality medical treatment. The majority of patients coming to Malaysia for treatment are from
its nearest neighbour, Indonesia. Out of a total of 671,727 foreign patients in 2012, more than
three-​quarters were Indonesians (76.6 per cent in 2011).1 As Ormond and Sulianti (2014) note,
Indonesian patients increasingly manage chronic care needs by commuting on a regular basis
to Malaysia for treatments, prescriptions and check-​ups. The state of Penang is the top medical
tourist destination in the country, treating 60 per cent of the country’s total foreign intake of
patients. Most of these patients are from neighbouring Indonesian districts.

Intra-​regional travel and ‘cultures of migration’

As described, intra-​regional travel is an important part of the trade in health services in Asia
and yet it is the least described (Connell 2013: 5). Migration for medical care is pervasive across
Asia. In some parts of Asia, a ‘culture of migration’ (Massey et al. 1993: 452–​53) exists in which
travelling for medical care has become a common-​sense and strategic behaviour to acquire
medical services unavailable or inaccessible in their home country, or to acquire services that are
perceived to be of better quality. In a study of Indonesian patients travelling between the cities

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of Pontianak and Singkawang in West Kalimantan to Kuching in Malaysian Borneo, Ormond

and Sulianti (2014) describe how such travel is considered a sensible pragmatic response within
a context of deep mistrust of the quality of care of local health services in Indonesia and the
perception of better quality care in Malaysian hospitals. Like other forms of labour migration,
flows of patients are also a response to the gaps in economic development, living standards and
health system inequities between the source and destination countries.
Frequent cross-​border medical traffic takes place elsewhere in the region:  Laotians along
the border travel regularly to hospitals over the Thai border for health care (Bochaton 2013,
2015; Durham 2015);Vietnamese, Cambodian and Myanmar patients check into Thai hospitals
(Lautier 2008: 109; Maung and Walsh 2014). Cambodians go to Vietnam for care (Pocock and
Phua 2011); and patients from the Maldives regularly visit India for treatment, such as for tha-
lassaemias (Knoll 2015). In the Bangkok hospital we spoke with Anh, who is 39 years old and
works as an education consultant in Vietnam. Anh joked that she is not a frequent flyer but a
‘frequent patient’. She had flown to Thailand with her daughter who had been suffering from
a fever and was diagnosed with pneumonia. Anh and her family regularly travel to Thailand
for their medical care and she cited a number of times when they had been misdiagnosed in
Vietnam: ‘Facilities in Vietnam are not very good. I don’t know if you’ve been to Vietnam or
not but if you go to hospitals there I’m sure you’d be scared. People are just everywhere, on the
floor –​100 per cent of hospitals in Vietnam are overloaded right now.’
Such movements have long histories, often following along other migration routes linked by
trade, education, cultural and linguistic ties (Whittaker, Chee and Por 2017). Charis Thompson
(2011) notes the enduring importance of historical patterns of commerce, migration, conflict,
colonialism and nationalism to all kinds of medical travel, even as they reinscribe these path-
ways. For example, intra-​regional travel by Indonesian patients to Penang in Malaysia is embed-
ded within historical regional circuits related to flows of trade and cultural and linguistic ties
(Toyota, Chee and Xiang 2013). For many patients, contemporary movements for health care
are a continuation of existing exchanges for trade, education and cultural ties, such as between
the Indonesian Chinese communities of Medan and Malaysian Chinese communities of Penang
(Whittaker, Chee and Por 2017 review). Patients we interviewed in the Penang hospitals were
disproportionately Indonesian Chinese (41/​70), with smaller numbers of Acehnese, Batak, and
other groups. Close to half (33/​70) came from Medan or its vicinity, and two-​thirds of these
Medanese were Chinese. Such patients spoke of their mistrust of the quality of doctors and
paramedics in Indonesia and felt safer and more confident in the medical care they received in
Penang. Hokkien-​speaking Indonesian Chinese appreciated Hokkien-​speaking staff, and spoke
of their social ties to Penang born out of a long history of trade, education and intermarriage.
Medical migrations are not just movements associated with accessibility and proximity, but speak
to broader relations and histories between peoples and places (Whittaker, Chee and Por 2017).
Movements by medical patients across Asia thus occur within specific local frames of refer-
ence. Catherine Smith (2015: 256) notes that Aceh’s health care system is ‘widely seen as reflect-
ing a much larger pattern of violence and systematic neglect of Aceh by the Indonesian state’.
Although Acehnese patients are primarily motivated by issues of quality of care, the context of
their travel must take into account the history of poor and disrupted services in the context of
the military conflict, and history of mistrust of the Indonesian state.
Medical migration carries other social meanings. Travel for medical care may carry status as
an indication of one’s wealth. For example, Mr Tomas, a 65-​year-​old patient from Bangladesh,
comes regularly to Hospital C in Kuala Lumpur for his respiratory problems. He explained that
people in Dhaka did not yet have confidence in the local private hospitals and that travelling
was also a prestigious statement of one’s wealth:

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There are four types of patients; poor sick men, low-​mid, and mid, and first-​class.
Those who are first-​class, they will definitely prefer Singapore, Thailand, even then
one of my friends was asking me, he said, ‘Okay let’s go to Australia, now medical
science is very developed in Australia for your problem. So those who can afford
Australia, those who can afford Singapore, they will not come to the local hospital.

Sending a family member across borders for medical treatment is also an expression of care to
a family member. For example, Beth Kangas (1996) notes the efforts and economic hardships
undertaken by Yemeni families to send sick family members overseas to India for treatment are
understood as signs of the family’s filial devotion.
The experience of medical migrations also involves affective transitions. Harris Solomon
(2011) writes of the ‘grid of sentiment’ that structures medical travel to India. Narratives rang-
ing from a sense of betrayal, to gratitude, and postcolonial critique of the uncaring West are
expressed by foreign patients in Indian hospitals along with their negotiations around notions
of risk, healthcare costs, and cultural difference. Whittaker and Chee (2015) note how hospitals
themselves as spaces and institutions negotiate the differing cultural and affective expectations
of differing groups of patients. The experience of high-​quality care within a foreign medical
system may itself lead to questioning of the source country’s responsibilities and care for its
citizens (Whittaker 2015a).
In some cases the number of patients moving across borders for care is so significant that
local governments appeal to values of patriotism and communal solidarity in efforts to curb the
flow. Ormond (2015b) describes how Indonesian patients describe themselves as undertaking a
valid and justifiable yet ‘reluctant exit’ from their local health system. Laotians crossing for medi-
cal care are criticised as unpatriotic by Laotian authorities (Bochaton 2015: 369).
Local transnational circuits for medical migration often depend upon social networks for
information about doctors, transport and accommodation (for example, see Bochaton 2015).
As in other forms of migration, the social network influences decisions about where and how
to travel, and may also be crucial in supplying the economic means to do so through loans or
collective payment. Informal and formal agents also form important sources of information and
may themselves be transnational, travelling between locations regularly, or having married into
the destination and hence using their local knowledge as the basis for their service (Chee, Por
and Whittaker 2015). In addition, contacts gained in the course of the actual journey may prove
significant in influencing patients’ decision-​making. Meghann Ormond’s (2015a) work describ-
ing the actual travel experiences of cross-​border patients from Indonesia to Malaysia notes not
only the physical hardship and logistics involved, but the significant role of informal contacts
met en route (see also Bochaton 2015).

Articulations with other forms of migration

Diasporic medical migrations
One group of patients that is prominent in medical travel but neglected in the research literature
is that of members of expatriate or diasporic communities returning to their former ‘home’
countries for medical care (Ormond 2013a; Brijnath 2009). This group is often not included in
statistics of medical travel, which often base their figures on nationality rather than residency.
Lee at al. (2010) write of how Korean immigrants draw upon their transnational connections
to return to South Korea for medical care for reasons of cultural comfort. Elsewhere I have
described the intersections of marriage migrations and returns ‘home’ by Thai women married

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to foreign men and living in another country, wishing to undertake assisted reproduction in
a familiar health system and culturally and socially supportive setting (Whittaker 2009). These
diasporic populations form a significant part of the medical travel market. Non-​resident Indians
(NRI) constitute over 22 per cent of medical tourists in India, alongside second-​generation
overseas Indians (Connell 2013; Smith et al. 2009). Studies of South Asian communities in
Britain note the importance of accessing medical services in Indian for these communities,
especially for accessing fertility treatments and to access phenotypically suitable ova and sperm
donors (Culley et al. 2006). Cohen (2011) also describes the movements of overseas Chinese
Malays and diasporic Indians travelling back to their homeland to procure purchased kidneys.

Retirement/​lifestyle migration
Retirement migration also intersects with medical travel as Asian countries play host to an
increasing number of retirees relocating for more affordable long-​term domestic or institutional
living and care arrangements (Toyota 2006; Ormond and Toyota 2016). In Asia, studies of retire-
ment migration include those from Japan to Southeast Asia (Toyota 2006, 2013; Ono 2008),
from Hong Kong to south China (Ma and Chow 2006), and of retiree enclaves in Malaysia,
Bali and Thailand (Green 2013). Much of this literature describes such migration in terms of
‘lifestyle migration’ (Benson and O’Reilly 2009), but there is increasing recognition of the
importance of health services and carers to these flows. For example, in his study of British retir-
ees living in Penang, Paul Green (2013) notes the importance of access to, and cheaper costs of,
health services as a consideration in people’s narratives. Likewise, Toyota and Xiang (2012: 712)
note that concerns over medical and social care were common motivations for the movement
of Japanese retirees to relocate to Southeast Asia.
Malaysia and Thailand annually attract 20,000 foreign retirees entering on various types of
visas for long stays (Ormond and Toyota 2016). Part of the attraction for retirement in Asia is
the availability of high-​quality medical services accessible to many retirees through portable
national health care insurance, as well as the opportunities for live-​in domestic care. For example,
Ormond and Toyota (2016) describe how countries of Southeast Asia have become the main
international retirement migration destination countries for Japanese seniors. Indonesia, Taiwan
and more recently Laos and Cambodia are also emerging destinations for Japanese retirees.
Such movements of retirees are embedded in aged care deficits ‘back home’ (Ormond
and Sothern 2012). As Toyota and Xiang (2012) note, the movements of retirees emerge
from national contexts, sociodemographic profiles, welfare and health policy settings in send-
ing and receiving countries. Like medical travel, the retirement industry in Asia has been
endorsed and promoted by states as national development strategies. For example, Thailand,
Malaysia and the Philippines have introduced special visa categories and schemes for those
wishing to retire in their countries with sufficient savings or pensions: the Philippine Leisure
and Retirement Authority, the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) scheme and the Thai
Long-​Stay and Health Care Project. At the same time, restrictions exist to discourage less
affluent retirees who rely upon short-​term tourist visas and regular ‘visa runs’ to renew their
stays, and there are concerns over increasing numbers of elderly expatriates in locations such
as Phuket failing to pay hospital bills (Chuenniran 2011; Hoff Sonne 2016). Such retiree/​
lifestyle migrants are often recorded in hospital statistics as ‘medical travellers’ even though
they may be resident in the country. For example, in a hospital in Kuala Lumpur in 2013 we
found numerous MM2H visa holders resident in Malaysia were included in statistics as ‘medi-
cal tourists’, thus inflating that hospital’s medical travel statistics.

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Cosmopolitan workers
Transient elite professionals are another important group whose work brings them into trans-
national spaces to work, live and seek treatment when sick. These forms of globalised work and
production dovetail with globalised spaces of medical travel and social reproduction (Whittaker
2009). Such expatriate workers are commonly encountered in hospitals catering to medical trav-
ellers due to their company health insurance arrangements. For example, two Australian patients
interviewed in a Bangkok hospital were living in Laos; one was an engineer and another the
spouse of an engineer involved in large construction projects in Laos. Their company insurance
covered costs for treatment in this hospital which has Joint Commission International (JCI)
accreditation. Another US citizen interviewed was an expatriate in the petrochemical industry,
living in Thailand but whose work required constant movement between various countries.
Likewise, in the hospital in Kuala Lumpur we encountered Lee who was admitted with cellulitis
in his leg. He works in Singapore for a UK company but lives in Johor Bahru in Malaysia, daily
commuting across to Singapore. Such patients highlight the linkages between medical migra-
tions and other forms of migration for work.

Refugees and forced migrants

Although medical migrations imply wealth, cross-​border care also involves medical services for
refugee populations and ‘forced’ migrants living and working illegally in neighbouring coun-
tries in search of better economic futures. Health services in host countries may struggle to
address the particular health care needs of refugee populations, often affected by trauma and
conflict (Cardozo et al. 2004). For example, Thailand plays host to thousands of illegal migrant
workers from Myanmar. These workers seek medical care in Thai public hospitals, causing con-
cerns about the costs to the Thai public health system. In addition to the illegal migrant work-
ers and registered workers, studies conducted on the Thai-​Myanmar border note the regular
migration of people across the border specifically for health care, including basic reproductive
services (Belton and Maung 2004; Belton 2007).These movements highlight the ways in which
citizenship status affects access to care. In another example, in one hospital in Kuala Lumpur we
encountered Somali patients who were being treated. Malaysia is one of the few destinations
that allows Somalis to enter without a visa and hence is a hub for Somalis seeking medical care,
as well as those undertaking education and seeking refuge.

Illegal movements
Not all medical migrations are legal. ‘Circumvention’ medical travel involves the movement
of patients to avoid legal restrictions or bans on medical procedures in their home countries.
Examples of this include the movements of patients from the Middle East to receive illegally
obtained donor organs such as kidneys from impoverished providers in the Philippines (Yea
2010; Scheper-​Hughes 2003), China or India (Cohen 2011). As Cohen (2011) notes, the traf-
ficking of organs highlights how issues such as nationalism and citizenship status (and money)
help define bodies and therapies, a reminder of the role of ‘biological citizenship’ in structuring
access to medical care (see also Whittaker and Chee 2016). Likewise, until recently India and
other countries such as Thailand and Nepal have had thriving (legal and illegal) international
trades in assisted reproduction, primarily by foreigners seeking commercial surrogacy and ova
donation services and non-​medical sex selection (Pande 2014;Whittaker 2011, 2016). China has
been a popular destination for experimental stem cell therapies banned or unavailable in other

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countries (Song 2010; Petersen, Seear and Munsie 2014). Linked with such trades is the move-
ment of human tissue, surrogates and ova donors and children across borders.

Movements of medical staff
Medical staff involved in caring for international medical travel patients also move. Firstly, they
move for overseas education and training. Foreign credentials are a source of cultural capital
important in reassuring prospective international patients of the quality of health care provided
(Casanova and Sutton 2013). Such previous education migrations equip staff with the ability
to translate both language and culture for patients. In turn, foreign migrant medical staff are
employed in international hospitals either as clinical staff or within the international medical
coordination centres as bicultural facilitators.
Secondly, specialist medical staff may move between hospital locations to provide their
expertise. For example, in Cambodia, fertility specialists and embryologists fly in and out regu-
larly to staff a clinic providing assisted reproductive services to locals and foreigners.
Thirdly, the growing volume of medical travel in the region intersects with the movements
of medical staff and may exacerbate existing inequities within health systems (Whittaker 2015c).
In Thailand, the medical travel trade is causing an internal brain drain of specialists away from its
public hospitals, attracted by higher salaries (Kanchanachitra, Lindelow et al. 2011; Na Ranong
and Na Ranong 2011; Wibulpolprasert and Pachanee 2004; 2008). This is within the context
of an overall shortfall in the number of physicians and a lack of doctors in poor rural com-
munities, affecting access for the local population (Connell 2011; Pocock and Phua 2011). A
similar trend in the number of public sector health professionals has been observed in Malaysia
(Wibulpolprasert and Pachanee 2008) prompting the Malaysian government to encourage the
return migration of doctors from overseas through tax incentives and removing the require-
ment that returnees work for the public sector for three years (Chee 2008). Likewise, Hazarika
(2010) reports that India suffers drastic shortages of doctors, nurses, dental surgeons and medical
specialists, while Indian health care professionals move to the better pay and conditions in the
private sector as well as in other countries (Skeldon 2009). There is concern that the free flow
of skilled labour under GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) within ASEAN, com-
bined with the disparities in salaries in the region, will encourage further migrations of medical
staff within the region, particularly those with English language skills or specialist medical skills,
to service private hospitals catering to foreign patients, resulting in shortages in other countries.

Conclusions
An analytic focus upon Asian medical travel as medical migrations offers a range of insights.
Firstly, anthropological theories of migration direct attention to the ‘cultures of migration’
across Asia, in which travelling for health care has become a regular and commonplace occur-
rence, particularly for those living in countries with inadequate or poor-​quality health systems.
Such travel is not just the privilege of the wealthy and growing middle class of Asia, although
it is stratified by class and economic status. Rather, a diverse range of hospitals offering ser-
vices at various price points has emerged to service a range of patients. Empirical studies note
the regional, point-​to-​point relationships involved in these movements, and the importance
of social networks in patients’ decision-​making and as sources of information, and economic
support. These transnational networks and spaces are patterned with class, ethnic and historical
divides. Empirical work also describes the affective dimension to medical migrations: the mean-
ings it holds, the care it demonstrates and the status it displays.

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Conceptualising Asian medical travel

Secondly, a focus upon migration highlights how medical migrations are articulated with
many other forms of migration. Medical migrations often facilitate or intersect with other
transnational relationships between people, production and care. Descriptions of various migra-
tory flows imbricated with medical migrations suggests a complex intersection of mobilities,
place and biology (Roberts and Scheper-​Hughes 2011), but also a need to understand: the ‘spa-
tial’ dimension of medical migrations, describing the pushes and pulls in origin and destination
countries; the ‘temporal’ dimension, exploring why migration streams begin, grow or dissipate
over time; and the ‘volitional’ dimension, exploring how migrants respond and make choices
within the changing contexts (Fussell 2012). Finally we should add citizenship, the relationships
of patients to their home countries and legal status within the destination countries as further
dimensions to this travel (Whittaker and Chee 2016).
Viewing medical travel through the analytic lens of migration also raises new questions and
suggests an agenda for further explorations. It suggests that the flows of people, or ethnoscapes
of biomedical care, are highly complex, multi-​directional, and riven by multiple differences in
class, ethnicity, corporeality, motivations and volition. We need to consider how the scale of
analysis (i.e. micro-​level or macro-​level analyses) affects how we study and understand medical
migrations. We need to understand better the linkages between medical migrations and other
forms of migrations and in particular how medical migrations relate to broader care markets in
the region (Huang, Thang and Toyota 2012). We also need to identify the historical, economic,
political and institutional characteristics of places that send and receive patients, and the role of
the state in the promotion of the trade. We need to explore the affective experience and mean-
ings of medical migrations and problematise assumptions that technologies, understandings and
expectations of biomedical care move immutably.
Medical migrations trace inequities that shape access to medical care globally and regionally.
The trajectories of these movements follow contours of regulatory settings, and the invest-
ments and speculations of private capital and medical corporations. Within Asia it is no longer
adequate to consider health systems through national perspectives alone, but rather as complex
ethnoscapes that extend across borders, diverting and filtering patients across the region. Further
empirical studies are needed to adequately theorise these diverse and complex inter-​relationships.

Note
1 Figures from the Malaysian Healthcare Travel Council website, accessed 13 February 2014.

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9
FROM ASIA WITH MONEY
The emigration of the wealthy

Gracia Liu-​Farrer

Introduction
A 2015 Barclays Wealth Insights report titled Rise of the Global Citizen?, based on a survey of
2,000 millionaires from Europe, North and South Americas, Asia-​Pacific, the Middle East and
Africa, discovered that nearly half (43 per cent) of these so-​called high net worth individuals
(HNWIs) have lived in different countries, and the majority see their children to be even more
mobile.1 The wealthy citizens from emerging Asian economies seem to be particularly inclined
to move abroad. Using immigration statistics from different immigrant destinations, New World
Wealth and LIO Global report that a total of 91,000 Chinese and 61,000 Indian millionaires left
the country and settled overseas in the first 14 years of this millennium.2 Moreover, according
to the Hurun Report issued by a consulting firm that publishes China’s Rich Lists, among a
sample of 393 Chinese who had net worth of over 10 million RMB in 2014, 64 per cent had
already emigrated to a foreign country or would be attempting to do so in the near future.3
Most of the 90,000+ Chinese millionaire emigrants migrated in recent years. While fewer
than 3,000 Chinese applied for an EB-​5 visa4 in 2011, in 2014 the US Consulate General in
Guangzhou, China issued 8,237 visas, using up more than 80 per cent of the annual limit of
10,000 visas set by the US Congress.5 Chinese nationals were also the main recipients of busi-
ness investment visas in Australia. Their share of the Business Innovation and Investment pro-
gramme was 72.2 per cent of the total 7,010 granted in the financial year of 2012–​13, rising
from 11.3 per cent in 2002–​03.6 According to numerous reports from media and consulting
firms, Chinese millionaires leave their countries to search for better climate, property protec-
tion, a nurturing educational environment for their children, and a more wholesome life in
general (Liu-​Farrer 2016).
This exodus of wealthy citizens is not a recent phenomenon. The hundreds of thousands
of rich Hong Kong and Taiwan businessmen who left for Canada and Australia in the 1980s
and the 1990s created no less a sensation and, in some cases, moral panic, and made important
impacts on both source and destination countries (see, for example, Skeldon 1994; Ley 2010).
These examples were preceded by the flight of the Chinese and Cuban capitalist class in the
mid-​20th century and the exile of Russian aristocrats in the early decades of that century due
to regime changes. Because of the limited population that is involved and the peculiarity of this
strand of migration, the cross-​border migration of the wealthy remains but a specialised and even

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somewhat marginal phenomenon in the research on global human mobilities. Nonetheless, the
migration of rich citizens matters. As a publicly visible and often emulated status group, their
flight has the potential to instigate anxiety in the general population. The amount of money
they take with them is large enough to have direct economic impacts on both the source
countries and the destination countries. For source countries it often spells the loss of capital,
revenues and, in cases of the closing down of businesses, the loss of jobs; and for the destination
countries, particularly cities, this form of migration sometimes leads to a sudden rise of property
market prices, among other effects (Ley 2010). As Birtchnell and Caletrío (2014) point out,
the movement of a few can affect complex social systems, from property ownership, politics to
infrastructure design and investment.
This chapter explores the forces that have made and shaped such contemporary migration
of wealthy citizens from East Asia by reviewing existing literature on the emigration of business
investors out of Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1980s and 1990s, and the more recent emigra-
tion among the wealthy Mainland Chinese. It pays particular attention to the rising global trend
of the commodification of citizenship and residency in recent years, and its consequences. An
increasing number of nation-​states have initiated ‘citizenship or residency by investment’ pro-
grammes, promising foreigner investors citizenship or permanent residency statuses with very
little requirement for physical presence in the country. These programmes essentially hang a
price tag on passports or long-​term resident visas, and have significant impacts on not only the
settlement patterns of migrants but also the social meanings as well as political implications of
citizenship.

Interpreting the emigration of the wealthy in contemporary East Asia

Mobility is inextricably tied up with power, inequality, governance and decision-​ making
(Ohnmacht et  al. 2009). The wealthy individuals who possess disproportionate shares of
resources have always been the most able to move. Hyper-​mobilities, from the frequency and
speed with which they move to the types of vehicles that they travel with, have historically
been seen as conspicuous consumption by the elite, and ‘a means of broadcasting social status’
(Centeno and Cohen 2010: 113, cited in Birtchnell and Caletrío 2014, 5). Although the emi-
gration of wealthy citizens from East Asian regions in recent decades echoes these observations,
the specific patterns and characteristics of migration are made within particular political and
economic circumstances and state policy frameworks (Lin and Gleiss, this volume, Chapter 10).
Furthermore, the mobility of wealthy citizens manifests the compounded cultural and eco-
nomic rationales as explained by Coates (this volume, Chapter 12). The capacity to move, in a
world where citizenship and residency have increasingly become commodified, constitutes an
important element in the cultural formation of global elites. Within this cultural frame, physical
mobility, or ‘motility’ as Kaufmann et al. (2004) terms it, is seen as a form of capital itself, and is
conducive to the accumulation of other forms of capital –​economic, cultural or social –​imme-
diately or inter-​generationally.

Political instability and the commodification of citizenship

The motives for the rich to emigrate vary in different political contexts and historical periods,
but frequently have to do with perceived or real political and social instability. In the past, the
sudden exodus of the rich was often associated with political purges and displacements dur-
ing regime changes. In Asia, for example, in the mid-​20th century, rich urban business people
fled Mainland China for Hong Kong and western countries for fear of political persecution in

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Communist China. Geopolitical threats were also at least part of the driving force of the flows
of affluent businessmen out of Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s before the Chinese takeover
of this British colony in 1997, as shown in a sudden increase in the volume of emigration after
the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 (Lam 1994; Li 2005; Ley 2010).
The recent migration out of Mainland China, again, has been attributed to the growth of a
general anxiety in the wake of political and social instabilities (Osburg 2013; Liu-​Farrer 2016).
One reason many wealthy Mainland Chinese have been leaving China is their concerns over
the security of their wealth in a country where private property rights are ambiguously deline-
ated and not necessarily guaranteed. Chinese media reports that asset insecurity is a ‘shadow’
looming over the wealthy Chinese. The historical precedents of Communist persecution of
the wealthy gave the current rich little assurance that their assets will be safe. Wealthy Chinese
business people are also haunted by the discourse of ‘original sin’ (yuanzuilun)  –​an accusa-
tion that most successful enterprises obtained their wealth, at least initially, by partnering with
corrupt government officials and by illegally appropriating public resources. In recent years,
President Xi Jinping’s anti-​corruption campaign has heightened these insecurities (Liu-​Farrer
2016). Underlying these concerns is the knowledge that very few countries grant visa exemp-
tion to holders of a Chinese passport, a document that provides little capacity for international
mobility, and is clearly disproportionate to what their wealth should have bestowed on them.
Migration decisions –​even among the wealthy –​are also conditioned by the prevailing immi-
gration regimes in destination countries, which in turn are influenced by global as well as local
economic situations. The creation of visa categories for business investments is often the desti-
nation country’s attempt to attract capital and entrepreneurial experiences.The reason that hun-
dreds of thousands of Hong Kong business people were able to relocate to Canada in the 1980s
and 1990s is because of the opening of immigration channels following the sluggish Canadian
economy in the 1970s and 1980s. While Canada suffered economic decline, on the other side
of the Pacific, Japan and four little tigers –​Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Singapore –​experi-
enced phenomenal economic growth. The Business Immigration Programme which started in
1978 and expanded in 1986, and especially the introduction of the ‘investors’ category which
stipulated the minimal asset eligibility, were seen as the Canadian government’s opportunistic
measures to tap into the economic energy in East Asia and channel them into the nation state
(Wong and Ng 2002; Ley 2003; Ley 2010). As a result, between 1980 and 2001, close to 330,000
new immigrants –​and one third of those from Hong Kong –​who entered Canada arrived on
one of the categories in the Business Immigration Programme (Ley 2010).
Such an effort in ‘touting’ wealthy foreign citizens is seen in many countries. The aforemen-
tioned EB-​5 visa programme has been bringing the US billions of dollars (Zamora and Brown
2015). In fact, ‘residency/​citizenship by investment’, where foreigners can obtain citizenship or
long-​term or permanent residencies by donation or by investing into these countries’ federal
bonds, industrial development programmes or properties, has become a national economic
strategy for many cash-​strapped or capital-​desiring nation states. The list of countries offering
such ‘economic citizenship’ has been lengthening.The price tags range from around a hundred-​
thousand US dollars for a passport from the small Caribbean island of Dominica to millions
of British pounds in the UK for several years of renewable residency and potential citizenship.
While some business immigrant programmes, such as the ‘entrepreneurs’ and ‘self-​employed’
categories in Canada, stipulate immigrants’ actual business involvement in the destination
countries as well as residency requirements, these recent cash-​for-​residency or citizenship pro-
grammes have nearly no requirement for actual business efforts and only minimal requirements
for residency in the destination countries. It is revealing that the more desirable the destination
country is –​as measured by the freedom of mobility its passport confers –​the higher the price.

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For the same destination country, the more money one possesses and is willing to invest, the
lower the requirement for actual business engagements and physical residency.
Controversial as some of these programmes are, there is a substantial interest among wealthy
citizens from countries where the mobility capacity of their passports is limited. Mainland
China is currently the largest source country. Among the recipients of the US EB-​5 visas in most
recent years, over 80 per cent are Chinese millionaires. In February 2014, when the Canadian
government announced the cancellation of the country’s Immigrant Investor Programme,
which allowed foreign nationals to gain Canadian residency by loaning 800,000 Canadian dol-
lars (US$726,720) interest-​free to any of the provinces for five years, Hong Kong’s South China
Morning Post revealed that among the 59,000 applications pending, more than 45,000 were from
Mainland Chinese.7 As discussed in the following section, this trend in commodifying residency
and citizenship is both a response to and a force in changing individuals’ migration motives, and
is reshaping the social meanings of emigration for the rich.

From insurance policies to status consumption

Bringing in Asian investors’ business skills and entrepreneurial experience along with their eco-
nomic capital was the initial intention of the business immigration programmes in destination
countries such as Australia and Canada. However, doing business in these destination countries
did not appear to be a priority among the wealthy business emigrants. In fact, these wealthy
citizens not only had few economic motives in emigration, most of them had little intention
in becoming settlers in the destination countries (Ley 2003, 2010; Liu-​Farrer 2016). Instead,
emigration was a means to obtain a foreign passport or residency papers as an insurance policy
against perceived political instability, and to pursue more desirable lifestyles. As the price tag
for ‘economic citizenship’ continues to rise, while citizenship is delinked from actual business
engagements and physical residency, the pursuit of such a form of citizenship has also morphed
into a pattern of consumption and a status symbol.
‘Immigration jail’ (or gaol) (yimin jian) is a term widely used among Hong Kong immigrants
in Australia and Canada in the 1990s, as well as more recent wealthy emigrants from Mainland
China, to refer to the residency requirement for citizenship or permanent residency in the
destination country (Findlay and Li 1997). What this term suggests is the temporariness of the
expected stay in the supposed settlement destination. Foreign passports or papers for permanent
residency overseas are treated as ‘insurance policies’ against perceived potential political and
social instabilities (Hardie 1994; Inglis and Wu 1994; Chan 1994). A Canadian survey conducted
in the early 1990s among entrepreneur and investor immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan
shows that nearly three-​quarters of the respondents expressed that they would definitely, or are
likely to, return to their country of origin to work (Wong 1997: 344). Australia also saw a high
attrition rate within a short period among Hong Kong settlers in the early 1990s (Pookong and
Skeldon 1994). This expectation of temporariness of residency and the function of a foreign
passport as mere insurance are also reflected among the wealthy Mainland Chinese who some-
times employ the term ‘beitai’ (spare tyre) to refer to the acquired passport in explaining their
motives for emigration.
Insuring against political instability only partially explains the motivation to ‘buy a status’. In
an early article on emigration from Hong Kong, Skeldon (1990) speculates that even without
the 1997 return on the horizon, emigration would still increase because ‘the rising levels of
affluence in Asia are accompanied by demands for higher personal standards of living and for
political freedom’ (1990:  521). In other words, even without political threats, material afflu-
ence naturally leads people to pursue different lifestyles. This is indeed the case with wealthy

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emigrants. When David Ley (2010) approached his survey respondents  –​the Hong Kong,
Taiwan and South Korean entrepreneurs living in Greater Vancouver –​several years after they
had immigrated, over half of them expressed that the top reason for immigrating to Canada
was ‘quality of life’. According to Ley (2003, 2010), although Vancouver was not the place that
offered the best economic opportunities in Canada, it was the most popular immigration desti-
nation for Asian business investors because of the perceived quality of life there. Such migration
has accumulative tendency. Once the ethnically defined social world is established, more and
more immigrants are attracted to the same location.
While a minority of wealthy immigrants chose emigration to slow down or even retire in
the destination country, a good many of them, especially those who were too young to retire or
not rich enough to be completely idle, had to work to maintain financial security (Ley 2005).
However, only a small number of business people were able to establish profitable businesses in
Canada (Ley 2010). For the majority, entrepreneurship in the destination country was largely a
frustrated aspiration and an aborted attempt. Most Hong Kong and Taiwan businessmen found,
once they landed in the new country, that what they had been successful in doing was neither
needed nor practical (Smart 1994; Lam 1994; Ley 2010).Their business propositions were often
drafted to satisfy immigration requirements (Smart 1994); their lack of language ability and
social networks made them dependent on ethnic resources (Wong 1997); and the lack of infor-
mation about the host market and unfamiliar institutional frameworks for business operation
made either continuing old businesses or establishing new profitable enterprises difficult. Most
immigrants who relocated in Canada and Australia through business investment programmes
became unemployed or underemployed (Lary and Luk 1994; Inglis and Wu 1994). The actual
incomes of Asian business immigrants living in million-​dollar houses in Vancouver and Toronto,
as reflected in their income taxes filed in Canada, were phenomenally low, with many house-
holds below the poverty line in 2000 (Ley 2010: 229). As a consequence, ‘astronaut families’
became a common social formation, in which the primary breadwinners, most often the hus-
bands, returned to home regions to continue their businesses and then shuttled between their
financial base in East Asia and their emotional base in Canada (Ley 2005). This transnational
mobility eventually evolved into a functionally differentiated geography  –​‘Hong Kong for
making money, Canada for quality of life’ (Ley and Kobayashi 2005).
In recent years, with the expanding choices of ‘economic citizenship’ and ‘residency by
investment’, emigration has increasingly become a form of consumption. Immigration consult-
ing firms in urban China in the 2010s promoted the concept of ‘yimin bu yizhu’ (emigrating
without settling), affirming that ‘business investor’ is but a visa category, a status (shenfen) to be
purchased.Very few rich Mainland Chinese emigrants intended to be engaged in serious busi-
ness enterprising in the destination country, and for many, a residency there was for vacation
(Liu-​Farrer 2016).
In the process of delinking emigration from physical residency, the act of emigration has
also acquired new meaning as a status symbol which signifies one’s class position. Among the
rich Chinese, there is a strong desire for social distinction, but converting their wealth into
social prestige presents some difficulties. In China, ostentatious consumer practices have been
targets of public ridicule, gaining those who exhibit them the satirical nickname ‘tuhao’ –​ the
country millionaires  –​that projects an image of crassness and lack of taste. In response, an
industry has been expanding in China to coach the rich to embrace an elite consumer culture.
Through magazines such as Best Things in Life by Hurun Report, wealthy Chinese businessmen
learned and emulated the consumption style of other global elites. ‘Emigration’ (yimin 移民)
was publicised as one of the items the rich acquired, along with other coveted commodities
(Liu-​Farrer 2016).

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Emigration has the ability to signify class status because the freedom to move is ‘perpetually
a scarce and unequally distributed commodity’, and ‘in our late-​modern or postmodern times’
has fast become ‘the main stratifying factor’ (Baumann 1998: 2). It is an especially prized com-
modity in countries where passports have less mobility potential, accounting for why ‘residency
and citizenship by investment’ has attracted more millionaires from China, Russia and Middle
Eastern countries than elsewhere. Decades of restriction through passport control and house-
hold registration have intensified the desire for mobility among Chinese people. From the ‘fever
to go abroad’ (chuguore 出国热) to the sense of ‘displacement’ at home, emigration has become
a ticket to a better life (Chu 2010). With the loosening of passport control and economic
development in recent decades, accompanied by the flourishing study abroad or travel agencies,
mobility itself is no longer unattainable.Yet manners of mobility now represent different levels
of power and resources (Urry 2007). Emigration through business investment comes with a
much higher price tag and brings immediate long-​term residency with no demand for physical
labour and very few institutional constraints. It ensures a higher degree of freedom of move-
ment and thereby signals a higher social status.

Symbolic capital, class reproduction and the training of global elites

Physical mobility is a form of capital that has the potential to be converted to other forms of
capital, such as cultural and social capital (Kaufmann et al. 2004). While doing business was not
a main motive for emigration among the millionaire migrants, the desire to perpetuate class
position and to gain intergenerational economic advantages was nonetheless present among the
1980s and 1990s East Asian as well as the recent Mainland emigrants. A survey conducted by
Lloyd Wong (1997) in the early 1990s found that 88.7 per cent of the responding Hong Kong
and Taiwan capitalist emigrants chose ‘better opportunities for children’ as a reason for choosing
Canada as a destination for migration, at the same rate as choosing ‘better lifestyle and stand-
ard of living (p. 344). For the recent wealthy Mainland Chinese emigrants, similarly, ‘children’s
education’ topped the motives for migration (Liu-​Farrer 2016). What kinds of education do
the emigrating Chinese expect to access for their children? What future do they have in mind?
Aihwa Ong (1999) points out that because ‘Euroamerican cultural hegemony determines
and judges the signs and forms of metropolitan status and glamour’ (p. 89), for well-​off Southeast
Asian Chinese, a western education and fluent English with the correct accent has become a
form of symbolic capital. Going to a missionary school at home, followed by a boarding school
abroad and ultimately a college in the West, is a key strategy for the accumulation of such sym-
bolic capital (p. 95) and to gain membership among the global elite. Wealthy mainland Chinese
have a similar plan.The expression, wan shangceng (playing at the level of upper class), captures rich
Chinese parents’ aspirations for their children (Liu-​Farrer 2016). ‘Wan shangceng’ involves first of
all ‘wan’ (play), indicating the possibility of not taking academic work too rigidly and seriously.
Life is no longer a rat race for these children. Rather, life could be fun and individuals could grow
up freely. Chinese parents send their children abroad to enjoy a ‘happy life’ instead of toiling 14
hours a day and six days a week at school in China. However, ‘wan shangceng’ also involves ‘shang-
ceng’ –​the upper-​class status that the emigrant parents imagined their children should occupy. In
order to be among the elite, certain skills and educational credentials are needed. Echoing both
Ong (1999) and Waters’ (2008) observations among Southeast Asian Chinese, English skills are
among the first assets that many Mainland parents believe would help their children get ahead. As
an informant I interviewed explained, ‘Wan shangceng needs good English, because in this world,
the West still leads the world in whichever aspect you can think of ’ (Liu-​Farrer 2016).

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However, in a world where East Asia has increasing economic power, transnational cultural
capital also includes ethnic cultural capital (Mitchell 1997; Waters 2008). Wealthy Chinese emi-
grants therefore emphasise bilingual education. Some have designed a transnational education
for their children, such as sending their children first to elementary school in China so as to
acquire enough reading and writing ability in Chinese (Liu-​Farrer 2016).
Aside from language skills, emigrant parents want elite education credentials for their chil-
dren. Emigration is a means to circumvent the competition they witness in China. Chinese
parents, while delighting in their children’s opportunity to have a freer and less test-​driven
education in the West, expect them to go to a top college there, preferably an Ivy League uni-
versity in the US. Some parents resort to paying for various education services in order to enter
their children into good schools.While a ‘happy education’ is a lifestyle that affluent parents feel
their wealth could provide for their children, it also comes with the expectation that cultivating
transnational cultural capital will place their children above others within China itself, similar to
what many affluent Hong Kong families had aspired (Liu-​Farrer 2016).
Wealthy Chinese parents’ aspirations for their children go beyond skills to include elite
habitus, in the forms of character and dispositions, which a western-​style elite education will
hopefully cultivate. As a result, the Financial Times reported that English public boarding schools
were receiving a rapidly increasing number of Chinese applications.8
A desire for class reproduction is also manifested in the concerns rich parents have toward
their children’s future marriage prospects. One potential emigrant, when discussing migration
options with an immigration agent, mentioned that he would stay in China to continue his
business enterprise, but he wished to send his children to a foreign country. His rationale was
simple, ‘People like us are all emigrating. If staying in China, my children will have to marry the
children of my drivers and employees’ (Liu-​Farrer 2016).

The erosion of citizenship

Contemporary wealthy Asian migration, glamorous in its hypermobility, poses challenges to
several important institutions. Family is one. Many studies have examined the phenomenon
of ‘split-​households’ entailed in ethnic Chinese business migration, and pointed out that such
arrangements shovel women back into the domestic sphere, placing them in economically
dependent positions and thereby reinforcing a repressive gender norm (Li and Findlay 1999;
Man 1995, 1997; Silvey and Lawson 1999). Prolonged separation of family members also caused
emotional distresses, extramarital sexual relationships, spousal estrangement, psychological and
behavioural problems among children, and in some cases dissolution of the family (Waters 2005;
Tsong and Liu 2009; Ley 2010). However, alongside the institution of family, with the migra-
tion of wealthy citizens increasingly taking the forms of ‘economic citizenship’ and adopting the
flexible residential arrangements exemplified by ‘yimin bu yizhu’, wealthy emigration has serious
implications for the institution of citizenship.
Aihwa Ong (1999), in her seminal book Flexible Citizenship, draws the challenge of transna-
tional migration to nation-​state sovereignty into the centre of her discussion. In Ong’s account,
the stack of foreign passports in the pockets of ethnic Chinese business people is evidence of
the nature of human agency in late modernity. Multiple citizenships not only represent these
rich strategising individuals’ ingenuity in ‘navigating the disjunctures between political land-
scapes and the shifting opportunities of global trade’, but also articulate a new form of ‘late
modern subject’ (p. 3). She argues that the emergence of this type of flexible citizenship does
not necessarily mean an erosion of state control over individuals. Using examples of Southeast
Asian states, in particular Malaysia, she proposes the concept of ‘graduated sovereignty’, arguing

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that the state is not necessarily losing control over its subjects, as some globalists proclaimed
(e.g. Sassen 1996). Rather, it is willing to adopt a system of selective governing and give some
corporate entities more rights and autonomy. A system of ‘variegated citizenship’ is the result
of such ‘graduated sovereignty’ in which populations of different ethnicities, class positions and
legal statuses are ‘subjected to different valuation, enjoy different kinds of rights, disciplines, car-
ing and security’ (1999: p. 217).
While Aihwa Ong (1999) looks at the strategic adaptation of sovereignty in a globalising
world from the point of view of the source countries, David Ley’s (2005) concerns with the
‘shaky borders’ take the perspective of western destination countries. Using the Asian business
immigrants’ experiences and settlement patterns in and out of Canada, Ley points out that the
Canadian government’s plan to integrate these desirable human resources into the framework of
the nation-​state was not successful. The most economically active people were those ‘astronaut
families’ whose business activities remained in the source regions. In addition, a strong trend of
return migration appeared among Hong Kong emigrants. Skeldon (1995) estimated that in the
mid-​1990s at least 30 per cent of emigrants to Australia returned after three years. By the early
2000s, at least 200,000 people living in Hong Kong carried Canadian passports (Ley 2010).
Among the recent wealthy emigrants from China who subscribe to the philosophy of ‘yimin
bu yizhu’, engagement in the social and political life of destination countries is of an even
lesser degree. Although immigrants’ transnationalism is not necessarily incompatible with their
integration into destination countries (Snel et al. 2006; Vertovec 2009; Wessendorf 2013), such
prolonged physical absence entailed in the practice of ‘immigrating without settling’ among
Mainland millionaires has reduced citizenship to just a residential right. Moreover, because the
motives for emigration are to obtain a vacation home overseas and to build up insurance poli-
cies for future rainy days, most recent Mainland Chinese emigrants maintain businesses in their
home country. Considering the potential institutional hurdles for doing business in China as
foreign citizens, moreover, the rich Chinese that I interviewed had no interests in obtaining
foreign citizenship (Liu-​Farrer 2016).
Whether labelled as ‘variegated citizenship’ produced under ‘graduated sovereignty’, or ‘eco-
nomic citizenship’ awarded by cash contributions, the recent trends of wealthy migration make
it clear that people who have money are subject to far fewer institutional constraints and enjoy
many more degrees of freedom. Mobility, in this sense, loudly speaks of class privilege. At the
same time, by peddling citizenship to wealthy customers, nation-​states essentially reduce the
obligations of citizenship to singular cash contributions, and in many ways erode the institution
of citizenship, at least in the western democratic sense.

Conclusion
The mobility of rich citizens is nothing new. Historically, whether motivated by the hint of
threat or a promise of fortune, an interest in adventure or an admiration for foreign cultures,
the wealthy, with the resources they could muster, have always been the most able to move.
In late modernity, under conditions of globalisation and in the wake of superior technologi-
cal advancement in transportation, the rich are more capable of embracing mobility than at
any time in history. At the same time, passports and visas were inventions of the 20th century,9
designed to allocate the freedom of mobility unequally among nation-​states. As a result, the
migration of the wealthy in search of higher-​value passports has been triggered, while citizen-
ship –​reshaped by changing institutional contexts –​takes on different meanings.
Since the early-​20th century, the sudden exodus of the rich has always had to do with vari-
ous forms of political and social instabilities in their home countries. In Asia, the emigration

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of both affluent Hong Kong and Taiwan business people in the late-​20th century and the
Mainland HNWIs in the 2010s were to different degrees a reaction to the perceived threats
stemming from Communist China. For the former, it was the fear of an imminent Communist
authoritarian regime and its geopolitical dominance, and for the latter, domestic political crack-
downs and uncertainties of property rights. Emigration, with the freedom of mobility it prom-
ises to bring, is perceived as a political insurance against these uncertainties. At the same time,
the emigration of rich East Asians is also a response to the invitation of destination countries
that has opened up migration channels to lure in their capital and skills. The escalating compe-
tition to sell residency and citizenship to the highest international bidders by some countries
further enhances the commodity nature of foreign residency and citizenship. When citizenships
are put up for sale with price tags indicating their worth –​measured by the number of countries
which allow visa-​free entry –​it is not hard to understand how emigration has also become a
form of consumption signalling the emigrants’ class status.
Emigration, moreover, becomes a strategy for social reproduction of the wealthy citizens.
It provides their children a more direct access to elite western education, opportunities to
acquire language skills and an environment conducive to cultivating ‘proper’ habitus. These are
important symbolic and cultural capital that will help them maintain advantageous positions in
a globalised economy and bring about further class mobility.
The wealthy emigrants, though triumphant in their efforts to evade institutional control and
to maximise the flexibility and security at some level, have built such flexibility by invoking
an instrumental notion of family that restricts the social and physical mobility of some fam-
ily members. The feasibility of a geographically split household is premised on a division of
labour among household members, and in the wealthy emigrants’ families, it has almost always
regressed toward the traditional gender role assignments.
Finally, while globalisation has already created many challenges to nation-​state citizenship,
the migration of the wealthy adds further question marks to the meaning of citizenship. Can
citizenship be a commodity? Is money enough to offset civic obligations? Where does their loy-
alty lie? Aside from their economic impact, substantive investigations are needed to understand
the social and political relationship of these wealthy migrants to their adopted countries, and
how such citizenship and residency affect their identities and belongings.

Notes
1 Barclays’s Wealth Insights Volume 18, The Rise of The Global Citizen. Available at:  wealth.barclays.com/​
content/​dam/​bwpublic/​global/​documents/​shared/​wealth-​inisghts-​volume-​18.pdf. [Accessed 6
April 2016].
2 Rishi Iyengar, ‘Tens of thousands of “high-​net-​worth individuals” have left to seek a better life over-
seas,’ Time, 27 July 2015. Available at: time.com/​3972744/​china-​india-​millionaires-​migration-​report-​
wealth/​. [Accessed 6 April. 2016].
3 ‘Zhishang youpin  –​Zhongguo qianwanfuhao pinpai qingxiang baogao’ (2014 Hurun Report on Chinese
Luxury Consumer Survey), Available at:  www.hurun.net/​CN/​ArticleShow.aspx?nid=261. [Accessed
23 February 2015].This number is close to the 60 per cent provided in the ‘2011 White Paper on Chinese
People’s Private Wealth Management’, published by Hurun Report and Bank of China. The sample size for
the latter is 980.
4 The EB-​5 visa is a US visa granted to immigrant investors that started in 1990. It asks foreign investors
to invest in a new ‘at-​r isk’ commercial enterprise either directly or through an EB-​5 Regional Centre.
Available at: www.uscis.gov/​eb-​5. [Accessed 23 February. 2015].
5 Statistics are retrieved from the Consulate General of the United States in Guangzhou, where all
Chinese immigrant visas are processed. Available at:  guangzhou.usembassy-​china.org.cn/​immigrant_​
visas/​eb5visasfaqs.html. [Accessed 29 April. 2016].

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6 Australia Department of Immigration and Border Protection: ‘Australian Migration Trend’. Available

at:  www.immi.gov.au/​pub-​res/​Documents/​statistics/​migration-​trends-​2012–​13.pdf. [Accessed 23
February 2015].
7 ‘Canada slams door on 45K Chinese millionaires with end of visa program’, Michael Cole, Forbes, 13
February2014. Available at:  www.forbes.com/​sites/​michaelcole/​2014/​02/​13/​canada-​slams-​door-​on-​
45k-​chinese-​millionaires-​with-​end-​of-​visa-​program/​#6688a2ec4d8c. [Accessed 22 April 2016].
8 ‘Chinese parents scramble to send children to top British schools’, Warrel, Helen, Financial Times,
21 March 2014.
9 Modern passports and visas as they function now appeared after World War One as an international
security measure. See ‘History of Passport’. Government of Canada, www.cic.gc.ca/​english/​games/​
teachers-​corner/​history-​passports.asp.

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Waters, J.L. (2005). Transnational family strategies and education in the contemporary Chinese diaspora.
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Waters, J. L. (2008). Education, Migration, and Cultural Capital in the Chinese Diaspora. Amherst, NY: Cambria
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Wessendorf, S. (2013). Second-​Generation Transnationalism and Roots Migration: Cross-​Border Lives. Abingdon:
Ashgate.
Wong, L.L. and Ng, M. (2002). The emergence of small transnational enterprise in Vancouver:  the
case of Chinese entrepreneur immigrants. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 26 (3),
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Yeoh, B.S., Huang, S. and Lam, T. (2005). Transnationalizing the ‘Asian’ family: imaginaries, intimacies and
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PART III

Reconceptualising migration through

Asian experiences
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10
MIGRATION AND THE
PRODUCTION OF MIGRANT
MOBILITIES
Weiqiang Lin and Marielle Stigum Gleiss

Introduction
For the last two decades, Asia has witnessed a significant speeding up of human migrations.
This does not simply apply to Asia’s ‘traditional’ role as a sending region of (e)migrants, but,
more crucially, to the diversification of mobilities coming into, and circulating within, this
region. Consider the streams of domestic workers, construction labourers, and skilled ‘tal-
ent’ moving between countries with so-​called surplus human capital and emerging growth
poles like Dubai, Hong Kong, and Singapore (Buckley 2012; Constable 2007; Oswin and Yeoh
2010); or the growing popularity of Asian destinations to European and North American early-​
careerists, professionals and expats in recent years (Lin and Yeoh 2014); or, within China alone,
the 230 million domestic journeys taking place annually around Lunar New Year as part of the
‘Spring Festival rush’ (Crang and Zhang 2012). These anecdotes of itinerancy not only convey
a sense of the quickening pace of migrant flows that are transforming national, provincial and
municipal borders in Asia, but also signal the momentous socio-​economic changes that are
affecting Asian countries and their relationship with the world. Indeed, if the 21st century is a
century of mobilities (Urry 2000), it is one whose centre lies in Asia.
Accounting for the dynamics of these intensifying flows, however, takes more than just put-
ting new wine in old conceptual wineskins. It requires a careful engagement with the particular
circumstances that are inventing these heterogeneous flows in Asia. Despite years of trying to
shed its associations with immigration discourses (especially of Europe and North America),
most policy-​oriented migration research still adheres to a language that draws strength from
the assumptions of ‘methodological nationalism’ (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002), where the
nation-​state (typically ‘under siege’ from migrants) is the undisputed starting point of analysis.
Even in work on transnationalism, the geo-​body of the nation often remains intact, with only
a ‘new’ emphasis placed on immigrants’ (problematic?) affinities with multiple territories (Lin
2012). In fairness, some ‘older’ migration causation theories, such as ones subscribing to neo-
classical economics, usefully stress the relational aspects of migration, by attending to the socio-​
economic factors that ‘push’ and ‘pull’ migrants across borders; but even these, we argue, have a
tendency to focus on migrants’ places of destination and origin, thus relegating moving –​and
what it means to move –​to a secondary status. In this context, we see value in tracing anew
what actually produces, fashions and organises migrant mobilities as meaningful phenomena in

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Asia. We are particularly interested in how migrations are mobilised in the region, not because
of any inherent properties found in bounded landscapes, but through specific structural and
technological drivers that cause mobilities to become, and become meaningful, in context.
By concentrating on the ‘production of migrant mobilities’ (paraphrasing Cresswell 1997),
this chapter aims to execute a ‘mobility turn’ on Asian migration studies. It posits that migra-
tion warrants explication not because of the social impacts and turbulences it leaves (behind)
in the places of arrival or departure. Rather, it is always already pertinent in its own right, as a
product of particular social arrangements –​oftentimes inequitable ones –​that invent, enable
and stretch out the line between A and B (Cresswell 2006) on which migrants embark. Put suc-
cinctly, migration itself, and not just the places it connects, possesses content, by which it also
(re)composes societies, including national ones. Following a brief exposition on the ‘mobilities
paradigm’ (Sheller and Urry 2006), the remainder of this chapter will examine three structural
and technological anchors that we see as having a key influence on migrant mobilities in Asia.
Encompassing the role of political economy, transport, and borders, we interrogate how these
intervening factors have mobilised migration in the region, in ways that reconfigure, rather than
predicate on, national territories.

Mobilising migration
As globalisation becomes the new catchword of the late-​1990s, a growing body of literature
allied with the ‘mobility turn’ has emerged to give greater salience to the condition of flux and
restlessness in the 21st century. This has aided a refocusing of social science research from one
that privileges places, sites and territories –​or a ‘sedentarist metaphysics’ (Cresswell 2006; Urry
2000) –​to one whose ontological concern is on mobilities and their production (Cresswell
1997). Expositing a range of phenomena from vehicular travel to virtual communications to
migration regimes, a whole host of movements once relegated to the background as asocial
passages are now being approached as objects of analysis. Their transitory lines of movement,
not their destinations, have become the new ‘sites’ where the ‘socially pertinent’ takes place,
and where people’s lives are reshaped, reinvented and interrupted. As Adey (2010: 4) puts it,
‘[m]‌obility, in short, is vital …it appears as if the social is mobility’.
Such an understanding directs attention to facts about movement that were previously
neglected, including its experiences, practices and methods of organisation. In transport studies
especially, there has been an explosion of research seeking to account exactly for such signifi-
cances and meanings imbued in everyday movements, giving a grounded sense of how what is
normally seen as an idle activity, transit, can likewise be a crucible of rich cultural nuances and
social activities. Such delineations do not stop there, but go on to pose further questions on the
politics and inequitable distribution of mobilities among different social groups (Flamm and
Kaufmann 2006). Central to these inquiries is not just which groups are being marginalised and
restricted in their movements, but also how, or through what justifications, relative (im)mobilities
are sanctioned as part and parcel of being on the move (Adey 2006). Put alternatively, mobilities
research’s concerns exceed basic observations of unequal accessibility. Its objective is to foster
a deeper understanding of the rules, logics and norms that processually structure these unfair
distributions of power, which lead to differentiated potentials of (im)mobility.
Tied to these critical understandings are also reflections on the socio-​technical mechanics
of movement. To be sure, rules and logics of mobilities do not operate solely in the discursive,
but are accompanied by spatial, architectural and institutional affordances that enable particular
ways of parsing flows. As Salter (2013: 16) argues, ‘the possibility for circulation must compre-
hend equally the ideational and the material, the social, and the bureaucratic, the disciplinary,

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and the sovereign’. Without these material and organisational frames (see Xiang and Lindquist,
this volume, Chapter 11), mobilities risk being activated in a vacuum. One structure that fea-
tures prominently and repeatedly in mobilities is technology, which can be broadly defined as
knowledge applications, and their associated innovations that help mediate, accelerate, and at
times bifurcate, mobilities. Consider the internet and its common uses in travel organisation.
This technology not only proves revolutionary in the way that it has altered the logistics of
mobility (enabling tasks such as fare comparisons, ticketing, and payment); it has also directly
impacted people’s desire to travel by transforming their social milieus (e.g. through facilitating
transnational ties across space) (Aguiléra et al. 2012). Yet, as much as it offers individuals more
options and freedom, the internet simultaneously forms a basis of exclusion for groups that are
structurally distanced from its applications –​whether due to cost or because of skills or linguis-
tic barriers. Insofar as technological aids are not democratically shared, but can be organised to
privilege one group over another, they are also tools that may further divide, rather than bridge,
mobility gaps.
It is against such a backdrop of wanting to unearth the meanings and formative processes
of mobilities that we want to advocate a re-​opening up of migration –​that is, the substance of
its movement, not its aftermath –​to analytical reflection. While there exist copious writings
on the frictions, hardships, and discriminations faced by (im)migrants after they arrive at their
host societies, studies that account for the structural production, and constraining conditions,
of their very journeys remain still in the minority. Generating a new epistemological strain
of migration research along these veins in Asia not only benefits from being able to test out
and advance a range of mobilities concepts in an emerging context unclouded by decades of
methodological nationalism; it also corrects a blind spot in mobilities research, pertaining to
its over-​reliance on Western European or North American paradigms (Lin and Yeoh 2016).
We begin with a discussion on the politico-​economic drivers enabling regional integra-
tion and speeding up intra-​Asian mobilities in recent years, before interrogating the role of
transport developments and border governance in further supporting and/​or re-​calibrating
these flows.

Politico-​economic drivers
When explaining the shape and direction of migration flows, classical immigration theories
point to the existence of differences in wage levels and job opportunities between more devel-
oped and less developed regions of the world (Harris and Todaro 1970; Piore 1979; Wallerstein
1974). While such theories clearly bear relevance for understanding contemporary migration
patterns in Asia, the experiences of Asian countries also demonstrate the active role played by
Asian state actors in mobilising, shaping and directing migration streams for politico-​economic
reasons. In her cross-​national comparison of women’s migration within Asia, for instance, Oishi
(2005) seeks to account for the different levels of out-​migration displayed by countries with
similar levels of unemployment, wages and poverty beyond economistic explanations. She
argues for the need to examine how emigration policies put in place by sending states can
encourage, restrict or outright ban out-​migration, and how individual (prospective) migrants
and their households, though exercising agency, are in fact responding to policy incentives to
go out or stay at home. These policy incentives are in turn shaped not only by social norms
restricting the out-​migration of women to particular age groups, occupations and countries of
destination, but also by the sending state’s overriding concern to mobilise migration in order to
achieve particular politico-​economic objectives such as alleviating domestic unemployment or
increasing the flows of economic and social remittances across national borders (Oishi 2005).

