Geographies of Education-Induced Skilled Migration: The Malaysian Case

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of Malaysia's skilled migration through the concept of 'education-induced migration'. The focus of this chapter is twofold: firstly, to explain how their migration pathways need to be contextualized to Malaysia's race-stratified education system that was institutionalized during the British colonial period; and secondly, to explain how Malaysia's skilled migration needs to be seen as a continuum from young people's education migration pathways. This chapter consists of five sections. The first section introduces the theoretical and empirical backgrounds to Malaysia's education-induced skilled migration. The second section provides the historical background to the institutionalization and development of Malaysia's race-stratified education system. The third section gives an overview of the geographies of higher education for Malaysian students in public, private and overseas institutions. The fourth section reviews available data suggesting evidence of education-induced skilled migration amongst the Malaysian diaspora, and describes two examples of such migration paths amongst non-bumiputera student-turned Malaysian skilled migrants in Singapore. The final section concludes this chapter and calls for researchers to adopt a continuum lens in understanding young people's learning-to-laboring migration processes.