Labor and Conflict in Southeast Asia

Abstract

LABOR migration is an important process in Southeast Asia, the second busiest hub of transnational migration in the world after the US–Mexico border. Cross-border labor flows in Southeast Asia have deepened regional interdependence. Migrant workers have contributed to key economic sectors in receiving countries like Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, while labor outmigration has reduced employment pressures and offered remittances to sending countries like the Philippines and Indonesia. But despite its economic value, labor migration in Southeast Asia is controversial. For receiving countries, migrant workers are often considered a security problem threatening both the state and particular societal groups. For sending countries, domestic anger over the often tenuous plight of their nationals abroad can stoke resentment towards the government and society of their hosts. In such situations, although economic interdependence might be expected to make such conflicts easier to address, labor migration can act to inflame bilateral relations. The way in which migrant workers are securitized is vital for explaining the origins of such conflicts. Labor migration has the potential to evoke emotional responses in both their host and home societies, since it raises issues both about who gets what and about how people are treated. Both economic and ideational factors play a key role in mediating how these issues are managed. Over the last decade, two main labor migration conflicts have arisen in Southeast Asia, between Malaysia and the Philippines and Malaysia and Indonesia. Both were catalyzed by security-motivated operations against undocumented migrant workers in Malaysia. However, the two bilateral conflicts followed radically different trajectories – with the role of emotions in the home state, and the discursive construction of the security threat posed by different migrant groups in Malaysia determining how these conflicts evolved. Show more