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The scope and nature of the emigration policies enacted by Asian states are, of course, not
confined to regulating the migration of women. State policies include different goals, rang-
ing from promoting labour export, controlling worker characteristics and protecting the well-​
being of nationals working abroad, to regulating the private migration recruitment industry
and maximising the potential for out-​migration to positively influence domestic economic
development. Moreover, the degree of state involvement in labour emigration varies consider-
ably from country to country and over time, from simply allowing or facilitating out-​migration
to actively promoting overseas employment (Hugo and Stahl 2004). The Philippines’ strategy
of exporting temporary workers while simultaneously ensuring their continued ties to the
homeland is a case in point which illustrates the active involvement of the state in encouraging
and institutionalising labour out-​migration as a national policy. In particular, the Filipino state
has sought to mobilise and direct the mobility of domestic workers and nurses (Constable 2007;
Brush and Sochalski 2007). Rodriguez (2010: xiv, xxi) equates the Filipino state’s involvement
in labour brokerage to setting up an ‘export-​processing zone’ that ‘enables the controlled flows
of temporary workers across national borders, mobilising them out of the Philippines and then
ensuring their return back home’. The case also demonstrates the close collaboration between
state actors and private labour recruitment agencies in structuring the scale, direction and com-
position of migrant mobilities, as well as the reach of these joint efforts to include strategies to
market overseas employment to Filipino workers and represent them as ideal global workers to
employers abroad (Guevarra 2010; Rodriguez 2010).
Other Asian countries at the receiving end of intra-​Asian flows of low-​skilled migrants have
implemented policies to channel these migrants into sectors of the economy with labour short-
ages (Kaur 2010). In Singapore, such policies have in effect created a transnational labour market
for low-​skilled labour within sectors such as construction, manufacturing, marine, processing,
services and domestic work. Within these sectors, foreign workers are recruited from neigh-
bouring Asian countries in order to meet the increased demand for labour due to falling birth
rates, the unwillingness of local citizens to take up so-​called dangerous, dirty and demeaning
jobs, and a social reproductive vacuum in the domestic sphere left by the increased participation
of local women in the workforce (Yeoh 2006). To regulate this mobilisation, and incorporation,
of labour beyond the national territory, measures such as the dependency ceiling and the foreign
worker levy have been put in place. While the former refers to sector-​specific rules about the
ratio of foreign to local workers, the foreign worker levy functions as an ‘import tax’ (Low 2002)
on labour and is differentiated according to sector and workers’ skills level. These two instru-
ments allow the city-​state to discard low-​skilled workers when their labour is no longer needed,
thereby ensuring a revolving labour regime that flexibly avails to Singapore (and its political
economy) the excess population it needs.
Asian countries not only export workers abroad, but also seek to compete in the ‘global
war for talent’ (Brown and Tannock 2009) by attracting highly skilled foreign professionals
and encouraging diasporic citizens to return home with the skills and experiences acquired
abroad. While such policies have long been in place in Asian countries such as Singapore, they
have been introduced more recently in countries such as Japan (Kamibayashi 2006) and China
(Zweig 2006). In 2012, China, which is slowly transitioning from a country of emigration
to one of immigration (Pieke 2012), passed a new law exactly in reflection of this. In addi-
tion to making it easier to control illegal entry, residence and work (the so-​called sanfei ‘three
illegals’ problem), the law also responds to Chinese authorities’ objective to strengthen ties
with communities of overseas Chinese and attract foreign professionals (Haugen 2015). Both
groups of migrants are desired by the Chinese state because their skills –​or ‘talent’ –​are seen
as key components in realising the state’s new vision for China. Whereas financial capital, hard

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infrastructure and labour-​intensive production have been the backbone of China’s economic
development over the past decades, earning China its nickname as the ‘factory of the world’,
Chinese authorities are now seeking to upgrade the Chinese economy and recreate China as a
hub of technology, innovation and creativity. Wang (2010) traces the Chinese discourse on ‘tal-
ent’ back to the Asia-​Pacific Economic Corporation (APEC) High Level Meeting on Human
Capacity Building that was held in Beijing in 2001. Following this meeting, references to talent
development were included in key governmental documents such as the 11th Five-​Year Plan
(2006–​2010) and talent promotion was adopted as a strategy to revitalise the country at the 17th
Party Congress in 2007. This strategy is dependent on global flows of not only knowledge and
ideas, but more crucially of people. For this reason, schemes to attract overseas talent such as the
‘Thousand talents scheme’ are a crucial part of the 2010 Talent Development Plan (Wang 2010).
While accounting for the effectiveness of migration policies in achieving their stated
goals is fraught with difficulties (Czaika and de Haas 2013), experiences from the Philippines,
Singapore, China and other Asian countries demonstrate how human mobilities into, out of and
within Asia take place within specific policy environments which seek to shape the nature and
direction of migration flows in ideological and material ways. Moreover, recent aspirations by
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to facilitate freer flows of skilled labour
among member countries point to the supranational character of policy efforts to valorise Asian
integration and accelerate migration flows (Sugiyarto and Mendoza 2014). The enactment of
migration policies therefore involves state actors at different levels of government as well as pri-
vate agencies (see also Zweig 2006). Migration flows do not simply respond to the impetuses of
capital in a push-​pull logic, but rather involve states seeking to harness the powers of economic
globalisation to their own advantage by mobilising, constraining and structuring the flows of
people across national borders.

Transport developments
It is not just the rationalities of the political economy that drive movements in Asia; transport
also articulates migration circuits in specific ways, and often with long-​lasting impacts on soci-
eties and nations. To draw preliminary insight from the historical Atlantic trade, steam-​and
coal-​powered ships were extremely instrumental to forging particular realities and imaginations
of European emigration in the 19th and early-​20th centuries. The arduous nature of journeys
across a hazardous ocean –​especially for steerage passengers (Coye and Murphy 2007) –​often
meant that migration was undertaken as a one-​way trip, in a more-​or-​less permanent ‘trans-​
oceanic cultural transference’ of people from the ‘Old World’ to the ‘New World’ (Lambert et
al. 2006: 481). Anchoring these settler networks were other authoritative landscapes that clearly
announced the immigrant’s arrival in a new national domicile each time a journey ended, the
most prominent of which being immigration stations like Ellis Island. These offshore zones,
besides being processing technologies meant to exclude the diseased, fugitives and political
subversives, doubled as ‘almost mythical site[s]‌where multicultural America was formed’; or
where the masses symbolically (and permanently) became nations on a ‘new’ island (Hoskins
and Maddern 2010: 152). Through these procedures, ocean transport not only facilitated a
particular circuit of movement, but also experientially produced a very particular sense of what
migration meant.
In Asia, the affordances of transport and its technologies have likewise impacted migrant
mobilities, if in different ways. Historically, before nation-​states became salient, the sojourns
and migrations of Arab, Chinese and Indian populations to Southeast Asia were intricately tied
to the seafaring capabilities of those groups. For instance, while the Chinese were an itinerant

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people for ‘over several millennia’, their mobilities were mostly confined to land routes to places
such as Korea and Vietnam; it was not until the 10th century that ‘Chinese migration increas-
ingly took place on a maritime canvas’ (Lockard 2013: 766), coinciding with the Song Dynasty’s
rising naval power, and the extensive use of large junks. As sinologist Jacques Gernet records,
the junks of the Song era were ‘big sailing ships with four or six masts, twelve big sails and four
decks, capable of carrying about a thousand men’. They were equipped with ‘[a]‌nchors, rudder,
drop-​keel, capstans, canvas sails and rigid matting sails, used according to whether the wind blew
from astern or ahead, pivoting sails which avoided the need to alter the rigging… [as well as]
oars with an automatic angle of attack’ (Gernet 1996: 328). No longer tethered to the whim of
monsoon winds, these vehicles not only established more durable and farther maritime trade
routes for the Chinese –​particularly in the Nanhai, or what is known today as the South China
Sea (Wang 2003) –​they also instigated commerce-​related migrations that gradually reshaped
Southeast Asian societies through establishing a Chinese presence. Remarkably, this change
in the region’s demographic complexion continues to drive migration circuits to this day, by
allowing historical affinities to be invoked between Southeast Asia and contemporary China
(Yeoh and Lin 2013).
In the last century, state-​led transport projects have become more prominent in giving shape
to migration in Asia. Rail technologies were, in particular, copiously harnessed for long-​range
overland travel in the late-​19th and early-​20th centuries. Momentous in the region’s early rail
history was the building of the Trans-​Siberian Railway, and its eastern branch, the Chinese
Eastern Railway.While largely a Russian project designed to strengthen the empire’s hold on its
Pacific ports, the rail lines doubled as key conduits for long-​range movements of people across
Eurasia (Liliopoulou et al. 2005). Not only did the lines’ construction enable the (re)peopling of
the Russian Far East with citizens of European descent, the Chinese extension founded Harbin
as a Russian-​administered rail city, which drew tens of thousands of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles
and Chinese immigrants to the trisected city, to find work in the settlement’s burgeoning rail-
road economy (Urbansky 2008).The building of China’s Lanxin line from Lanzhou to Urumqi
five decades on, and, more recently, the 2014 opening of the Lanzhou-​Xinjiang High-​Speed
Railway further reshuffled inter-​ethnic contacts. By opening up new, faster networks of con-
nectivity through the historic Chinese Silk Road, these trans-​continental infrastructures not
only boosted trade and economic exploitation across large distances, but also became the raison
d’être for the mobility of (more) migrants, including the provocative large-​scale movement of
Han Chinese to Xinjiang since the 1950s (Howell and Fan 2011).
Air transport has likewise significantly impacted modern-​day Asia’s migrant mobilities, both
by design and through its popular use. While flying used to be an elite reserve, mass aeromo-
bility today has enabled larger numbers of people to partake in air travel’s circulations, if still
in divided streams. Aided by the advent of efficient narrow-​body aircraft such as the new-​
generation A320s and the deregulation of air traffic rights, the recent proliferation of low-​cost
carriers (LCCs) has arisen in response to ‘new’ economic demands for (usually) low-​skilled
migratory flows since the 2000s (Zhang et al. 2008). Whereas legacy airlines used to connect
Asian capitals with other large cities globally, LCCs have facilitated much more versatile pair-
ings of origins and destinations, or areas of labour surplus and deficit, with their nimble fleet.
AirAsia, a Malaysian LCC, is an excellent example, offering over 200 flights daily within and
between Southeast Asia, China, Australasia, the Middle East and South Asia. Airlines like it have
made long-​haul and regional migration –​at least the initial relocation –​more affordable and
attainable for millions, while giving migrants and their families cheap options to make frequent
return visits, and other post-​migration journeys supportive of transnational living (Dobruszkes
2009). Like the way junks ferried sojourners in search of fortunes abroad for a time, LCCs

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today transport labour migrants who similarly harbour temporary intentions. Only now, they
do so at a spatio-​temporal scale that is more extensive, and speedier, in support of current
turnstile-​like labour regimes.
Transport’s ability to condition migrant mobilities should not be underestimated despite its
common (mis)representations as little more than conveyances between A and B. At the most
basic level, transport and its technologies directly determine the scope of long-​range move-
ments, both dictating the reach of migration, and altering its speeds and meanings as migrants
are ferried across land, sea and air. The manner in which these technologies are arranged as
infrastructures further nuances the nature of migration, at times instigating novel flows to fill an
economic gap, and, at other times, significantly reducing the friction of distance, making trans-
national migration possible. Understanding migrant mobilities through the lens of transport
helps to accent these intervening forces, which transpire in excess of the politico-​economic
relations linking places. Without this crucial intertwining of transport and migration, it may be
easy to forget that the latter has a medium, which not only carries the mobilities of migrants,
but is also often ordered to achieve and (re)shape them.

Border governance
Earlier we suggested that disembarkation procedures at the end of each ocean liner journey can
have a pedagogical effect on how early-​20th century migrants understood their arrival in the
‘New World’. Processing zones like Ellis Island not only allowed voyagers to be sorted and vali-
dated for their admissibility; they also created their subjectivity as immigrants and new entrants
at the destination. These processing zones were arguably the first prototypes of an elaborate
architecture of border governance that would come to organise and inform today’s migrant
mobilities, founded on a ‘closed’ world of nation-​states, each suspicious of intruding human
traffics, and active in (re)classifying prospective entrants who do arrive (Ó Tuathail 1996: 15).
In a sense, border governance lies at the heart of common territorially inflected understandings
of migration, where people’s movements are often articulated in relations to the nation-​state.
But as Richardson (2013: 1) also makes clear, migration cannot be understood rigidly ‘without
[first] confronting the ways in which [it is variously] constrained and regulated by borders and
bordering practises’. It is in this context that techniques of border governance, as well as the
technologies empowering their rule, warrant further scrutiny.
As part of the international community, countries in Asia are neither alienated from, nor
averse to, bordering practices. Oftentimes, they are obligated to follow international conventions
with respect to (now-​air) passenger protocols in order to continue partaking in the benefits of
global economic integration. The most fundamental of these bordering practices concerns the
institution of a mobility regime predicated on passports. Cho (2013) argues that the passport is
not an innocuous marker of citizenship or identity for the migrant/​traveller. It more crucially
functions as a ‘document of suspicion’, an identification paper that ‘must be produced where
there is a cause’, within an international system of mobility control (Cho 2013: 336). While,
for short-​term travellers, the use of the passport may prove slightly more straightforward (albeit
requiring visa formalities in some cases), the same travel regime subjects prospective migrants to
more stringent checks by the receiving nation, in accordance to what the passport states about
the bearer’s (foreign) country of citizenship, travel history, and even place of birth. By comply-
ing with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) specifications on the passport
(circa. 1968), Asian countries are complicit in reframing mobilities within their region in the
same territorial light. It is the nation-​state, rather than cultural ties or former trade routes, which
now takes precedence through the technology of the passport.

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The adoption of the passport is, however, not a simple case of governance importation from
ICAO. Asian states have been conscientious to embellish this order with other visa stipulations –​
effectively an extension of travel documentation –​by which the admissibility of migrants can
be further marked and splintered. If the passport locates a foundational, nationality-​based nexus
between mobilities and bordering, several Asian countries have additionally incorporated socio-​
economic matrices and health-​related technologies of surveillance within this passport-​and-​visa
regime to express the ‘worth’ and ‘safety’ of migrant flows. At the top of the hierarchy, the highly
skilled have long enjoyed relaxed rules for cross-​border mobilities in the region, including in
Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, often requiring just proof of prospective employment
before they are granted a work (and usually residency) permit (Iredale 2000). Conversely, low-​
skilled migrants are less welcome, as their ‘foreignness’ –​and associated ‘dangers’ –​abruptly
assumes greater prominence. National authorities often manage the admittance of these persons
on strict terms that inscribe their mobilities with numerous caveats and qualms, as expressed
through advance warnings or prohibitions against marriage, pregnancy and disease (Yeoh 2006)
on their visas, permits and travel documents. In short, more ‘developed’ Asian economies are
policing migration streams surrounding their territories in more complex ways than the pass-
port’s original intentions. By sorting through, differentiating and then making legible per-
sonal ‘merits’ on migrants’ travel documents, they are naturalising, through these ‘formalities’,
a mobility system that selectively erases national borders for some, but implements, for others,
more draconian border rules, even at the scale of the body.
Consider as well the recent embrace of biometric technologies in Asia. Notably, what began
as an American response to 9/​11 has spread to heighten national suspicions against ‘threaten-
ing’ migrant (and other) mobilities in the region. Whereas Singapore became one of the first
countries to issue biometric passports to safeguard its own citizens’ mobilities (in part to comply
with requirements of the business-​friendly US visa waiver programme), increasing numbers of
Asian countries, including Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, and, soon, Singapore, are mandating the
fingerprinting of all foreign nationals intending to cross their borders, pre-​emptively pathologis-
ing these movements. Joining the US and European countries in tracking the travel histories
and profiles of, especially, migrants through such personal identifiers, these protocols not only
seek to amass even more intrusive databases about those who move; they have also become the
basis for deciphering and divining ‘truths’ about individuals even before they travel –​vicari-
ously through data (mis)matches and algorithmic calculations of ‘risk’ (Amoore 2009). Though,
to be sure, biometric applications are not the brainchild of Asia, the fact that the technology has
gained relative traction in the region is a worrying trend that points to finer, and possibly irre-
versible, differentiations of who is fit (or not) to participate in Asia’s migration streams. Without
a clearer sense of what these technologies of surveillance are actually geared towards, questions
remain as to whether they would lead to truly greater security, or the further marginalisation
of some mobilities.
Borders should not be mistaken as ‘natural’ artefacts that nation-​states erect by virtue of
what they are, but a labour –​a bordering work –​undertaken to precisely give meaning to
nationhood, and, conversely, its mobile outside. At face value, they are what render migration
problematic and potentially disruptive to a nation’s integrity, thereby inciting the temptation
to understand migrant flows through the lens of methodological nationalism. But tracing the
histories of bordering, its embellishments and future trajectories in Asia nuances this picture,
and shows how bordering work can be modified and performed in more complex and affect-
ing ways. In particular, it has caused migration in the region to be treated simultaneously as a
phenomenon to micro-​manage territorially (for the low-​skilled), and a deterritorialised free-
dom for (highly skilled) talents. These tendencies should prompt further reflections on other

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configurations of mobilities and borders around the globe, including the eradication of national
checkpoints within, but not beyond, the European Union, and the US’s extension of its borders
to extra-​jurisdictional airports in Canada, the Caribbean, Ireland and the United Arab Emirates.
Collectively, they demonstrate that migration cannot be pinned down to a fixed definition, but
is a fluid condition of mobile (im)possibilities, defined according to how they are made mean-
ingful by the borders nation-​states reference it with.

Conclusion
This chapter has charted through three different avenues by which migrant mobilities take on
particular significances and tenors, in accordance to their formative processes. Whether it per-
tains to the demands of the prevailing political economy, or the possibilities enabled by transport
developments, or the bordering work enacted to order movement, ‘migration’ is scarcely an a
priori concept that describes a fixed, undifferentiated condition of relocation from one nation-​
state to another. Contrary to this popular notion of what migration is –​a notion Wimmer and
Glick Schiller (2002) attribute to methodological nationalism –​this chapter has focused on how
migrant mobilities become, by dint of the structural and technological forces that realise them in
particular times and spaces. Using Asia as a backdrop to explore these mobile formations, this
chapter has not chosen to (re)emplace migration onto a pre-​determined matrix of bounded ter-
ritories again; rather, it has sought to understand the varied iterations and meanings of migrant
mobilities anew, through the drivers and processes that emergently produce them.
Delineating the production of migrant mobilities as a subject of inquiry, however, does not
preclude the continued entanglements of migration with nation-​states. In fact, as the various
examples above intimate, state actors are frequently heavily invested in the assembling of struc-
tural and technological conditions for mobilising people (Salter 2013) –​be it in the way they
identify (and classify) migrant groups for circulation, in how they increasingly intervene in the
design and construction of transport infrastructures, or in the manner they make borders porous
(or not) for different migrants. Adhering to a mobilities approach that highlights these inter-
ventions helps retrieve a politics of movement that has so far been obscured by a discourse of
methodological nationalism, which states themselves propound. To the extent that migration is
an uneven process, that further exacts lived consequences on those (im)mobilised thereby, there
is also a need to uncover these manipulations in process, in order to begin a serious critique of
how migrant pathways are made to be so different in ‘mobile’ Asia.

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11
THE INFRASTRUCTURAL TURN
IN ASIAN MIGRATION
Johan Lindquist and Biao Xiang

Introduction
During the past decade we have witnessed dramatic changes in how transnational migration
across Asia and the Middle East is organised. Consider the rise of the mobile phone, the deregu-
lation of the airline industry, the evolution of biometric technology, which have all in different
ways reshaped communication, transportation, and surveillance in the context of migration. For
instance, two decades ago the great majority of Indonesian migrants travelling from the island
of Lombok to Malaysia to work on palm oil plantations, or to Singapore as domestic servants,
would go overland via a complicated network of middlemen and different modes of transpor-
tation. Today most fly directly. When previously labour brokers wanted to get in touch with
prospective migrants in rural villages, they would call a telephone office and someone would
be sent to fetch the person in question. Today a text message will do.1 In the case of low-​skilled
migration from China to Japan, internet-​based video conferences were recently introduced by
employers in Japan to test workers’ skills. This not only saves employers international trips but,
more importantly, enables them to interview more candidates across larger areas while adopting
stricter selection criteria.2
This, however, does not mean that the migration process has become easier for migrants or
regulators. Along with the development of these technologies there has been a proliferation of
commercial brokerage and government regulations across the region. More generally, labour
migration in and from Asia is increasingly intensively mediated (Xiang and Lindquist 2014). For
instance, in Indonesia, documented international migrants are recruited by a series of licenced
and unlicensed middlemen, are required to apply for a number of government documents –​
ranging from birth certificates, to travel permits, to passports –​and pass medical tests, are trans-
ported by a range of vehicles, inhabit different forms of temporary housing, and spend time in
training centres prior to departure (Lindquist 2010). Furthermore, technological changes have
not streamlined the regulation of migration. Sophisticated surveillance technologies do not
simplify regulatory procedures. On the contrary, increasing numbers of visa categories and more
complicated regulations have been introduced.The Singapore government, for instance, pigeon-
holes migrants into finely differentiated classificatory grids according to nationality, skill level,
occupation and sector of employment, each subject to varying regulations.The Japanese regula-
tion of labour migration (under the so-​called ‘industrial trainee’ programme) is so complicated

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that at least 38 forms have to be filled out when applying for a visa. Even a professional labour
recruiter in China has to spend more than US$120 just to get all documents in order.
In contrast to earlier forms of recruitment, which relied heavily on social networks and less
stringent bureaucratic process, such regulations turn migration in Asia into a form of ‘labour
transplant’, as migrants are extracted from their hometowns and inserted into a predesignated
foreign workplace with great precision. The journey between and the space beyond the two
points are thus minimised in migrants’ experience (Xiang 2012). In sum, the intensification of
mediation in migration has ushered in an ‘arms race’ between regulators and intermediaries
who compete to control the migratory processes (Pieke and Xiang 2009). As such, the compli-
cation of regulation has certainly not led to the demise of migrants’ rights abuses or migration
irregularities.
Behind these seemingly contradictory developments are three inter-​ related trends that
collectively constitute what we call the infrastructural turn in Asian migration. First, taken
together these developments call attention to how migration is profoundly shaped by changes
in infrastructure, broadly defined as a sociotechnical platform for mobility (Larkin 2013). The
transformations in the sociotechnical means of mobility are so dramatic that their effects on
migration processes are arguably more profound than any previous era. For instance, biometric
technologies have created an interface between individual identity, bodily characteristics and
databases, thus shaping the basis for the increasingly individualised and precise regulation of
migration. Irregular border-​crossing becomes more difficult, and formal documentation much
more important. As a result, labour migration across Asia has been transformed: migrants enjoy
safer journeys and fewer injuries, but have higher financial burdens; they face fewer physical
risks, but are more socially constrained.
Second, although mobility is always facilitated and mediated by a diverse range of actors, net-
works and technologies, the contemporary concentration and systematisation of infrastructure
is arguably unprecedented. When people travel overland in horsedrawn carts, for instance, the
roads and vehicles are part of the local landscape, while those who facilitate or deter mobility
are deeply embedded in local communities. By contrast, when people travel by airplane, their
mobility relies to a greater degree on a system managed by highly centralised and standardised
professional bodies. Similiarly, migrant networks that have historically primarily been extensions
of familial and community relations have increasingly been replaced by specialist commercial
middlemen. Migration infrastructure appears increasingly autonomous. More specifically, we
have argued that labour migration from Asia is characterised by a process of ‘infrastructural invo-
lution’, in which the interplay between different dimensions of migration infrastructure make
it self-​perpetuating and self-​serving, thus impeding rather than enhancing people’s migratory
capabilities, most notably for low-​skilled labour (Xiang and Lindquist 2014).
Third, government regulation has increasingly become a key component of migra-
tion infrastructure, particularly with regard to commercial middlemen and the rise of e-​
governance. Regulation has become ‘infrastructural’ in the sense that governments do not
simply control the entry of particular individuals, but put in place systems that integrate
different actors such as guarantors and employers, following procedures such as assessing
each application by scoring against pre-​set criteria, and forming transnational cooperation
and bilateral agreements between sending and receiving countries as well as private-​public
partnerships. This new policy attention to migration infrastructure should be understood
in the context of growing public concern with infrastructure, both as a site of spectacular
economic and political investment and expansion –​for instance, through the creation of the
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank –​and of general crisis, as public works have ‘splintered’
in the wake of neoliberal reform (Graham and Marvin 2001), not least through recurring

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flooding that illuminates the fragility of expanding urban landscapes across the region. In the
context of migration, biometric technologies and surveillance systems point to new forms of
bordering practices. As a result, there is a sense of urgency among policy makers across the
world to, so to speak, ‘get the infrastructure right’.
While acknowledging the contingent, embedded, and patchwork nature of infrastructure,
and the distributed forms of agency, we claim that migration infrastructure’s autonomy –​not
in the sense of existing and operating in isolation, but in becoming a driving force in its own
right –​calls for a particular conceptualisation. Following from this, and as outlined in an earlier
publication (Xiang and Lindquist 2014), we define migration infrastructure as the systemati-
cally interlinked technologies, institutions, and actors that facilitate and condition mobility. For
analytical purposes, we stipulate five dimensions of migration infrastructure: the commercial
(recruitment intermediaries), the regulatory (state apparatus and procedures for documentation,
licensing, training and other purposes), the technological (communication and transport), the
humanitarian (NGOs and international organisations), and the social (migrant networks).These
five dimensions point to distinct logics of operation rather than discrete domains. For instance,
commercial infrastructure functions by interacting with regulatory, humanitarian, social, and
technological infrastructures. But in each dimension, the leading actors, the driving forces, the
central strategies and rationalities, and the defining modus operandi differ. The five dimensions
collide with and contradict one another, and this deep entanglement is the key to understanding
migration infrastructure. By defining migration infrastructure in this way we create a new space
for analysis that engages with the intensifying mediation of migration, rather than narrowly
focusing on migrants, social networks, or state policies alone.
In sum, the infrastructural turn is both a turn in migration patterns and in policy and schol-
arly thinking about migration. Our focus on infrastructure follows primarily from a struggle to
understand and conceptualise changes in migration on the ground. At the same time we hope
that our attention to infrastructure will stimulate methodological innovation and link migration
studies more closely to broad intellectual and political debates. This chapter provides an over-
view of the notion of migration infrastructure as the result of a convergence between empirical
changes in migration and the history of conceptualising migration. The chapter will begin by
delineating the evolution of migration infrastructure in both a global and regional context. We
will then discuss how an infrastructural perspective has developed in social research in general
and migration studies in particular. We conclude the article by highlighting the methodological
and theoretical challenges and opportunities that the infrastructural turn may bring about in
migration studies.

The infrastructural turn in history

The infrastructural turn in migration became evident in the 1990s, but in Asia its history can
be traced further back. As such, the ‘turn’ refers to an intensification of migration infrastructure
that must be understood in relation to broad historical and non-​linear transformations, most
notably colonial technologies for regulating migration. Beginning around 1850 Asia witnessed
what some scholars call a ‘mobility revolution’ (Amrith 2011), as large-​scale labour migration
from China and British India developed in response to the demand for natural resources in Asia
in the wake of the industrial revolution and capitalist expansion. Migration was made possible
by colonial intervention, most explictly in relation to the circulation of coolies in the British
Empire, but also in China when the Qing court, after humiliating defeats in two opium wars,
was forced to sign the Beijing Treaty in 1860 that conferred foreign companies the right to
recruit workers primarily to Southeast Asia. The large-​scale movements were also facilitated

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The infrastructural turn in Asian migration

by transportation innovations such as the steamship, as well as temporary housing and labour
depots (Kaur 2004: 51).
The prevalence of private recruitment brokers who facilitated the circulation of labour was
of particular significance in this process. In China, colonial powers set up recruitment bureaus
in key cities and dispatched officers to different parts of the country, who in turn relied on local
brokers to recruit workers. As circular migration or sojourning was a key feature of Asian migra-
tion (Amrith 2011: 4), migrants themselves frequently became brokers. In India, for instance,
the use of return migrants was critical in both kangani and indentured recruitment (Carter
1992). Brokers linked previously separate societies, either between the colonial and the native,
or between formal systems and informal social life, and made the actual recruitment and move-
ment of labour across great distances possible.
In his work on the history of Asian migration, Adam McKeown (2008, 2012) has described
the evolving international concern among lawmakers and reformers with regulating migration
brokers and the infrastructure of mobility during the second half of the 19th century. This was
‘part of a broader process of redefining forms of personal power and obligation, especially in
the context of work relationships’ (McKeown 2012: 22). More specifically, the decline of the
Atlantic slave trade and European indenture in tandem with the increasing demand for labour
supply over long distance led to a focus on improving the process of migration and recruit-
ment, of which brokers were considered an integral part. By the beginning of the 20th century,
however, with the rise of the ‘free labourer’ and the increasing focus on regulating migration
at the border, the broker was increasingly associated with ‘pre-​modern’ forms of labour con-
trol and demonised on an international scale, despite the fact that most were a product of the
capitalist economies and mass migrations associated with modernity (McKeown 2008: 116). An
emerging form of proceduralism based on documentation increasingly came to regulate mobil-
ity (ibid:  Chapter  10). While previously migration was conceptualised as a process facilitated
by a range of actors embedded in social relations of the migrant, proceduralism fixated on the
migrant as the subject of bureaucratic examination and regulation.
This form of proceduralism was evident, for instance, in the context of regulation of labour
mobility within the Dutch East Indies in the early-​20th century, where the colonial state, while
heavily reliant on brokers, was also keen to curtail them.While Recruitment Ordinances aimed
to regulate labour recruitment through documentation, officials hoped that dactyloscopy, the
science of fingerprint identification, would form the basis for a modern labour system in the
Indies through the registration and, as Dutch experts put it, the ‘sieving’ of contract work-
ers. Indeed, labour depots in Javanese port cities such as Semarang, where prospective coolies
would transit, were the first places where fingerprint technology was implemented in the 1920s
(Mrázek 2002: 101–​2). The aim was that information connected with the photograph or fin-
gerprint could be organised centrally and be accessed by concerned parties (Breman 1990: 45).
The emergence of proceduralism, however, did not lead to a paradigm shift in practical
terms. Despite the efforts of colonial officials, the newly created regulatory infrastructure did
not become a determining force in shaping migration. A  range of licenced and unlicenced
brokers, transport, and housing remained, and continues to remain critical to migration across
Asia. Nevertheless, attempts to identify and regulate individual migrants illuminate processes of
‘state simplification’ (Scott 1998), which came to create an uneasy interface between legality
and mobility that has had profound effects on the regulation of migrants since.
If the period between 1850 and 1930 was the high point of Asian migration, the 1930s until
the 1970s was a period of ‘disconnection’ in the wake of World War Two and decolonialisation
(Amrith 2011: 89). By the 1970s, however, the rise of the Asian ‘Tiger’ and Middle Eastern oil
economies created new opportunities and patterns of migration across an increasingly uneven

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landscape of economic development, which generated divisions between sending countries

such as Indonesia and the Philippines and receiving countries such as Singapore and Saudi
Arabia. Dramatic processes of urbanisation and emerging class divisions created demands for
both construction and care workers. In stark contrast to modernisation theory, which focused
on domestic employment opportunities and formed the basis for earlier development models,
low-​skilled migration (of women, in particular), and associated remittances, have been seen as
a way forward for national development, thus signalling a significant transformation of values
across the region, and new forces for migration. These processes have come to intensify in the
wake of the 1997 Asian economic crisis.
Migration across Asia and the Middle East since the 1970s has become characterised by state
intervention, bilateral agreements between sending and receiving countries, temporary con-
tracts and return upon completion, increasingly multi-​tiered visa systems, biometric technolo-
gies, the extensive use of private recruitment companies, medical certification, pre-​departure
training, and the rise of low-​cost carrier airlines. Low-​skilled migrants themselves generally have
limited rights and are bound to one employer, most starkly in the case of the Middle Eastern
kafala sponsorship. In other words, although there is no explicit migration system, there is a
certain infrastructural form taking shape with shared elements.3 While commercial, regulatory,
technological, and social dimensions are evident in these processes, NGOs and international
organisations such as the International Organisation for Migration are critical in supporting
not only the rights of migrants but also their regularised return, thus in fact becoming a criti-
cal dimension of migration infrastructure. ‘Protection’ becomes a double-​edged sword; for a
migrant to be protected, one has to be regulated in the first place.
In relation to low-​skilled international migration from China and Indonesia, this has more
specifically led to a process of ‘infrastructural involution’ in which migration infrastructure has
become self-​perpetuating and self-​serving, and thus to a certain degree autonomous. Clifford
Geertz (1963) famously developed the concept of ‘agricultural involution’ to refer to how the
intensification of labour inputs in Javanese wet-​r ice agriculture increased total production, but
not per capita output, thus leading to rural stagnation, while Prasenjit Duara (1987) character-
ised the building of the modern Chinese state after the collapse of the Qing dynasty and before
the establishment of the People’s Republic as a process of ‘state involution’. Unable to increase
its administrative efficiency while losing the ability of social mobilisation, the modernising
state relied on political brokerage to extract additional resources while largely losing control
over them.
In comparable terms, the development of migration infrastructure has turned migration into
an object of intensive regulation, commodification and intervention, but has not necessarily
enhanced people’s migratory capability in terms of making independent decisions, explor-
ing new paths, and cultivating transnational social relations. For instance, in both China and
Indonesia the number of licenced recruitment companies has grown far more quickly than the
number of migrants in proportional terms (Xiang and Lindquist 2014: S123). The volume and
frequency of migration has not increased in proportion to the amount of resources and energy
absorbed in the process of migration. It is in this process that we can understand the paradox of
increasing levels of freedom and complication.
The intensification of mediation and infrastructural involution can be attributed to a dual
development in the broader political economy: an increasing level of mobility due to the exten-
sion of market forces and the enhancement of state regulatory capacity. Migration infrastructure
is particularly evident in Asia because both developments have acquired strong momentum in
the region. Governments of both migrant-​sending and migrant-​receiving countries promote
temporary labour migration that is placed under increasingly sophisticated regulations (Xiang

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2013a). In receiving countries, migration infrastructure in relation to low-​skilled migration

confines migrants to employers, prevents settlement, and enforces return (Xiang 2012, 2013b;
Lindquist 2013). In Asia and the Middle East, migration infrastructure is less elaborate on the
receiving side. It increasingly relies on the sending side to achieve its goals, for instance through
health certification and pre-​departure training.
Thus, historically migration infrastructure has become ever more complicated, though by
no means following an unlineal path. On the one hand, we observe a gradual differentiation
within migration infrastructure. Strengthened state capacity and active government interven-
tion create elaborate, supposedly coherent, systems of regulation; the increasing public awareness
about migrant rights and the proliferation of NGOs, especially facilitated by social media in
recent years, makes humanitarian interventions in transnational migration a force of its own; and
economic restructuring, particularly multi-​layered labour outsourcing, renders the commercial
infrastructure of migration ever more sophisticated. These different dimensions of infrastruc-
ture follow different logics and often pursue competing interests. On the other hand, different
dimensions of infrastructure are deeply intertwined. The regulatory infrastructure would not
function without others and vice versa.This is particularly evident in temporary circular migra-
tion based on bilateral agreements between sending and receiving countries.
We should, however, not regard the complication of infrastructure as something inevitable
or the current condition as a stable state of affairs. It would be incorrect to call this a system or
regime because of the diversity of patterns and the lack of multilateral government engagement.
Migration flows can be fragmented and short-​lived, though infrastructure retains a particu-
lar stability and coherence. In other words, we are interested in the internal constitution and
modular components of migration rather than in how migration flows may evolve into a self-​
perpetuating bounded system. More specifically, we regard Asia and the Middle East as a labora-
tory for migration infrastructure. Laboratory suggests a form of evolving experimentation that
offers insight into a system in the making centred on forms of infrastructural developments (cf.
Larkin 2013: 330). From this perspective, we may consider Asia and the Middle East as a model
for how the regulation of migration may develop in other regions in the future.

The infrastructural turn in perspective

While firmly grounded in observations of empirical change, our conceptualisation of migration
infrastructure also builds on academic attempts to broaden migration studies and a growing
interest in infrastructure in the social sciences. Dominant approaches to migration research –​
notably those focusing on social networks and migration management, the former taking rela-
tions between migrants as a starting point for analysis, and the latter focusing primarily on
the state and international actors  –​offer limited guidance in conceptualising contemporary
forms of international migration across Asia and the Middle East (Xiang and Lindquist 2014).
Between these research traditions there is a lack of empirical knowledge and a dearth of analyti-
cal concepts for considering the mechanics of migration, ranging from processes of recruitment,
modes of documentation, forms of transport, to technologies of surveillance.
We have identified the middle space of the migration process as the ‘black box’ of migration
(Lindquist, Xiang, and Yeoh 2012). Black box, a term borrowed from science and technology
studies, refers to devices or systems that are understood in terms of their input and output rather
than according to their inner workings. We argued that in order to understand how contempo-
rary forms of migration are shaped it is critical to pay attention to these inner workings in a sus-
tained empirical manner and to develop appropriate analytical concepts. While there is a large
body of research that focuses on why migrants leave home –​usually because of poverty, limited

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work opportunities, or dreams of modernity –​or what happens upon arrival –​they often lack
basic rights and are poorly paid –​we have limited knowledge of what happens in between.
Scholars of migration have increasingly recognised this process of black-​boxing from a variety
of perspectives. Historians have pointed out that brokers were increasingly vilified and pushed
underground with the rise of liberalism (McKeown 2012), thus creating the basis for an endur-
ing ethical binary, while social scientists have called for a shift of focus away from migrants and
their families to the entrepreneurs that make migration possible; in other words, the migration
industry (Hugo 2009). More recently, the concept of migration industry has been broadened
to highlight how ‘humanitarian’ interventions also need to be considered in empirical terms;
thus leading to a focus on the so-​called ‘rescue industry’ that includes NGOs and other kinds of
actors that engage in counter-​trafficking initiatives (Sørensen and Gammeltoft-​Hansen 2013)
and the ‘illegality’ industry that characterises contemporary European engagement with undoc-
umented migration across the Mediterranean (Andersson 2014). From a different perspective,
Feldman (2012) has developed the concept of migration apparatus in order to conceptualise
how the figure of the migrant takes shape through the work of policymakers, Walters (2015)
has focused on politics of transport –​viapolitics –​while Neilson and his colleagues (2010) have
used logistics as an entry-​point for conceptualising labour circulation.
These approaches have in different ways developed alternatives to mainstream migration
studies while avoiding the ethical binaries that characterise contemporary debates surround-
ing the figure of the migrant as either victim or perpetrator. This binary has become exceed-
ingly obvious in contemporary Europe, but is equally evident across Asia and the Middle East,
not least with regard to discussions concerning human trafficking or contemporary forms of
slavery or nationalist xenophobia. In other words, this suggests a shift of attention away from
the dichotomy between the figure of the migrant and the all-​encompassing power of the state,
to a focus on how migration is always mediated, albeit on different levels and from different
perspectives.
These perspectives, however, appear unsatisfactory in relation to empirical changes taking
place across Asia and the Middle East. Migration industry construes migration as a form of
business rather than, for instance, considering how brokers also deal with various components
of infrastructure that have regulatory effects, while migration apparatus, in turn, focuses on
governmental operations and policymakers. In contrast, migration infrastructure, as we define
it, highlights a broader range of dimensions and logics of operation that we argue are critical in
describing and conceptualising contemporary forms of migration.
Our attention to migration infrastructure is informed by a widely acknowledged infrastruc-
tural turn in the social sciences (Larkin 2013; Harvey, Jensen and Morita 2017). In contrast to
conceptualising infrastructure as the underlying material basis upon which modern society
operates (Edwards 2003), recent scholarship in science and technology studies has come to
acknowledge that infrastructure cannot be approached strictly in technological terms but rather
as co-​evolving sociotechnical systems (Jensen and Winthereik 2013; Larkin 2013), or even more
broadly as ‘technologically mediated, dynamic forms that continuously produce and transform
sociotechnical relations’ (Harvey, Jensen and Morita 2017: 5).
More generally, the turn to infrastructure points to broader transformations in social theory
that have important implications for the study of migration. In contrast to Marxian approaches
that situate migrant labour in a global political economy, or poststructuralist Foucauldian
perspectives, which have focused on power as a productive and diffusive force, science and
technology studies, primarily through the work of Latour (2005), have struggled to critique
taken-​for-​g ranted categories such as ‘power’ or the ‘social’, leading to a greater empirical focus
on materiality and mediation.4

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In particular, the infrastructural turn raises three related issues. First, there is an emphasis on
mediation. For instance, the desire to migrate should not be considered strictly in relation to
a decision-​making binary between voluntary and forced, or in terms of ‘push’ or ‘pull’ factors,
but rather as mediated by cultural symbols, calculations and activities (Chu 2010). Paraphrasing
Latour, it is not migrants who migrate, but rather constellations of migrants and non-​migrants,
of human and non-​human actors (Latour 1999: 182; see also Chu 2010). A sharper focus on
mediation sheds light on changes in the internal composition of migration –​how migration as
a process is constituted from within.
Second, and following from the previous point, an infrastructural approach allows for a
notion of distributed agency. In line with actor-​network theory, agency is not located in the
intentionality of individual actors but rather in the constellations of migrants and non-​migrants.
This does not disavow the possibility of change or migrant empowerment, but rather acknowl-
edges that these processes can be reduced neither to the agency of the migrants nor regulators.
Third, interconnectedness is contingent. Infrastructure is ecological and relational (Star
1999), and should be construed as a sociotechnical platform (Larkin 2013). This needs to be
done both synchronically and diachronically. We certainly agree that migration infrastructure
is instable, patchwork, has ‘splintering’ or recursive effects (Graham and Marvin 2001; Harvey,
Jensen and Morita 2017: 20) and that we need to pay attention to ‘gaps, interstices and zones
of opacity’ in infrastructure (Harvey, Jensen and Morita 2017: 23). A primary analytical value of
the infrastructural turn, however, is enabling us to discern contingent and often hidden inter-
connectedness. Highlighting gaps rather than the mechanisms that make mobility possible runs
the risk of drawing attention away from the broader analytical and political issues that are at the
centre of contemporary international migration.

Conclusion
Migration infrastructure has become a significant force in shaping migration outcomes and a
subject of intense government regulation in Asia. The infrastructural turn means that it has also
become a subject of academic inquiry in its own right since the 1990s. The turn is simultane-
ously empirical and epistemological. The double nature of the turn distinguishes it from recent
literature on infrastructure. In an early influential article, Star (1999) stressed that understand-
ing infrastructure is a matter of perspective. As infrastructure forms a background and is often
hidden, it is only through a form of inversion –​the foregrounding of the background –​that it
becomes visible and can be problematised. Larkin (2013: 338) further points out that any discus-
sion of infrastructure is a categorical act since the embedded nature of infrastructure means that
it is difficult to mark a beginning or an end to its existence. It follows that methodology is con-
tingent and that identifying a methodological approach to infrastructure becomes a theoretical
problem (see also Harvey, Jensen and Morita 2017); that is, there can be no standard method,
and how we approach infrastructure is always related to the specific theoretical question at hand.
Migration infrastructure, however, is not only a perspective that allows us to ‘rediscover’ what
has always been there but which we have failed to see, but also a new reality that demands new
research approaches. Migration infrastructure is not strictly that which becomes visible only
when it breaks down; migrants and regulators reflexively face and are constantly embedded in
infrastructure.
As such, the relation between the methodological and the theoretical may be less complex
than in other cases. Empirical reality provides a common ground for both. Future studies on
migration infrastructure should develop methods that will capture its actual mechanisms. For
instance, in line with innovations in multi-​sited ethnography (Marcus 1995), we may follow

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documents by examining how they are designed, handed out, filled out by whom on whose
behalf, how they travel, and come to shape migration and its relation to other dimensions of life
(cf. Hull 2012). We may also compare how different migration policies have generated various
infrastructural configurations. But the empirical description of infrastructure remains limited in
itself. We are not interested in migration infrastructure per se, but take this as a point of entry for
examining urgent intellectual and political problems. For instance, it may not be particularly use-
ful to point out that the infrastructure of high-​skilled migration differs from that of low-​skilled
migration. But it can be revealing to analyse how the infrastructural variations result in the dif-
ferentiated social positioning of migrants, and therefore to identify specific points of actions for
policy-makers and NGOs that will empower migrants in actual life. More generally, these exam-
ples point to different kinds of approaches and questions, thus suggesting that the infrastructural
turn does not offer a new grand theory of migration but is rather concerned with developing
methodology and analysis in the face of a changing and multi-​faceted empirical reality.

Notes
1 Lindquist’s primary data from fieldwork in Lombok intermittently from 2007 until 2014.
2 Xiang’s primary data from fieldwork in northeast China, 2004–​2008, 2011.
3 More generally, these changes are in line with a model of ‘circular migration’ that has moved to the top
of the global policy agenda following influential reports by the Global Commission on International
Migration (2005) and the International Organization for Migration (2005) (see also Vertovec 2007). In
many ways the Asia-​Middle East migration corridor has become a model of circular migration based
on an emerging system that preceded it. Importantly, there are clear continuities leading back to the
‘mobility revolution’ of the 19th century. Most notably, private recruitment brokers remain critical in a
wide range of contexts (Lindquist, Xiang, and Yeoh 2012).
4 This resonates, though often largely implicitly, with the growing interest in transnationalism and border
studies and a move toward a more dynamic, complex and open-​ended form of analysis than conven-
tional notions of social structure and systems can capture. Furthermore, the rise of mobility studies, nota-
bly through the efforts of John Urry and the journal Mobilities, has also been influenced by the general
infrastructural turn. In contrast to mobility studies, however, which is concerned with mobility broadly
as its subject matter –​ranging from mundane neighbourhood strolls to spectacular space exploration –​
we more narrowly attempt to deepen our understanding of ‘migration’ as conventionally conceived by
bringing in an infrastructural perspective.

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12
THE CULTURAL AND
ECONOMIC LOGICS
OF MIGRATION
Jamie Coates

Introduction
The field of migration studies has generally targeted the question of why people move, what
happens when they move, and how should a ‘host’ state or society accommodate new arrivals.
These logics of migration address the motivations of migration and its potential consequences,
important issues in how we might understand patterns of human mobility both past and pre-
sent. Historically, the models used to explain the motivations for movement have largely been
explained in economic terms (see Cole and Rigg, this volume, Chapter 16). However, more
recent scholarship, particularly from ethnographers, has made compelling arguments for the
sociocultural dynamics that shape migrant flows. We might say that established understandings
of migration theory today recognise both sociocultural and economic factors that shape human
mobility, but these two factors are still often treated as separate spheres of logic or separate scales
of analysis. The puzzle of migration, however, also serves as a useful case study for problematis-
ing simplistic distinctions of economics and culture. In particular, the case of migration in Asia
challenges this kind of simplistic dichotomy. Focusing on the case of Chinese migration in Asia,
this chapter argues that mobility and the economy are deeply imprecated within cultural imagi-
naries of desirable lifestyles and personhood today.
Before examining recent developments in Asia that challenge a simple distinction between
economic and cultural logics of migration, it is important to understand how respective under-
standings of culture and economics have influenced the development of migration studies.
Contemporary understandings of the ‘economic’ and ‘cultural’ are both theoretical inventions
developed to research social life. They have a history that traces back to the 19th century,
whereby the economic came to stand for objective conditions of human activity, and the cul-
tural as its subjective counterpart. The 19th-​century anthropologist Sir E.B. Tylor is generally
credited with the definition of culture that is used today (Fischer 2012). In Tylor’s definition,
culture was synonymous with any shared system of meaning and usually signified a society or
civilisation. He defined it as:

that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and
any other capabilities and habits acquired by man [sic] as a member of society
(Tylor 1920: 19)

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The cultural & economic logics of migration

Prior to Tylor’s influential definition, culture was perceived as the highest achievements of a
particular aesthetic practice, such as opera or painting, rather than a shared system of meanings
that people used to negotiated their lives. In contrast, the word ‘economics’ in English comes
from the Greek term ‘oikonomia’ which referred to the management of household affairs (Hann
and Hart 2011). Somewhat ironically, its etymology is closely related to many of the everyday
aspects of life that we associate with the term ‘culture’ today. At the time, the oikonomia was
seen as domestic, and distinct from the market. However, the oikonomia’s pragmatic connota-
tions eventually led it to inspire utilitarian understandings of human behaviour. In particular,
under the influence of 19th-​century political-​economists such as Marshall and Marx (Marshall
1890; Marx 1976), the pragmatic concerns of household affairs were expanded as a metaphor
for understanding wider objective social processes. Neoclassical economics, for example, pos-
ited that individual actors work towards maximising their own personal utility as an objective
condition of human behaviour. In contrast, Marxist political economy focused on how relations
of production and labour were the objective conditions that constituted social inequality. In
this way, whether Marxist or neoclassical, understandings of economics were seen as somehow
separate from meaning-​based relations and consequently more objective.

How the economic and cultural logics of migration were separated

The dichotomy between culture and economics became highly influential within research
on migration. Scholarly interest in migration first developed in the ‘state sciences’ of the 19th
century, such as geography, political-​economy and various subfields of early sociology (Harzig,
Hoerder, and Gabaccia 2009).These disciplines largely conducted their research in societies that
received migrants, developing their analyses as a response to the ‘social problem’ of mass migra-
tion across the Atlantic, within Europe, and to a lesser extent within the colonial regimes of Asia
and Africa (ibid: 54). Managing populations, in terms of labour, health, and productivity, were
the primary goals of these disciplines, and flows of migrants were usually analysed on a large
scale using a cartographic and demographic approach. As scientists, researchers posited migrants
as units of analysis that at best filled gaps within labour markets, or at worst posed threats to
population health. Migrants, as people, were of little interest to early migration researchers, but
rather researchers focused on the objective conditions that would potentially make them more
manageable.
For example, the cartographer Ernst Georg Ravenstein is generally credited with develop-
ing some of the first ‘laws’ of migration in the 1880s (Ravenstein 1885). Faced with an influx
of labour migrants into industrial centres in the United Kingdom, Ravenstein developed a set
of statistical rules of migration that would aid the British government in managing mobile
populations (Ravenstein 1885). Ravenstein saw economic logics as the most objective influ-
ence within migration, as he states: ‘It does not admit of doubt the call for labour in our centres
of industry and commerce is the prime cause of those currents of migration’ (1885: 198). The
historic movement of large numbers of people into Britain’s urban centres was a crucial part
of industrialisation, which employed and attracted migrants as new sources of labour. In this
sense, Ravenstein’s statement may seem apt at first glance. However, if we unpack his statement
as an explanation for why migrants move, circular logics become apparent. Who are the agents
in Ravenstein’s summation? Who is calling for labour, and does this ‘call’ explain why people
move? If we interpret Ravenstein’s use of the term ‘call’ as ‘need’ it may simply suggest that a
gap in the market attracted labour. However, such an explanation relies heavily on hidden actors,
and puts little consideration into the human qualities of economics. It does not explain how
people come to know about demands for labour in new destinations, or how they decide where

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Jamie Coates

they will move. More abstractly, it also forgets that economies are made up of people, who act
in culturally informed and occasionally irrational ways.
In scholarly circles, the broad understanding of the cultural and economic as potentially
separate phenomena, and consequently separate spheres of analysis, largely shaped the major
theories of migration in the 20th century (Brettell and Hollifield 2000; Bodvarsson and Berg
2009; Gupta and Omoniyi 2012). Neoclassical economic theories of labour migration have
been particularly influential, and in many senses framed the terms of the debate. From a neoclas-
sical perspective, people seek to maximise their gains by working in markets with the highest
wages or the best chance of employment. Hicks (1932) and Lewis (1954) originally connected
this perspective to the question of migration and labour distribution. From this basic premise,
migration theories focused on how migrants perceive the costs and benefits of migration. For
example, theorists extended the neoclassical model to consider how gains in human capital,
interpreted as economically valuable skills such as education, were also included in migrants’
economic logics (Sjaadstad 1962). Push–​pull theories of migration followed a similar approach,
where migrants pursued utilitarian goals within a context of push–​pull dynamics produced by
differences in economic, political and legal conditions (Lee 1966). In more critical leftist circles,
world systems theory explained how migration patterns were distributed along core, periphery
and semi-​periphery destinations. Core destinations, largely made up of nations rich in capital
and controlling the means of production, were thought to attract migrants from poorer nations
on the periphery and semi-​periphery (Wallerstein 1974). Viewing flows of capital as the pri-
mary way in which movement is channelled globally, world systems theory, much like neoclas-
sical approaches, saw economic conditions as largely determining movement (see for example
Cervantes-​Rodriguez, Grosfoguel, and Mielants 2008).
The social and cultural dimensions of migration developed in parallel to economic theories,
and were heavily influenced by the experiences of the United States. After a massive influx of
migration to the United States, the Chicago school of sociology started addressing the sociocul-
tural aspects of migration in the early-​20th century. Focusing on migrant communities within
North America, the Chicago school rarely questioned theories as to why migrants moved, but
rather focused on what happened to them once they were living in a new place. This emphasis
is exemplified in their efforts to develop a theory of ‘assimilation’ (Park and Burgess 1921; Park
1930; Park 1950). In the early-​20th century in the US, public concerns about immigration
had reached a political breaking point, and an emergency bill was enacted that limited the
number of migrants on a nation-​based quota system (Higham 2002). Migrants were seen as a
‘social problem’, and the Chicago school attended to this concern through questions of social
incorporation and cultural competency analysed on a local scale. As Robert E Park and Ervine
Burgess originally described it, this local problem was seen to come from questions of how one
might ‘establish and maintain a political order in a community that has no common culture’
(1921: 734).
The Chicago school’s emphasis on local communities enabled a compromise between
researchers of sociocultural phenomena and economics. Culture came to stand for the local
concerns of host societies, whereas the economic stood for the wider objective dynamics that
framed patterns of movement. However, this compromise also suggested blind-​spots within
the social sciences. The ways in which culture was perceived as local, tended to emphasise the
solidarity of groups. Cultures were treated as bounded organic wholes, whose parts were already
functionally integrated. Such a conceptualisation overlooked the fact that the boundaries of a
‘culture’ or community are difficult to determine, and that in many ways pre-​established mem-
bers of a group may not be, or feel, integrated. On an ethical note, it also put the responsibility of
assimilation on newcomers because the local was already assumed to be functionally assimilated.

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More generally, the framing of culture as local, and consequently particular, also reified the ‘uni-
versal’ and objective image of economics.

Globalising cultures of migration

The last few decades of the 20th century saw a shift away from the relegation of the social
and the cultural to a local scale. Faced with increasingly visible patterns of mobility around
the world (see Lin and Gleiss, this volume, Chapter 10), scholars, particularly ethnographers,
started to attend to the cultural dynamics of migration across borders. An increased focus on
transnationalism (Glick Schiller, Basch and Blanc 1993) and ‘cultures of migration’ (Cohen and
Sirkeci 2011; Massey et al. 1993) started to posit sociocultural dynamics as something beyond
the concern of local incorporation. Working in the places migrants were leaving, or in multiple
sites along migration flows, these scholars challenged the relegation of culture to the local, and
they challenged the ways in which national borders were treated as ‘natural’ boundaries (Basch,
Glick-​Schiller and Szanton Blanc 1993). While the contributions of these scholars cannot be
understated, there were still limitations to their work. Their major focus was on the ways flows
of migration, once established, develop new cultural meanings and social dynamics. At times this
focus on pre-​established migration patterns left the original split between the economic and
cultural logics of migration untouched. Economic justifications for the original reasons why
migrant groups historically moved were implicitly left unquestioned, at times implying that
economic logics come before the cultural.
These approaches tend to emphasise cultures of migration as historically new, raising the
question as to when and how a culture of migration is established. Is there a primordial stage
of migration, largely determined by non-​cultural dynamics (often assumed to be economic)
that precedes the sociocultural dynamics of migration? Some scholars have argued that Asia
entered the ‘age of migration’ in the second half of the 20th century after Europe had already
undergone several centuries of migration (Castles and Miller 2003; Haines, Yamanaka and
Yamashita 2012). Facilitated by decolonisation, economic growth, and new technologies,
Asia’s ‘age of migration’ was seen as signifying a new era of globalisation. However, recent
work by historians has shown that while different, Asia has had an equally long, if not longer,
history of mobility (Lucassen, Lucassen and Manning 2010; McDonald 2014; Kuhn 2008;
see Amrith, this volume, Chapter 1).
The history of migration in and out of China is a particular case in point. As East Asia’s
largest nation-​state, the area we recognise as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) today
has left a sizeable footprint on the ways migration in Asia is imagined (see Ong and Nonini
1997). Historically, emigrants from China established communities throughout Southeast and
Northeast Asia, contributing to the formation of new states and communities, as in the case
of Singapore, and distributing networks and enclaves of people who identified as Chinese
throughout the region (see van Dongen and Liu, this volume, Chapter 2). In 2009 it was esti-
mated that roughly 40 million people of Chinese ethnic identity were living outside China, of
which 75 per cent lived in Asia (Li and Li 2013). Several attempts have been made to date the
historic movements of the people that grew to become this Chinese diaspora. However, it is
generally agreed that historical records of travel from China date back at least as far as the 12th
century (Tan 2013). From merchant voyages to labour migration in the south, to religious and
artistic sojourns in the north, the reasons for travelling overseas were varied, albeit with a strong
emphasis on establishing trade networks throughout Asia. These economic activities filtered
through kinship networks and households, establishing enclaves in various parts of Southeast
Asia that would eventually draw wider social networks out of China.

