Industrialized and emerging countries face a serious problem of labour shortage, especially in the blue collar jobs, which are indispensable in every society but not very attractive for their own nationals because of the heavy work-load, lower wage and poor working conditions. Though some countries take strict regulations for the inflow of simple labours from other countries, increase of migrant workers seems to be an attractive solution which can realize a win-win situation for both sides. While the senders of the migrant workers can mitigate the pressure of unemployment and increase the foreign income, the destination countries can use relatively cheap labours. On the other hand, we should remember that labour immigration has a shadow side, too. A significant amount of migrant workers enter the informal sectors, such as housemaids. Due to their weaker bargaining position, it is very common to observe the delay or default of payment, torture and other inhumane treatments. Successful migrant workers can bring home a significant amount of money. It is easy to identify the ex-immigrant labours' house in rural area in Java, because they usually built very fancy houses by their income from overseas (Shimada, 2007). Building new houses seems to be one of the favourite expenditures of ex-migrant workers. It is not clear how much of their income was expended for more productive purposes such as a capital of small business or investment into agriculture. In some cases, their precious earnings cause dispute in their families when the money is remitted to their home and some family members disagree on its allocation.

Some countries have already taken actions to mitigate the negative impacts of labour immigrations. The Philippines, which send more than 900 thousands immigrant labours every year, requests the destination countries to intervene in the contracts between immigrant labours and their employers in order to state their working conditions clearly and fairly in writing forms. The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), in the Philippines, which offers 185 courses including software development, bartending and underwater welding in its 125 schools with around US$ 50 million governments' budget annually to train overseas job seekers (Yap, 2008). The qualified labours can enlarge their chances to be hired in formal sectors, thus enable them to get more stable jobs and better wages. Indonesia was once infamous for its poor policies to protect the basic rights of its migrant workers while the country successfully increased the number of migrant workers over a short term. However, since 2003, Indonesia also has concluded memorandums with several destination countries, which require proper treatments of Indonesian immigrant labours (Shimada, 2007).

Not only the senders but also their destination countries take measurements to protect migrant workers. The regulation by the Hong Kong Government specifies that employers should have standard contracts with their foreign domestic helpers. In addition to a minimum allowable wage, the domestic helpers are given the status of workers, hence entitled to holidays and free medical treatment. Any disputes between the domestic helpers and their employers can be settled through the Labour Department and the relevant public organizations (Anggraeni, 2006).

Global economic turmoil may cast a cloud on these efforts to improve the working conditions of migrant workers. The job opportunities will be shrinking due to the downsizing of their destinations economies. We should not move back the recent progress due to the weakening bargaining power of the migrant workers. One of the possible solutions is the human resource development. If governments could provide proper training opportunities to the candidates of the immigrant labours, their improved qualification would be a strong sales point even in a tightened global labour market. The TESDA in the Philippines will be a possible model for such policies. Also, the migrant labour issues should be considered in the context of structural transformation. Enlarged job opportunities in rural area could ease the driving forces of migrant works and reduce the gap of rural-urban economy.

Written by Tomohide Sugino, Senior Researcher, Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences.

(Reference available upon request).