Foreign Labour Migration in Sarawak,East Malaysia

Foreign labour force participation in Sarawak is thirteen per cent (about 138,027) workers from Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar, China and India, among others. This article attempts to describe the management of foreign labour employment in Sarawak. It also attempts to identify challenges and issues that current migration regulations have generated and which have impacted the society. Using the Filipino migrant workers as informants, a two-year period of fieldwork observation was conducted, using personal interviews and observations following the ‘mobile ethnography approach’. While Sarawak maintains its immigration control as part of the State safety net, the interplay between state and federal laws engenders contradictions that may be detrimental to the people and to society. This article argues that the claimed autonomous position of Sarawak in regard to immigration is not equated to better labour migration management in relation to the federal government’s approach to labour migration in Malaysia.     

The AIDS Epidemic and Migrants in South Asia and South-East Asia

Migrant vulnerability to AIDS is an important public health care issue. After having listed some characteristics of the epidemic in Asia and their link with migration, the article describes some of the disease's consequences on economic sectors that employ migrants and lists preventive measures (regulatory, sectoral, microeconomic) that have been taken to counter the spread.     

Social policy and population growth in South-East Asia

Social and population policies are considered for the 10 countries comprising Southeast Asia--Burma, Indonesia, the Khmer Republic, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam. All but Singapore have high fertility rates and Burma, Indonesia, the Khmer Republic, Laos and the two Vietnams have high mortality rates also. Government expenditures for education and social security systems is expanding throughout the region and it is hoped that their continued growth will contribute substantially to the effective implementation of population policies. Population policies in the 5 countries which have them are discussed. These are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. It is noted, however, that declaration of policy is but the first step. Strategies and programs differ from one country to the next and depend very much on the stage of development, level of literacy, degree of urbanization, and other factors. Family planning activities generally are endogenous to urban social systems but exogenous to rural social systems. Thus, the rural elite has a large role to play in making population policies an integral part of rural life. The possibility is considered of developing workable incentive packages integrating health, education, and social security benefits with suitable emphasis on fertility reduction.     

教派主义与中东政治

伊斯兰教派的产生与不同人群在伊斯兰社会政治发展中的不同权力主张有着密切关系,其本身也对政治发展产生着重要影响.进入现代社会之后,特别是1979年伊朗伊斯兰革命之后,教派主义的影响日益彰显.近年西亚北非的政治变局中,教派主义的概念更是被频频使用.本文通过对近年中东政治中教派主义因素进行系统分析,指出宗教既非中东地区安全问题的主要根源,也非治愈此问题的灵丹妙药.如把教派差异视为目前中东政治变局产生的主因,不仅不利于冲突的解决,反而会使所谓“逊尼派和什叶派的千年之争”成为真正的自我实现的预言.     

Labour migration from South and South-East Asia: some policy issues

The rise in migration for employment since the mid-1970s has had serious consequences for many Asian countries. This discussion examines the issues raised by the migration abroad of thousands of skilled workers and the efforts that sending countries have made in recent years to bring the effects of labor migration more closely into line with their development objectives. It also considers several problem areas requiring the attention of policymakers and authorities responsible for the administration of overseas employment policies. It is estimated that between 1976-81 annual labor migrant flows from the 8 major sending countries in Asia increased sevenfold, from a mere 146,400 to over 1 million. The Asian migrant workers tend to be young, male, married (with dependents in the sending country), and better educated than the average home population. Most of them come from rural areas and are predominantly employed in construction and labor. The most distinctive feature of these workers is their concentration in a few blue collar occupations--carpenters, masons, electricians, plumbers, lorry drivers, mechanics, and heavy equipment operators. These production and trnasport workers outnumber the professional and technical workers by anywhere from 3 to 1 (Philippines) to 17 to 1 (Pakistan and Sri Lanka). At the aggregate level labor emigration affects the sending country's economy through its impact on the labor market, on the financial market, and on the market for goods and services. It can be argued that the outflow of a significant proportion of the labor force should lead directly to a rise in labor projectivity in the sending country since capital per worker among those left behind will increase, yet it can also be argued that since migration sifts out the most skilled and experienced workers there will be an erosion of the country's human captial resources. Specific measures have been adopted in most labor sending Asian countries to protect the welfare of migrant workers, to regulate conditions of employment abroad, to restrict the outflow of scarce skills, and to secure new overseas markets for nationals. Despite the efforts of governments to ensure that workers have satisfactory contracts on going abroad, many cases of "contract substitution" have been reported. The present attitude of many governments toward private recruiters seems to reflect both an acknowledgement of their effectiveness in finding job placements overseas and a growing concern to regulate their activities. The present trend seems to be to allow private agencies easier access while exercising greater supervision over those permitted to operate. The impact of labor migration on the labor markets of sending countries has not been uniformly damaging, but most of the countries have adopted 1 kind of policy or another to reduce the outflow of scarce skills. The use of material and other incentives for retaining workers in the country has obvious advantages but is not very widespread.     