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Historically, the movements of Chinese people have also been circulatory, rather than
emigration-​immigration two-​directional flows. Some 20  million sojourners are estimated to
have travelled back and forth between China and Southeast Asia between the 1700s and 1900.
Distinctly transnational rather than emigrant settlers, many Chinese sojourners decided to stay
in the Southeast for more than economic reasons. Today some 55 per cent of the overseas
Chinese population is estimated to live in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand. While
the origins of these networks may seem to have solely developed out of economic interests,
romantic and heroic portrayals of China’s closest frontier, ‘the south seas’ (Nanyang/​nanhai),
have also been noted as influencing migrants’ decisions to ‘adventure’ south (Bernards 2015;
Wang 1997). Other phenomena also influenced people’s decision to stay. For example, political
conflict in China, inter-​ethnic marriage, and positions of power within colonial regimes in the
South eventually encouraged many Chinese to stay. These historical accounts of international
movement suggest that Chinese migration has historically been as much a transnational culture
of migration as an emigration-​immigration process shaped by economic forces.

Personhood, mobility and the blurring of cultural and

economic logics in China
In the accelerating and intensifying mobilities of Asia today, the line between cultural and
economic logics is increasingly blurred. Moreover, the ways in which migration and migrants
are valued, and the efforts to manage this valuation, shape the decisions of individuals. Most
especially, the cultural and economic logics of migration increasingly influence perceptions
of personhood in Asia. Personhood can be understood as the qualities attributed to being a
person, differing across time, space and cultures (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001). It is a form
of imagination that defines what makes a ‘person’ in a given context and the ways that person
is valued. From a personhood perspective, what defines a ‘person’ is a product of wider rela-
tions and processes than individuals themselves. In other words, it is cultural. In Asia today, the
capacity to be mobile is increasingly framed as a valuable trait. It is seen as a quality that signi-
fies citizens who are able to respond to the vicissitudes of global capitalism. In this sense, the
economic frameworks used to attribute value to persons in Asia today is inevitably and deeply
cultural. Countries such as China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia increas-
ingly describe desirable persons as cosmopolitan elites, mobile professionals, global talents, flex-
ible labourers, transnational entrepreneurs and international students. This positive framing of
mobile subjects forms a feedback loop, influencing the logics of why people move and where.
Fearing competition in the global markets of today, migrants’ economic imperatives are increas-
ingly steeped in cultural anxieties and expectations.
China’s drive to ‘join tracks with the world’ (yu shijie jiegui) from the 1980s is perhaps the
most explicit example of how the cultural and economic logics of migration reshaped the
social valuation of persons at the end of the 20th century. Indeed, mobility was a cornerstone
of China’s cultural and economic policy framework in the reform era (Nyiri 2010) and the
opening of China resulted in what has been popularly called ‘leaving the country fever’ (chugu-
ore). From 1985, when passports were made available to Chinese citizens, to 2009, the overseas
Chinese population doubled, with roughly 10 million Chinese emigrating from the PRC (Li
and Li 2013). Over this period an increasing trend towards emigration out of the PRC to North
America, Australasia, and Europe also shifted the proportions and dynamics of ethnic Chinese
communities around the world. Within Asia, new movements took on different pathways with
significant growth in countries that historically had small Chinese populations, such as Japan
(Liu-​Farrer 2011; Pieke 2007; Tajima 2003). The positive value attached to migration in China

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has not only influenced emigration, but also patterns of domestic migration. Within China the
number of seasonal migrations between rural and urban centres has almost rivalled the number
of international migrants as a whole. In 2004, for example, it was estimated that there were
126 million internal migrants in China, while there was a total of 200 million international
migrants globally (Murphy 2008). These human movements, both international and domestic,
signified widespread social changes in how Chinese people imagined their place in the world.
The intersection of these two drives has resulted in a process where, as Julie Chu suggests,
‘mobility is a privileged qualisign of modern selves’ among everyday Chinese people (Chu
2010: 63). Borrowing from Piercian semiotics, Chu uses the term qualisign to show how move-
ment, as a quality, has come to signify success, modernity and cosmopolitanism for those who
manage to leave the country. For example, she details how those left behind in a Fujian village
feel anxieties and pressures due to their lack of migration (Chu 2006), showing how mobility
as a qualisign is not only important to those who move, but also to those who are unable to do
so. Even for those who do not move, the accumulation of commodities that signify mobility is
important to their sense of self. As Chu shows, the accumulation of remittances and gifts also
embody Chinese dreams for mobility when stuck at home (2010). Case studies such as this sug-
gest that mobility has come to frame the cultural and economic logics of China in general, and
reshaped what defines positively valued personhood in Chinese cultural spheres.
Proportionally, only a small number of Chinese citizens have managed to emigrate to other
countries. In 2013, it was estimated that only 0.61 per cent of China’s population were living
outside the PRC (IOM 2015). However, as a normative perception emigration is valued posi-
tively (Coates 2013). Entrepreneurs and students who went abroad have become heroes in offi-
cial and popular discourse, and governments have attempted to kindle the positive associations
Chinese citizens have with emigration and study abroad through official policies (see Ho and
Lim, this volume, Chapter 6; Nyiri 2010). This is not merely a coincidental product of reform
era social dynamics, but has been an explicit objective within Chinese government rhetoric.
The ongoing efforts to frame overseas study as patriotic, and to foster patriotism among those
overseas, dates back to the 1990s and early 2000s (Xiang 2003; Fong 2004; Nyiri 2001). For
example, in 1992 government directives stated that overseas study policy should ‘support study
abroad, promote return, [uphold] freedom of movement’ and ‘promote overseas individuals to
serve the country’ (Nyiri 2001: 44). These directives continue today. Just recently, government
documents were circulated among China’s various cultural missions abroad, stating that overseas
institutions should work to, ‘assemble the broad numbers of students abroad as a positive patri-
otic energy’ (Buckley 2015).
The official rhetoric that encouraged educational and entrepreneurial migration is reflected
in the logics of those who have moved, albeit with more reflective nuance than governmental
discourse. For example,Vanessa Fong’s work on young aspiring migrants from Liaoning revealed
that a sense of China’s ‘backwardness’ (luohou), combined with a desire to be recognised as
modern cosmopolitan people, shaped the cultural and economic logics of those hoping to leave
the country (Fong 2004; Fong 2011).Viewing their decision to leave as both filial and reflexive,
Fong shows how economic and cultural logics of migration are imprecated with one another
under contemporary imaginaries surrounding personhood in China today.Their choice of des-
tination is also involved in this process. Aspiring to become modern global subjects, Fong’s
interlocutors spoke more of going to a ‘developed country’ in the abstract, than choosing a
particular destination (Fong 2011).
Mobility as a qualisign of the modern self not only influences people’s decision to go over-
seas but also many of the reasons for internal mobility in China today. Despite the dominance
of economic explanations of internal migration in China, research has shown that desires to

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overcome stereotypes of ‘backwardness’ and gender hierarchies in rural areas feed into the rea-
sons given by rural-​to-​urban migrants (Jacka and Gaetano 2004; Jacka 2014). For example, in a
1999 survey conducted by Knight, Song and Jia, over half of the rural-​to-​urban migrant women
interviewed stated that ‘more experience in life’ was their primary reason for moving to the city
(1999, cited in Jacka and Gaetano 2004: 6). More recently, ethnographic work has shown how
migrant women challenge images of backwardness and construct themselves as modern subjects
through internal migration (Gaetano 2015; Jacka 2014; Zheng 2011). For example, in Tiantian
Zheng’s research on migrant women in Dalian in Northern China, women’s performance of
gender co-​opts symbols of mobility as a means to overcome stereotypes of their ‘earthy’ (tu)
rural backgrounds (2011). From their choice to move, to their choice to emulate fashions from
Korea and Japan, these women utilise signs of mobility to perform a modern, cosmopolitan
gendered self.
While the motivation to move as a means to becoming a modern subject may be shared
between those who leave the countryside, and those who leave China, these two forms of
mobility are not valued equally. The ‘floating population’ of internal migrants, although the
backbone of China’s recent economic success, have been treated with suspicion, attacked, and
spawned discourses that perceive these groups as subhuman in some cases (Jacka 2014). Debates
around human mobility have been coupled with discussions of what constitutes a good citi-
zen, exemplified by campaigns to raise the ‘human quality’ (suzhi) of the Chinese population
(Anagnost 2004; Jacka 2009; Kipnis 2006).
Through the rhetoric of suzhi, China’s floating population has been framed as lower in qual-
ity than urban populations. Mobility has featured as a keystone within these debates, whereby to
some rural-​to-​urban migration signifies a means to improve the ‘quality’ of China’s population,
and to others these mobilities pose a threat to the ‘quality’ of urban people. In contrast, moving
overseas for study or business is seen as a means to improve one’s suzhi. The combination of
mobility as a qualisign of the modern subject with discourses of ‘human quality’ in China sug-
gest the pivotal role migration plays in the contemporary ideas of valued personhood that feed
into the cultural and economic logics of those who move.
These wider cultural imaginaries inform why the desire to move is so great among many
Chinese people, with emigration framed as the most valued form of movement.Young Chinese
desires for the developed world have ensured that America is the largest recipient. For example,
in 2015 over 300,000 Chinese students arrived in the United States, showing a 10 per cent
increase from the previous year, and exponential growth over the past five years (Open Doors
2015). At the same time, Chinese migration within Asia has also taken on new patterns in the
reform era. Chinese migration to Japan is a particular case in point when thinking about how
the new dreams of mobility in reform era China have shaped migratory patterns. Starting from
small numbers of migrants who had moved to Japan during its imperialist expansion into China,
the Chinese population in Japan has increased ten-​fold since 1985 (MOJ 2015). Being China’s
closest identifiable symbol of modernity in the 1980s and 1990s, Japan attracted migrants who
often had cultural, educational and money-​making aspirations. Under a slogan of internation-
alisation (kokusaika) from the 1980s, Japan introduced a series of policies to attract and cultivate
foreign students, labour and talent. Coupled with a strategically designed Japanese visa system
that permitted long working hours while studying, educational migration became a proxy for
labour migration in Japan in the 1990s (Liu-​Farrer 2011).
While the logics of this migratory flow may seem primarily economic, according to the
testimonies of Chinese migrants in Japan, there are fewer contradictions between everyday eco-
nomic and cultural logics than there may seem (Coates 2013).These purportedly separate logics
were combined into a variety of narratives that demonstrate the blurring of the economic and

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cultural in the everyday. Some migrants justify the move to Japan through ideas of the ‘good
life’ and how one has to be successful to be valued as a person (Coates, forthcoming). Others
moved as a response to family desires and pressures after failing to get into university in China
(Liu-​Farrer 2014). And much like rural-​to-​urban migrants in China, some desired to develop
their cosmopolitan sensibilities (Lai 2015). Japan’s status as a popular culture hub in East Asia
is also shaping the desires of young Chinese who wish to work in cultural industries abroad.
It is increasingly common to meet Chinese photographers, visual artists, musicians and fashion
designers on the streets of Tokyo, pursuing cosmopolitan lifestyles found in Japan.

What are the logics of migration?

According to Martijn Konings, the image of the economy as objective conceals the central
meanings that the ‘economy’ holds within our world. As he states, it is important to recognise
that, ‘morality, faith, power, and emotion, the distinctive qualities of human association, are inte-
riorised into the logic of the economy’ (Konings 2015: 11).This critique applies to understand-
ings of the cultural and economic logics of migration, as much as it does to understandings of
the economy in a philosophical sense. While the economic and the cultural were initially puri-
fied of one another in early theories of migration, today this purified state is no longer tenable.
As explained, some have tried to reconnect these divergent fields through periodisation, where
the economic precedes the cultural; however, this compromise also fits poorly with the ways in
which migration has developed historically and intensified in recent years.
Developments at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st warrant a recon-
ceptualisation of how we understand the drive for migration with the realisation that people’s
desires to move are simultaneously cultural and economic. As I have shown, it is desirable to be
considered mobile in China today, and this desire fuels people’s decisions to move. This cultural
trend has ensured that the line between economic aspirations and other cultural ambitions is
increasingly blurred, with migration acting as both a practice and an important signifier that
connects the two. This dynamic extends beyond the field of migration to encapsulate other
forms of mobility that could not be covered within this chapter. Briefly, however, it is worth
noting that the capacity to engage in other forms of mobility, such as tourism, is also part of
everyday notions of personal success in China (Nyiri 2006). Similarly, the capacity to live multi-​
nodal lifestyles is seen as desirable, whether as transnational elites (Osburg 2013) or as lifestyle
migrants who have businesses in Beijing and Shanghai with the capacity to retreat to mountain
villages in Yunnan (Wong 2013).
While I have focused on the case of Chinese migration for the purposes of this chapter, it
should be noted that these trends do not apply to China alone. In terms of Japanese emigration,
the relationship between lifestyle and economic aspirations are increasingly complicated. Today,
Japanese working holiday visa workers seek cosmopolitan lifestyles across the world, despite the
economic disadvantages that often come with this travel (Kawashima 2014). Similarly, Japanese
retirees seeking relaxed lifestyles are increasingly turning to Southeast Asia as lifestyle migrants
(Ono 2015). Pop culture flows from Hong Kong, Korea and Japan are also ensuring that
Northeast Asia is a desirable location for young people, who aspire to travel there for cultural,
rather than solely economic reasons (Otmazgin 2008). And so the cultural and economic logics
of migration are increasingly blurred across Asia, as much as they are in China.
Within this context, how might we understand the logics of migrants? Lessons from the
neoclassical premise that individuals seek to maximise their utility are useful in thinking
through why individuals choose to behave in a certain way. However, rather than perceiving
these individuals as ‘rational actors’ it would be more pertinent to say that they are actors with

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‘rationales’. These rationales emerge from cultural contexts, and migrants behave strategically
in accordance with the practical logics and values developed over their own personal histories
(Bourdieu 1990).They seek employment and education in new locations because those endeav-
ours are valued in their places of origin. They choose particular destinations because of the val-
ues ascribed to those locations, whether a nearby city or another country. They find particular
opportunities and weigh up their worth based on what those opportunities might mean for
themselves, their families, or their communities.
These insights resonate with certain economic theories as much as sociological ones. As the
economists Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Greenwald highlight in their critique of free market
economic models, information is an unevenly distributed resource that deeply impacts on the
capacity for people to make economic decisions (Stiglitz and Greenwald 1986). There is no
invisible hand to the market, but rather market dynamics emerge from networks of economic
actors with differing levels of information. From this insight we can extrapolate that economic
rationales, based on imperfect knowledge, are historically, geographically, socially and culturally
contingent. More concretely, when considering migrants’ reliance on imperfect knowledge of
labour markets and economic opportunity, we must question whether their perceptions of ‘the
economy’ and the reasons for why they move are reflective of economic conditions. Rather, as
some research within the neoclassical school suggests, migrants act on expected economic returns
(Bauer and Zimmerman 1999; Massey et al. 1993).
From these standpoints, it is more useful to understand economic logics as a form of cultural
imagination. Imagination is the capacity to think beyond one’s own circumstances in creative
and associative ways (Anderson 1991; Castoriadis 1998). Economic logics are never simply
about economic conditions. Rather, they allow people to think through hopes and desires in
tangible ways.The desire to be accepted, attractive to others, or to be a cosmopolitan consumer,
are some of the ways the differences between economic, personal and cultural logics are difficult
to determine in everyday life. This is particularly the case in China. Consequently, rather than
treating economic and cultural logics as separate phenomena, it is more useful to approach the
economic logics and cultural aspirations of migrants as embedded within an ongoing culture of
migration where meanings and contingencies shape their decisions to move and where.

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13
INTERNAL AND
INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION
Separate or integrated systems?

Ronald Skeldon

Background
Internal and international migrations have become virtually two separate fields of inquiry.A bib-
liographic analysis has revealed that only 4 per cent of papers focusing on international migra-
tion make any reference to papers on internal migration (Nestorowicz and Anacka 2015). The
same source shows that those focusing on internal migration are a little more aware of papers
on international migration, with some 25 per cent of papers on internal migration making
reference to papers on international migration. Despite parallels in the theoretical approaches
to their analyses, discussions of movements within a state (internal migration) have largely been
treated as separate from movements from one state to another (international migration). The
discussions of the former have revolved around the redistribution of population within a coun-
try and, often, those movements associated with the process of urbanisation. The discussions of
the latter have come to preoccupy policy makers, politicians, the public and scholars in Asia
and around the world to the extent that the word ‘migration’ has come to mean ‘international
migration’. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of those who migrate in the world do
so within the boundaries of their own country. United Nations estimates placed the number
of international migrants in the world in 2015 at around 244 million (UN 2015) against a very
conservative and minimum estimate for the number of internal migrants at 740 million around
2010 (UNDP 2009). However, applying different definitions of ‘a migrant’ can greatly increase
both these estimates and, particularly, the number of internal migrants. For example, in 2001,
the Indian census recorded some 307 million Indians having moved from a previous place of
residence (Abbas and Varma 2014) and, in China, some 229.9 million rural migrant workers
alone were recorded in 2009 (ILO n.d.). Hence, and considering India’s demographic growth
from 2001 to 2011, taking only the two countries of India and China around 2010 one could
easily come up with estimates in excess of 550 million internal migrants. A global figure of 740
million internal migrants in 2010 seems very conservative indeed. If we are indeed in an ‘age of
migration’ (Castles, De Haas and Miller 2014), it is an age of internal migration.
The central question to be addressed in this chapter, however, is whether linkages exist
between the internal and international migrations across Asia. The fundamental difficulty in
establishing any such linkages lies in the lack of sufficient data to demonstrate the case one
way or the other. In fact, one of the reasons for a separation of studies on internal from those

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on international migration revolved round the different data sources used: analysts of internal
migration used mainly census or large-​scale national surveys, while those studying international
migration used continuous immigration records. However, with census data being increasingly
used by those studying international migration, too, the two migrations are perhaps being
drawn closer together. Nevertheless, herein lie two major weaknesses. First, national population
censuses and most large-​scale surveys record only country of birth or last residence and not the
specific place of origin, either by small geographic place or by urban or rural sector. Second,
rarely are more than the origin, however defined, and the current destination, or place of pre-
sent registration, recorded. To establish that a person has moved more than once, either initially
internally from one place to another place in country A before moving to country B, or initially
internationally from country A to country B before moving to another destination in country
B, information on at least two previous places of residence is required. The situation becomes
yet more complicated if return migration to country of origin occurs. Ideally, a complete longi-
tudinal, life-​history approach is required to establish such linkages but such information is rarely
available for Asia or elsewhere. Even when available, generally the data are from small samples or
from case studies from which broad generalisations are problematic. Hence, this review can only
be indicative, advancing a number of hypotheses that might guide future research. It builds upon
previous work with which this author was involved (Skeldon 2006; King and Skeldon 2010),
draws on the essays in DeWind and Holdaway (2008) and pays tribute to one of the last papers
written by my colleague, Graeme Hugo (2016). Following on from the call in a collection of
essays on closing the gap between internal and international migration in Asia, this chapter
seeks to continue the conceptual exploration of the linkages in the search for a more integrated
approach to human migration (Hickey and Yeoh 2016).

The significance or otherwise of international borders

If one is arguing that international and internal migration systems can be linked, the assump-
tion is that differences exist between the two systems. At the most basic level of discussion,
movements within a state differ from those from one state to another to the extent that the
destinations of the latter are legally separate units. Hence, the majority of international migrants
are likely to be citizens of their state of origin and different from that of the host populations.
The rights of citizens have precedence over the rights of immigrants which, depending upon
the country, may place the migrants in positions of increased vulnerability. Internal migrants
are moving within the one jurisdiction and hence should have all the rights of citizens in des-
tination areas even if such rights might not be extended to all minority groups. Some states
also erect legal barriers to internal movements, too, as in the case of China through its hukou
(household registration) system, which during Maoist times determined that residents of any
area could only access basic essentials, particularly grain, in their place of registration. With the
gradual marketisation of most essential goods following the reforms implemented from 1979,
the hukou system as an economic means to limit migration is no longer effective, although the
restrictions on access to other services such as health, housing and education in the destinations
persist to varying degrees.
Hence, internal migrations are different from international migrations. Yet, even here some
qualification is required and differences can be ‘fuzzy’, particularly where boundaries have
recently been introduced. For example, the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1989 created,
at the stroke of a pen, international migrants from internal migrants. Those who had moved
from Soviet Central Asia as internal migrants within the Soviet Union became international
migrants from, for example, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan or Tajikistan to the Russian Federation.

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Also, the later international migration from these countries often built upon previous networks
of internal migration to the extent that the movements have become significant for both ori-
gins and destinations, with perhaps 500,000 migrant workers from Tajikistan alone in Russia,
although the exact number is impossible to calculate because of the number of those in an
irregular situation, as well as seasonal fluctuations.
Cases of ‘fuzziness’ also exist where an international border bisects an integrated eco-
nomic unit. For example, the city-​state of Singapore is the centre of a much larger metro-
politan area that incorporates parts of Johor State in the neighbouring country of Malaysia
as well as adjacent islands that belong to Indonesia. It is not just the activities of an integrated
Singapore production base that is spread across countries but thousands of workers travel to and
from Singapore to workplaces across the border. Similarly, the economic base of the Special
Administrative Region of Hong Kong has expanded well into China. In 2011, it was estimated
that 21,500 workers lived in Hong Kong but worked in China and 27,000 lived in China and
worked in Hong Kong (BFRC 2014). In total, some 532,600 persons living in Hong Kong
made a frequent trip to China, as defined by at least one trip per week, with some 170,000 peo-
ple living in China visiting Hong Kong. Both these flows to Hong Kong and Singapore have
closer parallels with daily and weekly commuting to Tokyo, London or New York even if they
cross some type of internationally recognised boundary: international in the case of Singapore
and between a special administrative region and the rest of China in the case of Hong Kong.
This latter boundary exemplifies many of the difficulties in clearly demarcating an internal from
an international migration, which is also shown in the movements from the island of Taiwan
to China, where migrants are supposed to enter China with a ‘Home Visit Permit’ (hui xiang
zheng). Hence, boundaries can be fluid and, over the long sweep of human history, appear and
disappear as political units wax and wane as has been so well shown for Europe (Davies 2011)
and Southeast Asia (Hugo 2016).
It is not just where boundaries have recently or not so recently been introduced that dif-
ferences between internal and international migrations can become indistinct. In areas more
distant from lowland centres of power in Asia, such as the tangled mountainous eastern exten-
sion of the Himalaya into Southeast Asia, the boundaries between states are highly porous.
Before the modern era, states were separated by areas of relative influence rather than by clearly
demarcated lines on the ground, and groups migrated within culturally similar territories that
today would cross modern state boundaries in the search for land within systems of shifting
agriculture. Other groups passed through these territories, perhaps fleeing more powerful low-
land armies (Scott 2009) or, more likely, seeking ever changing alliances with cognate groups
(Mazard 2014). The extension of the modern Asian state has sought to stabilise these popula-
tions and incorporate them into state structures in an attempt to create citizens from previous
fluid allegiances. What used to be internal migrations within vaguely defined and contested
territory have become inconvenient international movements that need to be controlled and
stabilised in settled agriculture.
Such movements have echoes in the volumes of irregular migration in parts of Asia today as
groups with traditional ties cross borders to neighbouring countries. Many of the movements
from Sumatra in Indonesia to peninsular Malaysia, within the island of Borneo from Indonesia
to East Malaysia, from Lao PDR into northeastern Thailand and of minorities from Myanmar
into Thailand all fall into this category. Not all irregular migrants to these destinations involve
people capitalising upon traditional linkages but it is difficult to separate out subgroups in these
flows. However, the total number of migrants in an irregular situation in Southeast Asia is sig-
nificant. For example, in 2006, it was estimated that there were between 600,000 and 700,000
irregular migrant workers in Malaysia, the vast majority from Indonesia (Hugo 2007; Huguet

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2013) and in 2013, there were almost 1.6 million irregular workers from Myanmar, Lao PDR
and Cambodia in Thailand (Huguet 2014). The crossing of irregular migrants might appear to
have parallels with internal migrants in that the movers do not pass through formal border pro-
cedures but often simply walk across the border or take a ferry, but the consequences of being
in an illegal state place them in a more vulnerable situation. Hence, differences between internal
and international migrations can become blurred.

Rural and urban destinations and origins of international migration

Perhaps the ‘classic’ view of a linkage between internal and international migration would be a
migration in ‘steps’, with an initial migration out of the rural sector towards a large city, either
directly or through intermediate points, and then from there moving on overseas to an interna-
tional destination. The father of modern migration studies, Ravenstein, argued in the second of
his famous ‘laws of migration’ that, ‘migration proceeds step by step’ (Ravenstein 1885). These
steps could be interpreted in two ways: a single person moving several times up an urban hierar-
chy from village through small town to city; or one group of migrants moving up from a village
to a small town while those born in that small town move up to a larger town, and so on. This
latter migration might be better termed ‘stage migration’ or a migration in stages rather than
steps.While Ravenstein applied his laws only to internal migration, international migration can
be added to incorporate a higher level of destinations.
A step in migration allowing a sojourn in a large city may allow a migrant to accumulate
the necessary capital to be able to purchase the visas, health certificates and certificates of no-​
criminal conviction and tickets for the onward travel. As important, the internal migrant in the
city can make contact with groups that already have contacts overseas that can help facilitate the
further international migration. Such patterns have been observed elsewhere (see for example
Sassen 1988) but the numbers of migrants who follow this path are impossible to derive from
existing sources, as emphasised above.
Nevertheless, it can be hypothesised that these step migrants, from villages through cities to
international destinations, may make up a minority of those who move internationally, or at least
would only be a significant component of the international flows for a relatively short period.
Two factors need consideration in this argument. First, the majority of international migrants
go to urban centres in destination areas and, second, whether migrants of rural origin have to
go through an urban centre in their country of origin before moving internationally. It does
seem clear that the principal destinations of international migrants tend to be the cities in the
host countries. For example, the proportion of the foreign-​born in Canada in 2011 was 21 per
cent, while in Toronto and Montreal the urban populations were respectively 49 and 33 per cent
foreign-​born. In the United States, with 12.7 per cent of its population foreign-​born in 2010,
the figures for New York and Los Angeles were 36.8 and 35.6 per cent respectively (IOM 2015).
Even in countries where international migration is not so pronounced, the same bias emerges.
The proportions of foreign-​born in Japan and Korea in 2010 and 2012 respectively were 1.3 and
2.8 per cent, while the proportions of foreign-​born in Tokyo and Seoul were 2.4 and 4.0 per
cent. This does not mean that concentrations of foreign populations in rural sectors do not exist,
but that the majority of international migrants do go to urban destinations. Most of these inter-
national migrants will be among the better prepared rather than those of rural origin who have
neither the physical nor the social capital to reach such urban destinations.
Second, and the above said, migrants from rural origins do participate in international flows
and examples of these will be raised in more detail below. However, more conceptually, it can be
argued that in these cases direct migration from the rural sector to an international destination

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will be a more likely outcome than a step through a city in the country of origin. Recruitment
of less-​skilled labour is likely to be carried out directly in villages through agents and, although
the migrants may transit through large cities to go overseas, they are unlikely to spend any great
amount of time working there. However, in cases where a rural migrant finds his or her way to
a regional or national capital to work for a time before deciding to move internationally, that
move will establish a direct link between the village and the international destination.The criti-
cal networks that influence subsequent movements have been created and later migrants from
the village can then ‘short circuit’ the city in the origin country to move directly internationally.
Hence, step migration, where it exists, is likely to be a temporary phase in the development of
direct migration, a pattern which has been seen as occurring with step migration in domes-
tic migration: the migration from villages to local towns and then on to larger cities is soon
short-​circuited as migrants from the villages move directly to the largest national cities once the
networks have become established (Skeldon 1990).
This perhaps downplays the significance of the linkage between internal and international
migration through the movement of individual migrants moving internally before moving
internationally, and the more important linkages may lie in the consequences of single move-
ments up the urban hierarchy by different groups of migrants.That is, and at the simplest level of
conceptualisation, those born in non-​metropolitan areas of a country move to the metropolitan
areas and those born in the metropolitan areas move internationally in a process that could be
termed ‘stage migration’. The internal migrations to the metropolitan areas will, in reality, be
diverse and include much internal stage and step migration up the urban hierarchy, including
the movements of both the rural-​born and the urban-​born.
It is to the origins of the international migration that attention must now turn. Sufficient
evidence exists to suggest that, just as destinations of international flows are highly concentrated,
so, too, are origins. However, even if it is known, for example, that the historical international
migration from China came primarily from the coastal parts of the three southern provinces
of China of Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang, it is not clear whether the migrants came from
villages or from towns and cities in those provinces or, if they had come from the urban sec-
tor, whether they had previously moved from a village. One of the few studies from Asia that
provides some indicative data is from the Philippines where it was observed that more than
two-​thirds of the migrant labour leaving the country between 1998 and 2002 came from
Metropolitan Manila and the surrounding regions of Central Luzon and Southern Tagalogue
(ADB 2004). That is, the majority of the Filipinos going overseas at that time came from the
major city of the country or from areas in the immediate vicinity. Data from Sri Lanka show
that up until the late 1970s, some three-​quarters of international migrants came from the capi-
tal Colombo and the two contiguous urbanised districts (Gunatilleke 1995:  677). However,
by the early 1990s that proportion of international migrants originating in that capital region
had declined to about one-​third, with increased numbers coming from towns in the interior
and eastern parts of the island. In China, too, the origins of migration have diversified, also to
include large metropolitan centres such as Beijing and Shanghai and particularly through their
role as important origins of the more than 900,000 Chinese students abroad in 2015 (ICEF
2016). Any role that prior internal migration may have played in this shifting pattern of move-
ment cannot be derived from the data. More generally, the growing skilled migration out of
Asian countries, mainly to the developed world, can also be assumed to have either originated in
or involved a sojourn in the major cities of countries of origin because it is in these centres that
the internationally recognised secondary and tertiary institutes of education are to be found.
It is perhaps in Latin America, where more work has been done on the urban origins of
international migration, that pointers may be found for migrations out of Asia. While it has

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been the migration from rural Mexico to the United States that has attracted most attention
from scholars, the metropolitan centres have provided an important source for such migrants for
some considerable time, accounting for between about 30 and 40 per cent of the total number
depending upon the time period under consideration (Hernández-​León 2008). Despite this
important, if variable, role in the migration, relatively little detail is known about its character-
istics. Alternative indicators, such as the destination of remittances from international sources,
can also be used. For example, in Peru some 80 per cent of those remittances were sent to the
highly urbanised coastal regions of the country, with 57 per cent to Metropolitan Lima alone
(OIM 2008: 55). Of course, remittances are sent to where the major banks exist and they may
be forwarded to more remote areas.
What is clear is that the cities themselves are major origins of international migration as
well as points of transit for some rural-​origin migration. Nevertheless, significant rural or small-​
town origins of international migration quite independent of the cities also exist, movements
that pre-​date those from the larger cities. In Asia, at least three areas can be identified, all in
South Asia: Sylhet in Bangladesh; Mirpur in Pakistan; and Kerala in India.The contexts of these
movements and their subsequent evolution have, however, been different.The migrations out of
Sylhet and Mirpur began in colonial times through local men being recruited into the British
merchant marine as low-​skilled labour. Mirpuris had long been river traders before being
recruited onto ships at the coast, while British sea-​going ships could penetrate as far as Sylhet to
load jute and take on any required labour. Some workers jumped ship at destinations in Britain,
others may have reached there after their ships were lost at sea during one of the world wars.
The result was the establishment of small communities of Mirpuris and Sylhetis in Britain, in
London but also in northern cities. Accounts of these migrations are well told in Ballard (1987)
and Gardner (1995) respectively, which later gave rise to direct migrations from home commu-
nities to the United Kingdom. Ballard estimated that some three-​quarters of British Pakistanis
in the 1980s could trace their origin to the areas around Mirpur, with Gardner surmising that
95 per cent of Bangladeshis in Britain around the same time were from Sylhet. The migration
from Kerala was perhaps more complicated, with a well-​developed internal migration to other
states before international migration emerged. However, the latter came from different areas
or different groups, mainly poorer and Muslim, with much directed towards the Gulf States
where permanent settlement was never allowed (Zachariah, Mathew and Rajan 2003). Hence,
unlike the migrations from Mirpur and Sylhet, long-​term settlement and family reunification
never emerged. In all three cases, however, the international migrations seem to have developed
separately from any internal migrations and the two migration systems indeed appear to operate
almost independently, even if some step movements exist as described above.

Linkages between the internal and international systems

Yet linkages between internal and international migration do seem to exist where the impact
of each on communities of origin may be most accentuated. For example, in all the cases just
examined in the previous paragraph, the international migrations had progressed to such an
extent that they gave rise to internal migration. This inward movement came about through
the tension between two opposing forces. The out-​migration had created a labour vacuum
resulting in shortages in the supply of local workers for agricultural and service activities but
in the context of an increasing demand for workers brought about by the amounts of money
available locally from the remittances sent back from international destinations.This was perhaps
most obviously seen in the house construction sector where, in the case of Kerala, craftsmen
were brought in from the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu. However, labour shortages were

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also seen in the agricultural sector and in Sylhet sharecropping emerged in wealthier villages
as landless workers from neighbouring areas moved in on both a shorter and longer-​term basis
(Gardner 1995:  67–​68). Emigration generated labour shortages that were reflected in rising
wages that, in turn, attracted workers from neighbouring areas. In the case of Mirpur, Ballard
(2005: 346) has shown that while the internal migrants initially came from neighbouring parts
of Pakistan, their numbers expanded to include some who had fled from Afghanistan. In this
case, international migration gave rise to local internal migration that later grew to include
previous international migrants in a complex sequence of human mobility.
In economies at more advanced levels of development than the areas examined in South
Asia, equally varied but different combinations of mobility can be seen. Just as the patterns of
fertility and mortality have been shown to change over time, as is summarised in the model of
the demographic transition, so, too, do the patterns of migration. Zelinsky (1971) was among
the first to suggest a linkage among all three demographic variables in the hypothesis of the
mobility transition (also Skeldon 1990).Where internal migration towards the major city or cit-
ies in a country has been intense and fertility has moved to low levels, a slowing in the growth
of rural populations occurs that ultimately leads to rural depopulation. Thus, internal migration
is no longer a sustainable source for labour for urban, as well as many rural, activities.The urban
populations, too, go through the transition to low fertility, usually before the rural populations,
ensuring a continued demand for workers.Thus, in economies where internal sources of labour
have either contracted or are difficult to access, international sources may come to replace
domestic sources. That is, international migration becomes a substitute for internal migration.
Complex realities show that migration systems rarely evolve in quite such simple mecha-
nistic ways. Nevertheless, sufficient evidence exists from Asian cases to suggest variants in the
process that can contribute to the wider debate on migration and development. Thailand has
emerged as one of the principal destinations for international migration in eastern Asia, with
between 3.5 and 4 million migrants in the country in 2013 (Huguet 2014: 1) and the foreign
workforce representing around 7 per cent of the total labour force (IOM 2013). With rising
education levels among the Thai population, Thais are no longer willing to engage in many
low-​paying and low-​prestige sectors of industry. The fishing industry, both onshore process-
ing and deep-​sea fishing, is dominated by migrant workers, as is the construction sector in the
major cities, as well as the domestic worker sector that frees Thai women to go into the labour
force. The substitution of international migrants for Thai workers, observed quite early in the
21st century (Martin 2007), reflects not just the increased aspirations of the Thai population
as a whole but also the fact that the internal migrants are no longer willing to engage in low-​
paying activities.While the evidence to demonstrate any clear decline in the number of internal
migrants is still elusive, the total fertility of the Thai population has been below replacement
level since the early 1990s, current population growth is around 0.25 per cent per annum and
will turn negative by 2025. In order to sustain its current labour-​intensive activities, Thailand
needs international migrants, with some three-​quarters coming from neighbouring Myanmar, a
country that is itself in the midst of profound economic and political change.
A country that is already in population decline, and where the annual numbers of inter-
nal migrants have already declined by almost 40 per cent between 1970 and 2010, is Japan
(Skeldon 2013). Much of the rural sector is classified as ‘severely depopulating’ and few
young people are to be found in the villages to migrate to urban labour markets. Yet the
annual flow of international migrants to Japan has changed little over recent decades. It has
fluctuated between 201,000 and 370,000 per annum with the figure for 2011 exactly the
same as it was for 1992 at 266,900 (OECD 2013; 2003). Clearly, policy is a major factor
in limiting the international flows to Japan but so, too, have been two other factors. First,

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the nature of Japan’s economy is totally different from that of Thailand. Labour-​intensive
industrialisation has long disappeared from the country in the ‘global shift’ of such industries
to areas where labour forces were still expanding (Dicken 2011). The advanced Japanese
economy, unlike that of Thailand, favoured the importation of relatively small numbers of
highly skilled labour that was subject to high turnover through networks of transnational
corporations. Second, Japan is one of the countries most energetically pursuing policies of
automation, or the substitution of capital for labour, and has the largest stock of industrial
robots in the world.1 In the future, migration, both internal and international, may become
progressively de-​linked from labour demand although, over the short term, a demand for
certain types of labour will exist, particularly with the 2020 Olympic Games on the horizon
in Tokyo.
Neighbouring South Korea has also seen very low population growth, even if population
decline is not expected until the 2030s. It has also experienced a smaller and more recent down-
turn in the annual number of internal migrants, by 13 per cent from 1990 to 2010. However,
unlike Japan, the annual flows of international migrants have increased quite markedly over
recent years, virtually doubling from 2001–​2002 to 307,000 in 2011. Hence, several pathways
in the nature of the substitution of international for internal migration exist and depend upon
the state of development of national and regional economies, as well as on government policy.

Onward and return movements

Upon reaching a destination in the host economy, international migrants may move on to a
second destination in that country (internal migration), move on to another country (transit
migration), or back to their home country (return international migration). Or their own
arrival in a particular location may contribute to the movement of others. For example, interna-
tional migration can give rise to internal migration in cases where the arrival of large numbers
of migrants in a host society, primarily a large city, then ‘push’ host groups out to other areas,
most particularly the suburbs, a movement that associates spatial mobility with social mobility
and assimilation. Such patterns have been proposed for the United States during its long his-
tory of immigration with, for example, Irish Catholics replacing Protestants, who were in turn
replaced by Italians, and so on. However, it has been the persistence of concentration rather than
further mobility that has been perhaps the prevailing characteristic of immigrant communities
in the United States (Portes and Rumbaut 1990: 50–​56).
Within Asian countries themselves, the relatively low levels of international migration to
most countries have neither given rise to any wave pattern of internal migration nor seen a
replication of ethnic neighbourhoods as in the history of the United States. The ethnic neigh-
bourhoods that have emerged in Asian cities interact more with other migrant communities in
multicultural environments rather than being based upon homogeneous ethnic groups control-
ling access to specific industries. The ‘Koreatowns’ in Tokyo and Beijing appear to illustrate this
multicultural pattern (Spencer, Flowers and Seo 2012) and perhaps too the Chinatowns across
Southeast Asian cities as well as among the subethnic Chinese population clusters in Hong
Kong. However, the modern international migrations in eastern Asia and between Asia and
North America and Australasia are dominated by educated and skilled migrants who not only
are leading to the erosion of traditional Chinatowns in cities in North America and Europe (see
for example Chen 1992; T   hunø 2007) but have also given rise to a highly mobile transnational
class virtually commuting around the Pacific (Skeldon 1994; Sklair 2001). Once again, these
patterns of changed migration are associated with the transformation of the underlying struc-
tures of global economic activity.

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Return migration has always been an integral part of all migration systems, whether the
international migration across the Atlantic in the 19th century or internal migration in Asia
today. Hence, a proportion of those who have migrated in a step or directly to an international
destination can be expected to return either to their hometown or village, or to the step or
transit stop along the way. In the former case, the migration can be seen as a full return whereas
the latter can be considered a partial return or ‘J-​turn’ migration. Some data for the 2.2 mil-
lion returned students to China exist. The Chinese Ministry of Education has estimated that
between 70 and 80 per cent of students have returned to China in recent years, with almost
half returning to one of the four leading cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou or Shenzhen
(ICEF 2016). In the case of Beijing, only about 10 per cent of the returnees had been born in
that city, showing the importance of ‘J-​turn’ international migration. More generally, precise
data are elusive, although it might seem unlikely that migrants who had spent considerable time
in a city overseas would return to a life in an isolated village. A return to the national capital
of the country of origin or to a regional urban centre close to the ancestral village might seem
a more realistic destination for both a return migrant to continue some kind of employment
or even to retire. These options reveal the complexity of onward or backward movement that
involve both internal and international migrations. Unless detailed migration histories are col-
lected, standard census and large-​scale survey instruments will record ‘no migration’ or just a
local internal migration for these cases instead of a whole complex sequence of internal and
international movements.

Conclusion
Migrations within the boundaries of a state tend to be distinct from those leaving a state,
although parallels and linkages do exist.This chapter has attempted to show how the spatial pat-
terns of internal and international migration can be linked, with the linkages varying over time
as the underlying economy evolves. Migrants respond to the opportunities available to them,
which will incorporate both internal and international destinations, but much work remains to
be done to identify the particular migration channels used: that is, to identify specific origins
and specific destinations by subnational region and by sector, urban and rural. Both internal and
international migration are operating separately, as well as together, and interacting in complex
and variable ways. By placing both within a single framework we can begin to move towards an
integrated methodological and conceptual approach to human migration. The examples from
Asia, in very different economic, political and social contexts from other parts of the world,
provide a comparative perspective that can help us to move towards this objective.

Note
1 The Economist, 29 March 2014.

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14
HUMAN TRAFFICKING OR
VOLUNTARY MIGRATION?
Lessons learned from across Asia

Pardis Mahdavi

Since at least 2001 there has been a growing sense of moral panic (Cohen 1972) around the
phenomenon loosely termed ‘human trafficking’. The term ‘trafficked’ has been deployed to
account for all experiences of women who migrate into the sex industry. The problematic
effects of this are two-​fold:  first, the assumption is that all women in the sex industry are
trafficked, and second, it eclipses the instances of trafficking experienced by men or women
outside the sex industry. Trafficking has been colloquially defined by the United Nations and
anti-​trafficking activists as entailing a migratory experience characterised by the elements of
force, fraud, and/​or coercion. To be labelled a ‘trafficking victim’ theoretically entitles one to
a particular legal status and its attendant benefits. Borne out of a reasonable sense of indigna-
tion toward the types of abuse and exploitation that seem all too common in migrant women’s
worlds, the concept has been expanded beyond reasonable or feasible limits, becoming both
conceptually and juristically obtuse, while narrowly gendered, sexualised, and racialised at the
same time. Specifically, the misunderstanding that human trafficking refers only to women
who are kidnapped by men and forced into the sex industry has, problematically, become the
functional definition of the term (Vance 2011). This has altered the way in which trafficking is
represented, pursued, and prosecuted.
The paradigm of human trafficking, as it exists today, and the legal ambiguity and popular
specificity with which trafficking has been defined, offer insight into the complex ways that
gender and race permeate understandings of both victimhood, vulnerability, and power. Most
problematically, discourses and policies pertaining to migration in the Asian context have cre-
ated falsely dichotomised categories of those who enjoy voluntary migration versus those who
have been trafficked. This false binary does not recognise that many migrants increasingly move
and live in the in-​between grey spaces of irregular migration and/​or employment.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with migrants moving across Asia, I argue that mis-
guided, racialised panic about gendered and raced bodies moving across the continent has
produced two levels of disconnection between policy and lived experience, and that these
disconnections have the result of producing irregular migration. The first is a disconnec-
tion between where policies are crafted (Euro-​America) and where they are operationalised
(migrant sending and receiving countries across Asia). This is most clearly manifest in the fact
that most human trafficking legislature –​such as the global Trafficking in Persons Report and
the Trafficking Victims Protection Act –​are written and contoured in the United States with

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some input from European nations. These policies have become de facto the pillars of global
responses to human trafficking writ large. However, policies crafted in places like Washington
DC are often out of touch with on-​the-​ground realities of migration in places such as Dubai,
Tokyo, Manila, or Mumbai.
The second level of disconnection occurs between those making global policies or the
local responses to global policies, and those whose experiences are affected by these policies.
Discourses and policies about human trafficking that seek to bifurcate the issues hinging on
the question of choice or blame do not adequately capture the complexity of lived reality for
most migrants. So disconnected are policies from the lives of migrants, that policies are actually
creating a situation wherein migrants options (already limited) become even fewer. For some,
irregular migration becomes the only way forward.
In this chapter I draw on original ethnographic fieldwork to highlight two case studies from
two very different migrant receiving nations, namely the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and
Japan. These two countries have played host to large numbers of migrants predominantly from
Southeast and South Asia. As such, examining the experiences of migrants in these two migrant
receiving countries allows for a comparative look at inter-​Asian migrations in two very differ-
ent contexts. I foreground policies formulated in response to the legislative and discursive panic
around the phenomenon of ‘human trafficking’ in order to highlight both the disconnection
between policies on trafficking and labour migration with lived experiences, and also the ways
in which policies actually produce irregular migration. It is interesting to note that in these two
very different contexts, the same patterns can be observed when looking at the on-​the-​g round
realities of migrants’ lives. Similar trajectories from formal, regulated migration and employment
into informal and irregular migration can also be observed in both contexts. Also of note is the
fact that the United States’ series of trafficking policies plays similar roles in both countries, and
requires both governments to enact certain types of legislature over the past decade that have
effectively produced more irregular migrants.
The presence of these irregular migrants, though produced by policies seeking to respond
to US-​based anti-​trafficking legislature, are, paradoxically, now seen as a weak point of both
governments, and a reason to place both countries on the second (less desirable) tier of the US
Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report. Effectively, it seems as though both governments are in a
position where they cannot win in the eyes of the US State Department. In response to previ-
ous rankings and suggestions in the TIP report, both governments have enacted a series of laws
and responses. These responses have led to increasing precarity for migrants, who now favour
irregular migration. Governments, at the country level, also experience a type of precarity in
receiving continued criticism from the US and its allies about the presence of ‘trafficking’ and
‘illegal immigration’ on their borders.
Governments across the globe have expressed increasing frustration at the rising numbers of
what can be variously termed ‘illegal’, ‘informal’ or ‘irregular’ migrants and immigrants. States
routinely seek to enact legislature to ‘solve’ the problem of ‘illegal (im)migration’. Globally, there
are tensions between countries seen as sending countries and those understood to be primar-
ily receiving nations, as they struggle to negotiate ways to mitigate the undocumented flow of
persons across their borders. However, policy makers, and those who engage in larger discourses
about the woes of ‘illegal’ or ‘irregular’ migration frequently overlook the role of national and
international laws or policies in producing situations wherein irregular migration or employ-
ment becomes the comparatively better –​and sometimes only –​option for social, economic,
emotional and physical mobility (DeGenova and Peutz 2010; Garces-​Mascarenas 2010). The
lived experiences of migrants are also elided in larger moral panic (Cohen 1972) about irregular
migration. When migrants are viewed only as products of their migration or employment, the

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very real intricacies of the challenges and opportunities they seek, and their experiences, are
erased. Moreover, the ways in which subjectivity is produced in and through migration, and the
complex series of decisions that migrants make as they seek different types of mobility, are also
eclipsed. This erasure of migrant agency and subjectivity then contributes to the production of
more laws and policies that are disconnected from lived experience, resulting in more challenges
for migrants, and often for the host countries in which they live and work.
Throughout this chapter, I have tried to pay special attention to the use of words and the
artificial nature of categories produced by etymology. It is important to have a heightened
awareness of binaries that have been falsely dichotomised with respect to the economies or
migratory schemes within which migrants operate. These binaries have become objects of
concern and query, and have become reified as a result of the trafficking moral panic that
colours conversations about migration. Both binaries of legal/​illegal and formal/​informal
have been used frequently, neither of which capture the grey areas of lived experience.
Many of my interlocutors migrated ‘legally’ (i.e. through ‘legal’ visa entry processes), but
then worked in the informal (or unregulated, untaxed) economies of care work or sex work.
Others came illegally (were smuggled or engaged in the ever-​popular ‘visa trading’) but
work for companies in the formal economy. Still others migrated legally but then overstayed
their visas or absconded from their employers, thus rendering them ‘illegal’ in their visa
status. What it means to migrate or work legally or illegally, and where the formal economy
ends and the informal economy begins, encompass many shades of grey. The terms ‘illegal’
and ‘informal’ carry with them some pejorative weight, and it is for this reason that many
scholars – myself included –​have used the terms ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ migration, not to
dichotomise the two, but in an attempt to find more neutral terminology. When I write
about ‘irregular’ migration or employment, I am using the term not to enact judgement, but
to refer to movement or work that takes place outside the spheres governed by formal legal
and economic structures.

Trafficking and its discontents

Policies that address human trafficking create some of the largest obstacles facing migrant work-
ers across Asia today. The discourse on trafficking, narrated within a script of young, white
women duped, tricked or ‘taken’ from their homes, triggers emotive responses to ‘save’ women
by any means necessary. Sometimes this ‘rescue’ takes the form of forced raids, abuse, detention
and deportation.1
The official definition of trafficking as stated in Article 3, paragraph (a)  of the Protocol to
Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons prepared by the United Nations Office of Drug
Control (note the disjuncture in the UN agency designated to monitor human trafficking –​an
agency dedicated to organised crime and the movement of drugs rather than the human rights
arm of the UN) is as follows:

The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means

of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of
deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or
receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control
over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at
a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual
exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude
or the removal of organs.

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That this policy has been constructed within a framework of criminalisation (rather than a
framework of rights) is just one aspect of the problem. Current political initiatives to fight
human trafficking are also markedly focused on sex, while the moral panic about human traf-
ficking remains suffused with racial undertones.
Beyond this reductive focus on sex, the discourse on human trafficking oversimplifies com-
plex decision-​making processes. The typical ‘victim’ does not have any agency in her circum-
stances. Either she is forced, and therefore trafficked, or she (or he) chooses to migrate, and
therefore is not trafficked. But this simplification extends further. ‘Victims’ are typically women
who have been forced by a particular trafficker. In some forms of legislature, such as the T-​visas
in the United States, the awarding of provision is contingent on the ‘victim’s’ willingness and
ability to testify against her trafficker.
A focus on individual villains is not only unsupported by data, but obscures the complex
strategies and decisions migrants work through in order to make a better life for themselves and
their loved ones. Many migrants made the difficult choice to migrate (or remain in traffick-
ing-​like situations) because of poverty or other structural conditions in their home countries
that made supporting family members at home impossible. Some are fleeing war or conflict,
while others migrate because their home economies have become almost entirely dependent
on remittances.Without looking at the complexity of lived experience and the intimate lives of
labourers, the picture remains half-​formed.2
A major challenge for migrants in Asia is that the trafficking discourse has been constructed
largely in Euro-​America. The two major pieces of trafficking legislation to date, the United
Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and
Children (Palermo Protocol) and the United States Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA),
reflect specific concerns about migration, and about the migration of women in particular,
revealing their formative context of increasing global securitisation and militarisation. While
the UN protocol represents a far more collaborative effort between states across the globe, and a
more broadly structural perspective on the types of coercive forces that migrants encounter, the
TVPA has become the salient actor on the global stage, mainly because of the role of the US and
the TIP in prompting countries around the world to respond to US rankings.To understand the
forcefulness of this particular piece of domestic legislation internationally, it is first necessary to
briefly examine the internal politics that contributed to its particular ideological underpinnings.
The collaboration between abolitionist feminism and conservative Christian agendas has
attained relevance far beyond the borders of the US in large part because of the TVPA’s for-
eign policy component, the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report. Essentially functioning as a
global scorecard, the TIP is a report that is produced in the spring of every year by the Office
to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (a division of the US Department of State)
that places foreign nations into one of three tiers based on the severity of human trafficking
within state boundaries and the perceived adequacy of responding domestic policies (though
the US itself remained conspicuously absent from these gradings until 2011). Countries that
have achieved Tier 1 status, such as the United Kingdom, Italy, and Sweden, have been deemed
to possess satisfactory counter-​trafficking measures, including effective anti-​trafficking laws and
well-​developed programmes within civil society. Countries that have historically received this
designation are primarily located in the developed world, with the majority located in the
‘West’ (exceptions being countries such as New Zealand and Australia).Tier 2 countries (such as
Thailand, Israel, and Mexico) are countries that do not fully comply with US international anti-​
trafficking criteria, but are deemed as making significant efforts to do so. Between Tiers 2 and 3
lies a category entitled ‘Tier 2 Watch List’ which consists of countries (such as Argentina, Russia
and the Philippines) who are not making ‘significant enough’ efforts to combat trafficking, but

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do not yet merit the heavily stigmatised designation of Tier 3. Countries currently placed in the
bottom tier (Tier 3) of the TIP report, those that do not comply with US-​designated standards
to ‘combat trafficking’ (such as Iran, Malaysia, Syria), can find themselves facing severe sanctions
as retribution for their failure to make the grade, and are subject to public shaming in the inter-
national community –​a salient factor in the cases of both the UAE and Japan. A critical look at
the ranking system of the TIP reveals more about the current state of the US’s foreign relations
priorities than about current global human trafficking trends and flows.
Critics from both within the US and across the globe have protested these rankings and the
criteria used to determine them, citing, amongst other things, prejudice and differential treat-
ment based on racial and religious composition of a given country. Some point to the use of the
TIP as a tool of American hegemony and a way for the US to paint its adversaries in a further
negative light.

States responding to panic

Since the creation of the TIP in 2001, both Japan and the UAE have hovered around the not
dreaded, but still undesirable placement of Tier 2 on the report.The UAE has experienced more
frequent ‘dips’ down to the level of Tier 2 Watch List, which has resulted in increased attention
to respond to recommendations laid out by the TIP. Japan, too, though not as regular a visitor
to the Tier 2 Watch List, has struggled to attain a Tier 1 ranking. Interestingly, the recommenda-
tions made for these two different countries have been strikingly similar and have followed a
similar trajectory over the past decade. Most presciently, it seems as though when both countries
respond by enacting legislature to follow recommendations made in the TIP report, they are not
only not commended for their actions, but also critiqued. This has resulted in much frustration
for both governments, and has created a situation for migrants themselves wherein they are
increasingly turning to irregular migratory or employment routes.
Positioned on the defensive, the Emirati government has been forced to acknowledge its
responsibility and ‘prove’ its ability to handle and respond to its classification as a ‘trafficking
hotspot’ as designated by the TIP reports of 2006 and 2007. Consequently, it hastily passed a
slew of laws counterproductive to ensuring and protecting the rights of migrant and trafficked
persons in 2007 and 2008, which only resulted in the UAE being moved to the Tier 2 Watch
List in the 2009 TIP report (Mahdavi 2011). This was accompanied by recommendations that
the UAE ‘tighten borders’, ‘increase police’ (TIP report on the UAE 2008 and 2009), and focus
on the prosecution of sex traffickers, while curiously neglecting to mention: 1) the problems
inherent in the structure of the kafala system (or the sponsorship system which structures all
migrant work in the UAE3); 2) the challenges imposed by the anti-​union ban passed by the
government which challenges grassroots organising; and 3) any possibility of merit to be found
in grassroots-​based approaches.
The state has responded to the international community’s call to take full control of the
campaign against human trafficking (based on the presumption that it has the capacity to do
so), while ignoring the actions of informal groups which had already been organising around
these issues and assimilating them within a national plan of action. It is supremely ironic that
while the TIP cites the UAE’s lack of civil society as one of the reasons for its inclusion on the
Watch List, it fails to suggest that the government invest in grassroots programmes already tak-
ing shape. Indeed, this omission suggests a pre-​existing belief that such a project lies outside the
realm of the possible in the UAE. Similar neglect can be found in other literature about the issue
of trafficking in the UAE, such as the Human Rights Watch report ‘Building Towers, Cheating
Workers’ (Ghaemi 2006), which excludes any acknowledgement that grassroots efforts do exist

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and hope to improve upon the current situation. This erasure has resulted in a silencing of the
efforts of many individuals (both citizens and non-​citizen residents), while also facilitating a
state-​driven co-​optation of the issue.
The UAE is a member of the International Labour Organisation and the Arab Labour
Organisation, and has ratified the Convention of the Rights of the Child, CEDAW, and the
United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially
Women and Children. While the Emirates is working towards improved labour standards,
human trafficking with a focus on sex work has taken centre-​stage. In a statement responding
to the 2009 TIP, Minister of State Anwar Mohammed Gargash, who is the head of the UAE’s
National Committee to Combat Human Trafficking (NCCHT) formed in 2007, said, ‘It is
incongruous to equate alleged labour rights violations, which are critical but a separate issue, to
the coercive and unacceptable sexual exploitation of women for profit. This report lumps all of
these issues together in a manner that is generalised and unconstructive.’4
One official within this NCCHT task force emphasised that anti-​prostitution activists from
the US had played a large role in refocusing the UAE’s efforts on sex trafficking. Responses to
the TIP have included the establishment of the NCCHT (which is made up primarily of pub-
lic prosecutors and law enforcement officials), as well as a human rights task force within the
police sector whose mandate is to arrest people deemed as ‘trafficked persons’. In addition, the
NCCHT has worked to create the Dubai Foundation for Women and Children that has admit-
ted 43 cases of trafficking (all women), and a shelter in Abu Dhabi that has admitted 15 women
since its inception in 2009. In 2009 there were 20 registered cases of trafficking (all related to
the sex industry), up from ten in 2008, and in 2008 six persons were convicted. While these are
important and impressive measures of progress, one activist who has been working to reform
the kafala system expressed frustration and felt that some officials were using the hyper-​scrutiny
on women in the sex industry to get away from the larger issue of labour laws in need of reform.
Simply put, the focus on human trafficking has obscured the larger issues around labour
rights violations in the UAE. Ironically, the government of the UAE and several local activists
had been working to reform kafala or abolish the system altogether (like neighbouring Bahrain).
When the UAE was placed on the Tier 2 Watch List in the TIP in the early 2000s, however,
these energies were moved aside in order to focus only on sex work and sex trafficking. The
UAE was told to ‘tighten borders’, ‘increase police’, and ‘increase prosecutions’ (TIP report
2008), all focused on the sex industry. All three of these recommendations actually resulted in
more challenges for migrants, and created more situations of irregularity. ‘Tightening borders’,
while not addressing the realities of supply and demand, resulted in more women migrating
through irregular channels.
‘Increasing prosecutions’ led to brothel raids wherein women who were not necessarily traf-
ficked, but who were working in the sex industry (and here the conflation of sex work and sex
trafficking becomes starkly manifest), were arrested, often abused and deported. ‘Increasing the
police force’ instead of increasing labour inspectors not only allowed labour abuses to continue,
but had the unfortunate side effect of resulting in higher numbers of women reporting rape at
the hands of imported policemen, according to the director of an informal shelter operating
in Dubai. Many of the members of law enforcement are migrant workers themselves and they
receive very little, if any, training about working with survivors of abuse. A large number of my
interlocutors (33) reported rape, sexual harassment, or physical abuse at the hands of policemen
in the UAE. Thus, ‘increasing police’ without providing training increases possibilities of abuse
that migrant women face.
In addition to more challenges for migrant workers, the UAE was also critiqued in sub-
sequent TIP reports (2013, 2014) for focusing too much on sex trafficking and not enough on

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labour abuses.The 2014 TIP report specifically asks the UAE to focus on labour, chastising them
for not doing so.When asked to comment on this paradoxical situation, one Ministry of Foreign
Affairs official told me in 2014, ‘We just can’t win. We think we are doing what they [the US]
want. But human trafficking is just one of those issues that is a never-​ending headache for us.
Not because of the trafficking itself, but because of this political mess.’
In Japan, the trajectory has been frustratingly similar. In an interview in early 2015 with
a former high-​level official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) who was in charge
of responding to Japan’s ranking in the TIP, his comments echoed the Emirati official with
whom I had spoken a few months earlier. ‘Human trafficking, TIP,’ he sighed hanging his
head and covering his forehead with his palm, ‘These were my biggest headaches. Trying to
negotiate, to tell the Americans that we are in fact addressing the problem in our own way…
but then nothing. No response. No matter what we did, always Tier 2. So… I gave up.’ As
this gentleman alludes, Japan has spent most of its time occupying the Tier 2 ranking of
the TIP report. While this is not devastating for some countries not particularly invested in
being moved to Tier 1, virtually all of the government officials with whom I spoke in Japan
were emphatic that being placed on Tier 2 was a source of shame. ‘Most of the countries
we trade with, most of the developed world is on Tier 1. Why should Japan be on Tier 2?’
asked another MFA official. ‘I would understand if we deserved it, but do you really think, in
light of all that the Japanese government does to protect migrants in this country, to provide
services, and after all that we have done, do you think we deserve to be ranked alongside
Bangladesh, Ethiopia and, I  don’t know, Mongolia?’ he added. In particular, government
officials expressed frustration at the fact that despite following many of the TIP recommen-
dations set out for Japan, they were not able to move from their ranking.
For example, in 2005, in response to TIP pressures that Japan focus on prosecuting and
preventing sex trafficking, and in particular paying attention to its ‘entertainment industry’, the
Japanese government enacted legislature to change the parameters for the legal application for
an ‘entertainer visa’.5 This resulted in a drop in the numbers of Filipina entertainers from nearly
100,000 to just under 8,000 in a two-​year period (Suzuki 2015). Some were deported; others
had returned home to renew their contracts and were not permitted to return. Some, however,
married clients or friends in order to be eligible for spousal visas so that they might stay or
return to Japan. Not surprisingly, in 2006, there was a spike in the number of Japanese Filipino
marriages to quadruple what it had been previously (Suzuki 2015).What is surprising, however,
is that despite this rather extreme legislative change, Japan remained on Tier 2 of the 2006 TIP
report. Similar to the situation of the UAE, in subsequent years, despite being told to focus on
reducing sex trafficking, Japan has been critiqued for an over-​focus on the sex industry (TIP
2013, 2014). Furthermore, despite enacting legislature to curb what is perceived as ‘sex traf-
ficking’, and despite significant outreach to irregular migrants such as the Filipina spouses and
mothers of Japanese citizens, who are supported by the government, and sponsoring shelters
and NGOs to provide services, the Japanese government is still seen as not doing ‘enough’ to
comply with opaque human trafficking standards set by the US.

