SUMMARY
The aim of this paper is to provide estimates
on the magnitude of migration, to profile the workers who
migrate, to identify the type of migration and difficulties
experienced by the migrants, and to determine the extent
to which migration helps in alleviating poverty in the transitional
economies of South-East Asia. It also attempts to reflect
upon the extant policies that have implications for migration.
The paper draws on recent data and studies done in Cambodia,
the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Viet Nam.
The transitional economies of South-East
Asia have experienced labour migration, both internal and
international, for all of recorded history. Such movements
have continued in contemporary times, and have increased
owing to rising population pressures and external demands
for local resources. In Cambodia, out-migration has emerged
in response to growing landlessness, unsettled populations
looking for settlement, and a rapidly growing labour force
in search of livelihood. Increased numbers are also (informally)
going to Thailand. While migration data on the Lao People’s
Democratic Republic are not available, it is believed that
rural-to-urban migration is rising there, in addition to
cross-border migration to Thailand. In Viet Nam, people
have traditionally migrated from north to south (since the
southern part of the country is better endowed) and from
rural areas to urban ones. International migration from
Viet Nam has followed two routes: cross-border, largely
to neighbouring countries, and globally, to as many as
30 countries.
The main reasons for migration are wage
differentials, the availability of jobs and work opportunities
(in some cases for long periods), and opportunities for
workers to grow in the labour market. Cambodian and Lao
workers, other than those who fled war and settled abroad
in the 1970s, mainly move for short- and medium-term periods,
with the explicit intention to return. Many Vietnamese,
in contrast, have been found to move with the intention
of staying for longer periods in the host locations. Those
migrants who
possess skills and distinctly fill in gaps in niches in
the labour markets, or those who invest capital, tend to
stay for longer periods, while the more unskilled ones tend
to stay a season or two, and return thereafter. Since Vietnamese
migrants are skilled and take up diverse activities –
including activities involving self-employment – they
tend to stay longer, compared with Cambodian and Lao migrants
who largely belong to the peasantry, and migrate for shorter
periods.
Migration is a powerful tool to combat
poverty. In addition to its direct effects in terms of higher
earnings, there are indirect effects, in the form of remittances.
Remittances help in stabilizing the household food security
situation and in capital formation. Next, the expenditure
of remittances helps to create local jobs. Indirect effects
extend also to filling gaps in certain segments in the labour
markets in the host economy and hence create more jobs.
In a few instances there is a path formed for future migrants
to enter the job market from outside the country. There
are negative implications also, both for migrant workers
and for the host economies. Migrants are forced to pay bribes,
face deprivation, get cheated etc., while in the host countries
there may be job losses for some local workers. But migrants
consider the negative effects to be more than offset by
the positive ones.
Neither Cambodia nor the Lao People’s
Democratic Republic have an official policy to promote or
control migration. However, Viet Nam has a clear policy
on international migration. After 1999, both State-owned
and private sector companies have been permitted to export
labour. Following leads from countries that have had a wider
exposure and experience in migration (Bangladesh, Sri Lanka
and Thailand, for example), the current thinking in Viet
Nam is to promote actively the export of skilled labour
to destinations where there is demand for such workers.
On local and cross-border migration, there is no policy
in any of the countries.
INTRODUCTION
The genesis of migration lies in people’s
quest to live or subsist in a form better than their present
status. Some migrate for sheer survival, that is, to escape
from poverty; others, to improve their quality of life,
while still others search for fortune. Since each of these
pursuits is made by people who come from different socio-economic
strata and hence have a different purpose for moving, migration
is quite a heterogeneous phenomenon. In contemporary low-income
economies, however, the principal reason for
people to move is the worsening productive-resource-to-human-power
ratio, stemming mainly from rapid population growth and
an external demand for local resources. This has compelled
large sections of the populace to migrate to look for work
as a part of their survival strategy. Depending upon the
needs and circumstances, people move seasonally, for fixed
periods, or permanently. In this sense, the transition economies
of South-East Asia, some of which are among the poorer ones
in the world, present a picture typical of other low-income
countries.
