Geoffrey Ducanes

The Effect of the Global Economic Crisis on Asian Migrant Workers and Governments' Responses

It will take more time for the full scale of the global economic crisis to unravel and for its impact on the cross border movements of labor, their conditions of employment and possible return to become manifest.1 Although the recession in the United States started well over a year before the collapse of sub-prime financial market migration and remittances grew strongly and rapidly in many parts of the world obscuring any early signs of the effects of the on-coming crisis. Many factors remain uncertain even today, including how the fiscal and monetary stimuli that many governments have hurriedly crafted are working to revive afflicted economies. While there have been daily reports of firms shutting down and laying off

The welfare impact of overseas migration on Philippine households: Analysis using panel data

This study uses a panel of some 8,000 households common to the 2007 and 2008 Annual Poverty Indicators Surveys to examine the economic impact of overseas migration on Philippine households. It finds overseas migration to be an important driving factor for household social mobility in the Philippines. Using panel regression analysis, the study shows households that are able to send members overseas experience a windfall in income transfers, but they also incur losses in domestic wages. This moves them up the income ladder, supports their increased consumption – including spending for education, medical care, real property and equipment, food, clothing and recreation – reduces their poverty, and allows them to increase inter-household transfers.

Migration Transition in Asia: Revisiting Theories in the Light of Recent Evidence

The point at which economies transition from being net senders to being net receivers of migrant labor has invariably been attributed in the literature to conditions when full employment is reached. Observers of the Asian experience with migration transition have focused on how integrated labor markets and trade-led development strategies have brought about early transition but closer examination of the experience of Japan, Republic of Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong (China) has brought to light the complexity of the transition and the fact that economic factors only explain a small part of the phenomenon. Political, especially exogenous developments, have in fact been more important in explaining actual turning points in net migration. This paper reviews the findings of research in Asia and what more recent global data on transition reported by the United Nations suggest about the relationship between turning points in migration and various indicators of human development, including educational attainment, income inequalities, levels of urbanization, and per capita incomes.