Living migration in the era of human trafficking

Human trafficking policies create situations of frustrating precarity, tightening the contours of
migration and migratory employment possibilities in the formal or regulated sphere. Rather
than alleviating challenges for states (as discussed above) or migrants, trafficking policies function
to increase bureaucracy while decreasing safe avenues for migration and work. Migrants have
responded by employing creativity in turning to irregular modes of migration and employment.

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These alternative employment and migratory spheres offer comparatively safer and more lucra-
tive options for many of my interlocutors, such as Meskit and Marguerita introduced below.
‘I used to see my cousins and girlfriends come back to Ethiopia with lots of money, and
nice magazines and nicer clothes,’ Meskit said, reflecting on her decision to migrate to Dubai
to work as a domestic worker. When I met her, she was working illegally as a nanny for three
different families and occasionally engaged in sex work on the side. She had been in Dubai for
almost five years, and in that time had borne a son fathered by an Emirati man with whom she
had lived for two years. She was very eager to return to Ethiopia to reunite with her family, but
was afraid of the heavy fines she would incur upon her departure. Migrants who overstay their
visas or work illegally must pay heavy fines ($25) for each day they remain beyond their assigned
departure date.The trouble for Meskit was that she did not have her passport or visa. Her previ-
ous employers had retained her documents and refused to return them to her.
Meskit’s trajectory  –​from migrating to work in the formal sphere of domestic work to
working in the informal economy of the sex industry and living as an ‘illegal alien’ in Dubai –​
was similar to that of at least seven other women with whom I  spoke. In recent years, the
Ethiopian government –​in response to moral panic about human trafficking –​has passed a
series of measures designed to regulate the flow of Ethiopians migrating for work, particularly
to the Middle East (Fernandez 2014).The state has imposed rules on licensing for recruiters and
has been working towards a system of employee training (similar to that in the Philippines) and
contract monitoring.This increased bureaucracy has resulted in many women looking for other
ways to leave Ethiopia, ways that are seen as simpler and faster routes for securing transnational
employment.
Meskit’s friend put her in touch with an illegal recruiter who asked for a high fee, equivalent
to $2,000, for securing Meskit’s passage to Dubai (via boat through Yemen) and for drawing up
a contract for her to work as a domestic worker. Meskit never saw the contract, but was told she
would be met by another recruiter upon her arrival in Dubai.
When she arrived in Dubai after a long journey she was met by a recruiter and then taken
to the home of her new employers, a Lebanese family who had moved to Dubai a few years
earlier. The family took her passport and to this day she is working to retrieve her passport so
that she can find legal employment and return to Ethiopia. During the six months that Meskit
worked for this family, she had suffered beatings from her madam (female employer and head of
the household) and sexual advances from the male head of the household and his son. Made to
work up to 18-​hour days, the family often locked Meskit in the house when they left, and did
not provide her with dinner on a majority of week nights.
After several months of abuse, Meskit ran away from her employers and met an Emirati young
man who wanted to help her. After a few weeks Meskit became romantically involved with this
man and eventually became pregnant. After their son was born, however, things changed. The
young man, who had not yet succeeded in retrieving her working papers or passport, suddenly
became agitated with Meskit and ordered her to leave the house with the baby. Though Meskit
did not know it at the time, her son was undocumented because the boy’s father had never
acknowledged paternity. If caught, Meskit would likely be deported, but her son might remain,
stateless, in the UAE, according to UAE law if he is suspected of having Emirati paternity.
Limited by not having legal working papers, Meskit began by working in a restaurant in
the Ethiopian neighbourhood in town. After a few months’ working at this job, however, she
was not getting paid. One evening she met a group of women at the restaurant who worked as
sex workers in a bar called Fantasi. They told her what her earning potential could be and she
decided to join them that evening.This marked the beginning of Meskit’s work in the informal
economy of sex work. After a few months’ working at the bar, Meskit was arrested one night on

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a raid. She was put in jail for three weeks and not permitted to see her son, who was still at the
home of the friends with whom she had been living.
Marguerite’s movements through the irregular and regulated economies reveal striking simi-
larities, but also important differences. Originally from Sasya in the Philippines, Marguerite
came from a family of four sisters. Marguerite and her youngest sister decided that they were
happy not to attend university in the Philippines, and sought out entertainer visas for Japan
in 1998. Both were successful in their attempts to receive visas, and they migrated to Tokyo
together at the end of 1998.
She described her first seven years as an entertainer as ‘very good’, and noted that she missed
Japan during her yearly trips back to the Philippines. In 2005, on one of her trips back to the
Philippines, where she would regularly return to renew her entertainer visa, Marguerite was
presented with shocking news. She was told that she would not be able to return to Japan on
an entertainer visa, and her sister was deported one month later. The two sisters were distraught
and emphatic that they did not wish to remain in Sasya but were determined to return to Japan.
A  few of their friends had managed to avoid deportation by marrying clients that they had
met during their time working as hostesses. ‘That seemed, at that time, like the best way. And
I had many men who wanted to marry me, so I decide I will just choose the one I like best,’
Marguerite reflected.
In 2006 she married Takahide, a Japanese contractor who worked in construction in Saitama,
just outside Tokyo. She moved to Saitama with him, and became pregnant shortly thereafter.
Mid-​way through her pregnancy, her problems with her new husband began when he started
physically abusing her. After the baby was born, Marguerite ran away from her husband and
moved into a local shelter. She began divorce proceedings immediately, and was granted a
divorce when her father-​in-​law wrote a letter to the court siding with Marguerite, who was
also given full custody of their newborn son.
Marguerite lived at the shelter with her little boy for the next year. After a year, she had
saved enough of the government subsidies that she received for being the mother of a Japanese
national to move out and into an apartment with two other women who were in similar situ-
ations. Though her visa and the support she received from the government mandated that she
not be officially employed, Marguerite sought out work in one of the hostess clubs in Kawasaki
(just south of central Tokyo) near her home. By this time her sister had also migrated to Japan
through a spousal visa, and was able to assist Marguerite in caring for her son. She continues to
work, irregularly, as an entertainer to this day, and as of 2015 had no plans for returning to the
Philippines.
As these stories show, migrants may end up moving, working or living outside the formal
contours of the ‘legal’ economy for a variety of reasons. For many of my interlocutors, it was a
combination of having to employ creativity in the face of ever-​changing and harsh laws con-
cerning migration, employment (through kafala in the UAE and recent anti-​trafficking laws in
Japan which made it difficult for Filipinas to work as entertainers) and citizenship, as well as a
desire to mobilise their intimate lives. Someone like Meskit chose (from amongst a series of lim-
ited options) to migrate irregularly because formal migratory routes were not available to her
due to anti-​trafficking legislature seeking to restrict the out-​migration of women in particular.
Beginning the journey in an irregular fashion, once she arrived at her destination, it became
increasingly preferable for her to choose not just irregular migration, but irregular or informal
employment as well. For people like both Marguerite and Meskit, they chose the space of the
informal economy because it afforded them more freedom, rights and empowerment, and also
allowed them to fulfil their intimate lives. Both women were able to make a living and sup-
port themselves through working irregularly. Formal, legal work options had been closed off to

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Human trafficking or voluntary migration?

them due to changing laws about gendered migration, and therefore informal work became the
comparatively desirable option.
Many of my interlocutors do, however, experience some vulnerability in the spaces of irreg-
ular migration or the informal economy, and their intimate lives reflect this vulnerability most
presciently. This new inter-​generational aspect of irregular migration and employment does
bear some reflection as it is an unfortunate by-​product of new economic realities of gendered
migrations across Asia. Children of migrants, such as Marguerite and Meskit’s sons are, in a sense,
born into a situation of irregularity. Produced by laws about gendered employment as well as
citizenship laws, these children’s situations and lives seem somewhat bleak. Though many of
these children with whom I have spoken, who have grown up either legally stateless (in the
UAE), or effectively stateless (in Japan),6 have found ways to creatively move through their sta-
tus, most of them now work in the informal economy where they face many challenges.

Toward a conclusion: irregular migration in comparative context

It is important to recognise at least three aspects of irregular migration, employment or status
that are often eclipsed by policies that do not take into account lived experiences. The first is
that irregularity is most often produced by policies seeking to curb (gendered) migration and
citizenship in Asia specifically, as can be seen in the cases of the women introduced above. The
second is that irregular migration or working status can be seen and experienced as a better,
more lucrative and empowering strategy, and one that can afford migrants with many options
for economic, social, class, physical and intimate mobility.7 Finally, it is also important to high-
light that while living, moving and working irregularly might be produced and may be seen
as the comparatively desirable (and in the case of the children of migrants –​the only) option,
there are vulnerabilities that migrants are exposed to when living and moving in these spaces.
These include the possibilities for arrest or deportation –​what Nicholas DeGenova has termed
‘deportability’ (DeGenova and Peutz 2010) –​as well as precarious living and working situations
wherein migrants are regularly abused, not paid their wages, and subject to difficult working
conditions.
Unfortunately, policies responding to moral panic about human trafficking do not recognise
the lived realities of gendered migration across Asia. That the very same policies designed to
‘help’ or ‘protect’ migrants are actively producing increased irregular migration and employ-
ment is one major part of the problem. Other aspects of the TIP report (and the resulting
discourse about ‘trafficking’ across the globe) that are problematic include the deep-​seated
racialised morality that undergirds the report as well as the series of policies that are enacted in
order to respond to TIP rankings. As of 2016 both Japan and the UAE remain on Tier 2 of the
TIP report. The critiques levelled at both countries seem oblivious to the role of the TIP itself
in previous years in producing the situation that now appears in need of reform. More disturb-
ingly, both Japan and the UAE are now considering further anti-​trafficking strategies (inspired
by earlier waves of moral panic about human trafficking in the US) such as ‘end demand’ in
Japan, and a ban on female migrants under a certain age in the UAE.These measures, if enacted,
would increase challenges faced by potential as well as would-​be migrants, leading to increasing
numbers of irregular migrants.
Looking at the UAE and Japan in a comparative context affords the opportunity to see the
far-​reaching scope of anti-​trafficking policies across Asia. Operating in a type of neo-​colonial
power struggle, the TIP, rather than improving the situations of migrants or governments has
resulted in increased challenges for these two very different case studies. A look at the impacts
on the lived experiences of migrants, their vulnerabilities, and the reasons they choose to

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migrate or work irregularly allows for a more robust understanding of the realities of migration
today. Impacts of policies on governments outside the US also need to be assessed, in order to
contribute to a more robust conversation about the challenges and opportunities presented by
migration outside the formal, legal or ‘regular’ sphere across Asia in the wake of anti-​trafficking
panic worldwide.

Notes
1 For a more in-​depth discussion of the problematic aspects of the ‘rescue industry’, see Agustin 2008,
Soderlund 2004, Jordan 2011, Vance 2011. For more discussion of the ‘deportation regime’ see De
Genova and Peutz 2010.
2 For further discussion on the role of state structures in promulgating systems of abuse, see the work of
Rhacel Parreñas (2000) and Christine Chin (2013).
3 For more on the abuses and inherent structural violence within the kafala system, see Gardner (2010)
and Longva (1992).
4 www.wam.ae/​servlet/​Satellite?c=WamLocEnews&cid=1241072976464&pagename=WAM/​WAM_​
E_​Layout.
5 See Amendment to the Criteria for the Landing Permission for the Status of Resident ‘Entertainer’, in
www.immi-​moj.go.jp/​keiziban/​happyou/​pdf/​e_​kougyou.pdf.
6 As scholar Nobue Suzuki has astutely pointed out, the children of Japanese men and Filipina entertain-
ers, while afforded legal citizenship, often face increasing challenges in Japan in accessing what Kerber
and Bhaba (2010) have referred to as ‘economic’ or ‘social citizenship’, rendering them, ‘effectively state-
less’ (Kerber 1998).
7 For an in-​depth discussion of what I mean by ‘intimate mobility’, see Mahdavi (2016).

References
Chin, C.B. (2013.) Cosmopolitan SexWorkers: Women and Migration in a Global City. Oxford University Press.
Cohen, S. (1972). Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. London: MacGibbon
and Kee.
De Genova, N. and Peutz, N., eds. (2010). The Deportation Regime:  Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of
Movement. Durham: Duke University Press.
Fernandez, B. (2014). Degrees of (un)freedom: the exercise of migrant agency by Ethiopian domestic
workers in Kuwait and Lebanon. In B. Fernandez and M. deRegt, eds., Migrant Domestic Workers in the
Middle East:The Home and The World. London: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 51–​74.
Garces-​Mascarenas, B. (2010). Legal production of illegality in a comparative perspective. the cases of
Malaysia and Spain. Asia Europe Journal, 8 (1), pp. 7789.
Gardner, A. M. (2010.) Engulfed: Indian guest workers, Bahraini citizens and the structural violence of the
kafala system. In, Nicholas De Genova and Nathalie Mae Peutz, eds. The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty,
Space, and the Freedom Of Movement. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 196–​223.
Ghaemi, H. (2006). Building Towers, Cheating Workers: Exploitation of Migrant Construction Workers in the United
Arab Emirates. Sarah Leah Whitson, Ian Gorvin and Carol Pier, eds. New York: Human Rights Watch.
Kerber, L.K. (1998.) No Constitutional Right to be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship. Macmillan.
Longva, A.N. (1992.) When state patriarchy rests on female consensus: Kuwait women as nation builders.
In Proceedings of the 1992 Annual Conference of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, pp. 95–​105.
Mahdavi, P. (2011). Gridlock: Labour, Migration, and Human Trafficking in Dubai. Stanford: Stanford UP.
—​—​. (2015). Migrant Encounters: Intimate Labour, the State, and Mobility across Asia. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania.
—​—​. (2016). Crossing the Gulf: Love and Family in Migrant Lives. Stanford: Stanford UP.
Parreñas, R.S. (2000.) Migrant Filipina domestic workers and the international division of reproductive
labor. Gender & Society, 14 (4), pp. 560–​580.
Suzuki, N. Personal communications.
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organized crime. In United Nationals Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Portocols
Thereto.Vienna: UN Office on Drugs and Crime, pp. 41–​51.
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[Accessed 14 November 2015].
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gov/​documents/​organization/​105501.pdf. [Accessed 9 November 2015].
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gov/​documents/​organization/​123357.pdf. [Accessed 9 November 2015].
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Vance, C.S. (2011).Thinking trafficking, thinking sex. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 17 (2011),
pp. 135–​143.

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15
CRITICAL EXPATRIATE
STUDIES
Changing expatriate communities in Asia
and the blurring boundaries of
expatriate identity

James Farrer

Approaches to expatriate studies

This chapter reviews a growing body of critical social science research on western expatriates
in Asian contexts and develops an urban sociology perspective on expatriate communities. We
should start with how the term ‘expatriate’ is contested both in social life (see Fechter 2012: 7)
and in scholarship (Adams and Van de Vijver 2015; Kunz 2016; McNulty and Brewster 2016), its
scope ranging narrowly from corporate assignees (Dabic et al. 2015), to all long-​term migrants
(Green 2009). Many researchers advocate its replacement with ostensibly more precise catego-
ries such as ‘highly skilled migrant’ (Oishi 2012), ‘privileged migrant’ (Croucher 2012), ‘business
expatriate’ (McNulty and Brewster 2016) or ‘white migrants’ (Debnar 2016; Lundström 2014).
Taken together, these definitions form a sociological composite, or ideal type, of the ‘expatri-
ate’: a privileged, credentialed, highly mobile, white businessman. However, the disagreements
among them also point to an unravelling of this ideal type analytically and in actual social life.
There are two approaches to resolving this analytic, or real-​world, unravelling of expatriate
identity. One approach, common in management studies, aims to use objective measures –​often
survey questions on ‘motives for migration’ and ‘length of migration’ –​to categorise some
migrants as expatriates (e.g. short-​term business migrants) and exclude others (e.g. sojourn-
ers, lifestyle migrants, returnees, etc.) (McNulty and Brewster 2016). The goal of such ‘etic’
approaches is consistent categorisation of who counts as an ‘expatriate’.1 Another approach,
however, recognises the ambiguities of the term as an aspect of what is studied, namely the
social construction of the migrant experience. For example, Sarah Kunz suggests that rather
than employing it as a ‘category of analysis’, the term ‘expatriate’ should be investigated as a
‘category of practice’, a term invested with meanings in social life (Kunz 2016: 90). More com-
mon in feminist and critical race studies, such ‘emic’ approaches highlight how the ‘expatriate’
remains a gendered and racialised category in practice, though ostensibly race and gender neu-
tral. Generally imagined to be ‘western white people going to work abroad’ (Koutonin 2015),
the label of ‘expatriate’ implies economic, gendered, and racial privileges.

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Critical expatriate studies

Taking the ‘expatriate’ as a category of practice, I advocate a classic urban sociology perspec-
tive. Such an urban ethnographic approach defines its unit of analysis not as individual migrants
but rather the larger context of expatriate communities. It thus can be argued that one is not
‘an expatriate’ by virtue of being a certain type of person but rather learns to be an expatriate
through socialisation into an expatriate community with its collective practices and outlooks.
While my review of the new expatriate studies does not ignore the experience of expatriates
as individuals, it focuses on the institutional, social and normative determinants of a collective
western expatriate experience in Asian cities. This approach is inspired by Eric Cohen’s seminal
review of research on expatriate communities (Cohen 1977). Before I return to this approach,
however, I outline the emergence of what I label ‘critical expatriate studies’.

Migrants or expats? Blurring boundaries in critical expatriate studies

Research on expatriates experienced its first boom in international management studies in the
1990s (Dabic et al. 2015). Given its applied roots, this management research concentrated on
expatriates’ psychological adjustment and effectiveness as workers, saying little about the larger
social contexts of expatriate migration. A more recent surge in social studies research on expa-
triates can be seen since the 2000s, and generally has taken a broader and more critical perspec-
tive on expatriates, not only as employees, but as socially and economically privileged migrants
(Croucher 2012; Fechter 2012; Fechter and Walsh 2010; Kunz 2016; Knowles and Harper 2009;
Lehmann 2014; Leonard 2010; Leggett 2013). Whiteness is shown to be a source of privilege,
but also alienation (Debnar 2016; Farrer 2014a; Lundström 2014: 6). Gender is shown to shape
both work and private life for expatriates. In particular, female ‘trailing spouses’ have been
central in creating and maintaining expatriate community networks, but also feel alienated and
marginalised (Willis and Yeoh 2002; Fechter 2012).
At the same time, the critical expatriate studies challenge the image of expatriates as organi-
sational men on fixed-​term contracts. Ethnographic research shows how corporate expatriates
may transition to long-​term settlement through local employment or entrepreneurship (Farrer
2010b). Most significantly, there has been a rapid increase in self-​initiated expatriates, who now
outnumber organisational expatriates two to one globally (Cerdin and Selmer 2014: 1282).This
group includes many younger, unmarried migrants, especially female self-​initiated expatriates
(Leonard 2010: 94; Fechter 2008, 2012: 128).
This new research emphasises the internal stratification of expatriate communities, docu-
menting the emergence of an expatriate precariat of young people from developed coun-
tries seeking employment in Asia as a refuge from weak job markets at home. These include
English language teachers in Shanghai, Taipei, and Tokyo (Appleby 2014; Lan 2011; Stanley
2012), young chefs in Shanghai (Farrer 2015) and a large number of young Japanese people
manning call centres in Dalian (Kawashima 2016). While not fitting the definition of expatri-
ates as privileged migrants, these young migrants are central to reproducing existing expatriate
communities, working in key expatriate institutions (from schools to sports associations) and
creating expatriate geographies (such as hip bar and café streets throughout Asia). They may
experience elements of white racial privilege in some spheres while remaining economically
precarious and socially marginal in others (Debnar 2016; Lan 2011).
The critical expatriate studies also point to the multiplicity of motives in expatriation.Although
expatriates in Asia have generally been regarded as economic migrants, there are also growing
numbers who settle in Asia as marriage migrants, including western men married to Asian women
(Farrer 2008,; Sunanta and Angeles 2013). Some married couples establish businesses together,
or retire in Asia, blurring the boundaries between economic, marriage, and lifestyle migration.

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James Farrer

We also should not forget that many expatriates in Asia are children, many of whom grow up as
‘third culture kids’ whose lives sometimes include experiences in local Asian schools (Farrer and
Greenspan 2015) or adventuring as teenagers in the larger urban environment (Sander 2014).
The broader research on Asian migration also points to the blurring racial boundaries of
expatriate communities. Research on ‘circular migration’ shows how Asians returning from
study abroad are new competitors to expatriates (Zweig and Wang 2013). But given that many
are now foreign nationals and culturally ‘westernised’, they also in many ways become part of
the new expatriate communities (for example, sending children to expatriate schools, joining
expatriate associations and living in expatriate communities).We also see increases in intra-​Asian
corporate expatriates, including many women, some of whom work abroad for Asian-​based
multinational enterprises (Shen and Jiang 2015). All this new research points to the expanding
but also blurring boundaries of expatriate communities and expatriate identities.

Challenges for critical expatriate studies

Despite its focuses on the larger context of migration, much new expatriate research still fails to
capture the changing relationship of expatriates to the host society. The voices of host country
nationals are virtually absent (Fechter and Walsh 2010; Kunz 2016). Even the state has been
relatively ignored, despite its visa-​granting gatekeeper role (Croucher 2012). Some research
has focused on new policies for ‘talent’ recruitment (Oishi 2012; Zweig and Wang 2013), but
there is less attention given to how visa and employment policies affect the chances of middling
expatriates such as chefs, teachers and others who are also considered ‘skilled’ in many regula-
tory contexts.
There is also surprisingly little research on the impact of expatriates on the larger host
society, despite their important economic and cultural role. Chang, for example, describes
the ‘expatriatisation’ of Holland Village in Singapore as a process transforming the culture of
that neighbourhood (Chang 1995, cited in Beaverstock 2011: 726). My research shows how
expatriate entrepreneurs in Shanghai have contributed to cosmopolitan nightlife (Farrer and
Field 2015) and gastronomy scenes (Farrer 2015) in that city. The transformation of expatriate
geographies into elite cosmopolitan consumer zones is a key aspect of this influence.
Finally, expatriate communities must also be considered in the larger geopolitical context of
the ‘rise of Asia’ economically and politically. Kimberly Hoang’s research on Asian sex workers
documents the flagging status of western expatriates in the cultural economy of commercial
sex, but this remains a rare and narrow perspective (Hoang 2015). Ironically, postcolonial ‘white-
ness studies’ may have blinded researchers to the relative loss of status of the former colonial
powers and to the declining currency of whiteness in East Asian contexts. Without discarding
‘whiteness’ as a critical focus, we must be aware of other racial hierarchies in East Asian cities,
especially the rise of Chineseness as a racial currency, which may entail an attention to the new
‘critical Han studies’ (Mullaney et al. 2012). To outline the changing racial and gendered rela-
tions of power in expatriate communities, I return to Eric Cohen’s concept of the expatriate
community (1977).

Expatriate communities: institutions, geographies, and norms

Rather than focusing on individuals, Cohen pointed to three factors that support an expatriate
community: specialised institutions, associated geographies, and (more vaguely) society, a term that
encompasses the informal social norms that shape expatriate lives (Cohen 1977). My approach
would follow Cohen’s organisation, showing continuity with his postcolonial characterisation

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of expatriate communities, while accounting more holistically for the blurring and fragmenta-
tion of the expatriate experience described above.
The scale and power of the formal institutions controlled by expatriates is the key factor
historically distinguishing them from all other migrant groups, with the exception of their
direct imperial predecessors. Formal institutions that support, or culturally ‘produce’, expatri-
ates include overseas government agencies (embassies, consulates, aid agencies), transnational
religious institutions (churches), educational institutions (primary, secondary and tertiary), mul-
tinational corporations, specialised consultancies and financial service companies, and expatriate
civil society organisations (associations, clubs, societies), and expatriate-​oriented media organi-
sations (Cohen 1977; Beaverstock 2002, 2011). In East Asia, most of these have a history dating
back to colonial times, explaining why the expatriate experience shows clear continuities over
more than a century. These were largely white western-​dominated institutions, and contempo-
rary research has focused on how they have remained racialised, albeit more covertly than in the
past (Leonard 2010; Fechter and Walsh 2010).
Beyond institutions, expatriate communities also occupy specific social geographies. The
urban expatriate geography includes housing estates, central business districts, and consumer
leisure spaces. Many were deliberately walled off from local communities (Cohen 1977). In
Asian cities, postcolonial expatriate geographies are often built upon imperial geographies, as
in Hong Kong (Knowles and Harper 2009), or Cold War US military geographies as in Seoul
(Kim 2014) or Tokyo (Yoshimi 2007). These postcolonial expatriate geographies have become
part of the cosmopolitan geographies of Asian global cities, situating the new expatriates in an
altered relationship to local elites who now dominate these spaces.
Finally, expatriate communities encompass the informal social norms and subcultural dis-
courses of migrants. These social norms have shown the greatest changes since Cohen’s 1977
essay, which highlighted the postcolonial and xenophobic nature of expatriate mentalities. I will
suggest that the biggest change in expatriate society may be the increase in mixed-​ethnic family
forms, globalised educational ideals, and a publicly cosmopolitan ethos.
Cohen’s term characterising the expatriate experience as a whole is the ‘environmental
bubble’, an institutionally and culturally defined zone that insulated elite migrants from the
host society. Much research on contemporary expatriates points to the persistence of ‘expatri-
ate bubbles’ and thus to continuities with the lifestyles documented by Cohen in the previous
century (Fechter 2012). Currently, however, the term ‘expatriate bubble’ may be an ethnocen-
tric generalisation, given that Asian elites now dominate many of the associated spaces. I intro-
duce, instead, the term ‘cosmopolitan canopy’ coined by urban ethnographer Elijah Anderson
to describe urban spaces of interracial and intercultural tolerance; these tend to be located in
wealthier central areas less accessible to poor residents, and are thus also fundamentally elite
spaces (Anderson 2011). In Asia, we can see examples in which the formerly racially exclusive
spaces of expatriate life now form cosmopolitan enclaves for elite locals, perhaps ‘golden cano-
pies’, but ones no longer exclusive to white migrants.

Expatriate institutions: deinstitutionalising the expatriate experience

Expatriates can be distinguished from other migrants by the scale of the institutions they long
controlled. The prototypical examples were colonial government offices. In pre-​ handover
Hong Kong, remaining colonial Britishers enjoyed privileged access to positions, especially the
police force through the 1990s (Leonard 2010; Knowles and Harper 2009). With the excep-
tion of government postings, however, the institutional bastions of western expatriate privilege
in Asian cities have undergone simultaneous processes of localisation and transnationalisation,

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incorporating both local elites and talents from diverse places beyond the white Euro-​American
sphere. At the same time, these institutions still remain gendered and racialised.

Multinational corporations
In the postcolonial era, multinational corporations, many with colonial roots, became the pre-
dominant expatriate institutions in Asian cities (Cohen 1977). Pressure from locals who had
experienced decades of discrimination forced a process of decolonisation. For example, in 1960
the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Corporation discontinued the use of the colonial nomen-
clature of ‘compradors’ in favour of the term ‘Chinese manager’, which was itself abandoned in
1965. In the space of 20 years the company transitioned from a hiring system based on explicit
ethnic tiers to one based, at least formally, on individual merit (Smith 2016).
Under pressure from home-​country or local laws, most western multinational corpora-
tions in Asia banned explicit ethnic discrimination. Recent research, however, questions the
full achievement of a post-​racial labour market in multinational firms operating in Asia. Ethnic
profiling in human resource departments is still regarded as common in some multinational
offices in Singapore, with whites and Chinese often favoured over other ethnicities (Ye and
Kelly 2011). Ethnicity or race may be even one of the traits valued in hiring an expatri-
ate, representing authenticity of knowledge and experience (Beaverstock 2002; Farrer 2014b).
Ethnographers also find evidence of colonial mentalities among white expatriates, who perceive
locals as in need of tutelage and not quite modern (Leggett 2013: 31–​38). Whiteness remains
a resource in some types of expatriate work, especially language teaching (Appleby 2014; Lan
2011; Stanley 2012) but also areas in which a ‘western’ cultural mindset (including presumed
ethical orientations) is implicitly valued (Farrer 2014b). In short, race, ethnicity and gender
are still conflated with the notion of ‘skill’ in various ways in globalising labour markets (Kunz
2016). At the same time, not just western culture, but national culture is an important ethnic
resource in western multinationals in Asia (Leonard 2010: 91). In local offices of multination-
als in the PRC, ethnic Chineseness is generally a more valued trait than whiteness. However,
whiteness may be valued for certain jobs that require interactions with foreign clients or show-
ing a ‘foreign face’ to Chinese clients (Farrer 2014b).
Whiteness seems to be, however, a declining currency in multinational corporate labour
markets in Asia. Under pressure from host societies, the localisation of expatriate roles started
as early as the 1960s (Cohen 1977: 75). As highly skilled Asian workers became more globally
mobile in the 1980s and 1990s, they came to resent expatriate managers being paid multiples
of local managers in the same office. Some localised offices of multinational companies became
resistant to expatriate transfers. Expatriate company managers are now expected to master
‘soft skills’ of networking, cultural sensitivity, government relations and teamwork that imply
deep local knowledge (Harvey and Moeller 2009: 276). With the growing focus on domes-
tic markets (as opposed to export-​oriented industries) local managers and Asian expatriates
may be more highly valued and highly paid than western expatriates without linguistic and
cultural skills (Farrer 2014b). At the same time, localisation has also meant a reduction in the
special perks and privileges that distinguished and also isolated expatriates from locals (Leonard
2010: 77).
As critical expatriate studies emphasise, multinationals have remained gendered institutions.
High-​level expatriate corporate managers remain overwhelmingly male. While men experi-
ence these moves as empowering, their female partners, who often must put aside their careers,
may experience a redomestication and loss of social identity. As in decades past, the unpaid
domestic, emotional and social labour of female trailing spouses remains essential for advancing

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their husbands’ careers (Beaverstock 2002; Fechter 2012; Kunz 2016; Lehmann 2014;Yeoh and
Willis 2005).
On the other hand, research also shows increasing numbers of expatriate women working
in Asia, particularly among self-​initiated expatriates. Migration may serve as an avenue of self-​
transformation for working female expatriates (Fechter 2008; Leonard 2010: 97). Still, working
migrant women are more likely than men to be treated as ‘local hires’ with less steady jobs
and fewer benefits. They also are more likely to be single, occupy lower positions, and are less
likely than male expatriates to be travelling with children (Selmer and Leung 2003). Women
also face discrimination in corporate expatriation. They are disproportionately less likely to be
sent on expatriate assignments in comparison to the proportion of women managers in their
home countries. They report more cross-​cultural adjustment difficulties than men, including
host country discrimination against women managers and adjustment issues related to dual
careers and child care (Caligiuri and Lazarova 2002; Shen and Jiang 2015). Female expatriates
thus may be more critical of male-​dominated colonial-​style expatriate cultures (Leonard 2010:
103). Despite such problems, however, in societies in which female managers remain rare within
local firms, multinational firms still may be seen as spaces favourable for women’s career mobil-
ity. Multinational firms’ gender policies may impact local perceptions through hiring female
managers as well as attention to the needs of gay and lesbian employees (McPhail et al. 2016).
In short, multinational workplaces in Asia are fields of multi-​ethnic competition in which
white expatriates no longer dominate the field nor set the rules for competition (Farrer 2014b).
Though still male-​dominated, they also have to some extent become institutional ‘cosmopolitan
canopies’ that allow men and women from various backgrounds to work together (Anderson
2011: 161–​4). However, we should note that multinational companies less and less define the
migration experience for young skilled migrants to Asian cities.Young self-​initiated expatriates
usually work as ‘local hires’, including employment in schools, local firms, self-​initiated small
businesses, or more recently in Asian multinational corporations such as Rakuten in Japan or
Huawei in China.

Expatriate clubs and international schools

Other important institutions that long defined the expatriate experience include clubs,
churches, and schools (Cohen 1977; Palmier 1957). In particular, expatriate social clubs have
transformed in recent decades from racially exclusive institutions to institutions defined by
social class. Like multinational corporations, however, clubs may preserve subtle forms of racial
hierarchy. Leonard finds that Hong Kong clubs, though now open to all nationalities, may
sustain a sense of racial difference through the club’s management and the routines of club life
(Leonard 2010: 81–​3). Despite this type of cultural inertia, however, most expatriate social clubs
have lost their overt racist membership policies. Beaverstock finds that Singapore clubs con-
tinue to serve social and professional functions, while their membership has become majority
Singaporean. They are less centres of white privilege and more centres of elite business activity
in the city (Beaverstock 2011: 725).
Among the most persistent of all colonial-​era expatriate institutions, international schools
are also some of the most radically decolonised. Most international schools once disdained the
teaching of local languages (Cohen 1977:  45), focusing on preparation for life ‘back home’.
We now see a shift from the ideal of ‘international’ (meaning western) education to one of
‘intercultural’ and ‘global’ education, as parents demand that children learn local languages and
experience local cultures (Haydn 2011), seeking to acquire cosmopolitan cultural capital for
global educational competition (Waters 2006). Depending on national regulations, local Asian

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children may dominate enrolment in international schools. Even in Mainland China where
PRC nationals are not allowed into expatriate international schools, the children of returnees
and other ethnic Chinese with foreign passports are the majority of pupils. Once bastions of
white expatriate distinction, traditional expatriate international schools now teach a multiracial
student body across Asia.
Asian elites eager to pass along cosmopolitan class capital to their offspring are some of the
most important stakeholders in sustaining these institutions, while also transforming the social
environment for the white expatriate children still attending them. At the same time, because of
high costs of traditional international schools, the increasing population of self-​initiated expa-
triates in Asian cities are forced to look to local schools both as affordable options and also as a
way of giving their children a locally grounded cosmopolitan education (Farrer and Greenspan
2015). These two trends mean that the international school is no longer a white expatriate
bubble. Moreover, white expatriate children (including many biracial children) are no longer
exclusively attending international schools, when cheaper local options are available.

The deinstitutionalisation of the expatriate experience

This overview of the traditionally expatriate institutions in Asian cities is limited but it dem-
onstrates a few clear patterns. First of all, leadership positions in these institutions are no longer
exclusively dominated by white Europeans and Americans. The once exclusive expatriate insti-
tutions of the immediate postwar era have become multi-​ethnic fields of opportunity and
competition among mobile elites from many backgrounds. Secondly, at the same time that
expatriate institutions in Asia have become less exclusively ‘white’, the population of white
expatriates in Asian cities has become less contained within these same institutions, with more
self-​initiated and localised expatriates working outside multinational corporations, more expa-
triate children enrolled in local schools, and fewer people able to afford expensive elite clubs.
These traditional expatriate institutions remain important in defining expatriate communities,
but they no longer ensure expatriate privilege nor serve, to the same extent they once did, to
inculcate a shared, ethnocentric expatriate outlook. Overall, this implies a deinstitutionalisation of
expatriate experience that produces a blurring and fracturing of expatriate identities.

Expatriate geographies: from environmental bubbles

to cosmopolitan canopies
As described by anthropologists, expatriates reacting against the ‘strangeness’ of the local envi-
ronment in the 1960s and 1970s created environmental bubbles out of clubs and gated commu-
nities to preserve comfort, safety, and familiarity.The surrounding city was ‘either terra incognita
or sensed as positively hostile’ (Cohen 1977: 29). Similar to the story of expatriate institutions,
expatriate geographies of Asian cities have also transformed from isolated bubbles of white
western culture to cosmopolitan geographies inhabited by transnational and national elites, as
well as a variety of marginalised middle-​class urbanites seeking spaces that tolerate difference.
Historically, expatriate communities in Asia occupied some of the ‘best areas’ of the central
city, and these areas to some extent still may be identified with expatriates. This would include
Roppongi in Tokyo, Orchard Road in Singapore, or areas of the ‘Former French Concession’
in Shanghai. At the same time, these districts also became aspirational neighbourhoods for local
elites attracted to them for their cosmopolitan consumer geographies, from Michelin-​starred
restaurants to trendy galleries and cafés. Both local and migrant elites identify the quaintness of
colonial heritage architecture with urbanism on a ‘human scale’ –​quirky irregular spaces that

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distinguish these streets from the shopping-​mall architecture of newly built middle-​class dis-
tricts (Zukin et al. 2015). The balance of economic power, however, has now shifted decidedly
in favour of the elite locals living in and visiting these historically colonial neighbourhoods.
In a reverse of the situation decades ago in which young educated Asians competed to serve
moneyed expatriates, many young, self-​initiated western expatriates now find work in ser-
vice industries in these areas, ranging from hospitality to arts and education, servicing affluent
cosmopolitan Asian urbanites (as well as rich expatriates). Research on bars and restaurants in
Shanghai’s postcolonial ‘Former French Concession’ provides wide-​ranging ­examples –​chefs,
mixologists, sommeliers, curators, designers, DJs, and dancers –​new varieties of skilled expa-
triate labour serving local urbanites and creating cosmopolitan consumer spaces (Farrer 2015;
Farrer and Field 2015).
Expatriate zones in Asian cities have become contact zones, or culturally in-​between spaces
fostering interactions among locals and migrants (Farrer 2011; Fechter 2012: 121; Yeoh and
Willis 2005). Urban contact zones are spaces of inequality as well as exchange. These include
nightlife zones, from Hong Kong to Jakarta, where high-​earning male expatriates interact with
working-​class migrants or local women, including sex workers (Leggett 2013: 42).They are also
more exclusive places, such as the clubs on Shanghai’s Bund, where more affluent women and
men date and flirt across racial and national boundaries (Farrer 2011), and hotel bars in Dubai
fostering interactions among the multicultural expatriates themselves (Walsh 2007). Expatriates
no longer occupy the most exclusive consumer spaces in many Asian cities (Hoang 2015).
However, accessible youth-​oriented neighbourhoods such as Hongdae in Seoul, Yongkang
Road in Shanghai, or Shimokitazawa in Tokyo serve as attractive spaces for young, self-​initiated
expatriates and cosmopolitan locals to interact.
Though often still zones of class-​based exclusivity, the expatriate friendly contact zones of
Asian cities have come to represent ‘cosmopolitan canopies’, or zones of tolerance and civility,
within which people not only of different races and nationalities, but also those with alterna-
tive sexual, political and aesthetic lifestyles can publicly interact without stares and harassment
(Anderson 2011). In cities where the state and society have been hostile to public homosexual-
ity, expatriate zones fostered some of the early gay bars, such as the gay clubs in Seoul’s Itaewon,
itself a heterogeneous district gathering all manner of sexual, religious, and ethnic minorities
into one tolerant ‘community of strangers’ (Kim 2014).Young Chinese women pursuing inde-
pendent lives contrary to the expectations of early marriage also find in Shanghai’s expatriate
zones a community of cosmopolitan singles with whom they can socialise with fewer marriage
pressures (Farrer and Field 2015). Nightlife spaces, art galleries, cafés and the street itself can be
spaces of tolerance and difference, a cosmopolitan canopy that extends sometimes to political as
well as sexual dissent. In such districts expatriates are usually out-​numbered and out-​moneyed
by locals, with white expatriates now serving as embodied symbols of diversity, providers of ser-
vices, and sometimes bearers of new ideas (Farrer and Field 2015). In short, these areas are still
marked as expatriate geographies in that they remain strongly associated with racially distinct
expatriates. But, the primary economic force sustaining and shaping these expatriate geogra-
phies these days may be the needs and desires of local cosmopolitan Asian urbanites who seek
out these spaces as diversified urban contact zones.

Expatriate norms: from avoidance to striving for integration

Cohen portrays western expatriates in the 1960s and 1970s as pampered sojourners whose
pursuit of familiar comforts and xenophobic attitudes isolated them from the host society. He
quotes British Southeast Asia anthropologist L.H. Palmier’s description of Asia-​based expatriates

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from 1957: ‘Within the placid lagoon of air-​conditioning … and iced drinks, of cocktail par-
ties and cyclical dinners, the community floats undisturbed. No Asian enters here, save into
the periphery; and no Western man, especially no Western woman, cares to leave it’ (Palmier
1957: 410, from Cohen 1977: 46). Within this bubble, expatriates expressed disdain for locals
and could even be punished socially for adapting too well to local customs (Cohen 1977: 69).
Host nationals, in turn, responded to this haughtiness with hostility (Cohen 1977: 71). Even the
expatriates themselves, particularly women, found this society stultifying, experiencing culture
shock less in response to local society than to the restrictive life in the expatriate bubble (Cohen
1977:  49). Expatriates did socialise with westernised elites from the host society but rarely
learned local languages or participated in local cultural life (Cohen 1977: 63).
Recent research on white expatriates in Asia shows significant changes in attitudes expressed
towards locals, but with some residues of the colonial mindset. Leggett in particular, describes a
condescending ‘colonial mentality’ of Jakarta-​based expatriates towards local Indonesian society
in the late 1990s (Leggett 2013, 31–​38). Other researchers emphasise how expatriates fail to
recognise or acknowledge the privileges accorded to whiteness in Asia (Fechter 2012; Leonard
2010: 41). Expatriates still maintain their own privileged status through exploiting the services
of other working-​class migrants (Kunz 2016: 92).
With the global influence of anti-​racist movements since the 1960s, however, we see a
generational shift towards norms of social integration. Most expatriates espouse ideals of eth-
nic inclusiveness, while lamenting the difficulties of learning local languages and making local
friends. Many expatriates, particularly trailing spouses, feel socially isolated in the ‘golden cage’
of a gendered expatriate bubble (Fechter 2012: 41–​43). Expatriates still tend to seek belonging
in communities organised along national lines; however, long-​term expatriates also endeavour
to establish local friendships and establish a sense of belonging in the city (Farrer 2010b). Adams
and Van de Vijver find two orientations among expatriates: a more cosmopolitan perspective,
which expatriates develop after much experience in various cultures, and a more pragmatic
perspective in which expatriates maintain their original identity and make only superficial
adjustments to a new context (Adams and Van de Vijver 2015).
The most visible change in expatriate engagement with local society in Asia is the rise of
international marriage as a new norm. Rates of international marriage between expatriates and
locals in some Asian contexts have risen from nearly zero to visible minority status. In some
cases, especially when religious differences are involved, intimate erotic relationships between
expatriates and locals may still be seen as a source of social pollution (Fechter 2010: 156–​160),
but they are more often regarded as a legitimate form of personal interaction. In particular,
western men find that dating and marrying Asian women may be a way of integrating into the
host society (see Farrer 2008; Sunanta and Angeles 2013). At the same time, many single female
white expatriates in Asia are more likely to find sexuality to be a cause of exclusion or margin-
alisation. Not only are they less likely to date and marry Asian men, but many find it difficult to
find partners among expatriate men (Caligiuri and Lazarova 2002: 764, Farrer and Dale 2014;
Fechter 2012: 46; Lehmann 2014: 120–​22).These gendered and racialised norms of cross-​border
sexual interaction differ according to national context, but sexuality should be considered both
an aspect of social integration and a source of racialised exclusion.
Attitudes also have changed regarding multicultural childrearing. One out of 29 children
born in Japan in 2014 had a foreign parent (Kyodo 2016), and multiracial children and young
adults have also become a visible minority in Tokyo and many other Asian cities. This once
highly stigmatised racial status is now exploited as a symbol of cosmopolitanism, as in the fre-
quent use of mixed race models in Asian advertising (Murphy-​Shigematsu 2001). Similarly, the
‘third culture kid’ (often labelled a ‘returnee’ in Japan) is now regarded less negatively as a social

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misfit with no ‘true’ culture and more as a multicultural person with marketable linguistic and
cultural skills (Selmer and Lam 2004).
In my research in Shanghai and Tokyo, expatriate families display a cosmopolitan ethos most
consistently in their aspirations for their children’s education. Most hope their children can be
exposed to local society and learn local languages.This may take the form of spending time, espe-
cially preschool years, in local or bilingual schools. In international schools, this ideal of locally
grounded cosmopolitanism is manifest in local language programmes and out-​reach activities.
Not all of these efforts are successful, and in Shanghai we found that efforts to ‘raise cosmopoli-
tans’ through exposure to local schooling were fraught with difficulties, ranging from study stress
to social isolation and aversion to political indoctrination. Conversely, children in international
schools had little contact with local society, unless one parent was Chinese (Farrer and Greenspan
2015). Cosmopolitan childrearing was thus more of a shared ideal than an easily achieved reality.
Host national norms also shape the migrant social experience. Racial visibility and the mean-
ings of whiteness shape the white expatriate in East Asia. A ‘longing’ for western culture is a
common narrative in discussing host relations to expatriates in Asia (Kelsky 2001). Positive prej-
udice for whiteness means that white people are preferred as English teachers in China, Japan
or Taiwan (Appleby 2014; Lan 2011; Stanley 2012), but concerns about their domestic habits
hurt white foreigners when seeking housing in Japan (Arudou 2015). Associations of whiteness
with masculinity seem to help men finding a romantic partner (Farrer 2010a; Kelksy 2001), but
disadvantage white women (Farrer and Dale 2014). Not all associations with whiteness are posi-
tive. Histories of colonialism and American military interaction create hostility in some regions.
And as self-​initiated expatriates become the norm in East Asia, problems of privilege are giving
way to problems of discrimination in life activities in which expatriates must now make their
own arrangements, such as schooling, employment, housing and access to leisure facilities. This
situation of social exclusion may be most evident in Japan, where expatriate employment was
‘localised’ earlier than in other countries (Arudou 2015; Oishi 2012).

Conclusions: changing sociological relevance of expatriate communities

Western migrants –​and skilled migrants from around the world –​continue to arrive in Asia,
but the increasingly porous communities in which they ‘learn to be expatriates’ are losing the
semi-​colonial visage they retained through the immediate postwar decades. The transformation
of key expatriate institutions –​especially multinational corporations and international schools –​
from white bastions to multicultural fields of competition, means they are more diverse and
less clearly dominated by white westerners. Expatriate geographies also have evolved into the
cosmopolitan canopies of Asian global cities, in which young expatriates find diverse roles sup-
porting the cosmopolitan lifestyles of increasingly affluent Asian urbanites. The social networks
of expatriates have become more open-​ended, as they seek more advantages from local social
ties (including friendship and marriage) and embrace norms of a greater openness to local cul-
tures. The expatriate experience is thus simultaneously more precarious and more exposed to
local society. ‘Becoming an expatriate’ still remains a distinct and identifiable type of migration
experience –​of finding work, friends, lovers, and leisure within pre-​existing expatriate com-
munities –​but one that is more diverse and less isolated from a larger urban environment.
The new critical expatriate studies show that the racialisation of this expatriate experience
continues, though also in more diverse guises. As described above, the associations of ‘whiteness’
remain a defining advantage for, and occasional disadvantage for, white expatriates. But with the
diversification of populations inside developed countries, ‘western’ expatriates leaving for Asia
include more people with East Asian, Latin American, African, and other backgrounds. They

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have been largely ignored in expatriate research. For example, ethnic Chineseness may be an
advantage for migrants seeking employment or a romantic partner in Shanghai (Farrer 2010a,
2014b). However, not all forms of Chineseness are equally valued in other contexts. A Mainland
Chinese background might hamper social integration in either Hong Kong or Singapore. More
research must focus on the racialisation of Africans, Latinos and other Asians in Asian contexts.
Theories of race born in North America and Europe, such as whiteness studies, may be found
inadequate for investigating race in globalising Asia.
Overall, the research on expatriates in Asia has failed to address the rise of Asian economies and
the changing position of foreigners within these societies. Postcolonial perspectives have been helpful
in understanding the continuities in expatriate experiences through the latter half of the 20th cen-
tury, but they do not explain many new experiences in rising cities such as Shanghai, Singapore or
Ho Chi Minh City. As Hoang (2015) has pointed out, such approaches may assume too much about
the advantages enjoyed by whites, while explaining too little about racial dynamics among Asians.
The ‘rise of Asia’, however, does not entail that expatriate communities are now irrelevant
in understanding Asian cities. Indeed, as I have tried to emphasise here, the cosmopolitan com-
munities created in great part by expatriates are important not only for migrants themselves,
but also for middle-​class consumers, bohemians, intellectuals, and sexual outsiders in Asian cit-
ies, who flock to such cosmopolitan areas such as Tianzifang in Shanghai, Tiong Bahru in
Singapore, Itaewon in Seoul, or Roppongi in Tokyo. These urban cosmopolitan canopies are a
space for migrants and locals to pursue hybrid relationships and lifestyles. However, in general,
these are also ‘golden canopies’, largely representing the elite ‘cosmopolitanism of frequent trav-
ellers’ (Calhoun 2002). They are based on elite institutions and consumer spaces that exclude
the working-​class migrants from poorer countries and interior regions, and thus serve to repro-
duce class privilege as well as postcolonial nostalgia.

Note
1 The term ‘etic’ refers to analyses that take the standpoint of an external scientific observer. ‘Emic’ analy-
ses undertake to explain phenomena from the perspective of participants (Pike 1967: 8–​12).

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PART IV

Challenges in Asian migration

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16
MIGRATION, POVERTY AND
SOURCE COMMUNITIES
Robert Cole and Jonathan Rigg

Introduction
One of the earliest studies of rural–​urban migration in Southeast Asia is Robert B.Textor’s From
Peasant to Pedicab Driver (Textor 1961). This took a ‘problem approach’ (Textor 1961: 1), view-
ing such migration as rooted in the ‘problem conditions’ of rural Thailand (and especially the
environmentally marginal Northeast region), and the ‘life problems’ of the migrants themselves
in their destination, Bangkok. Overwhelmingly, the reasons for leaving home were understood
as economic, as seen in Textor’s argument that ‘most migrants are pushed by the press of poverty
rather than pulled by lure of adventure’ (Textor 1961: 15–​16).
While a great deal has changed in the 60 years since Textor’s fieldwork in the mid-​1950s, in
terms of the development contexts within which migration in Southeast Asia occurs, there are
continuities in how the motivations for migration and policy concerns that typically under-
pin the process are perceived. Migration is as much driven by spatial inequalities as economic
opportunities, and for many policy makers, continues to be seen as a ‘problem’ for two main
reasons. First, migration is indicative of a consistent (policy) failure to narrow disparities across
space, and therein a failure to address those resulting from economic growth, despite the central
role migrant labour may play in generating such growth. Second, migration is assumed to be
unsettling and disruptive, challenging long-​held normative views about desirable (namely sed-
entary) lifestyles and patterns of living; ideal-​types whose existence some argue rarely stands up
to generalisation (de Haan 1999).
The limits to generalisation are writ large in the study of migration and poverty, and particu-
larly in such a diverse region as Southeast Asia. In this chapter, we explore a range of approaches
to understanding the intersections between migration and poverty, while acknowledging the
difficulty of generalising from such a varied field. To move some way towards corralling this
diversity, we argue that there are two central facets to the ‘migration, poverty and source com-
munities’ debate, which in turn map onto what we term four ‘indeterminacies’. Our two facets
comprise causalities (the poverty/​livelihood context, initial conditions and existence of oppor-
tunities that motivate migration decisions); and consequences (the implications of migration
for the source household, community or development context).The question of what develop-
mental impact migration has on source communities and natal households in turn raises four
indeterminacies, or areas of contention. It is these indeterminacies that largely explain why

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the development question, which is a long-​standing one, remains unresolved, as they shape the
approaches and assumptions of any given study. These areas of contention encompass what is
being addressed, who the question of impact is being applied to, where it is being evaluated, and
when (over what period or interval) it is being assessed. Our four indeterminacies thus relate
to the analytic applied, the object of attention, the challenge of comparison, and the issue of
temporality:

• Analytic:  are economic or sociocultural impacts the focus of study, and is poverty being
assessed in money-​metric terms or according to some wider consideration of well-​being?
• Object of attention:  is attention applied to migrant households alone and their non-​
migrating members or also to non-​migrant households, and does this then encompass the
wider community or settlement context?
• Challenge of comparison: how do we work with the evident and often profound differences
in impact between sites, regions and countries?
• Temporality: how does the developmental impact of migration alter over time given changes
in country conditions, local level development trajectories, household transitions and indi-
vidual circumstances?

Central facets: cause and consequence

Migration theory has long viewed migration as motivated by poverty, scarcity, and the desire
to seek new and better living conditions, whether domestically or across borders (Ravenstein
1889; Lee 1966; Todaro 1969). Beyond this seemingly axiomatic relationship, the causalities of
migration –​and their links to poverty –​are highly diverse and at times contradictory. It has
been said many times, but is no less important for that: context matters. Similarly, the effects
of migration on poverty are also mixed, and divining why remains a key challenge on which a
considerable body of literature is focused (e.g. de Haan 1999; Deshingkar 2006; Lipton 1980;
UNDP 2009).
The dynamics of the poverty-​migration relationship have for some decades been commonly
expressed in ‘push’ and ‘pull’ terms, as a simplistic explanatory tool for migrant decision-​making.
Textor’s early study epitomises this approach: ‘these upcountry folk have either been pushed by
bad conditions in the agricultural hinterland, or pulled by the attraction, real or false, of a bet-
ter life in the capital’ (Textor 1961: 1). His study highlights the prevailing developmental view
of migration as a bi-​directional (albeit often seasonal) process, in which migrants raise money
to overcome economic hardship in their places of origin, and return home. Textor describes
how the migrant ‘returns with relative affluence and prestige. He is, then, a potentially impor-
tant agent of social and cultural change’ (ibid: 2). Textor’s work in 1950s Thailand encapsulates
many of the issues that remain pertinent in studies of migration across the Southeast Asian
region today:

• how conditions in places of origin ‘drive’ migration;

• the largely economic/​livelihood rationale for migration;
• the possibility that migration can make an important contribution to development at ‘home’.

These key concerns have permeated efforts to develop new approaches to and delineations of
migration patterns in the decades since Textor’s study, as well as theoretical advances. Exploring
the latter, de Haas (2010) characterises the evolution of two broad approaches to migration the-
ory which are readily visible in many contemporary academic and applied studies in Southeast

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Asia. In de Haas’s analysis, migration ‘optimists’ are those grounded in neoclassical principles, not
least multilateral agencies, for whom migration is considered a vast process of labour optimisa-
tion, peopled by utility-​maximising migrants.This view is exemplified in the World Bank’s 2009
World Development Report:

Countries do not prosper without mobile people. Indeed, the ability of people to
move seems to be a good gauge of their economic potential, and the willingness to
migrate appears to be a measure of their desire for advancement
(World Bank 2009: 18).