This paper aims to present data on different
aspects of human migration, within as well as between different
countries in the transitional economies of South-East Asia,
with a view to reflect upon survival strategies adopted
by people in the backdrop of prevalent poverty.1 More specifically,
it aims to estimate the magnitude of migration, profile
the kinds of workers who migrate, identify the type of migration
and difficulties experienced by the migrants, and determine
the extent to which migration helps in addressing the problem
of poverty. The paper draws essentially on data and studies
done in the three countries under a research network named
Development Analysis Network (DAN) – Cambodia, the
Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Viet Nam –
in the period 2000- 2001, although it attempts to draw on
some information from elsewhere as well.2 While no fresh
field surveys have been launched, surveys done under DAN
have been liberally drawn upon.
COMPARATIVE DEVELOPMENT
PATTERN IN THE REGION
In these three countries known as transitional
economies owing to their recent transition from centrally
planned to market systems as well as other neighbouring
countries, human migration has prevailed since the colonial
and pre-colonial periods. For example, most trade in earlier
times in much of the region was managed by Chinese merchants;
the presence of Vietnamese in Cambodia in business and trade
was well established, and Malay peasants were long settled
in what is today southern Viet Nam. While not much is known
about the internal movement of people historically, based
on the current population and occupational compositions,
there is reason to believe that such movement existed, though
it may not have been on as high a scale as in contemporary
times. Migration of people from the peasantry as well as
other working classes has continued and intensified to this
day in one form or another, and it serves to bridge the
gap between the demand for labour in specific segments of
the market, as well as to
reduce the resource/labour imbalance between different regions.
In the process, it becomes a survival strategy for large
sections of the populations concerned. With rising demographic
pressures and consequently increasing resource imbalances,
the need to move in search of a livelihood is increasing.
What makes the transitional economies different from others
is their history of long wars in the recent past, experimentation
with socialism and then a transition to a market economy.
Each of these factors, particularly the war, has been responsible
to create prolonged periods of instability. This instability
has had negative effects on investments, infrastructure
and human development. In the process, the poverty situation
has not improved, and has further induced migration.
Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic
Republic and Viet Nam (along with probably Myanmar, on which
few data are available) are the least developed countries
of South-East Asia. In 1999, the lowest per capita gross
national product (GNP) was recorded in Cambodia at $260,
the Lao People’s Democratic Republic at $280 and Viet
Nam at $370. The Human Development Index (HDI) follows a
somewhat different order: in 2001, Viet Nam was ranked 101,
Cambodia 121 and the Lao People’s Democratic
Republic 131 (UNDP, 2001). Since HDI additionally incorporates
education and life expectancy, it is evident that there
is a divergence between economic and social progress in
these countries. Adult literacy is high in Viet Nam –
exceeding 90 per cent – but in Cambodia and the Lao
People’s Democratic Republic it is less than 65-70
per cent.3 It is not surprising that the Lao People’s
Democratic Republic ranks lowest in the HDI rating, since
its literacy achievements are the lowest. The total fertility
rate (TFR) is lower in Viet Nam, at nearly 2 children per
woman, while it is around 5 in Cambodia and in the Lao People’s
Democratic Republic. The population structure therefore
is different, which has implications on economic and demographic
dependency ratios, and hence on poverty and food security.
These statistics also suggest that social progress has been
possible at a relatively low-income level in Viet Nam, although
the same has not been witnessed in Cambodia and the Lao
People’s Democratic Republic.
In terms of natural and human endowment,
two indices, the per capita cultivable area and the extent
of education, bring out the contrasts. Viet Nam has the
largest active population per unit of cultivable area (511
per sq km), followed by the Lao People’s Democratic
Republic’s (151 per sq km) and then Cambodia’s
(105 per sq km). Interestingly, the former has a much higher
productivity level and is a food exporting country compared
with the latter two which, despite enjoying greater land
availability, are weaker in terms of agriculture and food
security. Considering the fact that the whole region is
agro-climatically nearby homogenous,4 better land-use practices
and irrigation have enabled Viet Nam to forge ahead of Cambodia
and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Part of
the reason why agricultural modernization has been more
successful in Viet Nam compared with Cambodia and the Lao
People’s Democratic Republic is related also to the
better educational attainment of people there. The number
of years of schooling per sq km, an indicator of educational
spread, was found to be by far the highest in Viet Nam (2,685),
followed by the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (512)
and then Cambodia (422). However, these statistics are not
independent of population density; hence, an exact correspondence
between education and productivity should not be expected.
