Labour Mobility in the Asia-Pacific Region - Dynamics, Issues and a New APEC Agenda

Edited by Graeme Hugo and Soogil Young

First Published in 2008 by ISEAS Publishing

A Joint Study by the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council and the APEC Business Advisory Council

Driven by demographic change, and reinforced by intensifying globalization, international labour mobility has been on the rise in recent decades in the Asia-Pacific region. It seems that, after trade and investment, labour mobility constitutes the final frontier for regional integration among the Asia-Pacific economies. There is no doubt that labour movements are integral to regional economic integration and critical to the long term health of the regional economies and business operations. In reality, hwoever, such movement are much burdened with political and social problems in the labour origin economies as well as the labour destination economies, and yet many of those problems remain not just unaddressed by the relevant governments but not even well studied.

The present volume seeks to fill this gap by offering synthesis papers stemming from the studies on international labour migration in twenty Asia-Pacific economies which were discussed at a joint PECC-ABAC conference held in Seoul, Korea, on 25-26 March 2008, organized by KOPEC. These papers examine the demographic transition, the associated pattern of international labour migration, the national policies associated with it as well as their implications for business and the issues they raise, and, finally, the implications of these analyses for cooperation among the APEC governments, for each of the four subregion in the Asia-Pacific, as well as for the whole region

1. Demographic Change and International Labour Mobility in Asia-Pacific - Implications for Business and Regional Economic Integration: Synthesis
2. Demographic Change and International Labour Mobility in Northeast Asia - Issues, Policies and Implications for Cooperation
3. Demographic Change and International Labour Mobility in Southeast Asia - Issues, Policies and Implications for Cooperation
4. Demographic Change and International Labour Mobility in Australasia - Issues, Policies and Implications for Cooperation
5. Demographic Change and International Labour Mobility in Pacific Americas - Issues, Policies and Implications for Cooperation