The ‘pessimistic’ approach, by contrast, views migration from a Marxian, historical-​structuralist

position, as a function of spatial disparities brought about by capitalist expansion. Connell et al.’s
pioneering comparative study captures the essence of this view: ‘migration is indeed the child
of inequality. It is from the village where land is most unequally distributed that migration rates
are highest … Migration, however, is also the father of inequality’ (Connell et al. 1976: 197).
The authors locate causal analysis of migration within socially differentiated access to resources,
extending this view towards the correspondingly differentiated consequences of migration: ‘It
confers cumulative gains upon the richer migrant’s family … for the poorer migrant, migration
is increasingly a wandering search for work’ (ibid). Both broad views continue to have traction
in the literature, with Deshingkar (2006), for example, echoing the latter historical-​structuralist
position, and Jalilian and Reyes (2012) subscribing to the former, broadly neoclassical stand-
point in their edited volume on migration in the Greater Mekong Subregion.
We can also see this broad division being repeated when it comes to studies of the develop-
mental effects or consequences of migration. One of the more heavily debated questions in this
vein is whether migration remittances stimulate investment in agricultural productivity among
sending households (as theorised in the neoclassical tradition), or foster increased consumption
and economic dependence on migrant household members (Davis et al. 2010; de Haan 1999;
de Haas 2010; Garip 2014; Leinbach and Watkins 1998; Manivong et al. 2014). This question is
central to how migration affects livelihoods, development and the lessening (or persistence) of
poverty in rural contexts.
As seen time and again in empirical findings, such questions are far from binary, since
productive and consumptive remittance behaviours may be present in a single study location,
or even within a single household. De Haas (2010) points out that both optimistic (neoclas-
sical) and pessimistic (historical-​structuralist) views falter on the assumption of migration
as a linear function of economic conditions, with a kind of attached inevitability in the
allocation of remittances. There is no question that the causes or ‘drivers’ of migration are
related to development conditions; there is also no doubt that migration affects those condi-
tions. Going further than these rather anodyne and unsatisfactory observations, however, is
difficult:

Migration may be propelled by poverty, and encouraged by wealth; it may reflect

resource scarcities at the local level, or be an outcome of prosperity; it may be embed-
ded in economic transformations, or better explained by social and cultural changes; it
may narrow inequalities in source communities, or widen them; it may tighten bonds
of reciprocity between migrants and their natal households, or it may serve to loosen
or break these bonds; it may help to support agricultural production, or it may be a
means to break away from farming altogether
(Rigg 2007: 163).

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Asking questions such as ‘does poverty drive migration?’ or ‘does migration develop source
communities?’ is, therefore, something of an interrogative cul de sac. Why this is the case pivots
on initial assumptions and approaches to the question based on our earlier stated indetermina-
cies, which we explore in the following section, returning to what questions we might more
productively ask in the conclusion.

Four indeterminacies
Analytic: assessing poverty and the developmental impacts of migration
Given that migration is, in most cases in Southeast Asia, a response to livelihood pressures or
lack of opportunities in source communities, and the presence of opportunities elsewhere (e.g.
Bylander 2014; Phouxay 2010; Rigg 2007), it is not surprising that migration is usually viewed –​
in aggregate terms –​to be income generating, livelihood strengthening and, therefore, poverty
reducing. At the same time, it is clear that not all migrants are poor. This has led some scholars
to make a distinction between distress migration driven by poverty (e.g. Bylander 2015) and
migration for accumulation (or consolidation) (see Waddington and Sabates-​Wheeler 2003;
Deshingkar and Start 2003), undertaken by the non-​poor. As Castles et al. (2014) emphasise,
there is, however, a need to move beyond purely economic considerations of migration-​devel-
opment interactions. Migration decisions are not just ‘passive or predictable responses to pov-
erty and spatial equilibria’ (Castles et al. 2014: 51), but are also demonstrative of the exercise of
freedoms to choose ways of living, and therefore intrinsic to a broader notion of development
(Sen 1999). In some settings such freedoms may be greatly expanded among poor natal house-
holds (both for leavers and stayers) when household members migrate, with potential ‘spill-​
over’ effects such as the ability to invest in human capital (particularly education, e.g. Adger
et al. 2002), as well as strengthening agency by engagement in new migratory opportunities
(Carswell and de Neve 2013).
When a money-​metric poverty approach is adopted, the benefits of migration are most
often reduced to the role of financial remittances, and their allocation or investment in
source communities. But remittances also take other forms. It is perhaps more from the
combination of assets, knowledge and skills gained via migration that ‘productive’ invest-
ments can result (Deshingkar 2012), rather than on the basis of cash remittances alone.
More broadly, livelihoods may also be reworked by social remittances drawn from periods
of life in different locations that gradually alter social norms and behaviours at home (King
and Skeldon 2010), while also bringing new knowledge and ideas, entrepreneurialism and,
sometimes (perhaps most prominently among migrant rural youth), a reduced interest in
farming (see White 2015). Social remittance effects are hard to encapsulate in a measurable
form, although their implications in terms of social reproduction and the continuation,
adoption or abandonment of agricultural practices may be significant (Barney 2012). From
this position, the question of whether migration leads to increased productive investments or
elevated consumption among rural households needs to entertain the possibility that declin-
ing farm production may be counterbalanced by increasing non-​farm enterprises. These
may include changes in livelihood activities catalysed by periods spent in other locations,
transfers of knowledge and enhancement of capabilities, as well as by necessity due to shifts
in the labour supply at the source community.
A common interaction underlying the question of how migration alters livelihoods relates to
how reduced labour is compensated once a household member migrates. This may be achieved
by substituting remittances for agricultural production (i.e. covering consumption needs with

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remitted income), hiring additional labour or through mechanisation, investing remittances in

intensification such as via the purchase of agricultural inputs, or simply by working harder or
working older (Gray and Bilsborrow 2014).While empirical studies have begun to explore ways
that social remittances in the form of the transmission of ideas reshape practices (Barney 2012),
the question of how remittances are invested (or not) in the land remains an area of continuing
and vigorous debate, and is in many ways central to our understanding of how migration affects
the livelihoods of source households and wider communities.

Object of attention: migrants, households and communities

That Southeast Asian societies are becoming more mobile is clear. Heightened human mobility
within national spaces and across borders has increasingly been acknowledged as both a con-
tributing factor and consequence of agrarian and broader development transitions (Kelly 2011).
Agricultural returns are declining at household level and as a share of national economies, while
the expansion of industry and service sectors has created new opportunities, diversifying rural
livelihoods, but often requiring that people migrate to take advantage of these proliferating
opportunities. Human mobility, in this way, becomes an important mechanism for redistributing
income to poor rural communities (King and Skeldon 2010).
This perspective also highlights the scalar nature of migration interactions with develop-
ment, engaging individuals and households while also driving processes of change that stretch
significantly beyond the source community. Viewing these interactions through a neoclassical
lens tends to produce the rather one-​dimensional and positivist assumptions that are emblem-
atic of the mainstream literature, such as:

Labour movements could be viewed as complementing the movement of capital from

capital-​abundant to labour-​and natural-​resource abundant countries, contributing
to benefits from a more productive allocation of global resources in terms of factor
productivity
(UNCTAD and IOM 1995: 3).

Underpinning this position, north–​south transfer of capital is coupled with wage increases as
local labour supply declines, ultimately resulting in factor price equalisation (de Haas 2010).
Pointing to the limits of abstraction in this way, Skeldon argues that ‘while no single pathway
through any migration or developmental transition exists, it nevertheless needs to be accepted
that a retreat to total relativism is counterproductive’ (Skeldon 2012: 154), and that regional
and local transitions can be usefully identified within spatial processes. These transitions would
incorporate changes in agriculture, industry and state structures to develop a ‘framework for the
structure of human movement in time and space’ (ibid: 164). Such an approach may allow for
the linkage of household-​level effects to national and global processes in more meaningful ways
that better account for variation between and within scales.
A significant trait of migration in Asia compared with some other regions, and one
that is visible in diverse contexts, is the degree to which migrants from rural areas  –​as
most migrants are  –​maintain links with their natal households and communities. It is a
trait that transcends not only scale, but economic and cultural rationales, and (perhaps for
this reason) usually goes unremarked. Migration sojourns in these circumstances are just
that; temporary absences where return is expected. Temporary and circular migrations are
dominant among the rural poor and near-​poor in Asia, who tend to ‘keep one foot in the
village either by necessity or choice’ (Deshingkar 2006: 2). Migrants’ on-​going commitment

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to home has sometimes been explained in culturalist terms (the ‘dutiful daughter’ argu-
ment, see Angeles and Sunanta 2009) but it is also fundamentally shaped by underlying
policy contexts. Vietnam’s household registration system (ho khau) makes urban living for
rural migrants difficult (Anh et al. 2012), while in other countries of the region, non-​farm
opportunities are precarious and migrants are wary of trading the security offered by even a
small piece of land for a possibly uncertain future in an urban/​non-​f arm milieu (Rigg et al.
2014). International labour migrants from rural regions in Southeast Asia, meanwhile, are
frequently undocumented and irregular (Derks 2010), or otherwise employed on fixed term
contracts where return is inevitable (Kitiarsa 2014).The wider political economy is therefore
a critical contextual component in understanding the causes, nature and consequences of
migration at household level.
The policy dynamic is exemplified in Elmhirst’s (2012) study in Lampung, south Sumatra,
where remittances to rural source households were not found to be channelled into agriculture,
but mainly spent on housing and education. A policy context that prioritised land enclosure for
commercial agriculture or conservation, and limited viable urban alternatives were identified, in
her study, as drivers of rural vulnerabilities in Indonesia (2012: 131). In a similar vein, Barney’s
(2012) study of migration and land enclosure in Khammouane province, Laos, contextualises
migration against a backdrop of state-​and investor-​driven extractive resource capture, identify-
ing a sharp rise in migration as local livelihoods and ecologies were progressively undermined
by plantations and hydropower projects (both state economic priorities). Here, policy-​driven
activities that weakened local agricultural potential met with ongoing drives for regional eco-
nomic and infrastructure integration, bridging gaps with burgeoning labour demands in neigh-
bouring Thailand.

Challenge of comparison: accounting for geographical difference

One of the key points that emerges from a review of the migration-​development literature is
the degree to which geographical difference plays a role in any local-​level conclusion about the
effects –​or impacts –​of migration on source households and communities (Cole et al. 2015).
This is evident, for example, in the earlier raised question of whether remittances from migra-
tion are used for productive purposes (developmental and, therefore, ‘good’), or for consump-
tion (seen as non-​developmental, and therefore ‘bad’).
The first difficulty is that in many instances remittances are allocated for both consumption
and production purposes, the balance and direction of which relates to relative local resource
scarcities and expected returns (Adger et al. 2002). Within this balance, an important considera-
tion is the fungible nature of the additional income provided by remittances, however small
individual transfers may be. While remittances may be notionally identified as supporting con-
sumption, they may free other household income or savings for ‘productive’ livelihood invest-
ments (Barney 2012). Existing studies frequently emphasise that remittances are only invested
for agricultural purposes in local contexts where such investment is perceived to be viable
(Manivong et al. 2014; Elmhirst 2012; Bylander 2014), which may not be the case in impov-
erished source regions characterised by limited infrastructure, weak markets and poor state
provision (Davis et al. 2010), and where marginal environments preclude profitable expansion
or intensification of traditional livelihood activities. In contexts where household production is
sub-​livelihood, migration has been identified as a way of coping with economic risks, as well
as an important adaptive strategy to climate-​induced livelihood pressures (Deshingkar 2012).
Migration, then, is recognised as increasingly central to livelihood strategies that are in turn
embedded in (and responses to) the specific conditions faced by natal households (Leinbach and

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Watkins 1998), some inherited but many others in flux due to social, economic and environ-
mental change. Not only must attention be paid to the particular migration/​development signa-
tures of regions, communities and households, but also to how these are changing, and the role
of migration within such change. For instance, migration may play a leading role in reworking
the envelope of accepted social practice (Elmhirst 2012); stimulate, through remittances and
labour, local development and employment opportunities for non-​migrants in both source and
recipient locations (Rungmanee 2014); and lead (or not) to investment in yield-​and produc-
tion-​enhancing technologies (Davis et al. 2010; Grimm and Klasen 2015).
At a general level it is the case that, across Southeast Asia, the ability of agriculture alone to
sustain rural livelihoods is diminishing (Deshingkar 2006; Rigg et al. 2012) and migration is
one important strategy that households employ to construct livelihoods that deal with the ‘scis-
sor effect of stagnating returns to work in farming locally and expanding opportunities in the
non-​farm sector extra-​locally’(Rigg et al. 2014: 192). As such, migration enables households to
cross-​subsidise smallholder production and thereby sustain rural communities, with productive
work away being supported by reproductive work at home.The question of whether migration
drives development or leads to rural stagnation among source communities tends to overlook
the question of whether, in the absence of migration, rural households would be able to stay on
the land and in the village at all. In the 1970s, radical scholars expected that rural poverty would
become endemic under the forces of modernisation (Mortimer 1973), with massive, often
violent, permanent out-​migration. That this outcome has not been realised is partly because of
the role that temporary migration has played across the region in sustaining rural communi-
ties, through managing pressures and shocks to rural livelihoods. This has subsequently driven
economic development processes at national scales, by permitting workers to be paid at less
than the cost of household reproduction –​because the natal household is sustained from semi-​
subsistence, albeit sub-​livelihood, production on the farm.
An example of migration as community-​supporting and community-​preserving is Bylander’s
(2014) study of rural Chanleas Dai, Cambodia. Here, the risks of village-​based livelihood strate-
gies were perceived as significantly higher than the uncertainties of migration, Chanleas Dai
having endured successive poor harvests due to environmental shocks throughout the 2000s.
Over the same period, labour migration to neighbouring Thailand became a primary liveli-
hood activity as networks strengthened, income became more reliable and the process grew
easier and safer, even entailing a certain level of protection under Thailand’s worker registration
scheme. By comparison, the use of remittances to spread risk in unfavourable climatic condi-
tions is explored in Yang and Choi’s (2007) study of remittance responses to rainfall-​derived
income shocks in the Philippines. The authors show correlation between falling household
incomes during years with rainfall shocks and increased remittance transfers among households
with overseas migrants, consistent with remittance flows performing an insurance role among
migrant-​sending households.
The effects of migration on land-​use practices –​and therefore on the texture of rural devel-
opment and agrarian change –​also differ markedly based on spatial variances, and can both
intensify (e.g. via investment of remittances in inputs to offset labour loss) and dis-​intensify
(e.g. by turning towards labour-​saving practices) agriculture (Deshingkar 2012). Manivong et al.
(2014) reveal such dynamics by examining remittance and labour effects of migration in south-
ern Laos, amid rapid transformation of rural livelihoods linked to economic integration in
the Greater Mekong Subregion. The authors found that many households in the study area of
Champassak province increasingly relied on wage work, particularly youth migration to neigh-
bouring Thailand, driving up local labour hire costs, while returns to rice production remained
low. Staying on the land instead of seeking more remunerative off-​farm work hence came with

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mounting opportunity costs. Higher returns to labour were sought in source communities
by switching to commercial crops, freeing household labour to continue pursuing migration
opportunities, and remitting a portion of income to support both household consumption
needs and farm production. De Brauw (2010) identified similar trends in household panel
data from Vietnam in the 1990s, which demonstrate shifts from rice to non-​r ice production in
response to migration, together with declining input usage among households with migrant
members compared to those without. The author suggests further causal links in changing
livelihoods via possible substitution of capital for labour-​saving technologies, and changing
preferences from relatively labour-​intensive to relatively land-​intensive crops. These examples
illustrate several ways that migration incomes sustain rural households in Southeast Asia, as well
as ways that shifting labour dynamics play into livelihood and land-​use practices, based on local
conditions. The comparison of such effects between locations offers an approach to tackling
questions of migration and poverty in novel and targeted ways, albeit with recognition of the
limits to generalisation discussed above.

Temporality: placing migration and development in temporal context

Having highlighted the need to pay attention to local conditions and household circumstances,
there is also a need to view these in temporal context. This applies equally to the national
development project, village development trajectories, and changing household circumstances
whether tied to stochastic events (such as illness, wedding costs or inheritance), or more gradual
processes of life-​course transition, accumulation or diminution.
Focusing on the latter, Leinbach and Watkins (1998) demonstrate how income from circular
wage migration by poor Sumatran migrants is prioritised initially towards securing basic survival
needs among source households, and subsequently economic accumulation and advancement
(including productive investments) once some measure of stability is achieved. The authors
develop a schematic for migration/​remittance decisions based on initial conditions at the source
and destination, household responses (in terms of consumption and labour allocation) and land-
holdings response (conversion, purchase or sale). While such schematics are useful in consider-
ing temporal sequences affecting decisions relating to migration and remittances, the authors
acknowledge external forces that affected migrants’ abilities to maximise benefits in each case,
including discrimination, the difficulty of separation from family or fulfilling a position in direct
competition with many other workers.The most successful households benefitted from specific
policy and market conditions at different points in time, capitalising on each successful endeav-
our while gaining increasing agency. The complexity of the decision process is emphasised,
necessitating understanding of ‘specific triggering elements and the timing of these’ (1998: 61).
This brings us back to the context-​dependent nature of analysis relating to migration:  such
decisions hinge not only on returns to labour and potential gains in income, but on a diversity
of concurrent temporal processes, opportunities and capabilities on the part of migrants.
McKay’s (2005) study of the role of remittances in rural landscape production in Ifugao
province, the Philippines, similarly illustrates remittance investment as a progressive process,
offering a compelling example of how development trajectories at village level shift over time
with the outflow of labour and inflow of remittance transfers. McKay’s study encapsulates the
‘globalisation’ of livelihoods, which in this case entailed women withdrawing from manual,
subsistence agriculture in the study context to engage in overseas contract domestic work, with
wages transferred home, first stabilising household income before providing capital for conver-
sion to commercial crops. These temporal processes resulted in the emergence of what the
author terms ‘remittance landscapes’, marked by linked and socially differentiated processes of

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landscape change. Poorer, landless non-​migrant households cleared vacated or marginal upland
swiddens, while migrant-​sending households with new access to investment capital switched
from subsistence to commercialised livelihoods to cope with reduced labour –​often a one-​way
conversion due to deleterious effects on the land (McKay 2005).
Demonstrating a broader, national development project, the drive to commercialise agricul-
ture in Vietnam’s Central Highlands has had a transformative impact on livelihoods and land-
scapes, motivated at the outset by state policies to settle a sparsely inhabited, forest-​r ich region,
and later to reclaim it (Tran 2006). In the context of Vietnam’s doi moi (‘renovation’) reforms,
institutional changes around de-​collectivisation, tenure reforms that enabled a land market to
emerge, and the relaxation of the household registration system operated in concert to dramati-
cally alter patterns of domestic mobility, as well as remittance flows (Adger et al. 2002). State-​
sponsored migration to reduce land and resource pressures gained traction in the 1980s, but
spontaneous movements exceeded government plans and controls, accelerating forest loss as the
highland population expanded (Tran 2006). Booming commercial crops in the 1990s hastened
conversion of and competition over land, as more affluent urban dwellers invested in plantations
(as per Sulawesi’s cocoa boom, Li 2002), and indigenous farmers incrementally sold customar-
ily held lands for agriculture and residential purposes, retreating further into the highlands. In
this example, we see how household level migration effects are bound to long-​term develop-
ment trajectories among both source and in this case destination communities, linked to wider
political-​economic forces during a period of national reform.

Conclusion: what questions to ask of the

migration-​poverty-​source community nexus?
Migration is transformative at the level of the individual, his or her identity and con-
sciousness, but also at the level of the family, community, and myriad other aggregations
(Curran et al 2007: 443).

This chapter has provided an overview of relevant literature regarding the relationships between
migration, poverty and source communities in Southeast Asia. We offer the four ‘indetermina-
cies’ of analytic, object, comparison and temporality as a means of imposing an explanatory
framework on a diverse field. This allows us partially to account for the diverse outcomes that
studies of migration and poverty seem to reach.
What questions can we usefully –​and reasonably –​ask about the migration-​poverty-​source
community nexus? A starting point may be found by returning to Skeldon’s caution against
‘a retreat to total relativism’ (2012). While seeking to avoid the much-​critiqued linearity of
grand transition theories (e.g. modernisation, demographic, urbanisation and agrarian), Skeldon
acknowledges that broad changes are nevertheless in process. Bringing ideas of social, economic
and environmental change together with locally embedded studies that seek to identify link-
ages between migration, livelihoods and development conditions may be one way that such an
approach could be applied. Following this line of thinking, more productive than posing the
question in binary terms (‘is migration developmental and poverty reducing for source com-
munities?’) is to ask a more open question that seeks to elucidate the transitions under way in
a given context, together with how and why migration emerges under different development
conditions, and how it then shapes those conditions.
Taking this approach permits sensitivity to geographical context; equally, however, we need
to be sensitive to the human context. Adopting a capabilities (Sen 1999) lens offers an induc-
tive theoretical basis for considering the dynamics and decisions relating to migration, moving

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Robert Cole & Jonathan Rigg

beyond the limited understanding offered by ‘push–pull’ and purely economic considerations.
Migrants accumulate new freedoms over life circumstances that might not previously have been
attainable, in one sense through diversification of livelihoods (thereby spreading risk), and in
another through the opening of broader opportunities. Keeping in sight the underlying spatial
disparities and frequently precarious conditions in which much migration occurs, productive
capabilities may nevertheless be enhanced and accumulated against a backdrop of wider devel-
opment, in which migration is both a cause and consequence (Cole et al. 2015). From this
perspective, it is not necessarily that the poor migrate towards opportunity from the ‘problem
conditions’ of source communities within a development ‘landscape’; migrants and mobility
shape that landscape such that it becomes, often at one and the same time, part of the problem
and part of the solution.

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17
REMITTANCES, MIGRATION,
AND TRADE
Philip Martin

International migration
Asia has 60 per cent of the world’s people, 30 per cent of the world’s migrants, and 55 per cent
of the remittances flowing to developing countries (Ratha,Yi and Yousefi 2015). The UN esti-
mated the stock of international migrants at 244 million in 2015, up from 222 million in 2010,
an increase of 4.4 million a year (UN DESA 2015). Some 3.3 per cent of the world’s 7.3 billion
people are international migrants.
The World Bank (2015b), which uses a slightly different methodology to estimate migrant
stocks, reported 249 million (versus UN DESA’s 244 million) international migrants in 2015.
Most migrants, at 56 per cent, reside in industrial or northern countries,1 but the largest group,
at 38 per cent, moved from one developing or southern country to another. Almost a quarter
of international migrants moved from one industrial country to another, and 6 per cent moved
from an industrial to a developing country (Table 17.1).
A sixth of the world’s people live in what the World Bank defines as industrial or high-​
income countries –​those with a per capita income of $12,736 or more (World Bank 2015a).
Five-​sixths of the world’s people are in developing countries with lower per capita incomes.
The incentive to migrate stems from demographic inequality –​all population growth is in
developing countries –​and economic inequality –​almost 70 per cent of the world’s national
income is in the high-​income countries. The average resident of high-​income countries had
a per capita income of $40,000 in 2013, almost ten times the $4,200 of lower-​income coun-
tries, which provides a powerful incentive for young people to migrate (World Bank 2015a,
p. 28).2
Demographic and economic inequalities are like positive and negative battery poles in that
nothing happens until a connection is made. Three revolutions over the past half-​century have
increased cross-​border connections and facilitated migration. First is the communications revo-
lution, which makes it easier than ever before to learn about opportunities abroad. With most
high-​income countries including diasporas from countries around the world, cell phones and
the internet can quickly inform friends and relatives in developing countries about opportuni-
ties abroad, assist in financing their travel, and help them after arrival.
The second revolution involves transportation. Many Europeans migrating to North
American colonies in the 18th century could not pay the cost of one-​way transportation, so

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Philip Martin

Table 17.1  International migrants in 2015

Origin (mils) Destination Destination

Industrial Developing Total
Industrial 56 14 70
Developing 84 95 179
Total 140 109 249
Origin (%)
Industrial 22% 6% 28%
Developing 34% 38% 72%
Total 56% 44% 100%

Source: Based on data from: World Bank Migration and Remittances Fact Book, 2015, p. 28.

they indentured themselves for four to six years to whomever met the ship and paid the trans-
portation costs. Transportation today is much more accessible and cheaper, usually at less than
$2,500.
The third revolution involves the rights of individuals vis-​à-​vis governments. Dictatorships
and wars early in the 20th century led to the creation of the UN and an emphasis on protecting
the human rights of individuals. Many human rights protect all persons, including foreigners,
making it difficult for governments to remove those who want to stay.
Policy makers faced with an influx of asylum seekers are unable to do much in the short
term about the demographic and economic inequalities that motivate migration, and they do
not want to try to roll back the communications and transportation revolutions that do far more
than facilitate migration. Their default policy option becomes adjusting the rights of migrants
by making it more difficult to enter countries with liberal asylum policies and restricting the
access of newcomers to social welfare (Hollifield, Martin and Orrenius 2014).

Recruitment, remittances, and returns

International migration moves people from one country to another. Recruitment, remittances,
and returns summarise the potential impacts that migrants can have on their countries of
origin.3

• Recruitment deals with who migrates. Are migrants persons who would have been
unemployed or underemployed at home, or key employees of business and govern-
ment whose departure leads to layoffs, reduced services, and slower growth in countries
they leave?
• Remittances to developing countries are projected to continue to increase, raising two ques-
tions. First, how can the cost of transferring small sums between countries be reduced?
Second, once remittances arrive, are they spent on improving the education and health of
children in migrant families or do they fuel competition for fixed assets, as when land or
dowry prices rise as more money arrives in the area?
• Returns deals with migrants who come back to their countries of origin or settle abroad.
Do migrants return with new skills and energies that fuel development, or do they rest and
retire, perhaps waiting to go abroad again? Do migrants who settle abroad retain ties to their
countries of origin, prompting diaspora-​led development, or do they cut ties?

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These three ‘R’s linking migration and development can create virtuous or vicious circles.
Migration can set in motion virtuous development circles, as when young workers who would
have been unemployed at home find jobs abroad, send home remittances that reduce pov-
erty and are invested to accelerate economic and job growth, and return with new skills and
technologies that lead to new industries and jobs. The result can be a convergence in eco-
nomic conditions between migrant-​sending and receiving areas, as predicted by the factor-​price
equalisation theorem that outlines how trade or migration can yield converging factor prices in
trading countries under a set of standard assumptions.
The alternative vicious circle finds that some migration slows development and prompts even
more migration. A vicious circle can unfold if employed nurses, teachers or engineers leave for
overseas jobs, a form of brain drain that can reduce the quality and accessibility of health and
educational services in migrant-​sending areas and force factories to lay off workers for lack of
managers. In the vicious circle scenario, migrants abroad do not send home significant remit-
tances, or they send home remittances that fuel inflation and raise the exchange rate, prompting
layoffs in factories whose goods become uncompetitive as their price to foreign buyers increases.
If migrants abroad do not return, or return only to rest and retire, there may be a limited transfer
of new ideas, energies, and entrepreneurial abilities from migrant destinations to origins.
No law ensures that more labour migration promotes virtuous development circles, just as
there is no law that says more foreign investment assures faster economic growth.4 Efforts to
explain the sources of economic growth in cross-​country comparisons have asked whether the
key is investment, technology, or institutions, and these studies usually end with the answer ‘it
depends’ on the country and context (Kenny 2011: 38). The same answer applies to the ques-
tion of whether more migration is associated with faster development across countries. Policy
makes a difference, justifying a more detailed work at how each migration channel affects
development.
Most recruitment, remittance, and return issues are similar whether workers move from a
developing to an industrial country or move from one developing country to another. However,
south–south migration can raise novel issues. Some developing countries send workers abroad
and allow their employers to recruit workers to fill vacant jobs in the same sectors that employ
their citizens abroad, as when Thai workers fill farm jobs in Israel and Thai farmers hire Burmese
workers to fill farm jobs in Thailand. The Thais in Israel earn far more than the Burmese in
Thailand, and their effects on labour markets abroad and development at home can also be
different.

Recruitment
Employers set most international labour migration in motion by asking their governments for
permission to recruit and employ foreign workers; that is, most labour migration is employer-​
led. Most governments have local-​workers-​first policies, and policies in most countries allow
employers to hire migrant workers only after they try and fail to recruit local workers, that is,
after employers test the labour market and fail to find local workers.
There are several reasons why labour market tests rarely find local workers, including the
fact that employers request permission to employ foreign workers only after they have identi-
fied the migrants they want to hire. Many employers assume that local workers will soon quit
for better jobs, as many do, explaining why they want to hire foreign workers who are tied
to them.
Once employers receive governmental permission to hire migrants, they must decide
which migrants to select.Young people are most likely to be requested by employers and to

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Philip Martin

agree to move over borders, in part because they have the least invested in jobs and careers at
home and the longest period to recoup a temporary or permanent investment in migration.
However, even among young people, exactly who is selected and who migrates is deter-
mined by the recruitment needs and strategies of employers in destination areas, recruiting
agents and governments in sending areas, and networks that link them.
For example, if employers recruit youth to work in construction or seasonal resort industries,
networks will evolve to move these types of workers over borders to construction sites and
resort hotels. If employers recruit IT professionals and nurses, institutions will evolve to train
them and help graduates to move abroad. Alternatively, if foreign employers recruit domestic
helpers and farm workers, networks will evolve to move low-​skilled migrants over borders to
fill jobs in private homes and on farms.
Job matching involves costs that often increase with geographic and cultural distance.
Recruitment or job-​matching costs can be expressed as a share of earnings, such as the rule-​
of-​thumb that the recruitment costs of a company executive are equivalent to six to 12 months
of his or her first-​year’s salary and are paid by the firm seeking an executive. Low-​skill work-
ers generally pay a higher share of their foreign earnings in recruitment costs than high-​skill
migrant workers, largely because the supply of low-​skilled workers is larger relative to the
(foreign) demand for them.
High migration costs are often aggravated by the high-​cost loans that many migrants take
out to pay them. As a result, indebted migrants may be especially vulnerable abroad and have less
ability to learn skills and send home remittances. There is no easy way to measure recruitment
costs, in part because international norms and national laws establish standards, stipulating that
workers should not pay any recruitment fees or not more than one month’s foreign earnings.
Since these norms are routinely violated, it is hard to know exactly how much migrant workers
paid in migration costs (Martin 2012).
Most of the world’s migrant workers are low-​skilled, employed as domestic workers,
labourers, and in similar occupations abroad. Most lower-​skilled workers find foreign jobs
with the help of for-​profit recruiters who often charge workers for job-​matching services.
Migrants, employers, and governments want low recruitment costs and good worker-​job
matches so that migrant workers are in the ‘right’ jobs abroad, satisfying employers and
enabling migrants to achieve savings targets without overstaying or taking second jobs.
However, recruiters may not have the same incentives to lower recruitment costs and ensure
good worker-​job matches.
International Labor Organization conventions call for employers to pay all of the
recruitment costs of the migrant workers they hire and for governments to operate no-​
fee labour exchanges. However, Convention 181 (1997), the Private Employment Agencies
Convention,5 allows governments to create exceptions to Article 7 which states that: ‘Private
employment agencies shall not charge directly or indirectly, in whole or in part, any fees or
costs to workers.’ Some governments set maximum recruitment charges that are a fraction
of foreign earnings, such as setting maximum recruitment charges at a month’s foreign earn-
ings, which is 4.2 per cent of earnings under a two-​year contract and 2.8 per cent under a
three-​year contract.
Nonetheless, many migrants report paying far more in recruitment costs, a quarter of
what they will earn abroad, or $2,000 for a three-​year contract paying $200 a month or
$7,200 while abroad. The migrant may remit $5,000 of these earnings, and pay 10 per cent
of what is remitted in money transfer costs, so that cutting remittance costs in half saves the
migrant $250. Cutting recruitment costs in half, on the other hand, would save the migrant
four times more, $1,000.

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Remittances, migration, & trade

Remittances
Remittances to developing countries rose from $430 billion in 2014 to $432 billion in 2016
(World Bank 2016). Remittances surpassed official development aid in the mid-​1990s and have
continued to rise much faster than the number of migrants, doubling between 1990 and 2000
and tripling between 2000 and 2010, although some analysts believe that some of this growth
in reported remittances reflects improved measurement of remittance flows rather than more
money flowing to developing countries. Some of the upsurge in remittances may reflect prop-
erty market booms in some developing countries, as migrants hope to profit from rising hous-
ing prices (Clemens and McKenzie 2014: 21).
Unlike foreign direct investment and private capital flows, remittances were stable during
the 2008–​09 recession, while foreign direct investment (FDI) and private capital flows to devel-
oping countries fell sharply (Sirkeci, Cohen and Ratha 2012). Remittances are often seen as
a shortcut to development, enabling developing countries to acquire scarce capital by sending
abroad workers who would have been unemployed or underemployed at home.
Remittances have two major components: workers’ remittances6 –​the wages and salaries
that are sent home by migrants abroad for 12 months or more –​and compensation of employ-
ees (called labour income until 1995) –​the wages and benefits of migrants abroad for fewer
than 12 months.7 Many countries do not know how long the migrants who remit funds have
been abroad, so most analyses combine workers’ remittances and compensation of employees.
For example, Mexico reports most money inflows from individuals under workers’ remittances,
while the Philippines reports most under compensation of employees.
The volume of remittances depends on the number of migrants, their earnings abroad, and
their willingness to send money home. Foreign direct investment (FDI) includes investment in
China, which accounted for half of FDI in developing countries in 2014, official development

Figure 17.1  Remittances and other flows to developing countries, 1990–​2014

Source: World Bank 2015.

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Philip Martin

assistance (ODA) are monies given on concessional terms to promote economic development,
and private equity includes net portfolio inflows for equity and bonds as well as net commercial
bank-​lending to developing countries.
Six developing countries received over half of remittances to developing countries in 2014.
India received $70 billion in 2014, followed by China, $64 billion, and then the Philippines
($28 billion), Mexico ($25 billion) and Nigeria and Egypt, $20 billion each.
Remittances are the largest share of GDP in a diverse group of countries, including ex-​
USSR countries whose Soviet industries collapsed, such as Tajikistan (remittances equivalent to
49 per cent of GDP in 2013), and island countries such as Tonga (24 per cent).
Most governments want to maximise remittances. Studies agree that the best way to maxim-
ise the volume of remittances migrants send home is to have an appropriate exchange rate and
economic policies that promise growth (Ratha 2005). Sound economic policies are a far better
magnet to attract remittances than special programmes that target migrants and encourage them
to send money home.
The G8 and G20 countries, as well as the Global Forum for Migration and Development,
have embraced two goals related to remittances:  (1) reduce the cost of small international
money transfers and (2) send more remittances via regulated financial institutions. The average
cost of transferring $200 over national borders fell from 15 per cent or $30 in the late 1990s to
8 per cent or $16 today (World Bank 2015); the World Bank’s goal is to reduce average remit-
tance costs to 3 per cent of the amount transferred by 2030. Average remittance costs are lower
in high-​volume corridors such as US-​Mexico (6 per cent) and higher in low-​volume corridors
into sub-​Saharan Africa (12 per cent).
The second goal is to encourage migrants to remit via regulated financial institutions such
as banks, in order to reduce the use of informal channels that can also be used by terrorists
to finance their activities. Migrants transfer money via formal channels if it is convenient and
cheap to do so, but this usually requires banking outlets in migrant communities both abroad
and at home, and competition and technology, including mobile phones, to lower transfer costs.
Since remittances are private transfers, most countries do not try to specify how much their
citizens abroad should remit or tax remittances. However, workers who remain employees of
companies based in their country of origin while abroad may have remittance amounts set
for them.
For example, many Korean migrants in the Middle East in the late 1970s were considered
to be ‘posted’ temporarily abroad, so they received a small stipend in local currency and had
most of their earnings paid in Korean currency to their families at home, a practice that remains
common for Chinese and Vietnamese workers who are posted by their Chinese and Vietnamese
employers abroad. However, withholding wages can prompt workers to ‘run away’ from the
employer to whom they are assigned in order to earn more in local currency.
Workers going abroad are often breadwinners for their families, so most remittances replace
earnings at home and are used for consumption. The fact that migrant workers are supporting
families from abroad helps to explain why remittances can remain stable even as exchange rates
and investment outlooks change.8 By earning more abroad than would have been earned at
home, families receiving remittances have more income and can also save and invest.
Many studies have documented the positive effects of remittances on families receiving them
(Ratha 2005; Pritchett 2006). The remittance-​fuelled increase in income reduces poverty and
often increases spending on education and health care for children, especially when mothers are
remitting from abroad or spending remittances at home (World Bank 2006). If the children of
migrants obtain more education than their parents, they may not have to migrate abroad to find
decent work. On the other hand, some studies find that the absence of parents negatively affects

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children who are cared for by grandparents and other relatives (Wickramage, Siriwardhana and
Peiris 2015)
The record on migrant investments at home to create jobs so that children do not have to
migrate is more mixed, in part because many migrants come from areas that offer few oppor-
tunities for investments that can improve livelihoods over time. Most migrants build new or
improve existing housing, but many find it difficult to invest in projects that create jobs for
non-​migrants.
Remittances can have the micro-​effect of improving the lives of families receiving them,
but may have the macro-​effect of slowing overall economic growth if they raise the value of
the currencies of migrant-​sending countries so that exports fall, displacing workers in export-​
oriented sectors, an example of Dutch disease.9 Many migrants are from countries with small
export sectors, and the remittances that benefit families receiving them may simultaneously hurt
other families.
Governments often use the volume of remittances as a short-​hand indicator of migration’s
contribution to development, which is short-​sighted (Skeldon 2008). Remittances can improve
the lives of migrants and their families, and their spending can speed economic growth and job
creation, even for non-​migrants via the multiplier effects of spending, but remittances can also
reduce pressure on governments to make the fundamental economic changes necessary for
sustainable growth.
Some governments highlight the importance of remittances by symbolically welcoming
home selected migrants and reminding non-​migrants of the hard work that migrants do abroad.
The Mexican government operates welcome centres for migrants who return for holidays and
encourages them to donate to projects in their communities of origin by matching migrant
donations in a 3x1 programme. For each dollar contributed by migrants for infrastructure
improvement in their areas of origin, three dollars are taken from funds set aside for develop-
ment and used in a local project (Orozco and Rouse 2007).
The results are mixed. On the one hand, remittance donations can trigger government fund-
ing of needed infrastructure, but there can also be conflicts between migrants abroad who want
the mix of remittances and government funds to improve churches or plazas for weddings and
celebrations when they return, and stay-​behind residents who favour running water and paved
streets (Orozco and Rouse 2007). Asian migrant-​sending countries do not have remittance-​
matching programmes.
Migrants can have other effects on their economies, steering FDI to their countries of ori-
gin and persuading their employers to buy products from their countries of origin, increasing
trade (Papademetriou and Martin 1991). Having migrants abroad increases travel and tourism
between countries, as well as trade in ethnic foods and other home-​country items. Migrants
abroad may organise themselves to provide funds for political parties and candidates in their
countries of origin, and can have significant outcomes on elections at home. In the extreme,
migrant remittances can fuel conflict at home (Orjuela 2008).

Returns
The third R in the migration and development equation is returns or settlement abroad, and
once again there can be virtuous or vicious circles. In the virtuous circle, returning migrants,
especially professionals who worked abroad, can provide the energy, ideas, and entrepreneurial
vigour to start or expand businesses at home or find jobs that use the skills and discipline they
acquired abroad, raising productivity and speeding development. Migrants are generally drawn

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from the ranks of the risk takers, and capital acquired abroad combined with risk-​taking entre-
preneurial behaviour upon return can stimulate economic development.
The vicious circle can unfold if migrants settle abroad and cut ties to their countries of
origin, so that remittances decline and migrants are ‘lost’ to the country of origin. Alternatively,
migrants may return, but only to rest and retire, limiting their development impacts. Finally,
migrants could circulate between sending and receiving areas, a policy that may maximise
migrant remittances. However, the forced circulation suggested by those who want to maximise
remittances can violate the human rights of migrants (Wickramasekara 2011).
The question of whether returning migrants contribute to development at home is best
answered with ‘it depends’. In most cases where migration is credited with contributing to
development, migrants left in one period and returned when their country of origin was
growing fast.
For example, the Taiwanese government invested mostly in primary and secondary educa-
tion, so that Taiwanese seeking higher education often went abroad for advanced study, and
over 90 per cent of those who earned PhDs abroad remained overseas despite rapid economic
growth at home in the 1970s.10 As Taiwan developed, some Taiwanese abroad returned to take
advantage of new opportunities, and the government encouraged returns with the creation of
the Hsinchu Industrial Park in 1980 and financial incentives, including subsidised western-​style
housing. Hsinchu became a major success, employing over 100,000 workers in 300 companies
that generated revenues of $28 billion by 2000, when 40 per cent of Hsinchu’s companies were
headed by returned migrants (Luo and Wang 2002).
Taiwan’s experience suggests that investing in the type of education appropriate to the stage
of economic development, and tapping what the then-​Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang called
‘stored brainpower overseas’ when the economy can absorb more professionals, can be a suc-
cessful development strategy. Many Chinese cities offer financial subsidies to encourage Chinese
professionals abroad to return, making ‘Returning Student Entrepreneur Buildings’ a common
sight (Kaufman 2003; Tempest 2002).11
Taiwan and China are economic success stories, raising the question of what returned
migrants can contribute to countries that are not developing fast.The International Organization
for Migration and the United Nations Development Program operate return-​of-​talent pro-
grammes that subsidise the transportation and living costs of professionals from a country who
are abroad and agree to return and work in government or academic institutions. Many partici-
pating professionals have an immigrant or long-​term secure status abroad, and remain in their
country of origin only a year or two, prompting one analyst to call them ‘expensive failures’
because they do not result in the ‘investment that [return] should bring’.
Some governments couple return incentive payments with help to start a business, and draw
funds and experts from development budgets to help ensure that businesses started by returned
migrants are sustainable. The French call such programmes co-​development, and often provide
return payments in stages so that the migrant is still in their country of origin at least a year
after returning.

Migration and trade
Are trade and migration substitutes? Economic theory suggests they are, but the evidence sug-
gests that freer trade and migration can be complements, at least in the short run, helping to
explain the surge in Mexico-​US migration after NAFTA went into effect in 1994, the upsurge
in Polish migration after Eastern European countries joined the EU in 2004, and more African

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Figure 17.2  Factor price equalisation with freer trade

migration toward Europe after a decade of faster-​than-​average growth. Closer economic inte-
gration can generate a migration hump, or temporarily more migration.The ASEAN Economic
Community may provide a test of the migration hump in Asia.
Economic theory deals with comparative statics, comparing two situations after adjustments
are completed, or after free trade leads to converging wages and reduces incentives to migrate.
The factor-​price equalisation theorem begins with two countries, C1 and C2, producing two
goods, G1 or a in Figure 17.2 and G2 or b, using two inputs, capital and labour. If G1 is a
capital-​intensive good and G2 is a labour-​intensive good, and the price of capital relative to
labour, R/​W, is lower in C1 than in C2, then C1 is the capital-​abundant country and C2 is the
labour-​abundant country.
With trade and time, the factor-​price line for C1, which is AB, rotates counter-​clockwise as
economies in the two trading countries adjust. This reduces the price of capital so that the fac-
tor-​price line for C2, which is CD, rotates clockwise. After sufficient time to reach equilibrium,
and under a standard set of assumptions, there is a new common factor-​price line PL tangent to
the C1 isoquant at T and tangent to the C2 isoquant at S. In this example, different endowments
of capital and labour mean that C1 (richer country) should continue to produce and export
capital-​intensive goods to C2 (poorer country).
This trade pattern, in which higher-​wage and capital-​abundant countries export capital-​
intensive goods and import labour-​intensive goods from the lower wage labour-​abundant
countries, should narrow differences in the cost of capital and labour (wages) in the trading
countries, thereby reducing economic incentives to migrate from the lower to the higher-​
wage country. In this way, freer trade acts as a substitute for international labour migration, as

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Philip Martin

capital-​intensive countries specialise in producing capital-​intensive goods and labour-​intensive

countries specialise in producing labour-​intensive goods.
Factor-​price equalisation embodies a number of assumptions that may not hold in particular
trading relationships, explaining why ‘factor-​price equalisation is a real-​world rarity’ between
low-​and high-​wage trading partners.12 A quick look at several of these assumptions in the con-
text of trade and migration between Mexico and the US after NAFTA went into effect in 1994
shows how trade and migration between low-​and high-​wage countries can be complements
rather than substitutes, producing a temporary increase in migration or a migration hump.13
One critical assumption of the trade-​as-​a-​substitute-​for-​migration model is that the two
trading countries share the same production functions or technologies. However, if the basis for
trade is a difference in technologies instead of each country’s endowment of capital and labour,
migration and trade may be complements (Purvis 1972). If tractors plough corn fields in the
United States and oxen pull ploughs in Mexico, trade theory assumes that the reason is that
Mexico has lower wages, not that tractor technology is unavailable to small farmers in Mexico;
that is, differences in the labour and capital intensities of production in the two countries are
due solely to differences in their factor endowments. US farmers have higher capital-​labour
ratios than Mexican farmers, in this scenario, because capital is cheaper in the US, not because
Mexico’s rural poor lack access to tractors.
When NAFTA went into effect in 1994, about 30 per cent of Mexicans were employed
in agriculture, and corn was the major crop of over half of Mexico’s farmers. Iowa, which
accounted for about 20 per cent of US-​produced corn, produced twice as much corn as
Mexico, and at about half the price.The Mexican government’s pre-​NAFTA agricultural policy
aimed to reduce rural poverty by offering higher-​than-​world prices for corn, but these price
subsidies benefitted primarily larger farmers who produced a surplus to sell, not the small corn
farmers who dominated the ranks of Mexico’s rural poor and produced corn for their own
consumption.
NAFTA’s free-​trade provisions required Mexico to reduce protections for its labour-​intensive
corn-​farming sector. Freer trade in corn opened new export markets for capital-​intensive US
corn farmers, but hastened the demise of labour-​intensive Mexican corn farmers. Especially
youth in rural Mexico realised that they could not achieve economic mobility by farming corn
as their parents did, and many left rural areas. One result was the so-​called Mexico-​US migra-
tion hump in the late 1990s, during which trade with Mexico and the migration of low-​skilled
Mexicans to the US increased together.14
The migration hump shows that more Mexicans migrated to the US as NAFTA was imple-
mented. This additional migration due to freer trade and other changes in Mexico is in area A.
However, freer trade and more investment also spurred economic and job growth in Mexico,
and many graduates of secondary school found jobs in the Mexican factories and businesses that
were created as a result of NAFTA. The additional migration associated with freer trade falls
after 15 years and, after another 15 years, the out-​migration country becomes a net migration
destination. It is too soon to know if this exact timing applies to the Mexico-​US case, but net
Mexico-​US migration has been minimal since 2008.
A second reason why trade may not be a substitute for migration between low-​and
high-​wage countries is because the differences in factor productivity that lie at the core
of comparative advantage may arise from infrastructure and other public goods rather
than factor endowments. In an extreme case, a labour-​intensive country such as Mexico
may not have a comparative advantage in producing some labour-​intensive goods despite
low wages because its limited infrastructure raises the cost of getting inputs to work-
ers and finished products to consumers. Inadequate infrastructure can encourage investors

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who produce labour-​intensive goods to locate plants in better infrastructure countries and
import migrant workers. This happened with North American shoe production, which rose
in the US despite freer trade and a devaluation of the peso because of the better infrastruc-
ture in the US and proximity to consumers. The expansion of shoe production in the US
attracted Mexican workers.
Standard trade models assume complete markets with perfect information and no transac-
tion costs. Rural areas in Mexico and other low-​wage countries often lack well-​functioning
banking and insurance markets, making it hard for farmers and other rural residents who want
to take advantage of new opportunities that are opened by freer trade to obtain capital to
expand or experiment with new crops that become more profitable. In such cases, migration
to a higher-​wage country may provide the fastest way to obtain additional capital, cope with
natural disasters, or earn money to repay unexpected health and related expenses, explaining
the seeming paradox that more opportunities are associated with more migration, at least in the
short term.15
Trade and migration can also be complements for other reasons, including transaction costs.
Information costs and transportation costs normally fall with closer economic integration, mak-
ing it easier for workers in poorer countries to learn about opportunities in richer countries
and travel to take advantage of them. Other reasons for more development and more migration
include relative deprivation, as occurs when a successful migrant returns from work abroad and
uses accumulated savings to buy a television or household appliances, encouraging other fami-
lies to send members abroad so that they too can afford these items (Taylor and Martin 2001).
These reasons for a migration hump are summarised in Table 17.2.
NAFTA was the first case of a free-​trade agreement between neighbouring rich and poor
countries with a pre-​existing migration relationship. The ASEAN Economic Community
(AEC) aims for closer economic integration among member countries after 2015, including
free mobility of professionals and highly skilled workers. The freer flows of goods and capi-
tal between AEC member states may also increase labour migration if path dependence that
encourages firms which already hire migrant workers expand faster than wages converge and
decrease incentives for international labour migration. Most current AEC migrants are low-​
skilled, and most new migrants are likely to be low-​skilled. This may push AEC governments
to acknowledge inevitable migration and develop policies to liberalise and regularise the cross-​
border movements of labour.
The AEC can foster more migration of professionals with Mutual Recognition Agreements
while regulating the recruitment and employment of low-​skilled migrant workers to ensure
that both they and local workers are treated equally. Demographic and economic realities sug-
gest there will be more international labour migration within the AEC, making the imple-
mentation 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
conflicts between AEC member states (Martin and Abella 2014).

Conclusions
Economically motivated migration is usually a journey of hope for success. Most migrants
leave home and cross national borders in search of higher wages and more opportunities. Most
find what they seek, explaining why there are often more people waiting to go abroad than
there are jobs. The remittances migrants send home usually improve their family’s housing and
increase investment in the education and health of their children, laying the foundation for
faster development.

233

Table 17.2  Migration humps: trade and low-​skill migration as complements
Theoretical rationale Complementarity between trade and migration
in the short run
Technologies differ Labour-​intensive production in south cannot
compete with capital-​intensive production
in north
Factor productivity Wage differences are insufficient to create
differences comparative advantage in labour-​intensive
production in south
Economies of scale Industries using migrant labour in the north
expand, lowering costs of production and
south cannot compete
Adjustment lags and Lags between economic integration and job
costs creation
factor specificity: displaced corn farmers not
hired as factory workers, so loss of subsidies
prompts emigration
Market failures New jobs in south provide the funds to
undertake risky migration
Migration networks Networks that minimise migration costs and
risks increase the likelihood that recessions
in the south turn into migration to the
north
Given a short-​run increase in migration,
networks accelerate migration effects
Relative deprivation Short-​run increases in income disparities
caused by trade reforms stimulate
migration to reduce relative deprivation
Source: based on author’s analysis in text.
Substitutability between trade and migration
in the long run
Production of goods in which south has a
comparative advantage generates jobs
Public investment in education and
infrastructure closes the productivity
gap
Public investment in education and
infrastructure in south closes the
productivity gap
Economic integration create jobs in
south, especially for better educated
younger workers most prone to
migrate
New jobs and factor market development
offer alternatives for migration
Diminishing returns to migration
networks, combined with increasing
opportunities from trade reform in the
migrant-​sending country
Broadened access to market opportunities
and/​or migration reduces relative
deprivation and associated migration
pressures
newgenrtpdf
234
Reason for larger migration hump
Poor infrastructure and public services
may retard new job creation
Failure of public policies to close
productivity gap over time
Failure of public policies to counteract
scale economies in northern migrant-​
intensive industries
Poor public services, discourage
investment, extend the investment-​
employment lag and fail to overcome
factor specificity problems
Limited employment expansion to provide
attractive alternatives to migration, due
to above
Absence of diminishing returns to
networks and/​or slow employment and
income growth in sending country
Persistence of unequal access to income
opportunities in migrant-​sending
country
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Remittances, migration, & trade

In a globalising world where regions with demographic and economic inequalities are drawn
closer by revolutions in communications and transportation, international labour migration and
remittances are likely to increase. Rising remittances can support families left behind to speed
development, but there is no guarantee that more migration and more remittances ensure faster
development. If employers recruit workers who would otherwise be unemployed, if remittances
are invested, and if returning migrants use skills learned abroad to raise productivity at home,
migration can accelerate development. Policy can make a difference to ensure that the window
of opportunity opened by international labour migration results in protected workers contrib-
uting to development in both migrant-​sending and receiving countries.
Migration is a process to be managed, not a problem to be solved. Experience demonstrates
that there is no universal best way to link migration and development, but there are universal
principles that can protect the human rights of migrants and local workers. Policies that adhere
to fundamental principles, such as protecting local workers from ‘unfair’ competition by treat-
ing migrants equally, offer a solid framework for ensuring that international labour migration
contributes to a better world.

Notes
1 The World Bank considers 32 of the OECD countries to be high-​income (not Mexico and Turkey)
and 47 non-​OECD countries and places to be high-​income, from places such as Hong Kong and
Macao to the Gulf oil exporters, to Argentina, Russia, Singapore, and Venezuela.
2 World economic output in 2013 was $76 trillion for 7.1 billion people, or an average $10,700 each. At
purchasing power parity, after incomes are adjusted for the cost of living, world economic output was
$102 trillion or $14,300 each. At PPP, per capita incomes in high-​income countries average $40,800,
almost five times more than the $8,400 average of lower-​income countries (World Bank 2015: 28).
3 Lucas (2005) uses a similar three-​way framework, discussing the effects of departures on those left
behind in sending countries, diasporas and their links to the countries they left, and returns and the
activities of returnees.
4 So-​called Harrod-​Domar growth models assume that the there is a capital-​output ratio that, e.g.
requires 4 per cent of GDP to be devoted to investment to achieve 1 per cent economic growth. Solow
countered that technological change, not investment, was the major driver of economic growth. These
exogenous growth theories suggested that giving foreign aid or technology to developing countries
could speed development.Today’s endogenous growth emphasises the importance of good institutions
such as the rule of law and enforceable contracts and process technologies including just-​in-​time
production methods and computerised inventory management to explain why some countries grow
faster than others. The evidence for institutions and sticky or hard-​to-​transfer processes is that mobile
phones and TVs have spread quickly to developing countries, but not the contracts and ways of think-
ing associated with faster growth (Kenny 2011: Chapter 3).
5 See:  ww.ilo.org/​dyn/​normlex/​en/​f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_​INSTRUMENT_​
ID:312326.
6 The IMF Balance of Payments Manual 6 replaced workers’ remittances with personal transfers, defined
as ‘current transfers in cash or kind made or received by resident households to or from nonresident
households’. (IMF 2013).
7 A third item not generally included in discussions of remittances are migrants’ transfers, the net worth
of migrants who move from one country to another. For example, if a person with stock migrates from
one country to another, the value of the stock owned moves from one country to another in interna-
tional accounts.
8 Automatic stabilisers in developed countries, such as unemployment insurance, help to stabilise the
flow of remittances to developing countries that have the same economic cycles as the countries in
which their migrants work.
9 Dutch disease refers to one part of the economy booming and hurting other sectors. When the Dutch
discovered natural gas in 1959, the value of the guilder rose and Dutch manufacturing exports fell.
10 These students were highly motivated to pursue advanced studies. Before they could go abroad, they
had to complete two years of military service and obtain private or overseas financing.

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11 Shanghai reportedly has 30,000 returned professionals, 90 per cent with MS or PhD degrees earned
abroad, who are employed or starting businesses.
12 The Economist, 17 November 2012, www.economist.com/​news/​finance-​and-​economics/​21566629-
​liberalising-​migration-​could-​deliver-​huge-​boost-​global-​output-​border-​follies.
13 Canada and the US entered into a free-​trade agreement in 1989, so the addition of Mexico with
NAFTA in 1994 primarily reduced trade and investment barriers between Mexico and the US, where
wage differences were about one to eight in the early 1990s.
14 A million Mexicans lost jobs in 1995, and two-​thirds of the Mexican farmers questioned in one survey
reported that their incomes had been reduced by a NAFTA-​induced influx of corn, processed meat
and milk products that lowered the prices they received for farm products in Mexico. An estimated
800,000 Mexicans entered the US, mostly illegally, in 1995.
15 Surveys of Mexican migrants in the US find that a significant share of young men migrated north in
order to earn the money needed to repay loans that were incurred by their families to deal with health
and similar emergencies.

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Wickramage, K., Siriwardhana, C. and Peiris, S. (2015). Promoting the Health of Left-​Behind Children of
Asian Labour Migrants: Evidence for Policy and Action. MPI-​IOM. Available at:: www.migrationpolicy.org/​
research/​promoting-​health-​left-​behind-​children-​asian-​labour-​migrants-​evidence-​policy-​and-​action.
Wickramasekara, P. (2011). Circular migration: a triple win or a dead end. ILO-​GURN Discussion Paper
15. Available at:  www.gurn.info/​en/​discussion-​papers/​no15-​mar11-​circular-​migration-​a-​triple-​win-​
or-​a-​dead-​end/​view.
World Bank (2016). Migration and Development Brief 26. April. Available at: www.worldbank.org/​en/​
topic/​migrationremittancesdiasporaissues/​brief/​migration-​and-​remittances-​publications.
World Bank (2015a). World Development Indicators. Available at:: data.worldbank.org/​products/​wdi.
World Bank (2015b). Migration and Remittances Fact Book.
World Bank (2015). World Development Indicators. 2015. data.worldbank.org/​products/​wdi.
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at: go.worldbank.org/​0G6XW1UPP0.