For example, the reason why Viet Nam shows such a high figure
is also because its population density is high. The human-capital-related
argument, however, is not negated by such deviations.
Cambodia has recently emerged from a traumatic
war and civil strife lasting nearly three decades; as a
result, its civic, financial and governance institutions
have been severely eroded. Its HDI is rather low because
none of its social institutions was effective as a result
of its civil war. Cambodia has barely started to function
again. Serious development efforts were initiated only in
1993 and the economy achieved annual growth rates of 7-8
per cent for four years thereafter. However, this situation
was punctuated again by the resurgence of civil unrest in
1997. With peace returning in 1998, business as
usual has begun fewer than three years ago. In 1998/99,
the annual population growth rate averaged 2.2 per cent.
As of 1999, the proportion of people living below the poverty
line was estimated at around 40 per cent. Almost 90 per
cent of the poor were in rural areas. The large rural-urban
gap, the high demographic upsurge and excessive dependence
on international aid for regular activities of the state
are the major problems faced by the country. The first two
of these three problems also create conditions for “push”
migration.
In the Lao People’s Democratic Republic
and Viet Nam, warfare ended in the mid- 1970s, but conditions
that would permit a rapid economic growth process began
to emerge only in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Lao
People’s Democratic Republic, a multi-ethnic low-income
country, has stayed out of the international division of
labour in the dualism of agrarian and centrally planned
forms of politics and economics for quite a long time. Its
involvement in the Indo-China War in the 1970s also caused
considerable destruction there. Though still sparsely populated,
its physical and human resources are
very underdeveloped and it appears as if its socio-economic
problems are similar to those faced by some other Asian
countries three to four decades previously. Those living
below the poverty line on the aggregate are about 46 per
cent of the population; in rural areas, the percentage is
53.6 The New Economic Mechanism, adopted by the Government
in 1986, heralded the beginning of economic liberalization
and the country achieved economic growth of about 6 per
cent per annum in the 1990s.
Viet Nam, a country that faced prolonged
warfare that lasted from the 1950s in to the 1970s, is a
low-income country. Despite the wars, however, it has shown
considerable economic dynamism in recent years. Its social
and civil institutions came out relatively intact after
the war, which is the reason for high literacy and education
there. Viet Nam adopted the policy of doi moi, meaning “renovation”,
in the late 1986. Through this policy, it initiated a number
of market-oriented reforms, which in turn hoisted the growth
rates to 7-8 per cent annually. Poverty proportions on the
aggregate fell from about 51 per
cent in 1993 to about 37 per cent in 1998. Growth, however,
was not very labour intensive, and even as late as 1998,
the percentage of the labour force employed in agriculture
was as high as 73.7 In the late 1990s, the country faced
a considerable drag on its economic performance, originating
in its low-efficiency state sector. It is reported that
in the late 1990s, this sector retrenched over 92,000 workers,
which compounded the effect of the demobilization of the
military to worsen an already difficult employment situation.
Finally, each of these three countries
was affected by the financial crisis of 1997/98, and they
still reel from its aftermath. This is not so much due to
their integration into the international financial system,
but because of their dependence on foreign investment, much
of which has come from other Asian countries. Human migration,
an important source of remittances, was also reduced because
of the crises in the host countries.
MIGRATORY STREAMS
IN THE TRANSITIONAL ECONOMIES
Cambodia: internal
migrants
While there are no comprehensive nationwide
data sets available that can precisely measure the migration
flows, a comparison of data from the demographic survey
of 1996 (National Institute of Statistics (NIS), 1997) with
those from the population census of 1998 (NIS, 1999), provides
an indirect estimate of recent trends in internal migration.
