This article examines the link between parental migration and young children's education using data from the Philippine country study of the Child Health and Migrant Parents in South-East Asia (CHAMPSEA) Project. The key research question probed here is: what difference does parental migration make to the school outcomes of young children? Specifically, it looks at factors that explain children's school progression (school pacing) and academic performance (school achievement) using multiple regression analysis. These questions are explored using CHAMPSEA data gathered from a survey of children under 12 years of age and their households in Laguna and Batangas (n=487). The concern that parental absence due to migration can negatively affect the school performance of children is not supported by the study. If parental migration affects school outcomes, it is associated with positive outcomes, or with outcomes which show that children in transnational households are not doing worse than children living with both parents. Positive school outcomes are best associated with a migrant-carer arrangement where fathers work abroad and mothers stay home as carers -children in these households fare very well when it comes to school pacing and school achievement. The study concludes that families and households need to provide both economic and psychological support to enhance the chances that children are at pace with their schooling and are doing well at school.

This article explores the impact of migrant worker registration on access to primary education for the children of Burmese migrants living in Thailand. The first section examines the basis in domestic and international law for migrant children's claim to educational entitlement and questions whether registration affects their claim. This leads to an analysis of NGO and other field-based reports of children and families' lived experience which explores how registration interacts with other intersecting forms of discrimination and disadvantage. The final section proposes a framework for evaluating the impact of Thailand's current Nationality Verification scheme from a children's rights perspective.

Most ethnic Koreans in China live in Yanbian Prefecture. Since 1996, the population of Yanbian Koreans has registered a negative growth, which is largely attributed to population outflow. According to the 2003 Sample Survey to Examine the Negative Population Growth of Yanbian Koreans, 37 percent of the households reported having members who sought work elsewhere. Logistic regression analysis shows that people with higher educational level and those engaged in agriculture had a higher probability of leaving. Men and those who completed secondary education were more likely to choose to go to South Korea while those who are married and are engaged in non-agricultural work were more likely to participate in intra- or inter-provincial search for employment in China.

This paper examines how Muslim Filipino domestic workers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia creatively assert agency and solicit recognition despite their precarious position in that country. One way that they do so is by leaving their legal employers to go ‘freelance,’ selling their labor to the highest bidder and living as best they can as irregular migrants in that country. The capacity to act in that way is enabled by the high demand for domestic labor and the wider network of relations among compatriot and kin who provide them with assistance. While effectively drawing on those social networks, migrant domestic workers, nonetheless, continue to bear the cost of a stigmatized social position among their co-nationals.

This paper documents the experiences of Vietnamese migrant workers who migrated to Japan as industrial “trainees” during early and mid-2000, some of whom became unauthorized workers. Based on in-depth interviews and survey data collected in Vietnam in 2008 and 2009 from migrants who had returned from Japan, this paper explores the factors that led some workers to slip from legal to irregular work. Our analysis shows how the recruitment process in Vietnam, the implementation of the trainee/intern program in Japan, and migrant networks together create the conditions that encourage or discourage some workers from working in the irregular job sector and overstaying their visas. We situate this argument within the conceptualization of unauthorized labor migration as a structurally embedded phenomenon.

This article explores how the forces of mobility affect the border society of Mae Sot, Thailand. In particular, it examines two forces generating population movements involving Burmese migrants: the Bangkok Dream, which pushes migrants from the borderland to Bangkok in their search for better opportunities, and refugee resettlement programs, which take refugees from the borderland to other countries. These two processes create massive human migrations across and beyond the border, with Mae Sot serving as a node. The study found that migrations have become part and parcel of societal formation of the border town.

This paper examines how East Timorese women in Melbourne, Australia view gender relations within the context of their resettlement and integration process in Australia as part of a broader question about gender and the construction of ethnic identities within a diverse community. Based upon a small qualitative study with fifteen East Timorese migrant women, we examine the complexity of the ethnic identity of East Timorese women in Australia, whose community reflects the diversity of their homeland, status divisions used historically within East Timor, different migration experiences and socio-economic and generational differences. The experience of East Timorese women varies according to the circumstances and timing of their arrival in Australia. Although most fled conflict and trauma, for the most part the women interviewed do not describe themselves in terms of a traumatized self-identity and depict their community in terms of engagement, support and resilience. Gender relationships changed with migration to Australia, with women enjoying more ‘equality’ in their relationships, in contrast to their past lives in East Timor. Yet many women also describe the maintenance of strong patriarchal values within the family, continued expectations of their responsibility to domestic affairs and the importance of maintaining a public face of appropriate behavior as ‘good Timorese women.’ They maintain Timorese identity through raising children and transmitting the potent cultural markers of food and language skills.