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18
TRANSNATIONAL
MIGRATIONS AND PLURAL
DIVERSITIES
Encounters in global cities

Brenda S.A. Yeoh

The city of migration and its diversities

Throughout history, people from somewhere else, or ‘migrants’ to use current terminology,
have been integral to life and labour in cities. While the phrasing has evolved over time –​from
‘melting-​pot of races, peoples, and cultures’ and ‘breeding-​g round of new biological and cul-
tural hybrids’ to ‘crossroads of tradition and change’ and ‘places of encounter between locals,
outsiders and migrants’ –​and the locus of attention has expanded beyond European cities to
include cities in the global South –​the idea of city has always been associated with incommen-
surable human diversity. As a site continually renewed by the ‘creative bloodstream’ (Hall 2000)
of transnational flows of different peoples, the contemporary global city is a city of anticipated
and unanticipated encounters, or what Jacobs (1996:  4, paraphrasing Barthes) calls ‘the very
place of our meeting with the other’.
There is now a large and growing literature exploring the social and cultural texture of
globalising cities as animated by a proliferating range of ‘contact zones’ shaped by local-​migrant
encounters across a number of registers including nationality, race, class, age, gender and sexual-
ity. Indeed, the contemporary phenomena of ‘immigration and ethnicity’ have been described
to be ‘constitutive of globalisation and are reconfiguring the spaces of and social relations in cit-
ies in new ways’ and there is no shortage of imaginative short forms to describe the global city
of encounters including the ‘cosmopolis’, ‘mongrel city’, ‘multiplex city’ and ‘divercity’ (Amin
and Graham 1997; Sandercock 2006;Vertovec 2007). Amidst the plethora of images, it is impor-
tant to note that the city is not just ‘a container where differences encounter each other’ but, as
Isin (2002: 283) notes,

the city generates differences and assembles identities.The city is a difference machine
insofar as it is understood as that space which is constituted by the dialogical encoun-
ter of groups formed and generated immanently in the process of taking up positions,
orienting themselves for and against each other, inventing and assembling strategies
and technologies, mobilizing various forms of capital, and making claims to that space
that is objectified as ‘the city’.

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The city’s pivotal role in generating, assembling and mobilising differences has been examined
from a variety of perspectives. This includes the earlier spatial science tradition of mapping the
geographical distribution of difference as a reflection of wider social structures and processes, as
well as constructivist frameworks where social groups that inhabit the city are differentiated pri-
marily using single attributes such as race, class, sexuality, or criminality (see Jacobs and Fincher
1998 for further discussion). More recently, cities of migration have been studied using a broad
spectrum of post-​structuralist approaches that gives weight to notions of difference associated
with power geometries, cultural politics, performativity, subject formation and context speci-
ficity. In line with Vertovec’s (2014) idea of ‘superdiversity’, Glick-​Schiller (2009) argues for an
approach to diversity not as ‘fixed difference’ but as ‘overlapping multiplicities’. Steyn (2014)
describes ‘difference’ as ‘always (inter)relational, inessential, incomplete, fluid and destabilised’,
while Beck (2009) encourages the ‘move from “either/​or” classification to a new logic of “not
only/​but also” ’.Vertovec (2014) in turn argues that ‘diversity studies’ could be broadened out to
focus on ‘modes of social differentiation’ (how categories of difference are constructed, mani-
fested, utilised, internalised, socially reproduced) and ‘complex social environments’ (how social
relations evolve in a context of multiple classifications across a single mode of difference, or
how a multiplicity of modes of difference interact to condition social relations in a single site).
These newer formulations of diversity encourage closer attention to migrant-​led diversification
in interaction with older forms of difference in cities.
Beyond theorisations, in the last two decades a range of policy interventions and integra-
tion projects have been developed to better manage cultural change in a world where the warp
of stability established around families, communities and networks has been irreversibly shot
through by the weft of mobilities and migrations. At the same time, conflicts, tensions and dis-
comforts –​and the accompanying expressions of emotion as well as the circulation of embod-
ied affect –​have continued to trouble questions of urban living in a culturally diverse world
constantly animated by migrant influx. This chapter provides a selective review of Asia-​focused
scholarship on the nature of urban diversities and encounters in the context of the increasing
volume and velocity of transnational migration in the region.The review is organised into three
themes of salience in understanding local-​migrant encounters in the Asian globalising city: the
politics and paradox of postcolonial encounters; coexistence and control in transient spaces of
enclavement; and intimate encounters in the home-​spaces of the city. To better contextualise
the discussion, I draw where relevant on the case of Singapore as illustration, a nation-​city-​state
with globalising ambitions and criss-​crossed by a high density of transnational migration flows.

The politics and paradox of postcolonial encounters

Using a global database developed by the World Bank and the United Nations Population
Division, Czaika and de Haas (2015: 305) empirically showed that comparing data for 1960
and 2000, the immigrant populations in the cities and urban agglomerations of Southeast and
East Asia are not only growing in numbers but reflect ‘an increasingly diverse array of origins’.
Unlike immigrant cities of the West, postcolonial cities across the region are in many ways the
demographic offspring of colonial diaspora, where their beginnings embody ‘many of the ten-
sions of blood and belonging that the concept [diaspora] evokes’ (Harper 1997: 261). These
cities are ‘always-​already “diasporic” in relation to what might be thought of as cultures of
origin’ (Hall 1996: 250). In other words, the presence of migrant bodies from somewhere else
is ‘foundational to the formation of the nation-​state’, as migration occurred ‘both prior to and
during the colonial period … becoming entrenched in a postcolonial moment of independ-
ence and nation-​state formation based on an already existing plurality’ (Collins, Lai and Yeoh

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2013:  15). As a result, the historical reality by the second half of the 20th century in much
of the once-​colonised world is best described as ‘a modernity that is scored by the claws of
colonialism, left full of contradictions, of half-​finished processes, of confusions, of hybridity, and
liminalities’ (Lee and Lam 1998: 968). In societies with a long history and experience of dealing
with multi-​ethnic, multi-​racial and multi-​lingual coexistence, ‘There is undoubtedly a capacity
and a tolerance for difference that is completely different from a European sensibility’ (Blom
Hansen 2009, quoted in Vertovec 2014: 4). Affective practices inhabiting the public spaces of
encounter in postcolonial formations are hence less likely to be performances enacted between
‘distant’ strangers (as seen in some of the analyses of western cities), and more likely to be akin to
interactions between people with recognisable yet disparate sociabilities. Where diversity exists
as ‘overlapping multiplicities’ accumulated over a fractured history, Blom Hansen’s observation
that ‘We need to get beyond the notion that minorities “have” diversity whilst the natives do
not’ becomes patently clear.
The limited but growing scholarship on migration and diversity in Asian cities which draws
on a postcolonial approach has taken pains to show how the historical geographies of the
colonial past have shaped complex geopolitical conditions of the present (Yeoh 2003). While
‘[ethno-​racial] ideologies of hierarchical difference … can be traced back to colonialism’ (Koh
2015: 436), they operate in complexly different and often paradoxical ways to shape local-​
migrant encounters of recent times. Focusing on Mainland Chinese skilled migrants who have
moved to Hong Kong after the 1997 handover, for example, Wang (2013: 393) shows how old-​
timer/​newcomer interactions are shaped by a postcolonial discourse of ‘national humiliation’,
where the migrants are motivated by a reverse colonising mission to restore ‘China’s economic
dominance, political authority and cultural authenticity’ at a time which coincides with the rise
of China as a global power and the decline of British influence in Hong Kong. In a very dif-
ferent scenario, Mainland mothers-​to-​be trying to evade China’s one-​child policy by crossing
the border to give birth in Hong Kong under the ‘One Country Two Systems’ framework, find
themselves in a hostile receiving society where they are castigated as ‘locusts’ or ‘aliens’ which
rampantly devour resources in host territory, while their babies are labelled as ‘locust eggs’
(Chee 2017). In the case of Japan, Kang (2001: 137) notes that ‘it is an irony of history that Japan,
the former colonial power and aggressor in Asia, has been reborn as an “ethnically homog-
enous” nation-​state, while the victims of colonialism and fascism have been sundered apart and
separated’. Despite the fact that the Japanese Empire was ‘once burdened with the complexities
and inequalities of an ethnically and culturally mixed population’ and complicit in the creation
of ‘diasporic existence’ among people of Korean descent, for instance, postwar national history
has attempted to reduce these complexities to ‘the history of a single ethnic identity’ played out
within the geography of the four ‘home islands’, thereby forgetting the other peoples of empire
(Kang 2001: 141). In tandem, Shin (2010) shows that historical asymmetries between Japanese
citizens and immigrants tended to be reproduced in contemporary Japanese immigration poli-
cies and public attitudes towards the nikkeijin (descendants of ethnic Japanese emigrants from
Latin America).
Sandwiched between the large polities of China and India, Southeast Asia has a long history
of migrations, mobilities and circulations connecting diverse societies, ranging from merchants,
monks, sailors, rebels, to the coolie trade (Nyiri and Tan 2017). In postcolonial times, one of
the primary tasks of nation-​building among the new Southeast Asian states is to transform a
motley crew of diasporic orphans, whose emotional homelands diverge from their physical
locations as well as from each other, into a ‘settled’ people who inscribe their belonging onto
a single home-​nation, while marking out other migrants who arrive later as part of renewed
diasporas as transgressors of the nation-​state through a politics of (selective) forgetting and

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(non-​)recognition (Yeoh 2003). In this context, urban encounters do not just engage difference,
but are underscored by a wide spectrum of familiar-​but-​strange plurality that shifts with each
turn of the postcolonial kaleidoscope. Affective practices that develop between the older ‘set-
tled’ (once-​migrant) population and the newer streams of ‘current’ migrants are hence ridden
by the contradictions of sameness and difference occurring simultaneously amidst new varieties
of pluralism.
In the case of Singapore, the welding of heterogeneous groups into ‘one people’ on achiev-
ing independence in 1965 was premised on the ideology of ‘separate but equal’ multiracialism.
Fifty years down the road, national identity continues to be built through the careful manage-
ment of race, where four ‘official races’ were designated under the so-​called CMIO (Chinese,
Malays, Indians and ‘Others’) framework. The notion of being ‘separate but equal’ serves to
encourage the acceptance of coexistence of different religious practices, customs and traditions
of various communities ‘without discrimination for any particular community’ (Chan and Evers
1978: 123). In short, Singapore-​style multiracialism is thus based on the arithmetic formula of
four ‘separate’ but ‘equal’ races in a nation of ‘one people’. The philosophy propounds the need
to submerge ethnic identity to the larger purposes of nation-​building and national identity
construction, while at the same time providing space for each of the four ‘founding races’ to
promote, valorise, and reclaim ethnic links and identity. This form of racialised multicultural-
ism continues the colonial classificatory schemas drawn under British rule and underlies ethnic
policies governing inter-​and intra-​ethnic relations in different spheres of life. At the same
time, such formulations privilege fixed categories (tied to ancestral cultures) and are silent
about the migrant ‘others’ who live and work in the city-​state yet do not officially belong
to the ‘CMIO races’ constituting the Singapore citizenry. Ranging from ‘foreign workers’ in
construction, domestic service, and other ‘dirty, dangerous and difficult’ (the 3Ds) sectors, to
‘foreign talents’ belonging to the professional and managerial classes, these ‘non-​residents’ are
outside state constructions of the national population and do not appear in national census-​
taking. When Singapore celebrated its Golden Jubilee as a sovereign nation-​state in 2015, out
of a total population of 5,535 million, less than two-​thirds (61 per cent) were citizens, 9.5 per
cent were permanent residents and 29.5 per cent were non-​residents (Singapore Department
of Statistics 2015). In terms of the country’s labour force, foreigners constituted around 32.1
per cent (excluding foreign domestic workers) or slightly more than one million of the nation’s
3.5 million-​strong workforce in 2014, possibly making Singapore the country with the highest
proportion of foreign workers in East Asia.1 While such openness to foreign others is seen to be
an essential strategy if Singapore is to compete successfully in the current round of globalisation,
it has also created on-​the-​ground paradoxical encounters.
For example, despite possessing a ‘Chinese’ majority in its demography, Singapore sits uncom-
fortably between being predominantly ‘Chinese’ and ‘anti-​Chinese’ (Yeoh and Lin 2013), as
evident in mounting social tensions arising from contemporary migrant flows from ‘mainland’
China. When a horrendous road accident in 2012 resulted in the deaths of a Singaporean taxi-​
driver, a Japanese passenger and a wealthy Chinese national behind the wheels of a speeding
Ferrari, public outcry centred on the Chinese migrant who became the focus of blame, not only
for causing the accident, but also as visible proof of an immigration policy gone wrong. And
when an immigrant Chinese family complained about the smell from curry cooked by their
Singaporean ethnic-​Indian neighbours, citizens retaliated by calling on fellow Singaporeans of
all races to deliberately cook Indian, Malay, Eurasian and Chinese varieties of curry en masse
on a designated weekend. As one of the organisers of a multicultural curry party in a housing
estate said, ‘We want people to remember that curry can also be a positive thing. Here, instead
of dividing people, curry is going to unite people’ (Yong 2013). The complicated politics and

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paradox of ‘distance’ and ‘proximity’ in dividing/​uniting some but not others are particular sali-
ent –​certainly more apparent than in western contexts characterised by a white majority where
the cultural self/​other divide is more consistently aligned with majority/​minority identifica-
tions –​under postcolonial conditions where ‘history mocks the nation-​state’s claims to cultural
and linguistic exclusiveness’ (Harper 1997:  261), making it difficult for the ‘majority’ to lay
claims to an earlier place and time devoid of plurality. In other words, colonial and postcolonial
migrancies are indissolubly if complexly intermeshed, sometimes with unanticipated outcomes
for cities in a time of renewed transnational migrations.

Coexistence and control in the transient spaces of enclavement

A second theme revolves around the question of how encounters occurring amidst kaleido-
scopic diversity may be differently shaped in a context where the political economy under-
pinning the migration regime is not necessarily dominated by notions of integration and
assimilation as pathways to citizenship, as often pervades the broader imagination in the case of
Europe. In many cities in Asia, migrant subjects are differentially incorporated into the national
geobody along clearly bifurcated lines:  while talent migrants (i.e. highly skilled professionals
and entrepreneurs) are incentivised to take up permanent residency or citizenship and lay down
roots (however, many choose to remain highly mobile and ‘flexible’ in their citizenship options),
labour migrants, particularly those considered unskilled or performing 3D jobs, are locked into
a ‘use-​and-​discard’ regime that enforces transience. Maintaining strict, categorically controlled
distinctions between temporary ‘non-​residents’ and permanent citizens not only creates ‘a con-
text where encounters across this form of diversity are structurally problematic’ (Collins, Lai
and Yeoh 2013: 16), but also induces a palpable sense of temporariness and fluidity as people
constantly adjust to transnational lives while inhabiting cities ‘which are leaking away into a
space of flows’ (Thrift 1997: 140).
Among highly skilled/​ professional migrants who gravitate towards global cities, the
emerging literature from Asia tends to counter earlier assumptions that transnational elites
are perpetually rootless, hypermobile sojourners who lead such fluid lives that they are indif-
ferent to where they lived (Tseng 2011). As Ley (2004: 151) has argued, ‘the expansive reach
and mastery imputed to global subject [referring to transnational businessmen and cosmo-
politan professionals], their flight from the particular and the partisan, their dominance and
freedom from vulnerability, are far from complete’. Instead, more probing scholarship has
revealed the significance of a broad cultural politics in the construction of ‘contact zones’
between people travelling on different circuits meeting in the global city (Yeoh and Willis
2005). In navigating these urban contact zones, strategies of residential enclavement, remi-
niscent of colonial times, allow elite transnational migrants to limit their social worlds to
gated condominiums, expatriate clubs, international schools and chauffeur-​driven cars. At
the same time, enclavement provides a partial account. Farrer’s (2011) work on the global
nightscapes of Shanghai, for example, reveals a much more variegated social geography
of intercultural contact among elite transnational migrants, including North Americans,
Europeans, overseas Chinese returnees (haigui) and mobile PRC nationals. A complex topog-
raphy with ‘multiple points of segregation and contact, alliances and conflicts’ unfolds, as
individuals draw on cultural-​sexual capital in staking ‘personal status claims’ in the grounded
politics of encounter (Farrer 2011). Also focused on highly skilled migrants in Chinese
cities, Yeoh and Willis (2005) argue that because Singaporeans and Britons trace very dif-
ferent ethno-​cultural histories in China, the way the two groups negotiate the frontiers
of difference follow divergent trajectories. Among British expatriates, the encounter with

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China tends to  be  either  viewed  through imperial lenses (among long-​term residents) or
portrayed as a new set of fascinating cultural challenges of getting to know the unfamil-
iar. In contrast, among Singaporeans, the construction of difference between ‘self ’ and the
‘other’ is played out using a much finer mesh, hence requiring more subtle navigation across
the space of difference. On the one hand, the display or lack of modern civilities becomes
elevated to the position of cultural and moral markers which bring the difference between
the Mainland Chinese and the Singaporean Chinese into sharp focus. On the other hand,
the terrain of identity politics becomes multiply contested when Singaporeans who are
expected to speak Mandarin speak it poorly, reducing the facility with Mandarin into a sign
of racial and national shame for Singaporean Chinese (Yeoh and Willis 2005). In moving
away from the fiction of frictionless mobility among transnational elites, the emerging schol-
arship on highly skilled migrants in Asian cities show that encounters in the contact zone are
grounded in everyday realities of urban life inflected by negotiations and contestations over
race, nationality, gender and other identity markers.
Turning attention to the other end of the skills spectrum, the affective urban experiences and
livelihood aspirations of lowly paid migrant workers who are admitted into the city as transient
and disposable labour are strongly conditioned by the inevitability of navigating transnational
routes to and from ‘home’ and ‘host’. A large workforce comprising foreign domestic workers
who plug the care deficit in the households of globalising cities such as Hong Kong, Kuala
Lumpur, Singapore and Taipei, for example, has little chance of sustainable employment in their
home countries where they hold citizenship papers, and even less likelihood of becoming an
immigrant-​turned-​citizen in the host countries where they have secured (low-​wage) employ-
ment. As a consequence, the migrant worker becomes a figure locked into unending circuits of
transnational care, affection, money, and material goods in order to sustain both the host-​family
as well as his or her home-​family in transnational form. In short, they are ‘necessary transnation-
als’ whose everyday practices sustain an ‘emotional economy’ across the transnational stage. For
them, the liminal freedoms of adopting a ‘doubleness’ of simultaneous identity as citizen and
ethnic minority (Simonsen and Koefoed 2015) remain perpetually elusive, and instead strange-
ness, transience and precarity coincide at the fullest degrees.
For example, the unskilled or low-​skilled migrant workers admitted into Singapore on
short-​term work permits –​as disposable labour without any residency rights (Yeoh 2006) –​are
most prominent in the everyday landscape in the form of ‘weekend enclaves’, transient social
and commercial landscapes containing migrant concentrations. Confined largely to their work-
places during the working week (such as construction sites or Singaporean homes in the case
of foreign domestic workers), large numbers of migrant contract workers congregate tempo-
rarily in strongly ethnicised enclaves over the weekend. Some examples include Little India/​
Serangoon Road, which attracts Indian and Bangladeshi workers; Little Manila in Lucky Plaza,
right in the heart of the Orchard Road shopping belt, for Filipina domestic workers; and Little
Thailand for Thai workers at the Golden Mile Complex on Beach Road. Certain landscapes are
also changeable within the span of a day; for example, a residential and commercial district in
the day, Joo Chiat turns into a vibrant Little Vietnam by night. Foreign worker gatherings have
also sprung up in open spaces near shopping centres and Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) stations
in the Housing and Development Board (HDB) estates, the residential heartlands where the
majority of Singaporeans live.
These weekend enclaves and foreign worker gatherings are often viewed negatively
or with unease by Singaporeans who consider them a form of ‘intrusion’ into ‘their own
backyards’. Some have openly expressed their displeasure and asked the authorities to step
up security measures in these places; others wondered whether these workers could be

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relocated to out-​of-​sight locations such as offshore islands. Residents of HDB flats located
in Little India have put up steel barricades around their blocks to keep foreign workers
out, and when the state announced plans to put a foreign workers’ dormitory in Serangoon
Gardens, a middle-​class residential estate, 1,600 residents signed a petition in protest.
Reasons for their objection included ‘fears that the workers would commit crimes in the
area, seduce their maids and dampen property prices’. The state relented by relocating the
entrance of the dormitory to another street that would be built to order and which faced
away from the residential estate, and by housing mainly Malaysian and Chinese workers
(male and female) from the manufacturing and service industries in the dormitory instead
of foreign workers from the construction sector (who are mainly of South Asian origin).
This prompted the observation that while the ‘Serangoon Gardens saga’ is as much a class
issue as it is a racial one, a ‘veiled racism’ is clearly at work in shaping the spatial politics of
exclusion. These voices reflect a ‘use-​and-​discard’ sentiment among the general population
who want foreign workers to do the work that citizens shun, but at the same time wish that
these workers could be erased from the landscape.
In other words, processes of enclosure and enclavement in a context of plural diversities are
symptomatic of the contradictions between the need for a large low-​waged low-​skilled migrant
population that is supposed to be transient on the one hand, and the fear of the malaise associ-
ated with ‘migrant concentrations’ that appear overwhelmingly visible, palpable and permanent
on the other hand.Yet, the space of encounters between locals and these ‘needed but unwanted’
migrant workers in the global city is only occasionally punctuated by raised social anxieties,
moral panics and calls to tighten control and surveillance to keep these populations if not out of
sight, then out of the way of locals. In the everyday rhythms of the plural ‘divercity’,2 a large part
of the everyday encounters falls within the range of studied obliviousness to the other forms of
civil non-​interaction and coexistence.
Beyond civil inattention, it is also notable that the plurality of interests in the global
city has also spawned significant attention to the rights and welfare of migrant workers
in Singapore. Of catalytic effect at the early years of the new millennium was the grow-
ing sense of dismay and outrage –​starting with those within the women’s movement who
were already concerned about violence against women –​at what appeared to be inadequate
state action and public apathy in the face of an increasing incidence of ‘maid abuse’ (Yeoh
and Annadhurai 2008). A broad range of NGOs focusing on migrant labour has emerged,
including mainly service-​oriented groups (of which a number grew out of faith-​based
organisations) along with skills training centres and women’s shelters; and a smaller number
of advocacy-​oriented groups. While service-​oriented groups primarily focus on providing
‘ambulance services’ to address the plight of the disadvantaged and seldom put forward an
alternative policy agenda from that of the state, their actions are often based on values advo-
cating an acceptance of and care and empathy for foreign others. These strategies of empa-
thetic care and cosmopolitan hope provide another face to the divercity, which exists side
by side with and partially counters the state’s tendency to harden control and containment
in reaction to perceived social threats associated with large numbers of labour migrants.
The latter is particularly obvious in the aftermath of the Little India ‘riot’ of December
20133 when the ethnic enclave became a space of exception zoned to facilitate a ban on
alcohol sales and increased police surveillance. In tandem, spaces of enclosure such as mega-​
dormitories with ‘integrated facilities’ including a 16,800-​bed complex with a minimart,
beer garden and foodcourt, recreational options such as a 250-​seat cinema and a cricket field,
were built at peripheral sites as a containment measure to keep the migrant worker popula-
tion away from Little India as far as possible.

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Intimate encounters in the home-​spaces of the city

A third theme in thinking about encounters in divercities stems from the observation that
contact zones between ‘self ’ and ‘other’ are no longer (if they ever were) only sited in the pub-
lic domain usually identified with the urban (e.g. streets, neighbourhoods, communities, civil
society) but also characterise the sphere of the intimate (e.g. families, households, home). This
chimes with geographers’ insistence in acknowledging the merits of considering scale –​start-
ing with the ‘body’ and spanning outwards to the ‘global’, or closing in from the ‘global’ to the
‘body’ –​and rethinking the politics of diversity and migrant encounter across a range of public
and private spaces, as manifested in relationships with ‘others’ in the city. It also accords with
Nava’s (2007) work on ‘domestic cosmopolitanism’, where cosmopolitan practices emerge from
engagement with otherness not just in the public sphere but within the privacy of the home.
Focusing on homespace as a site of encounter is particularly relevant in Asian cities expe-
riencing large care deficits as a result of plummeting fertility rates and rapid population age-
ing. In cities such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul and Taipei, ‘global householding’ strategies
(Douglass 2006) have become normalised as households sustain themselves by adopting market
and non-​market based options predicated on the international movement of people (including
for example, foreign domestic workers and foreign brides) in order to resolve deepening care
deficits. Turning the analytical spotlight on homespace will help to reveal the intimate rela-
tions and affective structures that undergird a broad range of familial and non-​familial relations.
Such an endeavour need not be seen in contradistinction to the customary urban focus on the
public sphere; instead, these kinds of interrogations are vital to a more holistic understanding of
affective practices and living with difference in cities, as the way intimate labour is performed
in homespace not only reflects but also reinforces larger structural inequalities of gender, race,
culture and citizenship across national and transnational contexts.
In many parts of Asia, urban householding has often been constituted by both familial and
non-​familial members. While domestic servants of the past –​for example, the amahs (single celi-
bate Chinese female servants) and mui tsais (young girls ‘given’ or ‘sold’ into domestic service)
in Singapore and Malaysia –​were often members of the employers’ larger ethnic communities,
transnational domestic workers today are perceived as ‘aliens’ or ‘foreigners’ who transgress the
integrity of the nation (Constable 1997; Chin 2000).While employer–worker relationships in the
past were informed by shared cultural norms and values (sometimes approximating patron–​client
or pseudo-​kin relationships instead), such considerations are manifestly absent in the contem-
porary institution of live-​in paid domestic work performed by transnational women. Today, the
self/​other divide is hence wider than before, and its location in a context of highly asymmetrical
power relations in the employer’s household as well as in the host nation has sometimes engen-
dered openly exploitative relationships between employer and worker unmitigated by culturally
based values and expectations (Chin 2005). The seeming contradictory dynamic of devaluing
domestic work shifted onto the shoulders of transnational migrant workers and at the same time
preferring the same workers as more natural or suitable embodiments of domestic servanthood is
also observed elsewhere. In Taiwan, employers’ everyday practices of devaluation and discrimi-
nation in negotiating the boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’ goes hand in hand with prefer-
ring Filipino, Indonesian and Vietnamese domestic workers as more ‘obedient’ and ‘deferential’,
compared to more rights-​conscious obasans (local domestic workers) (Lan 2005). Transnational
domestic workers are, in Lan’s (2003: 525) words, ‘the perfect example of the intimate Other –​
they are recruited by host countries as desired servants and yet rejected citizens’.
In the case of Singapore, the rapid decline in fertility rates, coupled with increasing life expec-
tancy as well as higher proportions of delayed or non-​marriage, has led to looming child-​and

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elder-​care deficits within families which have to be plugged by global householding strategies
(Yeoh and Huang 2014).These strategies include, for middle-​class households, the market-​based
option of bringing in women from less-​developed countries in the region to serve as low-​paid,
surrogate care for children, the elderly and the infirm as well as perform domestic work (Truong
1996). While elder-​care work may also be ‘outsourced’ to (mainly female) migrant healthcare
workers labouring in the institutionalised space of the nursing home, the prevalence of gen-
dered ideologies based on ‘Asian familialism’ means that families continue to prefer to relegate
the duty of elder-​care to the privatised family sector in order to conserve some semblance of
filial piety. In this context, the ‘live-​in foreign maid’ emerges as an increasingly common sub-
stitute to provide the care labour needed to sustain the household. By outsourcing domestic
and care work to other Southeast Asian women from less-​developed economies in the region
at a low cost, socially and economically privileged women trade in their class privilege for
(partial) freedom from the burden of household reproductive labour. This has the simultaneous
effects of subordinating other women to work conditions governed by retrogressive employer–
employee relations and minimal mobility; devaluing, racialising and commodifying household
labour as unskilled and lowly paid work; and further entrenching and normalising domestic
and care work as resolutely ‘women’s work’. Compounded by state policies which treat migrant
domestic workers as transient labour with diminished employment rights, the gender politics
of the home is negotiated between local and foreign women vis-​à-​vis a racialised grid of highly
asymmetrical power relations, while men continue to abdicate their household responsibilities.
The politics of household reproduction that develops in many middle-​class homes in Singapore
hence features mainly women –​migrant women working to present themselves as docile bodies
amenable to the disciplinary gaze of local women on the one hand, while disengaging from the
role of the deferential inferior on the other (Yeoh and Huang 2010).
Somewhat analogous to the practice of middle-​class families recruiting migrant domestic
workers for householding purposes, working-​class families without the financial means draw
on unpaid care labour by recruiting ‘foreign brides’.4 With globalisation and expanding edu-
cational and career opportunities for women, for example, Singaporean men from the lower
socio-​economic strata who feel positionally ‘left behind’ by local women’s participation in the
workforce are seeking to fill the care deficit in their households through international mar-
riage with women from the less-​developed countries in the region who are considered more
‘traditional’ and willing to take on procreation and caring roles in sustaining the household
(Yeoh, Chee and Vu 2014). In this context, the larger structural inequalities of gender, race, class,
culture and citizenship operating across a transnational stage are integral to an understanding of
the politics of familial encounters in homespace. In the last two decades, the rapid increase of
international marriage and cross-​cultural, bi-​national families has introduced ‘diversity’ into the
primary relations that constitute the family, giving rise to a potential proliferation of hybrid-
ity and hyphenations in the domestic sphere. Given the structural inequalities that pervade the
privatised sphere as much as they shape the public arena, it remains to be seen whether these
intimate encounters contain the seeds of future cosmopolitan hope. In short, more work needs
to be done to investigate whether such encounters in homespace within the global city are
productive of more sustained cosmopolitan sensibilities compared to the fleeting encounters of
the public streets.

Conclusion
Contemporary postcolonial migration is a compelling force increasing diversity in globalis-
ing cities. Amidst multiplicative diversities, processes of enclavement and encounter along a

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spectrum of self/​other divides, occur alongside those of selective acculturation and negotiated
coexistence as people with different histories and geographies meet and take stock of one
another in the constant (re)making of divercities. In approaching an understanding of these
global cities of encounter, public encounters and the civility of the streets in the form of ‘ritual-
ised codes of etiquette’ (Valentine 2008: 329) may not always be an adequate social barometer to
grasp the nature of migrant diversity politics in the city. Indeed, the urgent need is to rethink the
politics of diversity and migrant encounter across a range of public and private spaces, as mani-
fested in relationships with ‘others’ in the city, where ‘the other’ may be ‘strange’ and ‘unfamiliar’,
but may well be ‘intimate’ and even ‘familial’. For the global city of encounters to develop a
truly cosmopolitan urban ethic, not just the conviviality of its streets but the intimacies of its
homes need to be ‘places of self-​knowledge, not fear’ (Sennett 2001).

Notes
1 See: www.mom.gov.sg/​documents-​and-​publications/​foreign-​workforce-​numbers.
2 An increasingly popular neologism in both academic and public discourses, this shorthand signals
increasing diversity in the city.
3 On 8 December 2013, what was considered Singapore’s first riot in more than four decades broke out
in Little India. A bus and emergency vehicles were attacked after a male Indian national (construction
worker) died after being hit by the bus ferrying migrant workers back to their dormitories.
4 This parallels the use of international marriage as a strategy to sustain rural farm households in countries
such as Japan and Korea.

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19
GROWING UP IN
TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES
Children’s experiences and perspectives

Theodora Lam, Shirlena Huang, Brenda S.A. Yeoh,

and Jocelyn O. Celero

Introduction
In recent decades, the unprecedented rise in both the volume and velocity of transnational
migration –​principally characterised by temporary, multiple and circular labour flows –​within
and out of Asia has led to significant social and economic changes, not just at the scales of
nation-​states and communities but within the most immediate core of human experience, the
family. Migration is increasingly recognised as one of the main drivers of contemporary social
and developmental change in the region, and the search for new handles to promote devel-
opment has led migration scholars to focus significant attention on the mutually constitutive
effects of intra-​household dynamics, labour migration and remittance generation.
Part of the impetus for the burgeoning research in this field has also been driven by the
conceptual innovation, particularly Bryceson and Vuorela’s (2002) pioneering work on what
they call the ‘transnational family’. First used in the European context, Bryceson and Vuorela
(2002) used the term to advance the notion that the family continues to share strong bonds of
collective welfare and unity even though core members are distributed in two or more nation-​
states.They describe two strategies of negotiating familyhood across borders: ‘frontiering’ which
‘denotes the ways and means transnational family members use to create familial space and
network ties in terrain where affinal connections are relatively sparse’; and ‘relativising’ which
refers to the ways individuals establish, maintain or curtail relational ties with specific family
members (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002: 11). In other words, particularly for family formations
which transcend national borders, membership cannot be taken for granted; instead members
who no longer live under one roof may more easily choose to maintain emotional and material
attachments of varying degrees of intensity with certain kinspeople while opting out of other
transnational relationships.
As reviewed elsewhere (see Yeoh et al. 2017, forthcoming), three interrelated strands can be
discerned in the scholarship on transnational families. First, transnational families draw on ideo-
logically laden imaginaries to give coherence to notions of belonging despite the physical dis-
persal of their members. For example, despite the feminisation of labour migration in Southeast
Asia where women in less ​developed economies are fashioning themselves as international
breadwinning migrants responding to the growing gender-​segmented demand for domestic
and care workers in the more developed economies, normative gender ideologies are often at

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work to simultaneously exalt them as heroes of foreign exchange while also casting them as
in need of protection to preserve their sexual and moral purity for the sake of their families
(Silvey 2006). And while the notion of ‘good mothering’ from a distance has been reconstituted
to incorporate breadwinning, it also continues to retain expectations that migrant mothers
demonstrate a strong sense of maternal responsibility (Graham et al. 2012). Among left-​behind
families in source communities, the continued pressure to conform to gender norms with
respect to caring and nurturing practices may explain some men’s resistance to, and sometimes
complete abdication of, parenting responsibilities involving physical care in their wives’ absence
(Save the Children 2006). In other cases, left-​behind men struggle to live up to highly moralistic
masculine ideals of being both ‘good fathers’ and ‘independent breadwinners’ when their wives
are working abroad, by taking on some care functions for their children while holding on to
low-​paid work for a semblance of economic autonomy (Hoang and Yeoh 2011).
Second, transnational families are realised through lived experiences, where varying degrees
of intimacy are negotiated across transnational spaces in the context of new communication
technologies, and the time-​structuring conditions of Asia’s prevailing migration regimes. A
range of work focusing on the lived experiences of ‘being’ a transnational family has examined
different ways family members maintain communication with one another to substitute for
physical absence or negotiate the rearrangement of care work across day-​to-​day realities. Rapid
advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) in recent times have created
‘new opportunities for transnational [migrants] to reframe, negotiate, and contest gendered par-
enting ideology’ (Peng and Wong 2013: 509). Transnational communication may, however, be
uneven, for example when letters, messages and remittances fail to arrive, or when communica-
tion is deliberately ruptured as in the case of attempts on the part of a family member to exert
power from a distance or control relationships through silence or withdrawal. The changing
technologies, economic costs, and emotional pains and gains of ‘staying connected’ in order to
‘do family’ and perform care work across national borders are central concerns to understanding
the inner workings of the transnational family (Asis et al. 2004). At the same time, scholars such
as Madianou caution us not to ‘romanticise the role of communication technologies for “doing
family” because, as with non-​mediated practices, acts of mediated communication can have
complex consequences, both positive and negative, depending on a number of factors, including
the relationships themselves’ (Madianou 2016: 185).
Third, families often assume transnational morphologies with the strategic intent of remit-
tance generation as a means of economic survival, or to accumulate social and economic capital
so as to maximise social mobility for the family. In the context of low-​income transnational
families, for example, Schmalzbauer (2004: 1329) observes that transnational families ‘represent a
new family form born out of the inequality in the global economy and reproduced by means of
dependence on a transnational division of labour’. For these families, economic remittances are
critical to the well-​being of the family and ‘are often at the centre of socio-​economic mobility
strategies’ (Carling et al. 2012: 202). Writings on the migration-​development nexus have often
claimed that remittances sent by labour migrants are ‘a more reliable source of income than
other capital flows to developing countries’ in view of its ‘less volatile, less pro-​cyclical’ nature
(de Haas 2005: 1277). Turning attention to middle-​class Asian families, scholars have discussed
the strategic importance of transnationalising the family in order to invest heavily in children’s
education as the main route towards international social mobility and prestige (Baldassar and
Wilding 2014; Huang and Yeoh 2005; Waters 2005).
The burgeoning literature on transnational families has thus contributed in important ways
to opening up the ‘black box’ of the Asian ‘family’, paving the way for more critical understand-
ing of gender and generational relations, identities and politics within families. While much

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attention has been paid to the formation, maintenance and practices of transnational families, the
research focus has been distributed unevenly in favour of adults’ –​both migrant and left-​behind
members –​perspectives thus far, with less consideration of children’s experiences. More recent
literature has begun to address this gap by encouraging a more ‘children-​inclusive approach’ to
studying transnational families, hence revealing ‘children’s varying roles in migratory processes’
(Tyrrell and Kallis 2015: 329). Research in this vein is needed in order to ‘disrupt hegemonic
discourses and dominant representations of children in migration as simply “migrants’ children”
(and hence an appendage in migration) and elevate them to the status of “migrant children”,
social actors who are willing and able to navigate their own migrant lives … albeit with varying
degrees of guidance and success (as in the case of adults)’ (Huang and Yeoh 2011: 394). In the
rest of the chapter, we discuss three emerging themes in the transnational family scholarship
where children’s situated agency is now being given consideration in the context of family and
migration dynamics: children as educational migrants and family aspirational projects; children’s
mobilities in countering marginal circumstances; and left-​behind children’s role in negotiating
parental migration and child care arrangements.

Children as educational migrants

Much of the large body of academic research on international student migration examines
older students moving for higher education as an end in itself (see Ge and Ho, this volume,
Chapter  5). More recently, however, ‘international student mobility has extended beyond
its traditional focus on educational purposes to reflect students’ [and their parents’] diver-
gent aspirations to transform their life possibilities’ through facilitating career advancement,
achieving the quest for a better material life or securing settlement in the host country (Tran
2016: 1269). Often drawing on Bourdieu’s theorisation of the forms of capital, this litera-
ture highlights the importance of overseas education as a means of accumulating social and
cultural capital (particularly competence in English, a cosmopolitan mindset, and western
comportment), which is assumed to ultimately ensure intergenerational social reproduction
through improving the family’s well-​being and/​or enhancing its socio-​economic status over
the longer-​term (Waters 2006; Yeoh et al. 2005). Given the significance East Asians place on
education, particular attention has been paid to how education-​related migration for East
Asian families is not merely regarded as a strategy, but ‘is seen as a necessity –​the only way
of guaranteeing their family’s future’ (Waters 2015:  281). Practised primarily by elite and
middle-​class families, this strategy has expanded since the late 1980s to include growing num-
bers of younger students of secondary and primary school age –​initially mainly from Hong
Kong and Taiwan, followed by Mainland China, South Korea and Japan. These children,
sometimes accompanied by their mothers, travel to the English-​speaking countries of United
States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, and more recently also to countries in
Southeast Asia offering English-​medium education at more affordable rates (see, for example,
Bedford 2012, Ho 2002 and Waters 2008 for Hong Kong; Chee 2003, Chiang 2008 and Kuo
and Roysircar 2006 for Taiwan; Huang and Yeoh 2005, 2011 and Zhou 1998 for China; Jeong
et al. 2014, Lee and Johnstone 2017 and Lee and Koo 2006 for Korea; and Igarashi 2015 and
Igarashi and Yasumoto 2014 for Japan).
While economic costs are a crucial consideration in sending young children for an overseas
education, other ‘costs’ are more significant as the process often results in breaking up the fam-
ily across national borders.Various forms of transnational family arrangements have emerged as
a result of ‘strategic Asian families pursuing educational goals’ (Waters 2015: 281). The earliest
and most persistent formation identified has been the ‘astronaut family’ where one or more of

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the children are abroad for studies, sometimes alone and housed in boarding school or with a
guardian, but often with one accompanying parent, and the absent parent(s) travelling one or
more times a year to be with the rest of the family. In one of the earliest works on ‘astronaut
families’, Zhou (1998: 682) described these ‘parachute/​satellite kids’ as ‘a highly select group
of foreign students … seek[ing] a better education in American elementary or high schools’,
typically arriving between the ages of eight and 17, often as unaccompanied minors. More
recent work also identifies immigration and settlement as a specific goal, wherein the whole
family emigrates together before the father returns to East Asia to work to support the family.
This form is mainly associated with students from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China.
The literature has also identified the ‘study mother’ phenomenon tied specifically to Singapore’s
earlier Global Schoolhouse ambitions, wherein migrant (grand)mothers –​mostly from China
but also South Korea –​and usually from less affluent families, accompany their (grand)children
studying in Singapore’s primary and secondary schools on student visas (Chew 2010; Huang
and Yeoh, 2005).
A variation of the astronaut family is the South Korean kirŏgi gajok (literally, wild goose
families). Rather than the colder metaphors of astronauts and satellites emphasising space and
distance, the Korean term evokes warm familial emotions, as ‘wild geese symbolise family loy-
alty and marital harmony’ (Lee and Johnstone 2017: 308). Most recently, the oyako-​ryūgaku
(parent-​child study abroad trip) has been described for affluent Japanese families interested in
providing children with an international experience and an education in English while they are
very young (between three and 12 years of age); in this arrangement, both the parent and child
are theoretically enrolled in school but, in practice, most mothers keep their schedules free, pri-
marily to enjoy a variety of activities (Igarashi 2015). The most common form of oyako-​ryūgaku
is a short-​term stay (of a week to three months) typically taking place during the child’s vaca-
tion and ‘designed to augment rather than replace domestic education’ (Igarashi and Yasumoto
2014: 460).
The various strategies undertaken to facilitate the East Asian child’s mobility to acquire
cultural capital and a westernised (or at least, an English-​based) education are not just a family
project, but one very much based on traditional gendered divisions of labour within the family.
Across Chinese (from Hong Kong, Taiwan or China), Korean or Japanese transnational families,
‘men [see] it as their duty to provide material resources for the family, whilst their wives [are]
seen primarily as “nurturers” ’ (Waters 2015: 289). Unsurprisingly, the ‘dominant narrative of
“education migration” for East Asian transnational families is that of sacrifice’ (Igarashi and
Yasumoto 2014:454). While the transnational family arrangement is clearly logistically difficult
and emotionally challenging for everyone in the family, including the children (Huang and Yeoh
2011; Waters 2015; Zhou 1998) and fathers (Lee and Koo 2006; Waters 2010), most of the lit-
erature has highlighted how it is the mothers who self-​identify as the ones who have sacrificed
their own family lives and/​or professional careers the most, placing motherhood above selfhood
and wifehood for the sake of the children and family. Exceptions do exist, however; for exam-
ple, Japanese women on the oyako-​ryūgaku (Igarashi and Yasumoto, 2014) and Korean astronaut
mums in the US (Jeong et al. 2014) see the time abroad as an opportunity to get away from the
societal and cultural burdens at home.
Beyond the strong impetus of Asian parents’ aspirations and their willingness to sacrifice
for the family, structural imperatives also work to shape the international education flows
of Asia’s children. The education systems of East Asian countries are not only ‘notoriously
competitive’, resulting in high levels of stress (and sometimes suicide for children who fail to
make the cut), providing little guarantee of acceptance into local universities except for the
very best students (Waters 2015: 284); they are also perceived as not necessarily producing

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graduates with the social and cultural capital (including life skills) needed for the 21st cen-
tury (Lee and Koo 2006). Hence, Lee and Johnstone (2017: 308) call for research that pays
more attention to ‘how social policies and legislation [particularly in relation to education
and immigration] in both sending and receiving countries actively and strategically produce
and maintain this phenomenon’ of driving families towards an overseas education for their
children.
A significant aspect that has been neglected in the literature is a discussion of the role
children play in the process of their family’s decision to ‘go transnational’ to support their
international education. Although some attention has been given to the development needs
of and emotional costs borne by lone ‘parachute kids’ who are physically separated from
their families (see, for example, Orellana et al. 2001; Pe-​pua et al. 1996; Waters 2003), we
still know very little about how transnationalising the family affects the parent-​child bond
(whether of the absent father or accompanying mother), and even less on how family migra-
tion strategies are shaped by children’s needs. Despite increasing acknowledgement that
children’s education plays a pivotal role in shaping migration patterns and migrants’ subjec-
tivities (as discussed above) and the need to recognise children’s agency in education migra-
tion, ‘there has been little interrogation of the priorities of these children and young people
themselves’ (Dobson 2009: 358). Very few papers on international education include minor
children as respondents; even when they do, the focus is often on problems faced in the
adaptation process (Finch and Kim 2012; Kuo and Roysircar 2006) rather than on examin-
ing how they assert agency.
The papers that do give direct voice to children, while limited, plainly demonstrate, as
Orellana et al. (2001) first made clear, that children are not to be framed merely as luggage
weighing down adult migrants. Rather than being burdens, children are capable of independ-
ent action and may even carry the burden of the family’s migration on their fragile shoulders.
For example, ‘parachute kids’ who migrate alone take the role of lead migrant when other
family members follow in a process of chain migration, while those accompanied by a par-
ent often act as linguistic translators for the parent who may not speak the language of the
destination country (Jeong et al. 2014; Orellana et al. 2001). Zhou’s (1998: 699) study also
revealed the independent agency of children, both positively –​where ‘children who took the
initiative in the decision making were likely to fare better than those who took orders from
their parents’ –​and negatively –​when children refuse to engage with the adult agendas of
their parents and, instead, choose to rebel against parental authority by not studying, lying
about their grades and relationships, and in one case, even setting off her home-​made bomb.
In their research, Huang and Yeoh (2011: 402) found that as ‘human becomings’, ‘children are
capable of knowledgeable agency in (re)mapping their own paths as they confront various
constraints and contradictions, as well as opportunities’ as they move along their journeys as
education migrants. Tran (2016) also uses the notion of mobility as ‘becoming’ to conceptu-
alise international students as ‘self-​forming agents who have the potential capability to pursue
the course of life that they regard as being worth living and meaningful to them’. Building
on Katz’s (2008) notion of children as ‘sites of accumulation’, Waters (2015: 285) argues that
conceptualising children as such ‘acknowledges that they are central to the “accumulation
strategies” of East Asian migrants’.
In other words, there is empirical evidence of the important roles children play in education-​
related family migration, and also conceptual tools to challenge what Waters (2015: 281) terms
as ‘ “adultism” in migration studies’. Researchers should thus continue including children’s
voices in their research to enable a better understanding of children’s active and independent
agency in the migratory process.

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Children’s mobilities under marginal circumstances

Unlike children –​often from a wealthier or middle-​class background –​who migrate inter-
nationally for education, other Asian children may be compelled to move independently as
a result of marginal or precarious familial situations. Examples receiving some attention in
recent years include independent child migrants moving across international borders of vary-
ing distances without their parents or caregivers for work/​livelihood, and those who move for
complex issues related to identification and citizenship (Huijsmans 2008, 2011; Suzuki 2017).
Instead of conceptualising children of precarious mobilities as trafficked victims akin to what
the literature is historically prone to doing (Save the Children 2008), Huijsmans (2008) argues
that such mobile children often demonstrate forms of situated agency that cannot be ignored
and should be studied in their own right.This call is being increasingly answered through work
on independent young migrants from different parts of the world by scholars such as Punch
(2007), Hashim and Thorsen (2011) and Huijsmans (2011) himself, culminating in the con-
sensus that ‘children and youth are not passive objects in migration’ (Dobson 2009; Huijsmans
2014: 294).
In the case of Asia, there has been limited research on children or young people migrating
internally within their country for work, as reflected in studies by Camacho (1999), Elmhirst
(2002), Giani (2006) and Iversen (2002). Children do also migrate internationally for work,
albeit over short distances for some, as evident in the examples of border-​crossing child labour
migrants from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (Huijsmans 2008; Save the Children
2008). These children often migrate to escape poverty (earn money) or abusive conditions at
home, while others leave to seek new ways of fulfilling desires and aspirations that have lit-
tle chance of fulfilment in their home communities (Save the Children 2008). A  review by
Huijsmans (2008) further revealed that child labour migration from Laos to Thailand is com-
monplace and that these Lao child migrants who are often older than ten are also predominantly
girls. Though Lao children can be found working in different industries in Thailand, he con-
tinues that the girls are more likely to be working in exploitative occupations such as domestic
and sex work. Similarly, child migration is also prevalent in Cambodia where many children
from rural areas are attracted by employment opportunities across the border, resulting in high
dropout and low school attendance rates back in Cambodia (Retka and Seavmeng 2016).
The studies above demonstrate that while children who cross borders voluntarily and/​or
intentionally to seek better-​paid employment often do so under constraints and are subjected to
unequal power relations, they also clearly reveal some degree of agency. For instance, Huijsmans
and Baker (2012), whilst acknowledging evidence of exploitation, showed through three case
studies the agency of young girls from Laos and Thailand who actively and strategically pursued
employment outside their hometown by creating fake identities and conceiving effective plans
to cope with the challenges and problems posed by their sojourning projects. Besides earning
money for personal use or to contribute to family finances, children also willingly migrate for
work in the hope that migration will help transition and elevate their positions as ‘child’ to
‘independent youth’ (Huijsmans and Baker 2012). Thus, Huijsmans (2008: 334) concludes that
‘through labour migration children not only renegotiate their own social positions [Punch,
2002], but also, through their migration projects and experiences, child migrants actively con-
struct social reality’. More such studies are needed to counter the passive and helpless image of
children too often portrayed in trafficking discourses.
Turning to our second theme, children who are born as a result of precarious cross-​border
unions may also be compelled to cross borders themselves under marginal circumstances.
Japanese-​Filipino children (also known as JFC1 or negatively as Japinos) born out of unions

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Theodora Lam et al.

between Japanese men and Filipino women either in the Philippines or Japan, for example,
form a group of independent child migrants caught in marginal familial circumstances (Celero
2015; Seiger 2017; Suzuki 2010). Given their complicated cross-​national natal ties, many JFC
face a citizenship crisis both in their country as well as their own family (Suzuki 2017). In par-
ticular, children who were born out of wedlock or to single mothers were previously denied
Japanese citizenship until a new ruling in 2008 granted ‘fatherless’ children with paternal rec-
ognition legal Japanese status (Suzuki 2010). Prior to gaining birth and citizenship legitimacy,
these JFC lived a rather marginal life in Japan entwined with discrimination, limited rights/​
entitlements, exclusionary measures and constant threats of deportation. Even ‘legitimate’ JFC
are not spared from bullying and discrimination at school. Coupled with other reasons such as
a lack of child-​care resources, some JFC returned to the Philippines with their mothers, though
many others were sent there independently to live with their extended maternal family while
their Filipino mothers and/​or Japanese fathers remained in Japan. Some JFC were also ‘returned’
to the Philippines in order to obtain an English-​medium education. Some of these JFC would
remain in the Philippines until the opportune time to return to Japan for further education,
work or reunite with their families.
On the other hand, there were also JFC living in the Philippines, many of whom had never
even been to Japan. Nonetheless, they participated in activities organised by non-​governmental
organisations (NGOs) to acquire Japanese experience by learning the language through chil-
dren’s songs, for example, in the hope that they would be able to claim their birthright one day
(Seiger 2017). The JFC described in Seiger’s (2017) study further demonstrated their agency
by strategically labelling themselves to cope with the complexities of ethnic and national iden-
tity. Overall, the Philippines-​based JFC have learnt over time, through their participation in
NGO activities, to assert their blood ties in order to gain political and economic benefits for
themselves.

Children left behind by migrant parents

As our final theme, we turn to children left in home countries when one or both parents
migrate for work, another variation in transnational household formation receiving increasing
scholarly attention in migration studies. Though the phrase ‘left-​behind children’ is highly con-
tentious and imbued with negative connotations, it more accurately captures the limited choice
many lower-​waged migrant parents have as contract workers as well as the reduced agency these
children themselves have in their family’s mobility (Graham and Yeoh 2013). As the parent(s)
strive for a better economic future for the household by working abroad, many children are left
under the care of the non-​migrating parent, other relatives –​often female –​and/​or even hired
help. In and around Asia, estimates available to date place the number of children left behind by
migrant parents at around half a million in Thailand, one million in Indonesia2 (Bryant 2005),
some six to nine million in the Philippines (Parreñas 2005; Reyes 2008), nine to 61 million in
China (Li 2015; Ma 2016) and one million left behind in Sri Lanka by mothers alone3 (Perera
and Rathnayaka 2013). Unfortunately, the magnitude of the situation may never be accurately
determined given the variability in calculation methods and difficulties in pinning down all
migrant types (Cortés 2007).
Despite the growing interest in studying children within the migration context, literature on
left-​behind children in general is still fairly limited and disproportionate to the estimated scale
of the issue. Apart from anecdotes in popular media on the often negative effects of parental
absence on left-​behind children (see for example Conde 2008; Sudworth 2016), studies focus-
ing on Asian children’s experiences of migration only gained more traction after the turn of the

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second millennium following the publication of Parreñas’s (2005) book focusing on migrants’
children in the Philippines, as well as two special issues on the topic by Nguyen et al. (2006)
and Toyota et al. (2007). Since then, research on left-​behind children can be largely divided into
two broad strands, one focusing on the various impacts of migration on the children to, more
recently, children’s personal perspectives and experiences of the effects of migration.
For the first strand, numerous scholars have embarked on the task of understanding how
parental (international or internal) migration, be it of the father, mother or both, has affected
various aspects of Asian children’s economic, educational, emotional, psychological, physical
and social well-​being. More recent examples include Adhikari et al. (2014), Cortes (2015),
Graham and Jordan (2011), Graham and Jordan (2013), Hugo and Ukwatta (2010), Jampaklay
and Vapattanawong (2013), Jordan and Graham (2012), Jordan et al. (2013), Lu et al. (2016),
Nguyen (2016), Sarma and Parinduri (2016), Zhang et al. (2015), and Zhou et al. (2015).
Findings from these studies have been heterogeneous and disparate thus far, with the well-​
being outcomes largely dependent on rather specific yet complex sociocultural contexts and
a host of factors encompassing the age of left-​behind children, gender of migrants/​carers/​
children, length of parental migration, migrant destination, as well as the situations in the home
communities. However, many of the scholars would agree that left-​behind children usually
benefit economically when their parent(s) migrate. Whilst these studies provide better insights
into the mixed impacts of parental migration on the development of left-​behind children, oth-
ers would argue that it is still difficult to gain a comprehensive understanding of the childhoods
of left-​behind children vis-​à-​vis those from non-​migrant households. Furthermore, children’s
voices and agency are still often missing from these studies which portray children as relatively
passive vessels subjected to the effects of the adults’ actions.
To counter this, Parreñas (2005) was among the first scholars to proffer a closer, retrospective
insight into the gendered experiences of a group of Filipino left-​behind young adults who have
grown up in the absence of migrant parents. Her study highlighted the children’s expressions
of emotions (mostly sadness, confusion and a sense of abandonment) as well as estrangement
from both left-​behind and migrant-​fathers. On the other hand, another study by Scalabrini
Migration Center (SMC) et al. (2004) found that left-​behind school-​going Filipino children
surveyed were fairly similar to those from non-​migrant households, being socially well-​adjusted,
receiving strong support and getting along with other family members. Parental migration did
not affect the socialisation and development of critical values and spirituality for the left-​behind
children in this study. Instead, they were still schooled in responsibilities by being assigned
chores (though they, on average, had more chores than children from non-​migrant households)
from surrogate carers in place of their absent parent. Drawing from the same study, Asis (2006)
concluded that children demonstrated agency in determining migration outcomes, playing an
active role in minding their own well-​being, coping with parental absence and also keeping
the family together. Left-​behind children can grow independently in the absence of restrictive
parental control and may acquire many important life skills in the process. Generally, this schol-
arship reveals that the childhoods of left-​behind children need not necessarily be very different
from those from non-​migrant households, although this may also be largely dependent on the
quality of care provided by surrogate carers (Asis 2006; Asis and Baggio 2003; Battistella and
Conaco 1998).
From another large-​scale study on the impacts of transnational migration on children in
four Southeast Asian countries –​namely Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam –​
the CHAMPSEA4 project not only investigated the effects of parental migration but also drew
attention to the gendered migration experiences of left-​behind children aged nine to 11.
Through structured interviews conducted with left-​behind children from different types of

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migrant families and care-​giving arrangements, scholars from the team shed further light on
Indonesian, Filipino and Vietnamese children’s views, sentiments and agency in negotiating the
migration decision-​making process, arrangements of care, managing relationships with migrants
and left-​behind carers and their personal well-​being (see Graham et al. 2012; Hoang et al. 2015;
Hoang and Yeoh 2012, 2015). These studies affirm that children are not simply passive subjects
of migration, establishing how they are both simultaneously powerful and powerless within the
family’s livelihood strategy that is intertwined with mobility. The various studies also trace and
reveal children’s growth over their life-​course, agency and strategies in coping with parental
migration and familial adjustments through the changing times of parental migration, explor-
ing how children express their resilience and demonstrate their creativity in the face of parental
absence.
Besides acknowledging left-​ behind children’s agency, the various studies from the
CHAMPSEA project also recognised their inability and incapacity due to the larger structures
of power and inequality. Oftentimes, left-​behind children are rendered relatively ‘passive’ within
the larger migration and communication decisions that are usually controlled by the adults or
the structural setting at large. Nonetheless, left-​behind children do not remain in stasis but learn
and acquire the necessary skills and knowledge over time to navigate the perils of transnational
living. Changes in children’s everyday lives, educational choices, parental migration or return
as well as care-​giving decisions may be effected through seemingly small actions made by left-​
behind children. Generally, the interactions between left-​behind children and the adults can
make ‘a difference –​to a relationship, a decision, to the workings of a set of social assumptions
or constraints’ (Mayall 2002: 21).
Overall, both existing strands of studies on left-​behind children further confirm (as with
earlier themes) that children can no longer be ignored within the field of migration stud-
ies, highlighting the importance of the role they play within the family migration project.
(Dobson 2009; Hoang and Yeoh 2015; Ní Laoire et  al. 2010; Orellana et  al. 2001). Given
that children’s agency develops largely through their interactions with their families (van
Nijnatten 2013), it is especially important to study children of migrant families within the
family site where interactions with various family members may be remote, sporadic, inter-
rupted and/​or obstructed.

Conclusion
In this chapter, we have attempted to bring to the fore evidence of children’s situated agency
in three different types of transnational family circumstances –​children as key participants in
transnational education and capital accumulation projects; children moving independently out
of marginal familial circumstances; and non-​mobile children who are left in home countries
while one or both parents seek a better economic livelihood for the family elsewhere. In each
of these cases, children demonstrate varying capabilities and levels of agency subjected to the
constraints posed by the specific contexts in which they are situated. Despite these limitations,
the studies highlight that children are not passive members of transnational mobilities whilst also
recognising their incapacity at the same time.
Moving forward, beyond the basic need for more studies examining the agency of chil-
dren in different forms of transnational family projects, there is also a need for more com-
parative work among children of different Asian countries. For example, studies on children
migrating for education from countries in East Asia where Confucian thought prevails
may be compared with educational migration projects involving children from South and
Southeast Asian countries and cultures (such as Indonesia5 and Malaysia6). Finally, more

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research needs to take into account the way children’s agency may change or develop over
time. Thus, longitudinal research on the long-​term implications of transnational households
on families in Asia is needed to trace the changing agency of children over their life-​course,
and in turn, how these changes may affect the families’ transnational strategies as different
family members adapt relationally to one another and to changing circumstances as children
grow up.