Rural out-migration, whether to urban areas
or to other rural areas, is rising. The census of 1998 counted
881,400 persons who had moved from a rural area within the
period five years prior to the census (these are termed
as “recent” migrants). Of these, almost one
third (31 per cent) had moved within the previous 12 months
(these are termed as “very recent” migrants).
By comparison, the demographic survey of 1996 estimated
that 634,700 persons had moved from rural areas within the
period five years prior to the survey; of these, 27 per
cent had moved within the previous 12 months. These figures
show an increase in rural out-migration even though the
time elapsed between the two
enumerations is short.
Data also indicate that the average distance
travelled by migrants increased between 1996 and 1998. Among
the “recent” migrants from rural areas, the
proportion of interprovincial migrants rose from 37 per
cent in 1996 to 44 per cent in 1998. This trend is even
more noticeable in the case of “very recent”
migrants: 51 per cent of them were inter-provincial migrants
in 1998 compared with 41 per cent in 1996. Yet, in contrast
to popular perceptions, a majority of rural migrants did
not come to cities. The census shows that around 57 per
cent of the people who left their villages moved to another
rural area, 21 per cent moved from a rural to an urban area,
14 per cent moved from one urban area to another, and 8
per cent moved from urban to rural areas. As a result of
increasing geographic mobility, most places in Cambodia,
whether urban or rural, now include significant and fast-rising
proportions of “newcomers”, especially in urban
areas.
A comparison of the proportions of the
total population made up of “recent” and “very
recent” arrivals between 1996 and 1998 shows that
even in rural areas, the proportion of newcomers has been
increasing. In 1996, less than 2 per cent of the rural population
was estimated to be composed of “very recent”
migrants and the proportion of “recent” migrants
was estimated at less than 7 per cent. In 1998, these proportions
had increased to more than 2 per cent and nearly 8 per cent
respectively. The increase in the proportion of newcomers
is still more pronounced in urban areas. Here, the percentages
of both “very recent” and “recent”
migrants almost doubled between the two years 1996 and 1998,
as seen from the demographic survey and the census (from
3.6 per cent to 7.1 per cent for very recent migrants and
from 13.8 per cent to 22.4 per cent for recent migrants).
Thus, almost one quarter of the 1998 urban population was
living elsewhere five years previously. Such striking proportions
raise questions not only about the capacity of urban areas
to accommodate newcomers, but also, and perhaps more seriously,
about the increasing inability of rural areas to provide
a livelihood to its
populations.
Migration within Cambodia so far has been
directed from labour surplus provinces to resource rich
areas. In 1998, five provinces (out of 20) accounted for
over half of all “recent” provincial out-migrants
(NIS, 1999). Four of these were provinces with high rural
population densities and low land-to-population ratios:
Kompong Cham, Prey Veng, Kandal and Takeo. This migration
pattern seems well entrenched and fairly stable, judging
from the very similar results obtained for both “very
recent” migrants and “recent” migrants,
in 1996 as well as 1998. The top destination was Phnom Penh,
which alone received about one third of all inter-provincial
migrants, followed by Kandal, Banteay Meanchey and Koh Kong
(another 30 per cent). Phnom Penh and Kandal are the main
urban/non-agricultural destinations, while the two rural
provinces of Koh Kong and Banteay Meanchey have high average
farm sizes and low population densities. Thus, people move
to locations where they feel there is potential for employment.
Youth and young adults are disproportionately
represented among migrants. Youth (aged 15-24 years), who
made up 18 per cent of the total population, accounted for
30 per cent of the “very recent” migrant flows
and young adults (aged 25-29 years), who represented less
than 8 per cent of the total population, made up 13 per
cent of the migrant flows. These are the age groups in which
people enter the labour markets. When they cannot find a
job locally, they move out.
There is some gender specificity as well
in the migratory streams. Females made up 56 per cent of
“very recent” migrants to Phnom Penh, as revealed
by the census. This is evidently in response to the opening
up of numerous garment factories and shoe factories in the
capital. These began to attract rural women to the jobs
on offer, since the mid- 1990s.
A feature specific to Cambodia is its large,
yet unsettled population, which gets enumerated as “migrant”.
