Temporary International Labor Migration and Development in South and Southeast Asia

Growing migrant worker remittances are regarded as an important and more reliable source of capital to finance development in South and Southeast Asia than international aid and foreign direct investment. International financial institutions (IFIs) have proselytized based on this promise and have represented the feminization of labor migration as injecting more momentum into developmental potential. Many Asian governments have been won over by this promise, establishing labor-export policies to generate overseas earnings. This promise has also colored feminist interventions, especially within international agencies focused on migrant women workers' rights, which emphasize the need to redress labor market disadvantage for migrant domestic workers in particular. Insofar as labor-export programs are based on temporary migration, this study argues that the focus of support for migrant women workers fails to address the systemic disadvantage associated with temporariness. KEYWORDS: Division of labor, globalization, migrant labor, occupational segregation