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust [GR079946/​B/​06/​Z; GR079946/​Z/​06/​Z];
Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 2 [MOE2015-​T2-​1–​008]; and
the Department of Socio-​Cultural Diversity at Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious
and Ethnic Diversity.

Notes
1 Although some use JFC to refer to Japanese-​Filipino children of failed unions, it is being used in a neu-
tral way in this chapter to refer to all children of Japanese and Filipino parentage.
2 This estimate would probably have risen given that the number of migrants from Indonesia is posited to
be 6.5 million in 2014 (Saifuddin 2014).
3 However, Lakshman et al. (2014) caution that the overall number of Sri Lankan migrant-​parents may be
lower than those widely speculated.
4 CHAMPSEA or Child Health and Migrant Parents in Southeast Asia employs both quantitative and
qualitative methodologies to investigate the impacts of parental migration on the well-​being and health
of children aged three to five and nine to 11 from migrant and non-​migrant households. For a detailed
explanation of the study, refer to Graham and Yeoh (2013).
5 https://nziec.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Factsheet-Indonesia.pdf; https://​thepienews.com/​
analysis/​will-​indonesia-​become-​a-​major-​student-​market/​2/.​
6 www.freemalaysiatoday.com/​category/​nation/​2016/​08/​23/​r ich-​kids-​leave-​to-​study-​overseas-​after-​
form-​3-​says-​moe/​; www.themalaysiantimes.com.my/​malaysian-​students-​opting-​to-​study-​abroad/.​

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20
NON-​C ITIZEN POLITICAL
ENGAGEMENT
Erin Aeran Chung and Rameez Abbas

Introduction
The struggle to expand voting rights to previously disenfranchised groups such as peasants,
racial minorities, women, and immigrants is a defining feature of industrial democracies. A leg-
acy of the history of the incremental expansion of citizenship in industrial democracies is that
the act of voting has become synonymous with meaningful political participation and has come
to represent the fulfilment of a citizen’s civic rights and duties. It is not surprising, then, that in
an era of widespread electoral rights, studies of political participation tend to focus on electoral
participation and citizen voting behaviour. Likewise, much of the scholarship on immigrant
political participation concentrates on why naturalised immigrants vote less than native citizens
and why some groups of immigrants exhibit higher voting rates than others. However, immi-
grants and native-​born citizens alike participate in a range of political activities that extend well
beyond voting, and non-​citizens are active in politics even when they do not have voting rights.
Overall, the emphasis on electoral participation has meant that non-​citizen political behaviour is
under-​theorised.
Two relatively recent trends have transformed the ways scholars view non-​citizen political
participation. First, over the last few decades, naturalisation rates among non-​citizens in indus-
trial democracies have been declining amidst growing immigrant populations. While foreign
nationals make up a substantial proportion of the labour force in a number of industrialised
societies, their annual rates of naturalisation have been relatively low even among long-​term
and native-​born residents –​under 5 per cent in more than half of all OECD countries that
have native-​born generations of foreign residents in 2013 (SOPEMI 2017). Even in the United
States, where naturalisation rates are higher than in other OECD countries, the proportion of
naturalised citizens in the foreign-​born population has declined from 64 per cent in 1970 to
50 per cent in 1980 to 41 per cent in 1990 and, finally, to 37 per cent in 2000. This proportion
increased to 44 per cent in 2010. Low naturalisation rates among eligible foreign residents have
contributed to the overall growth of the total non-​citizen populations and, specifically, have
generated significant numbers of permanent foreign residents with rights on par with legal
citizens, or what Tomas Hammar (1990) refers to as ‘denizens’.
Second, non-​ citizens have become increasingly visible in the public sphere as politi-
cal actors in their own right. Contrary to assumptions that they are politically passive or

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politically disengaged until they naturalise, non-​citizens throughout the industrialised world
have engaged in a range of political activities, from homeland political participation to full-​
fledged non-​citizen civil rights movements. Recent political events in which non-​citizens
have been key participants –​such as the September 2015 rallies by foreign domestic workers
in Hong Kong and the December 2015 immigrant rights rallies in Taiwan –​have highlighted
that non-​citizens are not merely the objects of reform movements but also active and central
participants.
Developing democracies –​including many in Asia –​have experienced a different histori-
cal trajectory. Rather than a relatively incremental extension of the franchise, some developing
countries achieved independence from colonial powers through mass participatory movements,
and others overthrew authoritarian regimes through mass mobilisation (Tandon 2008:  286).
De jure, at least, their citizens acquired universal citizenship more abruptly. Another layer of
complexity is that the low capacity of many developing democracies when it comes to citizen
identification and documentation means that non-​citizens in these countries may have more
avenues of electoral participation than their counterparts in traditional countries of immigra-
tion (Sadiq 2009). Advanced industrial democracies and developing democracies are also differ-
ent in their experiences as migrant-​receiving countries. Developing states have fewer flows of
permanent international migrants, and engage in fewer integration and naturalisation activities
than do advanced industrial states. These core differences in citizenship and immigration mean
that the political engagement of their migrant populations –​citizens and non-​citizens –​have
varying drivers, modes, and outcomes.
Asia, with its mix of advanced industrial and developing democracies, is an interesting
context within which to study these issues. According to the United Nations Migration
Report, over 40 per cent of the 244 million international migrants in 2015 were born in Asia
and three of the five largest overseas populations originated from Asia.1 Although Asia hosts
almost as many international migrants as does Europe, most countries in Asia –​as well as in
Africa and the Middle East –​prohibit or discourage unskilled foreign workers’ permanent
settlement.
This chapter explores the scope, direction, and modes of non-​citizen political engagement
in selected Asian countries, focusing on some of Asia’s largest flows of migrants and refugees,
through a review of the most significant research advances in these areas. Studies of immigrant
political incorporation  –​defined as the process by which immigrants and their descendants
move from being the objects of political mobilisation and policymaking to political participants
(Messina 2007: 233) –​have begun to shift their attention from the process by which immigrants
acquire citizenship and become participants in formal politics to how they exercise their politi-
cal voice while they are not citizens. We argue that more research is needed on the political
actions of non-​citizens that take place in between the two moments of arrival and naturalisation,
if the latter occurs at all.
The following section discusses specific modes of non-​citizen political engagement that
range from electoral and extra-​electoral forms, on the one hand, and national and transnational
forms on the other. We then examine two principal areas of inquiry  –​electoral and extra-​
electoral participation –​and discuss the major challenges, opportunities, and insights of scholar-
ship that examine non-​citizen political participation in Asia.

Modes of non-​citizen political engagement

In his seminal study of guestworkers in Western Europe, Mark Miller (1981, 1989) challenged
the prevalent assumption that non-​citizens are politically passive. With a few exceptions (see

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Table 20.1  Selected non-​citizen populations in Asia

Country Year of data Total foreign born Sending countries of largest groups
(non-​citizens)1

Hong Kong 2014 485,000 Indonesia (137,403)

Philippines (135,081)
Indonesia 2001 149,761 China (93,717)
Japan 2015 2,232,189 China (666,847)
Korea (501,711)
Malaysia 2009 1,226,738 Indonesia (714,880)
Philippines (200,673)
S. Korea 2015 1,143,087 China (955,871)
India 2005 6,166,930 Bangladesh (3,742,883)
Pakistan (1,305,707)
Pakistan 2015 1,485,180 Afghanistan (1,478,030)

Sources:
United Nations Statistics Division Demographic Statistics;
‘Foreign population (non-​citizens) by country of citizenship, age and sex’, data.un.org/​Data.aspx?q=forei
gn+population&d=POP&f=tableCode%3a127;
Korea Immigration Service. 2016. Korea Immigration Service (KIS) Statistics 2016;
Ministry of Justice, Japan. 2016. Heisei 27 Nenmatsu Genzaini Okeru Gaikokujintorokusha Toukeini Tsuite
[Report on Current Foreign Resident Statistics at the End of 2015].
 The data from India do not distinguish between non-​citizens and citizens, and are found here: ‘Foreign-​
1

born population by country/​area of birth, age and sex’, data.un.org/​Data.aspx?q=foreign+population&

d=POP&f=tableCode%3a44. The data from Pakistan are refugee figures from UNHCR (www.unhcr.
org/​cgi-​bin/​texis/​vtx/​page?page=49e487016) and do not include other irregular or undocumented
non-​citizens. Finally, for all countries except for South Korea, the illegal or undocumented portion of
the non-​citizen population is not captured in these numbers.

Martiniello 2009), the literature that appeared on non-​citizen political engagement tended
to reduce the role of the non-​citizen to spectator, victim, or beneficiary of immigration and
citizenship policies and reforms. This oversight was in part due to the immigrant political
quiescence thesis that dominated the literature for most of the 1960s and 1970s. Because
the vast majority of non-​citizens in Europe were migrant labourers or ‘guestworkers’ who
lacked political rights, scholars assumed that they were either unable or unwilling to partici-
pate in the politics of their country of residence. However, as large populations of migrant
workers and their families transformed themselves into long-​term foreign residents and
found a voice within their countries of residence, the lens of analysis turned from factors
that constrain their participation to the modes, levels, and goals of non-​citizen political
engagement.
Miller identified five key extra-​electoral forms of political participation among non-​citizens
who are disenfranchised: 1) homeland participation, 2) consultative voice, 3) unions and factory
councils, 4) political, religious, and civic organisations, and 5) extra-​parliamentary opposition.
Building on Miller’s work, we can identify distinct modes of non-​citizen political engagement
that include both electoral and extra-​electoral political action on the one hand and national to
transnational politics on the other (see Table 20.2). ‘National politics’ in this framework refers to
the domestic politics of the country of residence.While some modes are specific to non-​citizens
and immigrants, most are shared by citizens and non-​citizens alike.

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Non-citizen political engagement

Table 20.2  Modes of non-​citizen political engagement

National

– Naturalisation – Participating in civic associations

– Voting – Engaging in collective action to solve a
– Campaign volunteer work local problem
– Attending fundraisers – Volunteer work
– Political donations – Participating in social movements
– Attending a political rally – Filing a complaint
– Attending public meetings with candidates – Litigation
and elected officials – Participating in a public interest group
– Signing a petition – Protest activity

Extra-electoral politics
– Contacting a public official – Labour union participation
Electoral politics

– Participating in foreign citizens council

– Participating in political action committees

– Regional-​level (EU) electoral political – Participating in a transnational public

participation
– Homeland electoral politics
– Voting
– Campaign volunteer work
– Political donations
– Attending a political rally
– Contacting a public official
– Attending a public meeting
– Signing a petition
interest organisation or social movement
– Participating in an ethnic civic association
– Protest activity
– Diasporic political participation
– Volunteer work
– Political donations
– Attending a political rally
– Attending a public meeting
– Signing a petition

Transnational

Source: Author’s own compilation.

It is important to note that non-​citizens of different legal statuses may engage in a num-
ber of the activities listed in Table 20.2, even those within the realm of electoral politics.
Naturalisation is the first step for non-​citizens to gain full citizenship rights, at least in theory,
which includes voting rights and the right to run for public office. At the same time, many
forms of electoral participation –​such as campaign volunteer work, political donations and
participation in public meetings –​do not require citizenship status. Additionally, foreign resi-
dents in countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, and South Korea are eligible
to vote in local elections and, in New Zealand, national elections (Hayduk 2006). Electoral
participation may also be transnational in scope. In Asia as elsewhere, some foreign citizens may
participate in homeland electoral politics depending on election laws in the country of origin,
though they may be disenfranchised even when participatory laws are in place. For example,
Afghanistan allowed its citizens in Pakistan to vote in the 2004 election that brought Hamid
Karzai to power, but in the 2009 and 2014 elections, the government restricted the vote due to
alleged security risks and logistical troubles. In this case, the question of the migrant vote was
politicised, as some observers complained that keeping the ethnically Pashtun Afghan refugees
out of the national elections was an attempt by the government to influence the result (Shams
and Khan 2014).

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As citizen participation in extra-​electoral political action has expanded in contemporary

industrial democracies (Dalton 2000), so too have the options for non-​citizens to engage in
direct action methods of political participation. Accordingly, formal citizenship status is even less
of a prerequisite for meaningful political action. While the state may not recognise them as full
members, non-​citizens may directly influence public debates and help bring about democratic
reforms.
Extra-​electoral modes of political engagement include participation in social move-
ments, public interest groups, and protest activities. The substantive issues addressed range
from non-​citizen, immigrant, and/​or minority rights –​as in local voting rights movements
for foreign residents in a number of industrial democracies –​to issues that directly impact
a wide segment of both the citizen and non-​citizen population nationally or locally  –​
such as labour union strikes or protests against redistricting. Non-​citizen engagement in
extra-​electoral politics may also be transnational in scope. While immigrant participation
in transnational movements is not new, the development of supranational organisations
coupled with the forces of economic globalisation have enabled the expansion of contem-
porary transnational movements based on universal concerns, such as the environmental
movement, and transnational networks based on common ethnicity and/​or religion, such
as international Islamic networks. Closely associated with the latter are diasporic networks
and movements that are based on shared national origins and/​or a collective vision of the
homeland, such as non-​resident Indians (NRIs) or the Korean diasporic network. These
movements highlight a growing tension between state-​based forms of legal citizenship and
the increased ability of non-​citizens to engage in politics that bypasses the nation-​states in
which they reside.

Naturalisation and electoral political participation

Empirical studies of non-​citizen political engagement in industrial democracies have most
often concentrated on naturalisation rates, voting, and other forms of formal political partici-
pation with much of the English-​language scholarship dominated by US-​based studies. US-​
based scholarship on non-​citizen political participation has historically emphasised the role of
individual-​level characteristics, such as an individual’s education, income, gender, and age (Verba
et al. 1993; Yang 1994). These characteristics have helped explain questions such as why some
immigrant groups exhibit higher voting rates than others, and what contextual factors predict
high or low rates of electoral participation among migrant groups.
In countries with birthright citizenship policies such as the United States and Canada,
questions regarding immigrant legal incorporation as full citizens resolve themselves after the
first generation. That is, regardless of the first generation’s legal status, native-​born generations
automatically gain nationality in their country of birth. Countries that combine elements
of jus soli and jus sanguinis in their citizenship policies, such as Belgium and France, likewise
resolve these questions after the second generation since nationality is automatically granted to
the third generation of immigrants. In addition, they generally make second-​generation attri-
bution contingent on particular requirements but do not require second-​generation immi-
grants to undergo the formal process of naturalisation. The problem of immigrant political
incorporation is especially pronounced in countries with citizenship policies based exclusively
or predominantly on jus sanguinis, which is the norm in Asia. Citizenship policies based solely
on jus sanguinis extend the descent requirement beyond the second-​generation and require
native-​born generations of immigrants to undergo the formal process of naturalisation in order
to become full citizens.

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Although most countries with descent-​based citizenship policies do not prohibit foreign
residents from acquiring nationality through naturalisation, they will likely exhibit low rates of
naturalisation among their foreign residents across generations, especially if dominant under-
standings of national citizenship and naturalisation procedures reflect ethno-​national concep-
tions of nationhood. Descent-​based citizenship policies combined with low naturalisation rates
will then result in a relatively large proportion of foreign citizens within the community of
immigrants and their native-​born descendants. Consequently, the challenge of politically incor-
porating foreign residents extends beyond the first immigrant generation to their descendants,
who may remain foreigners for multiple generations.
For example, naturalisation rates in Japan, where citizenship policies are based purely on jus
sanguinis, have not exceeded 1 per cent of the total foreign population despite the four-​fold
increase in annual naturalisations from the early 1990s. Such low naturalisation rates, moreover,
are exhibited across five generations of foreign residents. Although Japan’s official naturalisation
criteria are no more stringent than those of the United States, the substantial discretionary pow-
ers exercised by the Ministry of Justice officials during the process make naturalisation proce-
dures opaque and arbitrary. In addition to meeting official naturalisation criteria and submitting
tax records or bank statements and extensive documentation related to their family histories
(including a copy of their household registration from their country of origin), they must, in
most cases, demonstrate evidence of cultural assimilation (Chung 2010a). Despite the presence
of permanently settled and, in many cases, native-​born foreign resident populations within its
borders, Japan has not revised its nationality laws to introduce elements of jus soli, resulting in
multiple generations of foreign residents.
In both developing and industrial democracies, electoral participation depends on docu-
mentation –​in particular, the process of gaining permanent residency and citizenship status
and acquiring the accompanying documents that allow the bearer to vote. Non-​citizens in
industrial democracies often vote in municipal elections, while the national-​level right to vote
is typically restricted to citizens. But for both citizen and non-​citizen immigrants, documenta-
tion is the entry to electoral participation. In developing Asian democracies, documentation
plays a surprising role in the electoral participation of non-​citizens. Globally, birth certificates
are by far the most common proof of citizenship; yet, over 50 million births worldwide are not
registered. Approximately two-​thirds of all unregistered births are in Asia (UNICEF 2002: 2,
reported in Sadiq 2009: 78). In societies where the bureaucratic capacity of the state is limited
and large numbers of people  –​citizens and others  –​lack identity documentation, political
engagement often looks different from that in more developed countries. In these contexts,
uneven documentation means that citizens may not be able to participate in politics through
legal channels while non-​citizens may have opportunities to be electorally active. As Sadiq
(2009) points out, native-​born citizens may lack the paperwork to prove their citizenship status
while non-​native non-​citizens may have multiple documents –​both legal and illegal –​that
attest to their status as local inhabitants. In this way, documentation can blur the lines between
who is a citizen and who is not and, therefore, between those who are legally entitled to vote
and those who are not.
In Pakistan, for example, a significant number of Afghans have Pakistani identity documents
and claim to be migrants of long-​standing or Pakistani natives (AREU 2005) –​a claim made
plausible by the fact that the Pashtun homeland straddles the Afghan-​Pakistan border. In India
too –​indeed, throughout the developing world –​state boundaries that do not coincide with
ethnic boundaries make it easier for non-​citizen migrants to claim political rights. Political par-
ties and candidates in countries such as India, Pakistan and Malaysia have thus courted the votes
of Bangladeshis, Afghans, Filipinos and others, ensuring the dominance of the ruling parties in

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certain regions; likewise, non-​citizen migrants in India, Pakistan, and Malaysia have run for and
been elected for public office through what Sadiq (2009: 157–​67) calls ‘documentary citizen-
ship practices’.

Extra-​electoral political participation

Rather than examining individual-​level characteristics that explain naturalisation and voting
rates, the comparative scholarship tends to focus on formal citizenship policies with particular
emphasis on the structural constraints of the political system under study. The central area of
concern in this literature is explaining variations in citizenship policies and, especially in recent
years, whether or not those variations are dissipating. Aside from electoral studies of countries
where foreign residents have voting rights, the bulk of the comparative scholarship on non-​
citizen political engagement itself has focused on extra-​electoral forms. One approach links
specific modes of national incorporation regimes with distinct forms of immigrant political
participation. According to these ‘institutional channelling’ approaches, the receiving society’s
institutional forces –​including immigration and citizenship policies and administrative prac-
tices as well as ‘institutional gatekeepers’ such as political parties and trade unions –​structure
the political participation of immigrant groups (Ireland 1994). The key insight of this literature
is that the national context, including formal and informal policies and practices, matters con-
siderably in explaining immigrants’ modes of political engagement. A fruitful avenue for future
research is investigating this relationship in Asian contexts. For example, the Pakistani govern-
ment’s policies toward Afghan refugees and irregular migrants moved from being relatively open
to newcomers and facilitating their movement in the late 1970s to 1988, to a policy of openness
without facilitation until 2001, and finally to policies emphasising repatriation and more regula-
tion after 2001 (AREU 2005). Meanwhile, Pakistani electoral coalitions and security considera-
tions also changed drastically over this period. The existing literature sheds light on how this
new political context may have led to a change in the manner in which Afghan refugees in
Pakistan engaged in local and national politics.
In India, the combined activism of state and non-​state actors has considerably altered immi-
grant politics. India’s initially inclusive citizenship regime at independence began to change
dramatically during the 1970s and 1980s, with the independence of Bangladesh and the Tamil
insurgency in Sri Lanka dislocating millions of migrants to India. As a result of these events,
and especially due to ongoing contentious politics in India’s Northeast, the politics of immigra-
tion were debated on the national stage, resulting in a new policy that excluded Bangladeshi
immigrants from national citizenship in 1985. This led to a 1987 constitutional amendment
stipulating that a person born in India was only an Indian citizen if either parent was also a
citizen of India at the time of the birth. Indian citizenship was restricted further in 2004, after
which a person born in India is only considered a citizen if one parent is a citizen and the other
parent is not an illegal migrant at the time of birth. As India’s citizenship regime has become
more restrictive, local officials have used accusations of foreign citizenship to restrict rights such
as housing and food rations (Abbas 2016). Correspondingly, a central concern of non-​citizen
populations has been to convince the state that they are natives, through acquiring documenta-
tion. Much of this effort happens through NGOs that mobilise populations to claim their rights
and often serve as intermediaries between migrants and the state.
A growing body of scholarship on East Asia examines the gap between national state poli-
cies that exclude immigrants and local-​level practices that have helped foreign residents gain
access to numerous services and institutionalised rights. Much of this literature focuses on the
role played by civil society actors in mediating the relationship between foreign residents and

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the state (Chung 2014; Gurowitz 1999; Hsia 2009; Kim 2003) and partnerships between local
state and civil society actors (Cheng 2002; Chung 2010b; Kim 2008; Milly 2014; Tsuda 2006).
Contrary to conventional wisdom, these works demonstrate that restrictive immigration and
citizenship policies do not necessarily limit opportunities for non-​citizen political participa-
tion; rather, they present different opportunities. Japan’s descent-​based citizenship policies, for
example, have brought into being native-​born generations of foreign residents who have at
their disposal distinct forms of social and political capital that foreign-​born immigrants lack.
Although their foreign citizenship may not allow them to vote, native-​born generations of
Korean residents in Japan have mobilised the community around their foreign citizenship status
not as a means of participating in homeland politics but as part of a strategy to gain political
visibility in Japan (Chung 2010a).
Likewise, the absence of national immigrant-​incorporation programmes in the face of rap-
idly growing immigrant populations in Japan has led to a blossoming of local programmes and
services for foreign residents as well as a surge in volunteers assisting foreign residents (Roberts
2000; Shipper 2008). Research on pro-​immigrant NGOs in South Korea demonstrates how
the struggle for migrant labour rights have been couched in broader efforts to advance the
democratic process in Korea (Lim 2003). South Korea’s strong tradition of labour activism lent
the struggle for migrant labour rights significant potency and magnitude in Korean society and
explains in part why reforms to policies regarding migrant labour have been enacted at a much
swifter pace in Korea than in Japan (Chung 2010b).
Scholarship on extra-​electoral political participation among non-​citizens points to the myr-
iad ways in which non-​citizens can engage in the politics of their country of residence without
formal membership in the political community. These works also challenge the conventional
understanding that restrictive, ethno-​cultural citizenship regimes inhibit non-​citizen political
engagement. While such regimes may make citizenship acquisition difficult, they nevertheless
provide opportunities for non-​citizens to express their interests and engage in politics at the
local and national levels.

Transnational political participation

The most passionate areas of debate on non-​citizen political engagement over the past few
decades have been in the realm of transnational political participation. The subject of dual, or
multiple, citizenship, in particular, has been the focus of debate among academics, policymakers,
and activists. Opponents warn that dual citizenship would have a negative effect on immigrant
political participation in the country of residence and would result in divided loyalties among
citizens (Schuck 1998). Others claim that allowing immigrants to ‘have it both ways’ deval-
ues the institution of national citizenship (Rehnson 2001). As Spiro writes, ‘instances of dual
nationality are almost as old as the concept of nationality itself, and the phenomenon has been
deplored for just as long’ (2016: 13). However, research on Latin American immigrants in the
United States suggests that the requirement to renounce formal membership in one’s country
of origin is a significant disincentive for naturalisation and that dual citizenship encourages immi-
grant political participation in their country of residence (FitzGerald 2008; Jones-​Correa 2001).
Aside from the realm of formal policies and institutions, a body of literature in social psychology
has found that the ability to maintain one’s ‘dual identity’ –​minority and mainstream –​actually
facilitates the social adaptation of immigrant minorities and contributes to positive intergroup
relations (Fleischmann et al. 2013: 215).
Dual nationality remains a rarity in Asia. While most Asian countries do not recognise
dual nationality, some, such as Singapore and Japan, strictly prohibit it (Sejersen 2008). India

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also does not permit dual nationality, but does confer the ‘Overseas Citizen of India’ (OCI)
status to people of Indian origin who acquire a different citizenship. OCI cardholders may
not carry an Indian passport and do not have the political rights of Indian citizens, but are
permitted unlimited entries into India and economic rights such as landownership and invest-
ment rights. In more recent years, however, a handful of Asian countries have passed dual
nationality laws that allow their emigrants and descendants to reacquire their citizenship. The
Philippines Citizenship Retention and Reacquisition Act of 2003, for example, allows native-​
born Filipinos who have naturalised elsewhere to retain or reacquire their Filipino citizen-
ship; additionally, children of Filipino citizens born in countries with birthright citizenship
automatically acquire dual citizenship. Children of current or former South Korean citizens
born in countries with birthright citizenship and former South Korean citizens over the age
of 65 have likewise been eligible for dual nationality since South Korea’s National Assembly
passed a multiple nationality bill in 2010 (Chung and Kim 2012).2 And Bangladesh allows
people of Bangladeshi origin who are citizens of select countries –​including Australia, Canada,
the United States, and the United Kingdom –​to obtain a Dual Nationality Certificate. Dual
nationality, however, is not the only path through which Asian migrants engage in transna-
tional politics. Non-​resident citizens of most Asian countries, including Japan, South Korea,
Malaysia, Singapore, and India, are eligible to vote in their home country elections by mail or
through their embassies.
Migrant transnational networks are also sources of debate about immigrant political loyalty
and identification with their country of residence. In the post 9/​11 era, the debate on migrant
transnational networks has focused especially on the question of security (Adamson 2006;
Rudolph 2006). While transnationalism may continue to connote notions of an economically
interconnected world and the universalisation of democratic values, transnational networks have
increasingly become associated with anti-​democratic, particularistic terrorist cells. In the same
way that some theorists postulated that the forces of globalisation have led to the emergence of
a type of postnational citizenship (Soysal 1994), in which formal membership is not a prereq-
uisite for the privileges of citizenship, we might say that the security concerns of the post 9/​11
era have led to a re-​evaluation of national citizenship, making citizenship rights and citizenship
status contingent upon national exigencies.
Among large labour migrant populations, transnational political engagement often happens
through efforts within their sending countries to secure better working conditions or treat-
ment in the receiving society. For example, the Indonesian nonprofit organisation Migrant
Care advocates for Indonesian workers abroad, and migrants who become involved with the
organisation participate in the process of advocating for labour rights in their receiving state
(Tampubolon 2015). Governments also involve their citizens in advocacy for labour rights
abroad. A  prominent example is the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration  –​an agency
of the Philippines –​which had over 1 million members as of May 2007. This represented 28
per cent of the 3.8 million legal temporary Filipino workers abroad during the previous year
(Agunias and Ruiz 2007: 12). In fact, many developing states have ministerial-​level agencies
for managing their migrant workers, but the question is to what extent these agencies involve
migrants themselves in modes of transnational political engagement.
Diasporic populations in particular occupy the grey areas of citizenship. While they may
legally be nationals of their countries of residence, some diasporic populations may identify
themselves primarily as citizens of their homeland that may or may not correspond with exist-
ing legal territorial boundaries. Diasporic networks and movements may be based on shared
national origins and/​or a collective vision of the homeland that transcend discrete catego-
ries of legal citizenship and non-​citizenship. Whether they are overseas Indians engaged in

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long-​distance democratisation movements (Kapur 2010) or Korean diasporic groups seeking to

reunify the Korean peninsula (Chung 2010a), diasporic movements highlight tensions between
state-​based forms of legal citizenship and the ability of non-​citizens to engage in politics that
bypasses the nation-​state.

Conclusion
Comparative scholarship on immigration and citizenship emerging in the last few decades
has yielded three significant insights upon which further research on non-​citizen political
engagement can build. First, the current conception of incorporation implies a mutually
constitutive relationship between the immigrant and the receiving society, in contrast to
straight-​line assimilation theory found in early-​20th century US social scientific scholar-
ship. While immigrants adapt to the receiving societies, they also have a significant impact
in a type of give-​and-​take process that ultimately results in the remaking of both the immi-
grants and the receiving societies (DeWind and Kasinitz 1997: 1098). Second, non-​citizen
political engagement is not limited to naturalisation; moreover, naturalisation is not the first
politically meaningful act in which the non-​citizen participates. While non-​citizens may
not be formal members of their country of residence, they may nevertheless engage in vari-
ous forms of politics to influence public opinion, public policies and institutions, political
parties or individual politicians, foreign relations, and racial politics. Finally, scholars have
increasingly begun to recognise that the institutional context in which non-​citizens engage
in politics extends far beyond their formal legal status and encompasses diverse factors such
as ideas of nationhood, the quality of civil society organisations, and governance structures
in the country of residence.
These three broad insights represent significant advances in our understanding of immigrant
incorporation regimes and non-​citizen political engagement. The next step, we believe, is to
shift the lens of analysis from immigrant incorporation to non-​citizen political empowerment.
Rather than assume immigrant interests, we suggest that the study of non-​citizen political
engagement should concentrate on immigrant agency to better understand how individuals or
groups attempt to improve their social, economic, and/​or political standing.
This requires a critical revaluation of the ways that we use and analyse concepts such as
immigrant incorporation, political engagement, and citizenship. In particular, examining non-​
citizen political engagement in Asian countries brings into relief the grey area between internal
and international migrants and citizens and non-​citizens. Each group may become ‘undocu-
mented’ due to their inability to produce material verification of their residency, descent, mari-
tal status, or other official documentation of their presence in a particular territory. Non-​citizens
in some countries may indeed have more citizenship rights than varieties of ‘second-​class’ citi-
zens. Further comparative research that analyses both internal and international migrants in a
single country or across multiple countries has the potential to contribute fresh insights into
how states attempt to control migration and migrants themselves, how second-​class citizenship
develops over time, and how non-​citizen political involvement may transform the nature and
meaning of citizenship in both sending and receiving societies (Chung 2017).
We argue for a more nuanced understanding of non-​citizen political engagement that
delineates distinct modes of political participation as well as the gaps between different modes.
Mark Miller’s work was pivotal in pointing out that non-​citizens –​despite or because of their
citizenship status  –​can be active political participants. The substantial body of scholarship
that has emerged in the decades since Miller’s study demonstrates that patterns of non-​citizen
political engagement vary considerably across communities and countries. Although the extant

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Erin Aeran Chung & Rameez Abbas

literature sets out to explain immigrant political behaviour, most do not treat immigrants –​or
non-​citizens –​as full political actors in their own right, with divergent political interests. Instead,
immigrants are often viewed as potential political actors.Why do non-​citizens make the political
choices that they do? Are naturalisation rates lower in countries that do not allow for birthright
citizenship because of relatively restrictive naturalisation criteria or because of the formal and
informal ways that state and non-​state actors encourage or discourage naturalisation? Do high
levels of transnational political participation among specific immigrant groups reflect strong
homeland ties, lack of incorporation in the receiving society, or a general shift toward transna-
tional politics in the host civil society?
We propose a paradigm shift in understanding non-​citizen political engagement from politi-
cal incorporation to political empowerment. When the study of non-​citizen political engage-
ment is limited to naturalisation or voting, then non-​citizen political interests are assumed.
That is, we assume that foreign residents want to be incorporated into the existing political
system and that structural or individual-​level barriers prevent them from doing so.The literature
on non-​citizen political engagement in Asia, however, demonstrates that the goal of political
engagement is not always incorporation. On the contrary, when the group in question does
not benefit from the status quo, political engagement may aim to contest the political system,
not affirm it.
By shifting the focus from political incorporation to political empowerment, we can bet-
ter understand non-​citizen interests and strategies that go well beyond their legal status. State
policies in both the sending and receiving societies set the structural boundaries of non-​citizen
political engagement by regulating movement within and between state borders, linking access
to rights and goods to specific groups of people, and establishing the parameters of debate on
national identity, community, and equality. Mainstream and minority mediating institutions
structure the political learning environment for non-​citizens and citizens alike and provide the
tools and resources for political engagement. State policies and mediating institutions together
shape non-​citizen political identities, both in terms of how non-​citizens identify themselves
with the receiving and sending societies as well as in terms of how non-​citizens represent
themselves in the public sphere and how they are inserted in public discourse. Finally, indi-
vidual and group-​level variables, combined with contextual factors, push non-​citizens toward
or pull them away from political opportunities and efforts at political mobilisation.
Distinguishing between modes of non-​citizen political participants confronts the normative
bias that naturalisation, voting, and other ‘system-​affirming’ acts demonstrate evidence of incor-
poration and are, thus, ‘desirable’ forms of participation, whereas homeland and transnational
political participation are ‘undesirable’ or simply extraneous forms of political engagement that
suggest non-​incorporation. The emerging areas of research on non-​citizen political engage-
ment in Asia in particular challenge us to examine the grey areas of citizenship, thus helping us
to better understand the gaps between policies and outcomes, the porous boundaries between
citizenship and non-​citizenship, and the multiple ways that those who are formally excluded
from the political process voice their interests.

Notes
1 See United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, International
Migration Report 2015, Advance Copy Highlights: www.un.org/​en/​development/​desa/​population/​
migration/​publications/​migrationreport/​docs/​MigrationReport2015_​Highlights.pdf.
2 Children of current or former South Korean citizens children who gain birthright citizenship in other
countries (so-​called ‘anchor babies’) in which their parents did not reside for more than six months are

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explicitly excluded. Koreans who lost their citizenship by acquiring a foreign one are eligible to reac-
quire their citizenship, provided (in the case of men) that they have fulfilled military duty.

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21
IRREGULAR MIGRATION
IN ASIA
Are new solutions in sight?

Maruja M.B. Asis and Graziano Battistella

Introduction
Irregular migration is a challenge that confronts countries of origin, transit and destination.
Despite efforts by governments to regulate international migration, no country is exempt from
irregular migration: where there is regular migration, irregular migration cannot be far behind.
Globally, irregular migration accounts for 10–​15 per cent of all international migrants (IOM
2010: 29), and in the case of some individual countries, irregular migration may be larger, or as
numerically significant as regular migration.
While irregular migration is a longstanding issue in all parts of Asia, we focus mainly on
Southeast Asia, given the relative magnitude of irregular migration in this sub-​region of 640 mil-
lion people, as well as recent developments in migration governance to address irregularity.This
chapter begins with a discussion of the links between the regulation of migration and the crea-
tion of irregular migration. This is followed by a discussion of the trends and patterns as well as
policy responses to address the issues.

Regulating migration
At its core, migration governance is enacted through regulatory frameworks which ensure
compliance with the migration norms of countries of origin, transit and destination, and reduce
irregular migration in the process. For countries of origin, legal migration means documented
and proper exit while for countries of transit and destination, legal migration means docu-
mented and proper entry, work and stay of foreign nationals in their territories. In contrast,
irregular migration results from non-​compliance with the migration norms of these countries,
and the category ‘irregular migrants’ encompasses those under the following circumstances: (1)
those who cross national borders without authorisation (this is especially common between
countries which share land borders, e.g. Myanmar and Thailand); (2) those who work without
authorisation (e.g. tourists who work and therefore violate the terms of condition of their
tourist visa); (3) those who overstay their visas; and (4) those who run away from their employ-
ers to whom their legal status is tied (as will be explained later, this is common in Asia).1 But
when migration is unpacked into different moments –​exit from an origin country, and entry,
residence and work in a destination country –​a migrant’s legal status may shift between regular

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Maruja M.B. Asis & Graziano Battistella

and irregular, suggesting that these categories form a continuum rather than clear-​cut polar
opposites (Asis and Battistella 2003: 63). Moreover, in the dynamic context of multiple flows
in the region, different types of migration occur simultaneously or mutate from one type to
another. Until late 2010, for example, migrants from Myanmar to Thailand included those seek-
ing asylum from persecution and migrants seeking employment without the required docu-
ments. Without diligent screening, the former may be misclassified as irregular migrants, and
thereby deprived of much-​needed protection. For the latter, the lack of due process can unduly
criminalise migrant workers in an irregular situation while ignoring the role of other actors, i.e.
intermediaries, employers and even governments, in generating irregular migration (Battistella
and Asis 2003: 14). Measures by governments to address irregular migration are often directed
at the irregular practices of migrants while neglecting the irregular practices committed against
migrants by profit-​seeking intermediaries or erring employers. As the regulator of migration,
states may also fail to realise how their own migration policies may give rise to irregularity.
For example, restricting migrant workers from changing employers results in the problem of
absconding or runaway workers –​the workers become irregular migrants because they have
‘run away’ from the employer who brought them to the country and to whom their work and
stay in the country are tied (see also endnote vi). Also complicating realities on the ground
is the muddling of irregular migration and trafficking in persons. Unlike irregular migration,
there is an international instrument, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in
Persons, especially Women and Girls, which provides a definition of what constitutes trafficking
in persons. Considered as a crime against persons, trafficking is a criminal activity and those
who have been identified as victims are entitled to support and services. The victim identifi-
cation process requires checking the presence of all three elements –​act/​process, means and
purpose –​to establish trafficking. Without a careful identification process, victims of trafficking
may be presumed to be irregular migrants. Treated as irregular migrants, victims of trafficking
are at risk of arrest and detention, and may be rendered ineligible with regard to accessing
services and support. It should also be mentioned that while legal migrants are presumed to be
protected, specific aspects of their recruitment, migration and employment conditions may have
trafficking-​like elements (Asis 2008). Thus, knowledge of the underlying commonalities and
differences of legal migration, irregular migration, refugee migration, and trafficking in persons
is vital to understanding how different types of migration intersect, so as to identify the specific
needs of different migrants. Regardless of the type of migrant, the protection of the rights of all
migrants, including irregular ones, should be respected.
Another important consideration to bear in mind is the marked difference in governance
frameworks for permanent vis-​à-​vis temporary forms of migration. In traditional countries of
settlement (the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), legally admitted immi-
grants have rights to residence, integration and citizenship. Under these conditions, overall,
permanent migrants tend to be better protected compared to temporary migrants. However,
permanent migration is a limited good that can only be accessed by a few. The intensifica-
tion of international migration since the 1970s was largely due to the increasing incidence
of temporary migration. The growing importance of temporary migration prompted the
need to rethink traditional migration theories premised on permanent migration (e.g. Kritz,
Lim and Zlotnik 1992; Massey et al. 1998). In a temporary migration regime, migrants are
admitted for a limited period of time for a specific purpose –​for example, employment or
studies –​after which they are expected to leave the country of destination, either to return
to their home countries or to migrate to other destinations. In Asia, temporary labour
migration has been prominent since the 1970s. Propelled by the demand for workers by
the oil-​r ich Gulf countries, the region witnessed the large-​scale movement of workers from

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Irregular migration in Asia

South, Southeast and East Asia (mainly South Korea) to the Middle East. The rise of newly
industrialised countries in East and Southeast Asia in the 1980s expanded the destinations
for migrant workers, and by the 1990s, other countries beyond Asia also recruited contract-​
based workers from the region.
The emergence of the Middle East as a magnet for temporary migrant workers fol-
lowed on the heels of the end of the guestworker programme in Europe in the 1970s,
which, in turn, was preceded by the termination of the bracero programme in the US in
1964 (Martin 2006). These two precedents had different trajectories: in Europe, the end of
temporary labour migration saw the transformation into de facto settlement (when family
members were allowed to join the migrant workers) while in the US, the termination of
the bracero programme segued into irregular migration (when migrant workers opted to
remain in the country). To avert the possibility of settlement, the Gulf countries estab-
lished a temporary labour migration programme which regulates the admission, work
and stay of migrant workers through the following mechanisms: by limiting the work
and stay of migrant workers to a two-​year contract, by restricting the transfer of migrant
workers to another employer or sector, and by not allowing family reunification to less
skilled migrant workers. The two-​year contract precludes continuous residence, which
forecloses the possibility of a condition that will qualify migrants to access the right to
residence in other destinations. Similar policies were adopted by destination countries
in East and Southeast Asia. Some countries adopted additional measures to keep labour
migration temporary. For example, in Singapore, a monthly levy is imposed on companies
and employers hiring foreign workers in order to encourage employers to innovate and
wean off dependence on foreign workers. Taiwan adopted a one-​time entry and a cap on
the maximum years of employment for migrant workers. Initially set at two years (Lee and
Wang 1996: 286), the cap has been raised over the years to the current maximum of 12
years. In 2015, law-​makers proposed extending the maximum stay to 15 years while the
advocacy group, Taiwan International Workers Association, opined that there should be no
cap in the first place (Taipei Times 2015).
Immigration reforms in the US in 1965, and in Canada, Australia and New Zealand
in the 1970s, brought about massive immigration from non-​European countries. By the
1990s, there was a shift towards more stringent requirements for permanent migration and
the introduction of temporary migration schemes in these settlement countries (although
there are also moves to allow transition to permanent migration for select immigrants, such
as international students). The turn to temporary migration schemes in settlement coun-
tries and the discourse of (managed) circular migration in the European Union hint at the
growing gravitation towards this scheme, a change which raises concerns. The experience
of Asia with temporary labour migration points to the inadequacies of the programme to
protect migrant workers because it limits migrants’ full participation in destination coun-
tries and restricts their eligibility to avail themselves of support services. Withholding rights
and imposing surveillance on migrants’ stay and employment fosters conditions that ironi-
cally contribute to irregular migration. For example, when migrants run away from abusive
working conditions, they become irregular migrants because they have absconded from their
employers. Their act of running away is registered as a violation of the conditions of stay, but
what is often overlooked are dire working conditions that may push migrants to seek better
conditions. Thus, while the mechanisms to tie the employment and stay of migrants to their
employers may aid governments in keeping track of migrants, they may also end up forcing
migrants to endure difficult working conditions, or risk becoming absconders or runaways
when the conditions become unbearable.

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Trends and patterns

One of the enduring characteristics of international migration in Asia is the substantial share of
irregular migration in the region. Quantifying the scale of irregular migration, however, is dif-
ficult. Available estimates usually do not provide ample information on data sources and meth-
odology and often vary widely. Moreover, estimates for irregular migration may be conflated
with those for trafficking in persons, which is problematic as they are not synonymous. In our
survey of present-​day characteristics of irregular migration in Southeast Asia, we draw refer-
ence to an earlier study on irregular migration in this part of Asia in the late 1990s (Battistella
and Asis 2003). The mix of origin, transit and destination countries in Southeast Asia offers an
interesting backdrop to examine the dynamics of regional cooperation on migration issues.2
Sustained international migration from and within the subregion since the 1970s has given rise
to three well-​established migration systems3 as described below:

Singapore and Malaysia

Singapore and Malaysia are the major hubs in this sub-​system. Both countries employ quotas
and levies in regulating the importation of foreign workers, but with different results in curb-
ing irregular migration.While foreigners of varying skill levels and from a wide range of source
countries (including Malaysia) comprise a substantial share of Singapore’s population and work
force, the city-​state has been able to contain irregular migration. This is because Singapore had
anticipated the need to recruit foreign workers and developed policies and measures before
the arrival of migrants. The size of the city-​state and the enforcement of the rule of law are
other factors which have curbed irregular migration. Malaysia also receives migrant workers
from several countries, with neighbouring Indonesia as a major source of foreign workers. For
decades, Malaysia has wrestled with the problem of irregular migration, mostly originating
from Indonesia. By the 1990s, migrant communities had been established in Malaysia, which
facilitated further migration. Malaysia has implemented amnesty programmes (the last one was
in 1997) and crackdown operations which have raised concerns about migrants’ rights. From
the 1990s to the present, migrants in an irregular situation have either equalled or outnum-
bered the population of legal migrants. Malaysia has an estimated 4 million legal migrants and
about the same number of irregular migrant workers already in the country.4 Thus, when the
government recently announced plans to bring in some 1.5 million Bangladeshi workers over
the next three years to replace those whose contracts would be ending, the announcement
was met with much opposition from the public, and eventually scrapped (Tash Aw 2016). Like
Thailand (discussed below), irregular migrant workers were already present in large numbers
and had become part of the socio-​economic fabric of the country when Malaysia set up
migration policies, making it difficult to identify and deal with the migrants as a separate cat-
egory. Moreover, the country’s flexible migration policies, which in reality is a strategy for the
flexible use of foreign labour, reflect a mismatch between the government’s intention to reduce
irregular migration and the political will to enforce the policy.

The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS)

The GMS comprises countries through which the Mekong River runs, which include Thailand,
Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, otherwise known as Mainland Southeast Asia. In 2010,
the stock of migrants in the GMS was estimated at 3,918,000 persons (Lewis et al. 2010, as
cited in ADB 2013: 2). Migration within the GMS is intense, with migrants from Myanmar,

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Cambodia and Laos moving to Thailand since the early 1990s. Demographic, economic and
political factors constitute the context for understanding the flows to Thailand. Geography is
also a contributory factor: Myanmar, from where more than 80 per cent of migrants come,
shares a long and porous land border (about 1,900 km) with Thailand. After peaking in the
1970s, Thailand is now experiencing population decline, particularly among the working age
population (years 15–​39) (Huguet 2014).
According to the Thailand Migration Report 2014, the number of foreigners in Thailand
in 2013 reached 3.6 million, of whom 2.7 million were from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.
The number comprised 92,008 skilled workers, 1,082,892 migrants with work permits and
1,592,870 with an irregular status. Of those with work permits, 40 per cent were women.
The distribution by nationality of origin of those with work permits and verified nationality
(899,658) revealed that 86 per cent were from Myanmar, 10 percent from Cambodia and under
4 per cent from Laos. Apart from migrants, who are mostly in less-​skilled occupations, the for-
eign population in Thailand also includes stateless persons (281,938), refugees (127,038) and
tertiary-​level international students (20,155) (Huguet 2014).
Similar to Malaysia,Thailand has a larger share of irregular migrants vis-​à-​vis regular migrants.
Considering the country’s long and porous borders and the weak enforcement of migration
policies (ADB 2013), Thailand forged memoranda of understanding (MOUs) to facilitate legal
labour migration with its neighbours –​Cambodia and Laos in 2002 and Myanmar in 2003.
However, only a relatively small number of migrants have found employment in Thailand
through MOU arrangements (139,048 at the end of 2012) (Huguet 2014).
Irregular migration has been addressed in Thailand in various ways, including annual regis-
trations. However, such registrations are difficult to verify as numbers always drop during the
following year’s renewal, making it difficult to confirm whether those who had not renewed
registration had returned to their home country or were still in Thailand. Since 2009, irregular
migrants have had the opportunity to regularise their status after undergoing national verifica-
tion by their country of origin, and perhaps more than 1 million have availed of this possibility
(Huguet 2014).
The crossing of borders to find employment has generated immense border mobility, both
attracted by and driving border economic areas. Border towns and industries where the legal
status of the labour force is unclear are characterised by vulnerabilities for migrants as well as
child labour and trafficking (ADB 2013).
Although several social protection measures have been implemented by Thailand in favour
of migrant workers, including the enrolment of registered workers in the social security fund
and access to health insurance for all migrants, gaps still exist in the inadequate social security
coverage and limited access to complaint mechanisms. In fact, the complaint mechanisms are
considered ineffective as they were not designed for migrants working in Thailand (ILO 2013).
A recent initiative is the adoption of the National Policy, Strategies and Measures to Prevent
and Suppress Trafficking in Persons for 2011–​2016, which aims to provide guidelines and to
coordinate action to fight human trafficking (Jayagupta 2013).

Brunei Darussalam and Sabah (East Malaysia)

Oil-​rich Brunei Darussalam and Sabah and Sarawak (East Malaysia) are target destinations
for migrant workers, mostly from within Southeast Asia, but also including those beyond the
region.5 Brunei Darussalam has established labour migration policies and mechanisms to regu-
late the system of bringing in foreign workers which contrasts with the frequently publicised,
high volume of irregular migration that Sabah has been grappling with for decades. Sabah is

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part of traditional migration routes involving the Sulu archipelago and southern Philippines and
Indonesia. Irregular migration to Sabah mostly originates from the same areas, but the history
and dynamics of irregular migration in this area are distinct from those in West or Mainland
Malaysia (Kanapathy 2008). In addition, the foreign population includes a few thousand from
the Philippines recognised as refugees, and many stateless children. Given the long history of
migration in these areas, many migrants have built communities in Sabah.
Trends and patterns of irregular migration in the region established in the late 1990s have
not changed much. Singapore and Brunei Darussalam have managed to uphold legal migration
processes and to contain irregular migration. Common to both are established and transparent
labour migration policies and procedures6 (although some of these measures have raised rights’
concerns) and the employment of migrant workers in the formal sector (although the number
of foreign domestic workers in both countries is significant). In Malaysia and Thailand, the
majority of migrants work in agriculture (palm oil plantations in Malaysia), transport, services
and the fishing industry, mostly sectors which do not offer ample workers’ protection. With
regard to origin countries, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam represent those which have
institutions, policies and mechanisms in place to govern labour migration (the Philippines, in
particular), while Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos are relative newcomers in terms of institu-
tionalising labour migration. As was mentioned, it was only in 2002 and 2003 that they entered
into an agreement with Thailand to cooperate in promoting labour migration through legal
channels. Available data suggest that the legal channels have only captured a small portion of
total migration flows.

Tackling irregular migration

Governments have attempted crackdowns, registrations, amnesties and regularisations to curb
irregular migration. Oftentimes, these resulted in a temporary drop in irregular migration, fol-
lowed by renewed levels of irregular migration after some time. Some strategies to reduce
irregular migration tend towards more hardline measures, such as the construction of physical
barriers along the frontiers (the infamous wall between the US and Mexico is one example) and
increased border surveillance (such as the control and rescue operations in the Mediterranean
Sea). Some European Union countries have entered into bilateral agreements with origin
countries, seeking the latter’s cooperation to control irregular migration in exchange for eco-
nomic assistance and a fixed number of annual admissions. Multilateral discussions have also
been pursued, either leading to multilateral declarations and treaties or simply providing venues
for the mutual exchange of information and support.Two e­ xamples –​the bilateral arrangement
between South Korea and selected countries of origin and regional initiatives in Southeast
Asia –​are elaborated below.
Enforced in 2004, South Korea’s Employment Permit System (EPS) was a turning point in
Korea’s migration governance. Korea is one of the few Asian countries that successfully made
the transition from an emigration to an immigration country. In its early years as an immi-
gration country, Korea followed Japan’s trainee programme in meeting its need for workers.
Similar to Japan’s experience, the trainee programme resulted in many trainees running away
from their companies because they were essentially workers but were treated as trainees. Before
the EPS, Korea had more irregular migrant workers than legal ones. Lobbying by civil soci-
ety organisations contributed to the government’s realisation of the need to bring in workers
under a temporary labour migration programme. In 2003, the Employment Permit System Act
was passed, recognising the need to bring in migrant workers, and a year later, the EPS was
implemented. Under the EPS, Korea signed labour agreements with 16 origin countries to

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provide and prepare workers for employment in Korea; part of the preparation is studying for
and passing the Korean language examination. The government-​to-​government arrangement
is aimed at eliminating fee-​charging private recruitment agencies to protect migrant workers
from excessive placement fees. Once migrant workers are in Korea, they receive the same treat-
ment as Korean workers, except that migrant workers have restrictions concerning employer
transfer. Migrant workers can work and stay in Korea for four years and ten months and may be
able to return to work in Korea after a six-​month interval. Although the EPS is a step forward,
an assessment of the programme found implementation problems and provisions that erode the
protection of migrant workers (Kim 2014). The limitations of the EPS reflect the fundamental
flaw of temporary labour migration programmes; that is, such programmes based on enforcing
transience cannot be a viable solution to a systemic or structural labour shortage (Kim 2014).
Another indication of a major crack in the EPS is the resurgence of irregular migration follow-
ing a noticeable decline soon after the EPS was implemented.
As suggested by the earlier discussion, international migration in Southeast Asia shows
no sign of slowing down. Among the sub-​regions in Asia, Southeast Asia may have taken the
most strides in working out a regional approach to address irregular migration issues. The first
such effort, which also included countries beyond the region, was the Bangkok Declaration
of 1999. The declaration called for concerted efforts in the fight against irregular migration
where the approach should be comprehensive and balanced:  while criminalising smuggling
and trafficking in human beings, it called for the humanitarian treatment of migrants. The
document, however, remains just a declaration; and there is no information on whether actual
steps have been taken according to the plan of action. In the last decade or so, the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) adopted migration-​related declarations and a convention
that may strengthen region-​wide initiatives. The 2004 ASEAN Declaration against Trafficking
in Persons Particularly Women and Children commits governments ‘[t]‌o undertake actions to
respect and safeguard the dignity and human rights of genuine victims of trafficking in persons’.
The commitment to fight trafficking was stepped up in 2015 with the adoption of the more
binding Convention against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. Thus far,
Cambodia and Singapore have ratified the Convention; a minimum of six ratifications is needed
to enforce it. In 2007, ASEAN adopted the Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of
the Rights of Migrant Workers. Items 2 and 4 of general principles refer to undocumented
migration: ‘The receiving states and the sending states shall, for humanitarian reasons, closely
cooperate to resolve the cases of migrant workers who, through no fault of their own, have
subsequently become undocumented’, and ‘Nothing in the present Declaration shall be inter-
preted as implying the regularisation of  the situation  of  migrant  workers who  are  undocu-
mented’.The 2007 Declaration tends to be minimalistic and guarded when it comes to irregular
migration. It is interesting that one of the four general principles specifically mentions that the
Declaration should not be taken as suggesting the regularisation of undocumented migrant
workers. Moreover, the rest of the text does not mention irregular migrant workers. What is
mentioned is for ASEAN to ‘[t]ake concrete measures to prevent or curb smuggling and traf-
ficking in persons by, among others, introducing stiffer penalties for those who are involved in
these activities’. The establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in December
2015, an important step towards the aspiration to become a single market and production base,
is silent on irregular migration. As regards migration, the AEC aims to promote the mobility of
skilled labour, which is a small component of labour migration in the ASEAN.
In general, it can be said that while all governments want to fight irregular migration, their
actions are either ambiguous and/​or ineffective. Registrations and amnesties function more
as tools to assess the level of the phenomenon rather than instruments to eliminate it. Such

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measures create uncertainties for migrants while smugglers and other intermediaries continue
to profit from the mismatch between unabated demand for migrant workers, the large sup-
ply of aspiring migrant workers in the region, and increasingly restrictive admission policies.
Memoranda of understanding, such as the ones between Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and
Laos, or that between Malaysia and Indonesia, provide for some level of protection to migrants
but are less successful in ensuring adherence to migration norms and policies. Even initiatives
against irregular migration by countries of origin are indecisive in enforcing measures to regu-
late the recruitment industry.The preoccupation to generate foreign employment leads to some
leniency in dealing with recruitment agencies. In spite of the best initiatives, the promise of a
better life through migration is very potent; policies can regulate migration to some extent,
but they cannot control it. The persistence of irregular migration even in the best administered
migration programmes indicates that without addressing the causes of migration, regulating
migration can only reap limited success.