The unsettled population settles as and where it gets land.
Otherwise, much of the migration that is not from a rural
area to an urban area is for short periods only. Migrants
from one rural area to another are engaged in similar occupations
as in their home locations: agriculture, fishing and forest-based
work. They move not so much because of wage differences
but because of the availability of work.
Cambodian migration
to Thailand
Cambodia is in an intermediate position
in the regional labour market – receiving migrant
workers from Viet Nam to meet the demand in certain niches
in the market, and sending their own workers to Thailand
to work in segments in which Thailand has a labour shortage.
Little is known about these flows, most of which are unofficial
and unrecorded. Sample surveys fail to capture them, partly
because migrant workers are unwilling to identify themselves.
The Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI) carried
out two small-scale rapid surveys in the period April –
May 2000, in an attempt to
learn more about what is happening.
Interviews were conducted in 163 households
with experience of migration to Thailand. Most of the households
were poor or very poor; 47 per cent were landless and 23
per cent possessed less than one hectare of land. The reasons
given for migration were overwhelmingly economic. Local
earning opportunities are few, as farm work and exploitation
of the dwindling common property resources are possible
only for a few months a year.
Migrants are mostly between the ages of
17 and 35 years, implying that, as stated previously, the
young are not able to make a place for themselves in local
labour markets. Of the 272 migrants interviewed, 56 per
cent were male and 44 per cent female. The short-range migrants,
the majority of whom were women, commuted daily or for a
few weeks at a time to work on farms (including planting,
weeding and harvesting rice, corn and sugarcane) across
the border. Long-range migrants, the majority of whom were
men, went deep into Thailand with guides. They belonged
to households with sufficient assets to finance their trip.
Long-range migrants were usually employed as construction
workers, porters, farm workers, garment workers and other
unskilled workers, in manufacturing and food processing,
the fishing industry off the Thai coast, and in restaurants
and shops.
Estimates made by village chiefs and NGOs
during the fieldwork suggest a big fall in long-range migration
of Cambodians to Thailand between 1997 and 1998. This was
particularly steep in the case of men, owing to the market
crash in 1997/98 and the consequent lack of labour demand
in Thailand. The demand revived in 1999, but was still below
that of 1997. Short-range migration by people of both sexes
continued to increase, however, and it is likely that some
long-range migrants may have switched to commuting over
shorter distances. These statistics suggest that, while
the urge to migrate out is on the
rise, the demand for labour varies with peaks and troughs
in the host economies. Cambodian migrants to Thailand can
be defined as those who go to Thailand with the intention
to return to Cambodia. Evidence shows that even the long-term
migrants to Thailand return home.
Migration patterns
in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic
Owing to urbanization and industrialization,
in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, particularly
in Vientiane Municipality, Savannakhet, Paksé, Thakhèk
and Luang Prabang, (internal) rural-to-urban migration of
labour has been on the increase in recent years. Although
migration data, which would have permitted an analysis of
rural-to-urban migration, are not available, increased settlement
in urban areas by migrants is visible. Because direct impacts
of the Asian financial crisis on employment have been
minimal in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic –
the country is very marginally integrated into the international
financial markets – there was no clear evidence of
a “crisis-induced” migration of labour in either
direction between the rural and urban areas or between provinces.
Through the middle of 1999 to early 2000, there were only
520 workers from seven provinces registered to work in Vientiane
Municipality. The number of unregistered workers is unknown,
although it is believed that it would be much larger than
the number of registered workers. It is evident that urbanization
has continued
despite the Asian financial crisis. As labour migration
data are not available from any other source, the data reported
here have been obtained from (government-owned) labour exchange
companies, responsible for facilitating labour movement
in the formal labour market. The figures appear to be highly
unrealistic. However, not much discussion is possible on
numbers in the case of the Lao People’s Democratic
Republic because none of the large surveys has collected
information on internal migration.
Although there are no clear estimates available
of the numbers of Lao workers abroad, particularly in Thailand,
it is believed that there may have been as many as 95,000
of them employed illegally in Thailand in 2000.13 It is
unlikely that there would be very many Lao workers elsewhere.
