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.