Is the temporary migration regime in Asia future-ready?

Abstract

In pre-pandemic times, the labour migration regime in Asia based on principles of enforced transience is largely dependent on the ease and low cost of transnational mobility across national borders. Stalled mobility in COVID-19 times has both deepened the precarity that transient migrant workers face and also laid bare the unsustainability of the temporary migration for nation-states. At the same time, the pandemic presents an opportunity to reconfigure and move temporary migration toward a more sustainable and equitable basis. This could involve offering visas and contracts of longer duration and selective pathways towards residency status to reduce ‘churning’, incorporating migrant workers into national healthcare safety nets to improve migrant welfare and societal resilience, and careful recalibration of using automation and technological substitutes to replace migrant labour.