Since 1997, when Thailand was hit hard by the financial
crisis, the Government has been making efforts to restrict
foreign labour in order to protect jobs for Thai citizens.
According to a Voice of America broadcast on 9 August
2000, Thai officials repatriated 10,000 illegal Lao workers
in that year. About 60 per cent of them were women, aged
14 and 24, who worked in nightclubs, restaurants and garment
factories. Lao workers migrate to Thailand because they
earn more in Thailand than what they would earn in the Lao
People’s Democratic Republic, despite the fact that
illegal Lao workers generally earn lower wages than Thai
workers performing the same or similar activities. Also,
the availability of work for a longer period of time in
a year is an inducement to migrate. Most, though not all,
Lao migrants are the ones who have no
permanent footing in Thailand; they eventually return to
their own country.
Foreign
workers in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic
The Lao People’s Democratic
Republic has been importing a number of foreign workers
mostly to perform construction work. The information about
foreign workers employed in the Lao People’s Democratic
Republic from different agencies has differed widely in
terms of their number: an early 2000 survey conducted by
the National Economic Research Institute in Vientiane found
that there were 6,889 foreign workers registered in all
provinces of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic
in 1999. The Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare reported
that 2,328 foreign workers were permitted to work in the
Lao People’s Democratic Republic in 1999 (table 1).
The Laos-Vietnam Co-operation Agency reported that there
were about 15,000 Vietnamese workers, including illegal
workers, working in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic
in 1999, of whom around 6,500 were employed under investment
project contracts with the central and provincial governments.
Others were independent workers, both legal and
illegal. In reality, there are probably many more foreign
workers than the figures reported here would indicate. In
fact, almost none of the cross-border migrants registers
with the authorities. Most of them are Chinese and Vietnamese,
though some are Thai as well. Inmigration of foreign workers
seems to have slowed down in recent years because the financial
crisis in the region has delayed, postponed and reduced
the budgets of many investment projects. But the Lao People’s
Democratic Republic, being generally a lowskill and sparsely
populated economy, will continue to be a fertile ground
for in-migrants
possessing some skills and enterprise. Illegal workers replace
local workers in specific jobs, and may also act as dampers
on the building of local capacities. In this sense, they
could be a deterrent to the reduction of poverty locally.
Internal
migration in Viet Nam
Internal migration in Viet
Nam has historically been characterized by two major flows:
the southward flow and the rural-to-urban flow. Among the
reasons explaining the southward migration trend is the
fact that the southern provinces of Viet Nam are better
endowed than those in the northern part of the country,
in terms of both physical resources and the level of economic
development. People from the northern provinces have, therefore,
been moving southwards to find new occupations and resettlement
for a very long time.
Data also show strong rural-to-urban
flows of migrants. Table 2 shows the migration picture,
calculated from the Viet Nam Living Standards Survey of
1997/98. This table shows that about half the urban residents
were born in the countryside, while more than 90 per cent
of the rural population had its origin in the countryside.
This means that for every 100 urban persons, 52 were born
elsewhere, and for every 100 rural persons, only about 9
were born elsewhere. The rate of migration from one region
of the country to another is very different: the Central
Highlands was found to have the highest rate of immigrants.
While in the other regions, the rate of those who were born
and are currently living in the same region was between
65 and 85 per cent, the Central Highlands region had a proportion
of 39.6 per cent, as of 1997/98. The migrants were mostly
from the south-central coastal region, where the economic
development level is the lowest.
In contrast to the Cambodian
migrants, Vietnamese migrants, to a significant extent,
move with the intention to settle or stay for long periods
in the new locations. This phenomenon can be explained by
the fact that they relocate from resource-poor regions of
the country to better-endowed regions. The high population
density in specific regions and the historical tradition
of Vietnamese moving away from home contribute to this characteristic.
Typical for expectations in
low-income agrarian economies, there are trends that indicate
a rising regional and urban-to-rural movement of people.
These flows, though, have as yet not been large enough,
and have not been sustained for long enough, to tilt the
population balance in such a way that dependence of the
populace on subsistence agriculture is reduced.
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