Subnational Migration States and the New Politics of Immigration

Using Catherine Dauvergne's The New Politics of Immigration and the End of Settler Society (2016) as a starting point, this article explores subnational policy dynamics in Canada, Australia and the United States. It considers whether the trends associated with legalization, two-step programmes, rapid policy changes and economic discourses are present in Canadian provinces as well as in U.S. and Australian states. It shows that the forces described by Dauvergne contribute to a further rescaling of policymaking and to the emergence of subnational migration states. However, this article also demonstrates that this common movement varies in its consequences and identifies two central subnational policy responses typical of the new politics of immigration: 1) the “economic subnational migration state” (Canada and Australia) and 2) the “access subnational migration state” (United States). The models and the global trends described in this article have implications for immigration policymaking in federations.     

Migration and Human Rights on the Mexico-Guatemala Border

This paper identifies the protections in place for irregular migrants on the Mexico‐Guatemala border and analyzes Mexican government immigration enforcement policies and levels of compliance with international standards and national law. The history of the Mexico‐Guatemala border region and different types of migration flows into and through the area are also explored, as well as the linkages between migration, trade, security, and US immigration policy. It is argued that the Mexican government has partially complied with international conventions and national laws to protect the human rights of transmigrants in the Guatemalan border region, but that compliance is not complete and that an international response is required to ensure that human rights standards are upheld.     

American Studies in East Asia

Abstract

American Studies as practised in China, Japan, and Korea has some features of its own and reflects the specific conditions and needs of each country. Chinese Americanists have shown keen interest in US economy, politics, and China policy. Japanese Americanists are interested in ethnic studies and contemporary international issues involving the USA, while Korean Americanists are attracted to ethnic writers and politicians. Unlike their colleagues elsewhere, some East Asian Americanists have tended to study the USA in order to find the source of American strength through social sciences more than the American national ethos reflected in American culture, literature, and history.     

约旦内外政策走向

1999年2月,阿卜杜拉继承约旦王位.作为中东政坛新生代的代表人物,他上任以来,在继承先王大政方略的基础上,积极推行新政,锐意改革,巩固了王权,实现了政权的平稳过渡.政局基本稳定,经济总体运行平稳,外交灵活务实.     

中东社会转型中的政党政治

政党竞争是政治生活中重要的组成部分,其相关状态反映了某一国家或地区政治生活的真实状况。阿拉伯革命之后中东地区政党竞争开始出现,但随之而来的是诸多消极表现。中东政党竞争中的困境是社会意识、政党发展程度、国内其他政治力量以及外部干涉等多种因素互相影响的结果。由于这些因素将长期存在,因此中东地区的政党制度的发展和完善还需要一定的时间。     

Human Rights,Income and International Migration

This study contributes to the literature of migration studies by addressing the question: why does international migration persist despite welfare improvements in migrant‐sending countries? We propose that the human rights condition of the origin countries is an important determinant of global migration. Although the human rights issue is not new to researchers in migration studies, the concern is primarily about the rights of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers or migrant workers in a host country. We undertake a bilateral panel data analysis to examine the pattern of global bilateral migration between 1995 and 2010. We find that international migration is positively associated with human rights conditions and income. Similar results are also obtained when we control for multilateral resistance and possible sample selection biases in a panel context. Our study implies that efforts to promote human rights may also be assessed in relation to their contribution to migration flows.