Conclusion
Notwithstanding decades of experience in governing migration, countries in Asia continue
to reckon with the presence of irregular migrants. The intractability of irregular migration
cannot be separated from the intractability of regular migration, that is, migration continues
to feature as a ‘constant’ rather than an ‘aberration’ in human history (Castles, De Haas and
Miller 2013: 317). According to our earlier research on irregular migration in Southeast Asia
(Battistella and Asis 2003: 14), regular and irregular migrations are mirror images of each other.
The research also indicated that the causes (both macro and proximate factors) and channels for
regular and irregular migrations are the same, and the migrants who figure in both migrations
have similar characteristics. The second point is important because it indicates that irregular
migrants are not any more ‘deviant’ compared to those who go through the regular channels
of migration. Rather, it is the different access to legal and irregular channels of migration that
leads to different migration pathways. In general, those who are legally recruited tend to be less
problematic and are better protected than those who are illegally recruited. However, migrant
workers who go through licenced recruitment agencies may be subjected to irregular practices,
such as excessive recruitment fees or salary deductions. Migrants’ legal status may be more
fluid rather than a fixed, clearcut dichotomy of legal vs. irregular. For example, a migrant who
went through a licenced recruitment agency may have left his/​her country of origin legally,
entered a destination country legally, but can be rendered irregular if he/​she runs away from the
employer indicated in the contract. Or an irregular migrant worker may be able to regularise
his/​her status should a government decide to conduct a regularisation programme. While not
discounting that some migrants may knowingly seek out irregular means to enter, stay or work
in another country, the study did not find many such cases. Among others, lack of accurate
information about migration and/​or employment conditions in foreign countries may predis-
pose prospective migrants towards irregular channels (Asis and Mendoza 2013; IOM 2010: 30)
as well as administrative obstacles and the growing complexity of migration procedures (IOM
2010: 30, also see Linquist and Xiang, this volume, Chapter 11). Migrants can be misinformed
about actual conditions because intermediaries, given their stake in the migration process, are
not likely to disclose real conditions. As ‘merchants of labour’ (Martin 2005), intermediaries and
brokers provide information on what is possible, not necessarily what is real.
Gaps and inconsistencies in migration governance also contribute to the intractability of
irregular migration. Governments cannot be too zealous in eradicating irregular migration
because pursuing legal migration can be costly, requiring investments in funds, personnel and

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political will. However, governments also have to consider potential economic fallouts. For
origin countries, relentless pursuit against irregular migration could cost jobs and remittances
from overseas employment; for countries of destination, prospects of unmet labour needs and
higher production outlay also create problems. Irregular migration is almost a non-​issue when
the economy is going well and there is relative peace; it becomes contentious and politicised in
uncertain times.
At the regional level, the ASEAN has, in more recent years, given increasing attention to
migration issues. After decades of migration, the 2007 Declaration finally acknowledges the role
of international migration in the development of origin and destination countries. Regional
cooperation is relatively easy to commit to on the movement of the highly skilled. But even in
this regard, much needs to be done to make this possible. What has been achieved thus far in
relation to the AEC is the conclusion of Mutual Recognition Agreements for eight professions.
However, it is important to note that international migration in the ASEAN (and in Asia in gen-
eral) is mostly the migration of less-​skilled migrant workers. The adoption of a declaration and
eventually a convention against trafficking in persons, especially women and children, reflects
the consensus to combat human trafficking. Consensus and cooperation are less evident on the
issue of irregular migration. The very careful wording in the 2007 Declaration as not implying
the regularisation of migrants in an unauthorised situation suggests reluctance to submit to a
regional approach to address this reality.
The need for a regional framework for cooperation on international migration was high-
lighted by the Rohingya crisis in 2015. The Rohingyas are a Muslim minority group residing
in Rakhine state in Myanmar. The Myanmar government does not recognise them as one
of the country’s ethnic groups and instead considers them as refugees from Bangladesh, and
Bangladesh does not consider them as its citizens either. Due to persecution, many Rohingyas
fled to Bangladesh in the 1970s, but later some were repatriated to Myanmar. A wave of riots
in Rakhine state in 2012 resulted in some 100,000 Rohingyas seeking refuge in neighbouring
countries.Thailand had become a transit country for Rohingyas seeking to reach Malaysia. Since
2013, Thai authorities had caught and detained about 3,000 Rohingyas (ECHO 2016). In May
2015, the plight of the Rohingyas caught media attention because of thousands of Rohingyas
(and some Bangladeshis) adrift at sea and the discovery of graves in the Thai-​Malaysian border
area. On 29 May, Thailand convened the Special Meeting on Irregular Migration in the Indian
Ocean to address the humanitarian crisis. An immediate but temporary solution was reached to
deal with the urgent situation: ‘Indonesia and Malaysia agreed to continue to provide humani-
tarian assistance and temporary shelter to those 7,000 irregular migrants still at sea, provided
that the resettlement and repatriation process will be done in one year by the international
community’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Thailand 2015). Several follow-​up
meetings were held to discuss this crisis and proposals presented for cooperation and mecha-
nisms to respond to distress at sea –​but no clear indications on the repatriation or resettlement
of the Rohingyas, and less so, no lasting solutions to their plight had been reported. The call
for an ASEAN response to the crisis has been raised, including the need to develop a regional
framework concerning irregular migrants (as well as refugees and those forcibly displaced) and
refugees, but to date nothing has been agreed on.To shepherd a regional approach, ASEAN will
have to hurdle at least two key challenges: to engage ten national governments whose will on
overall policies and laws on migration continue to prevail (Petcharamesree 2016) and to incul-
cate responsibility sharing in regional arrangements concerning migration.
Similar crises in other parts of the world indicate that the governance of migration is in
need of a new perspective. The idea that it is possible to achieve prosperity and safety within
the borders of nation-​states and to somehow protect this for citizens through exclusionary

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migration policies is challenged by the tens of thousands who attempt to enter and cannot be
easily, if not forcibly, turned away. Irregular migration has become more than just an attempt
to circumvent migration policies and norms. It is a movement reflecting global disparities in
demography, development and democracy, and as such, the tried and tested limits of the usual
approaches need serious rethinking.

Notes
1 According to IOM (2010: 30), persons who had been moved by smugglers and traffickers initially find
themselves in an irregular situation. We are more inclined to believe that those who had been smug-
gled and trafficked will not only be at risk initially but for a longer time. If arrested, both categories
of migrants may be lumped with irregular migrants. Particularly for victims of trafficking, this misclas-
sification can have adverse consequences. Since smuggling is considered a violation against the state,
smuggled persons may be subject to detention and punitive sanctions.
2 South Asia mostly comprises origin countries while East Asia and West Asia (GCC countries) are mostly
destination regions. For details regarding irregular migration in other sub-​regions, see Fargues (2012)
concerning the Arab Mediterranean area and IOM (2015) concerning Central Asia.
3 International migration systems are formed when countries establish linkages forged by flows and coun-
terflows of people, goods, capital and ideas. These flows create a fairly stable and regular movement
involving a significant number of people between countries (or specific areas between countries). For a
recent review of the migration systems framework, see Bakewell (2012).
4 As of December 2015, data from the Malaysian Human Resource Ministry reported that the country
has 2,135,035 documented foreign workers and an estimated 1.7 million illegal workers.
5 Borneo Island comprises Brunei Darussalam, Sabah (East Malaysia), Sarawak (East Malaysia) and
Kalimantan (Indonesia). Sabah and Sarawak are part of the Federation of Malaysia; both have their own
immigration policies. Sarawak receives fewer migrants than Sabah.
6 Some policies and measures may be effective in enabling the state to better monitor migrant workers’
stay in the destination, e.g. tying migrant workers’ residence and employment permit to the employer,
but may erode migrants’ rights. In the GCC, for example, the kafala system (sponsorship system) serves
the purpose of monitoring migrants’ entry, stay, work and exit. Rights’ advocates, however, view the
system as breeding abuse because it gives the kafeel (sponsor) control over the worker. A kafeel can cancel
a worker’s residence permit, which will render the worker irregular. The system also requires the kafeel
to issue an exit permit at the time of the worker’s departure. A kafeel can prevent a worker from leaving
by accusing the worker of criminal activities, such as stealing.

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MOBILITIES ON EDGE
Migration at the margins of nation-​states

Juan Zhang

Introduction: borders and migration

Migration is inherently a journey of border crossing. Migrants leave their home spaces of
various sorts on a temporary or permanent basis, and embark on journeys that take them
to new territories of governance and belonging. Their journeys, sometimes smooth and
other times treacherous, are comprised of multiple processes of crossing borders –​locational,
spatial, relational and emotional. These crossings are invariably gendered and classed (e.g.
Mahler and Pessar 2001); they are in many cases ethnicised (Horstmann 2006) and rendered
in highly moralistic discourses (van Schendel and Abraham 2005). Migrant border crossing
is deeply embedded in local and global power politics, and tied to the movements of trans-
national capital, forces of the market, as well as the circulation of desires and imaginations
of other identities and lifestyles. The borders that migrants encounter are both physical and
symbolic. Some of them appear at wired fences and militarised guard posts, and others at
various entry gates and designated pathways. Some can be clearly marked on physical ter-
rains while others are subtly articulated in policy documents. These borders manifest on
bodies, materials, through practices and beliefs. As Mezzadra and Neilson put it, ‘the bor-
der has inscribed itself at the centre of contemporary experience’ (Mezzadra and Neilson
2013: vii).
Since the 1990s, with the so-​called ‘mobilities turn’ (Sheller and Urry 2006), new theoretical
understanding that aims to shed light on the increasingly mobile world starts to challenge the
imaginaries of spatially fixed terrains and geographical containers when it comes to the bod-
ies and materials that move on a global scale (e.g. Cresswell 2006). But borders have not gone
obsolete as once predicted by the enthusiasts of globalisation (e.g. Hardt and Negri 2001). As
globalising processes rapidly invent spaces of circulation, borders have mutated and multiplied,
opening up new possibilities of oppression and empowerment. Once studied as a natural given
and as coercive devices used by political authorities to prevent movements, borders were often
imagined as walls, fences and barricades that obstructed passages of people, money, and materials
(Fall 2010). Now scholars start to question the ‘politics of movement’ (Cresswell 2010) through
and around the border.They recognise that borders are marked by ‘tensions between practices of
border reinforcement and border-​crossing’ (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013: 3) as borders articulate
multiple strategies to ‘make move and let stop’ (Salter 2013).

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With new theoretical development on borders and mobilities (see e.g. Richardson 2013),
novel concepts such as ‘borderwork’ (Jensen 2012), ‘border regime’ (van Houtum 2010), ‘border
spectacle’ (de Genova 2013), and ‘borderland strategies’ (van Schendel and de Maaker 2014) start
to bring forward critical readings of myriad practices and relations with regard to transnational
migration. Jensen’s ‘borderwork’, for example, describes how the European Union’s mobility
policies produce intangible borders and differential politics that separate the highly mobile
European elites from those who are deemed slow-​moving or immobile (Jensen 2012). By
calling borders a ‘regime’, scholars pay attention to the ‘ensemble of practices and knowledge-​
power-​complexes’ (Casas-​Cortes et al. 2015: 69) and theorise migration as a defining force in
producing contemporary borders.
While much of the new border research has been undertaken in the European and North
American contexts, Asian borderlands begin to stimulate interest as offering alternative per-
spectives on the histories, logics and processes of border making and border crossing. Willem
van Schendel and Erik de Maaker (2014) have convincingly argued that Asian borderlands are
essentially historical products of colonial conquest and domination, and their existence was
realised not through natural processes but violent struggles and contestations. Population move-
ment through and across various sovereign spaces in Asia has been happening for centuries, and
only in recent decades has been recast as an issue of ‘migration’ (Ludden 2003). In this sense,
it may be productive to take a step back and rethink the relationship between migration and
borders.
Rather than taking ‘migration’ as something apolitical, as a natural force in producing bor-
ders of various kinds, it is important to also consider the opposite. Borders are often ‘enacted’
first as an effective strategy of governing mobile populations, and in doing so ‘othering them as
migration’ (Casas-​Cortes et al. 2015: 70). The politics of migration and the politics of ‘b/​order-
ing’ (van Houtum et al. 2005) go hand in hand, generating different articulations of inclusion
and exclusion, movement and stasis, identity and belonging.
This chapter examines migration and mobility in Asian borderlands by taking a view from
the ‘margins’ of contemporary nation-​states. Borders as ‘margins’ do not suggest that they are
marginal to contemporary experiences. Rather, they provide alternative, off-​centre perspectives
on a range of political questions –​who defines the border, who navigates the border, who is
policing the border, and who claims ownership of the border –​that are central to debates on
governance and mobility, security and citizenship, global forces and local strategies. By docu-
menting how borders can be lines that separate as well as spaces that connect, this chapter main-
tains that the border is always a site of situated social relations and contested power. Highlighting
the edginess of the border and its transgressive potentials, this chapter argues that the border has
become part and parcel of contemporary migration processes and migrant lives in many parts
of Asia.
Drawing on my research in the China-​Vietnam borderlands, I provide an account on the
transgressive ‘livelihood strategies’ (Eilenberg and Wadley 2009) of Chinese and Vietnamese
borderlanders vis-​à-​vis their cross-​border mobility. In particular, I  focus on migrant counter-​
topographies to develop an analytical framework on entrepreneurial transgression at the border.
Borderlanders carefully negotiate state-​determined border spaces as they produce alternative
routes and relations. Their negotiations and experiments generate controversial zones of profit
and morality.
The following section provides a general depiction of mobile Asian borderlands and their
ambiguous histories. Their ambiguity and contestedness create particular characteristics of per-
meability and permissiveness. These two characteristics set the specific condition for transgres-
sive politics. I  then discuss two aspects that mark the transgressive politics vis-​à-​vis migrant

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mobility. The first deals with migrant strategies and counter-​topographies. The second deals
with fluid identities at the border and critical social networks that different migrants forge.
Lastly, I discuss how mobile practices in the borderland sharpen migrant ‘edginess’ when trans-
gressive actions redefine the normal and the moral. My aim is to show that such edginess is
central to borderland migrant subjectivities.

Ambiguous borderlands, permissive politics

David Ludden once eloquently spoke about the ways in which ‘mobility has repeatedly rema-
pped Asia’ (Ludden 2003: 1063). Taking South Asia as an example, he described how mobile
spaces constantly overlapped with, penetrated, reconfigured and challenged territorial forms.

Territorial boundaries formed a frantic kaleidoscope, as perhaps half of the total popu-
lation consisted of mobile artisans and workers; peasants colonising new land; itiner-
ant merchants and nomads; pilgrims; shifting cultivators; hunters; migratory service
workers and literati; herders; transporters; people fleeing war, drought and flood; and
soldiers and camp followers supplying troops on the move. All of this mobility sparked
widespread conflict and a huge expansion of commercial activity, commodity produc-
tion, and economic interconnections; it formed the space of modern empires and
globalisation.
(Ludden 2003: 1063).

Over the centuries, territorial authorities of various powers recognised this high level of mobil-
ity, but they never intended to, or were able to, gain full control of territorial order in the way
that modern borders do. In fact, modern borders did not come into existence before the age
of colonisation. Colonial state-​making craft and map-​making technologies saw the birth of the
modern nation-​state in Asia, with now a sharply defined ‘geo-​body’ (Winichakul 1994). But
human and commodity mobility in this part of the world could in no way be contained by this
narrowly defined territorialism. The mobile populations that had travelled to and resided in the
vast zones of contact and exchange continued to traverse borders to maintain familial ties, to
expand agricultural and economic activities, to escape war and hardship, and to explore new
opportunities. The ebb and flow of transnational movements rendered territorial borders fluid
and stretchable, where different actors and forces competed for resources, power, and wealth.
Even today, many of Asia’s land borders are not demarcated, especially in the hard-​to-​reach
mountains, forests, and deserts. Some borders are marked in a haphazard way, with border
markers serving no more than symbolic functions. The Burma-​Bangladesh border, for example,
stretches into the River Naf with only an ordinary buoy that floats about the river as a border
marker (see its image in van Schendel 2006). Many existing Asian borders are heavily contested,
and violent conflicts continue to surround issues of demarcation (e.g. the India-​Bangladesh
border and the North-​South Korea border). Some borders have arbitrarily partitioned com-
munities of the same ethnic identification, creating competing claims over identity, belonging,
and citizenship (Eilenberg and Wadley 2009).
Towards the end of the Cold War and with the forces of globalisation, Asian borders wit-
nessed growing movements of individuals and commodities. At the same time, some borders
became hardened, heavily militarised, and deeply involved in international politics of security
and development. Powerful international agencies arrived at the frontiers of developing coun-
tries with both humanitarian and political agendas that are backed by certain ideologies of
development.Their aid packages came with strings attached, incentivising or even commanding

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nation-​states to both enhance border control and promote border connectivity at the same time.
Cross-​border infrastructure, various economic belts and corridors were constructed to facilitate
regional economic integration.These new international forces, together with state agencies and
local actors, help to create new ‘border regimes’ that promote discriminatory and anti-​poor
politics (see Hughes 2011).
This is not to suggest, however, that borders and borderlanders are held captive by the
increasingly intensive and expansive control exercised by power players from the ‘above’. The
economic and political interests these individuals and communities pursue are sometimes in
opposition to state interests (van Schendel and de Maaker 2014). And people perceive the
opportunities and dangers of the border in strategic ways. Historical and ethnographic accounts
have documented how borderland subjects actively engage with the state and processes of glo-
balisation and development. Their opportunism and pragmatism have produced unique social
worlds and subjectivities (Kalir et  al. 2012; Flynn 1997; Walker 1999; Scott 2009). Most of
these accounts highlight the porosity of the border, and the ‘permissive politics’ played out by
local actors and stakeholders. These permissive politics can be heavily gendered (Sur 2012) and
ethnicised (Alff 2017). They produce not exceptional spaces of infringement, but productive
partnerships between the state and local actors.
Borderland permissiveness constitutes a particular kind of transgressive politics that comes
to dominate life at the margin of the state. By transgressive politics I do not mean overt resist-
ance or rebellious acts enacted by local actors against the state or state-​like authorities. I call it
‘entrepreneurial transgression’, as it speaks more about strategic manoeuvring and flexible rela-
tion making. Transgressive actions open up new spaces of opportunity and produce ‘counter-​
topographies’ that give different meanings to transnational politics. Drawing upon my research
in the Hekou-​Lao Cai border at the China-​Vietnam borderland,1 I  discuss how Vietnamese
migrant women cross the border informally and enter the sex and entertainment sector for
profit, and how mobile Chinese traders develop multiple identities and critical business net-
works as they engage with, go around, and sometimes transgress state regulations and local
norms. Migrant entrepreneurial transgression is gendered and spatially negotiated. It brings
certain ‘edginess’ to migrant practices when they participate in the trans-​border marketplace as
their own agents.

Entrepreneurial transgression
The border town of Hekou is situated at the southern tip of Yunnan province in Southwest
China (Map 22.1). It shares a 193-​kilometre international border with Lao Cai in northern
Vietnam. These two towns are connected by the Red River and Nanxi River, which for
centuries have provided sustenance for local communities and served as important trade
routes for trans-​regional merchants. Before the demarcation of international borders in the
1950s,2 trade flourished along the waterways, and interactions between the Vietnamese and
the Chinese were frequent. Local communities on both sides of the border shared kinship
networks and traversed the frontier with ease. Intermarriage was (and still is) a common
practice (Grillot 2012). In the 1970s and much of the 1980s, border conflicts and political
stalemate dominated the frontier, turning private border crossing into a deadly endeavour as
the borderland became heavily militarised. From the 1990s onwards, successive economic
reforms in both countries brought life back to the frontier, as Hekou and Lao Cai became
‘special economic zones’ that enjoyed favourable state policies on trade, investment and tour-
ism. A battlefield in the past, Hekou is now one of the busiest crossings in the region, and a
land of opportunities for many.

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Map 22.1  The China–Vietnam borderlands

Source: figure reproduced from Figure 5.1 in Zhang [2012], p. 97, with permission.

Among those who frequently cross the Hekou-​Lao Cai border for economic opportunities,
young Vietnamese women constitute a special group. The majority of them cross the border
illegally to solicit business in Hekou’s burgeoning commercial sex sector. Their youthful bod-
ies (as many are in their late teens or early 20s) and exotic appeal tantalise erotic imaginations
of Chinese men who seek pleasure at the border. Since the early 1990s, Hekou has gradu-
ally developed a reputation of being a ‘men’s paradise’, where Chinese men could indulge in
exotic intimacy unavailable in most inland cities in China (Grillot and Zhang 2016). Hekou’s
Vietnamese sex workers embrace strong aspirations for wealth accumulation and the develop-
ment of personal opportunities. For many, working in the sex sector –​although far from ideal –​
offers a fast and relatively effortless way of accumulating income (Kempadoo and Doezema
1998). They could ‘optimise’ their limited ‘capital’ (Zheng 2009) and participate in the bor-
derland economy. In the local context, selling sex is not so much considered criminal or the
distasteful commodification of the body, but more of a ‘market experiment’ of the self for many
(Zhang 2012).
More interestingly, Hekou’s commercial sex sector flourished in tandem with the prolifera-
tion of the anti-​trafficking discourse in the borderland. Since the 2000s, with generous financial
support from the Chinese central government and powerful international agencies such as the

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Asian Development Bank, the local government in Hekou frequently launched anti-​trafficking
campaigns and rescue missions to save and repatriate trafficked victims who have been sold as
wives to rural Chinese men and exploited as ‘sex slaves’ in the commercial sex settings. However,
the majority of Hekou’s sex workers could be labelled as ‘illegal’ migrants, as many crossed the
border without official identity papers and valid entry permits. Their illegal entrance and sex
worker status would automatically qualify them as ‘trafficked victims’.Yet few of them are rec-
ognised as ‘victims’ and get ‘rescued’.
In a curious way, Hekou’s Vietnamese Street represents a migrant ‘counter-​topography’ (Katz
2001). Cindi Katz and other feminist geographers (e.g. Dixon 2011; Mountz 2011) use ‘coun-
ter-​topography’ to make visible the politics of location and differentiation and their effects
in producing ‘in-​between’ places and subjects. Sex work as self-​experiment at the borderland
produces such paradoxical ‘in-​between’ places and identities. Sex workers’ lives and experiences
are intimately connected to regional activities of economic growth and global discourses of
anti-​trafficking and human rights. And these experiences both include and exclude migrant
women from rightfully claiming their position in the larger economic-​political processes tak-
ing place at state margins. On the one hand, migrant women’s sexuality helps to stimulate
cross-​border business and interaction, which serves strategic functions in bridging regional
economic integration and development; on the other hand, their illicit border crossing can be
used to serve different political agendas on human security and protection. The irony is that
the former is never officially admitted and the latter never practically enforced (Zhang 2012).
Migrant women continue to arrive via unauthorised channels without papers, stimulating the
borderland economy with their sexual appeal. Anti-​trafficking and anti-​crime politics will also
continue to generate headlines and attract international funding as long as these do not actually
interfere with the local business practice.
Vietnamese migrant women’s participation in Hekou’s sex sector can be read as both entre-
preneurial and transgressive. Local borderlanders regard their capitalisation on youth and sexu-
ality as embodying an ‘open attitude’ and market spirit. The inherent illicitness of the sex trade
and the illegality of their border crossing remain transgressive, especially in the eyes of the state
and state-​like international bodies. But this transgression is very much tolerated, and perhaps
even tacitly encouraged, as local stakeholders not only patronise these sex venues but also rely
on the sex sector to attract future business. Permissive politics at the border thus carve out
unique zones of licitness, giving new meanings to opportunistic and oftentimes exploitative
practices.

Borderland edginess
Entrepreneurial transgression illustrates the innately unstable and shifting relationship between
mobile bodies and fixed categories, between migrant strategies and transnational politics. It can
be argued that the border as a unique site of engagement has played a significant role in pro-
ducing various kinds of ‘grey spaces’ that allow for multiple manoeuvring by local actors. Their
transgressive practices give meaning to what I call ‘borderland edginess’ as migrants and traders
explore different terrains of possibility and impossibility.
By definition, a border indicates an edge, which points to marginalisation as well as edginess.
‘Social edginess’ –​a term coined by Erik Harms (2011) –​expresses how being on ‘edge’ has its
marginalising effects, but also strategic potentials.

Edginess emphasises the possibility and the risks associated with moving into, out-
side, and across the boundaries created by discrete categories… For some, the ‘edge’

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that develops on the edge of pure categories enables new forms of creative action; for
others, it constrains social action in significant ways, most clearly by relegating less
advantaged social actors to the margins of social consciousness, the grey zone that lies
between commonly understood categories of action and social status
(Harms 2011: 36).

While Harms’s discussion focuses on the rural–​urban divide in Vietnam, and how citizens at
the city’s edge negotiate their rights for recognition and empowerment; in the context of the
borderland, such an analysis of the ‘edge’ can be equally productive. The ‘edge’ that the border
brings can be risky; but for many it also means an advantageous position in the local world
of business. Vietnamese sex workers entail such borderland ‘edginess’ because they challenge
conventional categories. It is hard to pin them down as either ‘helpless victims’ of transnational
trafficking and the sex trade (as most of the international agencies would portray them –​see
Mahdavi, this volume, Chapter 14), or entrepreneurial agents of their own will. They are no
doubt marginalised individuals; but their marginalisation can sometimes be turned into an edge.
Migrant sex workers are not the only group that embodies such edginess in the borderland.
Chinese traders, who migrated from mainland provinces to the border, also demonstrate how
they can maintain an edge in the trans-​border marketplace. Studies on small-​scale trade between
Chinese and Vietnamese and its effect have been well documented (Turner 2010; Bonnin 2011;
Chan 2013). These detailed accounts show how small traders and businessmen are able to neu-
tralise their marginality by engaging in multiple livelihood strategies that sometimes involve
bending or even breaking the law. Here, I focus on a common yet legally ambiguous practice
of their trade –​smuggling.
At the Chinese side of the border, smuggling –​or zousi in Chinese –​is commonplace. It is
the ‘second economy’ (MacGaffey and Mukohya 1991), indispensible to border’s economic life.
While the word still carries negative connotations, in the border its everyday meaning has been
heavily decriminalised. Zousi, literally ‘to pass the private goods’, like the sex trade, is tolerated
by the permissive politics at the border. In Hekou, smuggling takes place in various forms and
at various locations. The busiest spot for smuggling is a stretch of pebbly riverbank about 15
kilometres away from town. Seasonal produce, prohibited commodities, and the occasional tour
groups (with no entry visas to Vietnam) are brought to Lao Cai from this point by motorised
boats. In Hekou, a rice trader named Mr Ho told me that this unofficial crossing was an impor-
tant alternative for his business, especially when he wanted to trade more than what the official
quota allowed.3 Like most borderland traders, he did not think that ‘smuggling’ was completely
illegal. He pointed out that the popularity of this unofficial crossing did not mean that everyone
could use it effectively without getting caught. ‘Smuggling’ is thus considered a practical skill
that only a few borderland traders have mastered.
Many traders become acquaintances and business partners with the local law enforcement
officers. Gifts, holidays, shopping cards, dinners and parties –​these gestures of ‘friendship’ con-
solidate critical networks that borderland traders establish with other trading parties, local offi-
cials, and out-​of-​town guests. Mr Ho, for example, relied on his friendship with a senior officer
in Hekou’s Customs Office for information and updates on periodic inspections and raids at
various smuggling hotspots. This senior officer once told me in private that traders like Mr
Ho were in fact ‘good citizens’ because they were easily scared (danxiao) and always practised
discretion when they smuggled goods across the river. In other words, they were still the ‘rule-​
abiding’ (shou guiju) traders who rarely made trouble. Traders with more complicated back-
grounds and connections (e.g. with local gangs) were a different story. Officers working in
Chinese Customs told me that not only was ‘smuggling’ regarded as a local skill, but ‘combating

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smuggling’ required equal skilfullness.The law enforcement needs to make calculated, pragmatic
decisions on arrest and detention, especially the specific time this should occur, or its particular
location. In a way, Chinese local authorities actively explore and exercise what Andrew Walker
(1999: 111) calls ‘profitable regulation’ in pursuit of their own wealth and legitimacy. It is not
necessary, and perhaps counter-​productive, for every law and regulation to be strictly followed.
‘Good traders’ would maintain a strong relationship with the local authorities in pursuit of
profit. ‘If the control becomes too tight, these good traders would simply go somewhere else
less strict and we are left with hooligans and real troublemakers,’ one of the officers told me.
Apart from the critical networks that borderland traders maintain with local authorities and
other business partners, entrepreneurs on the border construct multiple identities to suit differ-
ent social and business needs. Some Vietnamese traders in Lao Cai are from a Chinese origin,
and in the cross-​border business scene, they highlight their ‘Chineseness’ to secure partnership
with Chinese traders (Zhang 2015). Some Chinese traders have learned to speak Vietnamese
after their arrival at the border; many choose to marry a Vietnamese wife or have a Vietnamese
girlfriend.Their new ‘Vietnameseness’ helps expand their business networks beyond the border-
land and into the bigger Vietnamese marketplace. Some Chinese traders start a second family in
Vietnam, which is usually held by the Vietnamese girlfriend or mistress who appears as the ‘wife’
in front of the neighbours.The Vietnamese family thus becomes a stable base for these mainland
Chinese businessmen, who then adopt a new ‘ethnic Chinese’ identity in Vietnam which works
to their advantage.
Apart from national identities, regional and hometown-​based identities become important
markers for friendship and collaboration. Chinese traders who come from the same province of
origin tend to form a closer bond. Especially at moments when internal conflicts arise among
Chinese traders in Hekou, hometown-​based identities become even more critical. Traders from
the same ‘old home’ (laoxiang) defend each other’s interests and sabotage other traders by steal-
ing clients, reporting them to the authorities, and sometimes involving the local gangs to settle
scores. On occasions, hometown identities become less significant if traders share other similar
experiences, such as being veteran soldiers or laid-​off workers. Identity politics are thus exer-
cised in a flexible way in the borderland. How these different identities are played out depends
on the individual understanding of the situation, and their negotiations of the advantages, dis-
advantages, risks and opportunities.
The critical networks the borderland traders establish, and the multiple identities that they
engage with, highlight their edginess as both transgressive subjects and pioneers in the transna-
tional marketplace.Their broad business networks and their flexible identity strategies give them
an edge in economic pursuits. Their experiments with alternative routes and illicit dealings also
indicate the more risky and precarious aspects of the borderland business practice. Borderland
edginess, manifest as business flexibility and transgression, becomes characteristic of mobile
individuals who instigate self-​enterprising practices that give new meanings and mutations to
‘marginality’ and migrant pragmatism.

Conclusion
At the China-​Vietnam frontier, national borders are crossed and controlled ‘entrepreneurially’
to suit the different interests and politics of local actors.The borders are demarcated and policed
by state authorities, but their meanings and significance are defined by those who actually cross
the border for various motivations. Migrant subjects, in particular, explore alternative routes that
challenge the officially designated border space. Rather than reading this as migrant criminal-
ity or a form of local resistance, I regard it as a widely practised localised spatial strategy that

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enables actors to not only make their lives viable, but also express their own economic and
political claims. Across the vast Asian borderlands, similar spatial strategies are adopted by diverse
communities of different linguistic, religious, and ethnic backgrounds (Endres 2014; Sur 2013;
Eilenberg and Wadley 2009). Migrant practices shed light on the ways in which the production
of various ‘in-​between spaces’ –​illegal passages, immoral trade, dangerous liaisons and corrupt
engagement –​in fact contribute to globalisation processes as these marginal zones provide mul-
tiple linkages and more organic forms of connectivity.
Focusing on the various transgressive politics of borderland migrants, this chapter offers
a reflection on the entwinement of mobility and the border from the position of the edge.
Borderland migrants participate in ‘edgy businesses’ –​exemplified by cross-​border commer-
cial sex and smuggling –​that are often deemed illegal by the state. In doing so migrants pro-
duce plural meanings of the border through transgressive manoeuvring. Borderland edginess is
heightened when state-​led border making is continuously confronted and reshaped by mobile
actors’ experiments and controversial crossings. My ethnographic examples show that such edg-
iness can be unexpectedly productive, as it generates new spaces of market participation for the
marginalised and the criminalised.4
Borderland edginess and its associated transgressive politics have wider implications in
migration and mobility studies in the context of Asia. Borderlanders are neither the mobile
elites nor the vulnerable migrants, when their in-​between-​ness continues to shape bordered
migrant identities that cannot be easily contained by fixed conceptual categories. Moreover,
the linking of borders and migrant mobilities suggests a new approach in understanding the
power of permissive politics at work, which can be stretched and relaxed in some instances, and
turn unexpectedly oppressive and aggressive in other situations. Migrant subjects are able to
explore the various spaces permitted in this malleable regime of control; but ultimately they are
subjected to its power, especially if such permission is suddenly withdrawn or the conditions of
such permission change.
Malini Sur (2013) argues that permissive politics are a matter of state optics and they are
used as a strategy of governing the frontier by deliberately ‘looking away’ from certain flows
and crossings. This form of ‘benign dismissal’ on the part of the state sustains the regime of
permissiveness, and turns migrant transgression into inconsequential actions that do not deliver
significant legal or political effect. Under the permissive regime at the border, those who par-
ticipate in sex work or smuggling are often dismissed as economically productive yet politically
insignificant. This official denial or dismissal also brings along productive potentials. As ‘apoliti-
cal’ participants in the transnational marketplace, these mobile actors are able to mobilise mul-
tiple resources and capitals. Crossings at the China-​Vietnam borderland thus continue to bear
an edge, as mobile actors refashion practices and discourses of freedom and entrepreneurialism
at the margins of nation-​states.

Notes
1 The ethnographic materials are drawn from my 12-​month fieldwork in Hekou and Lao Cai in 2007,
and a short one-​month fieldtrip in 2012. Pseudonyms are used throughout this chapter.
2 The marking of international borders between the Southwest of China and northern Vietnam started
first with the French colonists who navigated the Red River in search of new markets for trade. The
imperial officials of the Qing Court participated in border making as an act of challenge to the French
exercise. During this period this border region was in effect ruled by a local lord –​a Chinese military
rebel Liu Yongfu, the leader of the Black Flags (Heqi jun) –​who maintained control over trade rights on
the two rivers and demanded tax and protection fees (Davis 2014). The international boundary existed
but did not perform any practical function. In the 1950s the newly independent People’s Republic of

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China started a more systematic exercise of border making, which was then stopped when military
conflicts took place between China and Vietnam in the 1970s. When the Sino-​Vietnamese border
war ended in 1989, border-​marking exercises continued in full force alongside massive minesweeping
operations. However, long stretches of the China-​Vietnam border remains unmarked due to difficult
geographical terrains. Some of the existing borders are also being questioned and debated upon with
regard to their precise locations. The demarcation of borders in this part of the region is far from over
and will continue to be debated and negotiated.
3 Rice as a high-​value commodity is heavily regulated by both the Chinese and Vietnamese states. Official
permission and import quota has to be sought from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce before traders
can bring Vietnamese rice into the Chinese market.
4 It however can also be undermining as transgressive practices further the marginality of certain social
actors who are running the risk of being formally denied the political potentials of their actions.

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INDEX

Page numbers in bold refer to information in tables.

Adams, B.G. 204 borders: overview 15, 288–​290, 295–​296;

Afghan migrants 267, 269 ambiguities of 174–​175, 269, 290–​291; creation
agency: of children 254–​255, 256, 257–​258; of new 28, 174–​175; edginess of 293–​295,
distributed 158; of sex workers 187 296; entrepreneurial transgression 291–​293;
agriculture 22, 25, 216–​218, 219 governance of 68–​69, 147–​149; importance of
air transport 146–​147 288–​290
alumni organisations 42 ‘borderwork’ 289
amnesty programmes 280 Bracero Program 53, 279
analytics in migration studies 214–​215 Brain Korea 21 strategy 75
anti-​trafficking policies 71, 192, 293 Brazil, return migration to Japan 107–​111
Appadurai, Arjun 116 ‘bridges’ between host and home 83, 84–​86
ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) 231, British migrants 242–​243
233, 283 Brooks, R. 78, 84
Asia: challenges of migration in 12–​15; geography Brunei Darussalam 281–​282
and diversity 1–​2; migration pathways 2–​7; Bryceson, D. 250
theories of migration 7–​12 Burlingame Treaty 38
Asis, M.M.B. 257 Business Immigration Programme 130–​131
assimilation policies 40 business investments 130, 131–​132
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
145, 283, 285 Cambodia 217, 255; see also Greater Mekong
astronaut families 42, 135, 252–​253 Subregion (GMS)
asylum-​seekers 278 Canada 130, 131–​132
attitudes of expatriates 204–​205 capital: cultural 77, 133–​134; mobility as 129; of
return migrants 95–​97; social 252; symbolic 133
Baker, S. 255 categorisation of migrants 51, 52–​53, 54–​55, 152
Ballard, R. 178–​179 censuses 174
Bangkok Declaration 283 CHAMPSEA project 257–​258
Bangladesh: citizenship 272; Rohingyas 285; Chan, Shelly 35
source communities 178 Chee, A. see Orellana, M.F. et al.
bilateral agreements 156, 157, 282 Chen, T. 25
biometric technologies 148 Chicago school of sociology 164–​165
birth certificates 269 children: overview 14–​15, 258–​259; China’s
‘black box’ of migration 157–​158 one-​child policy 240; as educational migrants
borderlands 289–​296 252–​254; effect of remittances 228–​229; of

299
300
Index
expatriates 198, 201–​202, 205; labour migration
of 255; left behind by migrant parents 256–​258;
in marginal circumstances 255–​256; multiracial
191–​192, 193, 204–​205, 256; transnational
families 250–​252
Chin, K. 67
China: borderland with Vietnam 291–​296; cultures
of migration 165–​168; ethnic return migration
103–​104; higher education migration 75,
81–​83; logics of migration 166–​169; migration
policies 144–​145; Nationality Laws 39, 40–​41,
42; return migration 95–​96, 180–​181
Chinese Eastern Railway 146
Chinese migrants: after 1949 40–​41; after 1978
41–​43; asset insecurity 130; to Canada
129–​131; Chinese schools 40; cultures of
migration 165–​168; early 20th century 38–​40;
early traders 35–​37; in Hong Kong 200, 240;
mass labour migration after 1850s 24–​25,
37–​38; meanings of diaspora and 33–​35, 43–​44;
political movements 26; to Singapore 241–​242;
to United States 68; to Vietnam 294–​295
Chu, J. 167
‘circumvention’ medical travel 121–​122
cities: overview 14; coexistence and control
242–​244; diversity, migration and 203, 238–​239;
home-​spaces within 245–​246; as migration
destination 28–​29, 175–​178; postcolonial
239–​242; self/​other divides 245–​246; as source
communities 177
citizenship: introduction to 13; of cross-​border
children 255–​256; debates over 26; dual 40–​41,
42, 271–​272; economic 134–​135; flexible 42,
134–​135; by investment 130–​131; policies
268–​269, 270–​271; wealthy migrants 129–​131,
134–​135
civil society actors 270–​271
class 132–​134, 203
Cohen, E. 196, 198–​199, 203–​204
Cold War period 40
colonies: early Chinese traders and 35–​37;
migration from/​to 53, 54, 154–​155
communication: as migration facilitator 223;
technologies 22, 152; transnational families
and 251
community-​support 217
comparison in migration studies 216–​218
compensation of employees 227
contact zones 203, 242–​243
Convention against Trafficking in Persons,
Especially Women and Children (ASEAN) 283
cosmopolitan workers 121
counter-​ topographies 15, 293
‘credit ticket’ system 24
Cresswell, T. 59
crises 23, 285–​286
Cultural Revolution 41
300
cultures: definition 162–​163; Korean cultural
industry 84; as local concern 164–​165; of
migration 117–​119, 165–​166; separation from
economics 163–​165
data limitations 67, 93, 174, 181
Davis, K. 25
De Brauw, A. 218
de Haas, H. 212–​213
de Maaker, E. 289
Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of
the Rights of Migrant Workers (ASEAN) 283
democracies, development of 265
‘denizens’ 264
dependency ceiling 144
deportability 193
diaspora: introduction to 33, 43–​44; Chinese in
South Asia 35–​43; meanings of 33–​35; medical
migration and 119–​120; nation-​building and
240; networks and movements 268, 272–​273;
return migration 95–​96, 97–​98
direct action 268
diversity: within cities 203, 238–​239; coexistence
and control 242–​244; postcolonial cities and
239–​242
documentation 147–​148, 191, 269–​270
domestic abuse 66, 192
domestic work 144, 245–​246
donations of remittances 229
dual citizenship 40–​41, 42, 271–​272
Duara, P. 156
economic citizenship 134–​135
economics: definition 163; as driver of mobility
143–​145; separation from culture 163–​165
edginess 293–​294, 296
education: children as educational migrants
252–​254; Chinese schools 40; as class
reproduction 133–​134; of expatriates 205; higher
education in China 81–​83; higher education
in Singapore 86–​87; higher education in South
Korea 84–​86; higher education migration 75–​80;
in international schools 201–​202; investment
in Japan 230; as migration strategy 42; wealthy/​
middle class migration 133–​134, 251
electoral participation 267, 268–​270
emigrating without settling 132–​133, 135
‘emotional turn’ 10
employers 225–​226, 278
Employment Pass (E-​Pass) 57
Employment Permit System (EPS) 98, 99,
282–​283
enclavement, spaces of 242–​244
enclosure 243–​244
encounters: in home-​spaces 245–​246; in
postcolonial cities 239–​242; in transient spaces
242–​244
301
Index
entertainment industry 70, 190, 192
entrepreneurial transgression 291–​293, 294–​295
entrepreneurship 132
environmental bubble 199, 202
environmental disasters 22–​23
Ethiopian migrants 191
ethnic return migration: homeland marginalisation
104–​105; to Japan 105–​111; schemes and
privileges 97–​98, 103–​104; to Vietnam 98–​100;
see also return migration
ethnoscapes 116
European temporary labour migration
programmes 53–​54, 279
expatriates: overview 11–​12; approaches to
study 196–​197; blurred boundaries with
migrants 197–​198; challenges of studies 198;
communities 198–​199; encounters of 242–​243;
geographies 199, 202–​203; health care 121;
institutions 199–​202; norms 199, 203–​205;
conclusions 205–​206
extra-​electoral political participation 268, 270–​271
factor-​price equalisation 231–​232
families see children; transnational families; wives
Farrer, J. 242
Filipino migrants: citizenship 272; hostesses 67, 70;
in Japan 190, 192; source communities 177
Finckenauer, J.O. 67
fingerprints 148, 155
Fong, V. 167
foreign workers: across Asia 2, 144; in Japan
106–​107; in Malaysia 281; policies 42, 52–​55,
97–​100, 105–​107, 144–​145, 279, 283; quotas
and levies 279, 280; recruitment of 225–​226;
in Singapore 241, 243–​244, 279, 280; skilled
42, 77–​78, 122, 144–​145, 196, 242–​243;
unskilled 53–​55, 105–​107, 144, 156–​157,
226, 243–​244; unskilled/​skilled dichotomy
4–​5, 9, 52–​53, 56–​57, 60, 148; see also labour
migration
forced migration 121
Friedman, J. 68–​69
frontiering 250
Gardner, K. 178–​179
Geertz, C. 156
gender: education and 253; expatriates and
196–​197, 200–​201; inequalities 110; irregular
migration and 190–​193; stereotypes 168;
transnational families 134, 250–​251, 253
German guestworker programmes 53
global householding 245–​246
‘Globalising Universities and International Student
Mobilities in East Asia’ (GUISM) 80
graduated sovereignty 134–​135
grassroots work on human trafficking 188–​189
Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) 41, 280–​281
301
Greenwald, J. 170
guestworker programmes 53, 266, 279
H-​2 Visa Program 53
Harms, E. 293–​294
health care see medical migration
health insurance 281
Hekou 291–​293, 294–​295
higher education migration: to China 75, 81–​83;
insertion, adjustment and mobility 80–​87;
New Asian migrants 77–​80; significance
of 75–​77; to Singapore 86–​87; to South
Korea 84–​86
historical migrations: introduction to 3–​4,
21–​22; after 1970s 156; Asian modernism
25–​26; of Chinese diaspora 35–​43, 165–​166;
mobility in 19th century 22–​25; postcolonial
27–​29; private brokers 155; state and 26–​27;
conclusions 29–​30
Hoang, Kimberley 198
home and homeland 111–​112
homeland: 20th century ideas of 28; electoral
participation 266; experience of return
migrants 107–​111; home and 111–​112;
marginalisation from 104–​105; ties to China
38–​40, 42–​43
home-​spaces 245–​246
Hong Kong: British expatriates in 199, 201;
Chinese migrants in 240; ‘fuzziness’ of borders
175; historical migrations 37; multinational
corporations 200; sex workers 70
‘hostile worlds view’ 67
Huang, S. 254
Hugo, G. 56, 57
Huijsmans, R. 255
human rights as migration facilitator 224
human trafficking: introduction to 11, 184–​186;
ASEAN responses to 283, 285; definitions
and discontents 186–​188; intimate migrations
66–​67, 71, 292–​293, 294; irregular migration
and 278; migration experience and 190–​193;
states responses to 188–​190, 281; conclusions
193–​194
humanitarian interventions 158, 290–​291
identity: choices in early 20th century 38–​39;
ethnic 107–​111; flexible 295; post 1978
focus on 41–​42; Singapore 241–​242; youth
migrants 78–​79
identity documentation 269–​270
illegal activities 121–​122, 293, 296
immigrant incorporation 268–​269, 270, 273–​274
Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition
Act (Japan) 97, 106
‘immigration jail’ 131
immobility 59
‘in-​between’ places/​identities 203, 293, 295
302
Index
India: during British empire 23–​24; citizenship
271–​272; as medical hub 117; political
participation 26, 270; return migration 96–​97;
source communities 178–​179
Indonesia 94, 117–​118, 175, 216, 218
Industrial Technical Training Programme
(ITTP) 97, 99
infrastructural turn: introduction to 13, 152–​154;
academic perspectives 157–​159; in history
154–​157; conclusions 159–​160
interconnectedness 158
intermediation: governance of 155, 278;
infrastructural turn 158; misinformation and
284; of mobility 152–​153; recruitment 191,
226; sex workers 65, 71
internal/​international migration: introduction to
10–​11, 173–​174; borders 174–​175; linkages between
178–​180; onward and return migration 180–​181;
origins of international migration 175–​178
international agencies and borders 290–​291
International Civil Aviation Organization’s
(ICAO) 147–​148
International Labour Organization 226
International Organisation for Migration
(IOM) 99
international schools 98, 201–​202
international students: introduction to 6;
characteristics of 77–​78; children as 252–​254; in
China 81–​83; in East Asia 75–​77; future plans
85, 87; in Singapore 86–​87; skills and 57–​58; in
South Korea 84–​86; universities 78–​80
intimate migrations: overview 64–​65, 71–​72;
regulating 68–​71; vulnerabilities 64–​68; see also
marriage migration; sex workers
involution 156–​157
irregular migration: introduction to 13–​14;
anti-​trafficking policies and 193–​194;
experience of 191–​193; links with regular
migration 284; regulation 277–​279; tackling
282–​284; terminology 186; trends and patterns
280–​282; conclusions 284–​286
Japan: bilateral agreements 99; Chinese migrants
in 168–​169; diversity within 240; ethnic
return migration 97, 103–​104, 105–​107;
extra-​electoral political participation
271; Immigration Control and Refugee
Recognition Act 97, 106; internal and
international migration 179–​180; irregular
migration 190, 192–​193; Japanese-​Brazilian
return migration 97, 107–​111; Japanese-Filipino
children 255–​256; naturalisation 269;
transnational education families 253
Jensen, A. 289
Katz, C. 254, 293
Kim, J. 66
302
knowledge as remittance 214–​215
Konings, M. 169
Korea see South Korea
Kunz, S. 196
labour: definitions 51–​52, 56; rights 71, 189–​190,
244; shortages 53–​54, 103–​104, 106, 144,
178–​179
labour income 227
labour migration: introduction to 4–​5, 51–​52;
children and 255; governance of 156–​157,
278–​279; historical 37–​38; irregular migration
and 278, 279; medical staff 122; neoclassical
theories of 58, 92, 164; new economics of
labour migration (NELM) 92; recruitment
225–​226; remittances 227–​229; return/​
reintegration policies 93–​95; Singapore 241;
South Korea 282–​283; standards on 189;
students and 77–​78; temporary programmes
53–​55; understanding of term 55–​58; vicious/​
virtuous development circles 225, see also
foreign workers
Lam, W.S.E. see Orellana, M.F. et al.
land enclosure 216
language 79, 105, 134, 204, 243
Lao Cai 291–​293, 294–​295
Laos 175, 216, 255; see also Greater Mekong
Subregion (GMS)
Law on Sending Vietnamese Contract-​Based
Workers Abroad 98
‘left-​behind children’ 256–​258
legal status 277–​278, 279, 284
Leinbach, T.R. 218
Leonard, P. 201
levies 144, 280
Ley, D. 132, 135, 242
lifestyle migration 120, 131–​132
Liu-​Farrer, G. 57, 83, 84
livelihood strategies 216–​217, 220, 289, 294,
295–​296
living conditions 55, 272
logics of migration 9–​10, 162–​170
long-​term resident visas 97
Ludden, D. 290
Luibhéid, E. 68
McKay, D. 218–​219
McKeown, A. 34, 155
Malaysia: irregular migration 280, 281–​282; as
medical hub 116, 117
Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) scheme 120
Manchuria 25
margins 289
marriage migration: international marriages
64–​67, 69, 204; expatriates 197–​198; regulation
of 68–​70
masculinities 251
303
Index
medical migration: introduction to 6,
114–​116; cosmopolitan workers 121; cultures
of migration 117–​119; diaspora and 119–​120;
illegal migrations and 121–​122; lifestyle and
120; major hubs in Asia 116–​117; medical staff
and 122; refugees and 121; retirement and 120;
conclusions 122–​123
memoranda of understanding (MOUs) 280, 284
Mexico 229, 232–​233
migration: overview of Asian 1–​2, 15–​16;
causal analyses 211–​214; challenges 12–​14;
consequences 213–​214; contemporary 4–​7;
contesting binaries 10–​12; historical migrations
3–​4; as industry 158; infrastructure of 154; as
produced process 7–​9; reconceptualising 7–​12;
statistics 223, 224; understanding of 52
migration control 26–​27
migration humps 231, 232, 234
migration policies: overview 143–​145; 19th and
20th centuries 26–​27; Brunei Darussalam
281; diaspora and 103; existing migrants and
280; higher education 75–​76; investment
130; Japan 106; return migration 93–​97;
Singapore 281
migration programmes 52–​55, 120, 130, 279,
282–​283
Migration Resource Centre (MRC) 99
Miller, M. 265–​266, 273–​274
mobilities: in 19th century 22–​25; border
governance 147–​149; as means to redistribute
income 215; mobilities paradigm 58–​59; the
‘mobility turn’ 142–​143, 288; personhood and
167–​168; politico-​economic drivers 143–​145;
positive framing of 166–​168; production of
migrant 141–​142; transport developments
145–​147
modernism 25–​26
multinational corporations 200–​201
multiracialism 241–​242
Myanmar 175, 278, 285; see also Greater Mekong
Subregion (GMS)
NAFTA free-​trade provisions 232–​233
National Committee to Combat Human
Trafficking (NCCHT) 189
National Reintegration Centre for Overseas
Filipino Workers (NRCO) 93–​94
National Strategic Special Zones 98
national universities 79
nationality see citizenship
nationality laws 39, 40–​41, 42, 268–​269
nation-​building 2, 240, 241
native-​place organisations 38
naturalisation: introduction to 13; declining 264;
and political participation 267, 268–​270; return
migration and 95–​96; spouses 69
new economics of labour migration (NELM) 92
303
newspapers 38–​39
nightlife 198, 203
nikkeijin 97, 106–​111
non-​citizens: and political engagement 264–​268,
270–​273; populations 266
North Korean women 66
objects of attention in migration studies 215–​216
ocean transport 22, 145–​146
Oishi, N. 143
one-​child policy 240
Ong, A. 59, 133, 134–​135
optimistic-​pessimistic approaches to migration
212–​213
Orellana, M.F. et al. 254
organ trafficking 121
‘Overseas Citizen of India’ (OCI) status 272
Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) 96
Overseas Korean Act 97
Overseas Workers Welfare Administration
(OWWA) 93–​94
Pakistan 178, 269
Palmier, L.H. 203–​204
‘parachute kids’ 254
parent-​child study abroad trip 253
parental migration 256–​258
Parreñas, R.S. 257
passports 131, 147–​148
patriotism 109–​111, 119
permanent residency: eligibility for 59, 60, 265;
ethnic return migration 104; foreign spouses
66, 69; by investment 130–​133; political
participation and 264, 269; skill levels and 56,
57, 242; temporary migration and 52–​53,
54–​55, 60, 278–​279
personhood 166–​167, 168
‘Persons of Indian Origin’ (PIO) 96
Philippine Leisure and Retirement Authority 120
Philippines 93, 144, 217, 255–​256, 257, 272
Pimlott-​Wilson, H. 78, 84
plantation workers 22
political engagement/​participation: introduction
to 13, 264–​265; extra-​electoral 270–​271;
modes of 265–​268; naturalisation and electoral
268–​270; political movements 26; of temporary
labour migrants 55; transnational 271–​273;
conclusions 271–​273
politics: context of 270, 273; as driver of mobility
143–​145; instability 23, 129–​132; permissive
291; see also political engagement/​participation
popular culture 169
postcolonial cities 239–​242
postcolonial migration 27–​29
poverty: introduction to 12–​13; overview of
migration-​poverty-​source community nexus
211–​212, 219–​220; as cause and consequence
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of migration 212–​214; developmental impact
of migration 214–​215; geographical difference
216–​218; households and communities
215–​216; temporality and 218–​219
power and mobilities 129, 142–​143
private universities 79–​80
‘problem approaches’ to migration 211
proceduralism 155
processing zones 147
productivity 232–​233
professional organisations 42
Project 985 75
protests 55, 265, 268
public/​private spaces 245–​246
‘push-​pull’ theories of migration 58, 59, 164,
212–​213
qualisign 3, 167–​168
quotas 280
race: exclusion and 13–​14; expatriate
communities 197–​198, 205–​206; multinational
corporations 200
rail technologies 25, 146
Ravenstein, E.G. 163–​164, 176
recruitment: channels of 284; definition 224; of
domestic workers 191; mediation and 153,
155; of plantation workers 22; remittances and
returns 224–​225, 233–​235; in rural areas 177
refugees 121
registration 216, 281
regulation: as component of infrastructure
153–​154, 155–​157; frameworks of 277–​279;
remittances and 228
reintegration programmes 93–​95
relativising families 250
re-​migration 95, 96
remittance-​matching programmes 229
remittances: overview 227–​229; definition 224;
development and 213, 214, 225; international
migration and 223–​224; recruitment and
returns 224–​230, 233–​235; transnational
families and 251; use of 216–​217, 218–​219
residency, delinked from emigration 132
re-​Sinicisation 41–​43
retirement 120, 132
return migration: overview 4–​5, 92–​93, 101; in
China 1949–​61 41; development and
229–​230; diasporic descendants 97–​98;
homeland marginalisation 104–​105; internal
and international migration 180–​181; of
Japanese Brazilians 107–​111; multidimensional
streams 98–​101; policies 93–​98, 230;
recruitment and remittances 224–​225, 233–​235;
schemes and privileges 97–​98, 103–​104; skills
and capital 95–​97; to Vietnam 98–​100; wealthy
migrants 135
304
rights 71, 189–​190, 224, 244
risk 217, 220
Roberts, E. 114–​115
Rodriguez, R.M. 144
Rohingya crisis (2015) 285
rural communities 175–​178, 215–​216
Sabah (East Malaysia) 281–​282
Scalabrini Migration Center (SMC) 257
Scheper-​Hughes, N. 114–​115
scholarships 82, 83
security: concern around foreign worker
gatherings 243–​244; transnational networks
and 272
segregation 55, 105
self/​other divides 245–​246
sex workers: overview 65; in China-​Vietnam
borderlands 292–​293, 294; decisions to
become 191–​192; ethnographic studies 67–​68;
expatriates and 198; regulation of 70–​71, 189;
trafficking and 66–​67, 71, 184, 187
Shanghai Bank Corporation 200
Sheller, M. 58–​59
Singapore: diversity within 241–​242, 243–​244;
domestic work and 245–​246; ‘fuzziness’ of
borders 175; higher education migration
75–​76, 86–​87; irregular migration 280; as
medical hub 117; mid-​level skilled migrants
57–​58; migrants in China 242–​243; migration
policies/​programmes 54–​55, 144; talent
migrants 56; temporary migration 279
Skeldon, R. 131, 135, 215, 219
skills: categorisation of skills 57–​58; mid-​level
57–​58; as remittance 214–​215; residency and
242; return migration 95–​97
Smith, C. 118
smuggling 294–​295
social capital 214–​215, 252
social clubs 201–​202
social edginess 293–​294
social integration of expatriates 204–​205
social media 58
social movements 268
social networks 24, 119
social norms 199, 203–​205
social security 281
sociotechnical changes 153
source communities 12–​13, 211–​219
South Korea: citizenship 272; Employment Permit
System (EPS) 99, 282–​283; ethnic return
migration 97, 103–​104; higher education
migration 75, 84–​86; internal and international
migration 180; marriage migrants 69; as
medical hub 116; migration programmes
54–​55; political participation 271; transnational
education families 253
sovereignty 134–​135
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Soviet Union 174–​175 United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress,

S-​Pass 57 and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially
spouses see wives Women and Children (Palermo Protocol)
Sri Lanka 177 186–​187, 278
step migration 11, 176–​177 United States 53, 68
Stiglitz, J. 170 United States Trafficking Victims Protection Act
‘study mothers’ 253 (TVPA) 187; see also Trafficking in Persons
Sumatran migrants 218 (TIP) report
Sur, M. 296 universities 79–​80; see also higher education
migration
Taiwan: education migrants and 230; marriage urban centres see cities
migrants 68–​69; temporary migration 279 Urry, J. 58–​59
‘talent’ 56, 95, 145
tariff reductions for health care 117 van de Vijver, F.J. 204
technological change 143, 152 van Schendel, W. 289
telegraph innovations 22 ‘variegated citizenship’ 135
temporality 52–​55, 218–​219, 279 vicious/​virtuous circles 225, 229–​230
temporary migration: overview 4–​5, 51, Vietnam: agriculture 219; borderlands 291–​296;
52–​55; governance frameworks and 278–​279; health care migrants 118; registration 216;
‘immigration jail’ 131; rural communities return migration policies 98–​99; see also Greater
215–​216 Mekong Subregion (GMS)
‘Terminal 3’ 94 voting 264, 267, 268–​270
Textor, R.B. 211, 212 Vuorela, U. 250
Thai Long-​Stay and Health Care Project 120
Thailand: internal and international migration Waters, J. 78, 84, 254
179; irregular migration 278, 281; as medical Watkins, J.F. 218
hub 116, 117; Rohingyas 285; see also Greater wealthy migrants 6–​7, 118–​119, 128–​136
Mekong Subregion (GMS) weekend enclaves 243–​244
‘third culture kids’ 198, 204–​205 whiteness 196, 197, 198, 200–​201, 202, 205–​206
Thorne, B. see Orellana, M.F. et al. wild goose families 253
trade 35–​37, 230–​233, 234, 294–​295 wives: dependency of 65–​66; of expatriates 196,
trafficking see human trafficking 200–​201; foreign brides 65–​67, 246; second
Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report 11, 184–​185, families 295; see also marriage migration
187–​188, 189–​190, 193–​194 women: in China-​Vietnam borderlands
Tran, L.T. 254 292–​293; domestic work and 245–​246;
Trans-​Siberian Railway 146 expatriates and 196–​197, 200–​201; as
transnational education providers 79 intimate migrants 64; migration and 4–​5,
transnational families: introduction to 14–​15; 143; policies to protect 186–​187, 278, 283;
overview 250–​252; children left behind stereotypes 168; as study mothers 253;
256–​258; children’s mobilities 255–​256; transnational families and 134, 250–​251, 253;
educational migration 252–​254; women and worker rights and 244
134; conclusions 258–​259 work permits 148
transnational political participation 271–​273 workers’ remittance 227
transnationalism 42, 58, 272 working holidays 169
transport: historical innovations 22, 155; as
migration facilitator 223–​224; mobility and Yeoh, B.S.A. 254
145–​147; for return migrants 94
Turkish migrants 53 Zelinsky, W. 179
Tylor, E.B. 162 Zelizer,V. 64, 67
Zheng, T. 168
United Arab Emirates (UAE) 185, 188–​190, Zhou, M. 253, 254
191–​192 zousi 294–​295

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