Date and Venue
June 09 (Monday) | 17:00-18:30 JST
In-person at Waseda University and Online via Zoom
REGISTRATION REQUIRED HERE
Room 309, Building 19, Waseda University
Event details:
Speaker:
Dr. Arwen Joyce (University of Leicester)
Dr. Arwen Joyce is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Law at the University of Leicester, UK. Her research interests include economic migration, labour law and legal education. She was previously an Adjunct Professor of Law at Singapore Management University and worked in private practice as a capital markets lawyer in London and Singapore. She holds a BA from the University of Virginia, a JD cum laude from Georgetown University, an LLM with merit from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in Law from the University of Leicester. She is a non-practicing member of the New York Bar Association and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her first monograph, Low-wage Labour Migration Regimes in Asia: Lessons from across the governance spectrum, will be published by Routledge in 2026.
Abstract:
Eliminating, or at least minimising, low-wage migrant workers’ recruitment costs, which are often debt-financed, is an important goal and pressing policy challenge. The challenge is acute in Asia, where the supply of willing low-wage workers in South and Southeast Asia greatly outstrips even the sizable demand for labour generated by the region’s top seven destination economies. In South and Southeast Asia, abusive and exploitative recruitment practices have become ‘endemic—the norm’ (International Organization for Migration 2015). Without regulatory oversight and investment, predatory markets develop for work visas that create opportunities for corrupt employers, their agents, and authorities at various levels to not only offset costs arising from worker recruitment but to profit from low-wage labour migration.
This paper considers the bilateral labour agreements (BLAs) in place between countries of origin and destination economies in Asia and relevant recruitment cost data to identify the most beneficial recruitment policies for migrant workers. Regulatory challenges for destination economies, such as the persistence of recruitment channels outside of BLAs, and challenges for workers such as recruitment scams and unregulated language training schools and testing centres, are also explored.
The paper concludes that signing BLAs with countries of origin can help, but only if the BLA creates a recruitment channel that is genuinely managed by government institutions. This requires adequate public sector investment to reduce the involvement of private sector recruitment agents. When BLAs simply formalise private sector recruitment arrangements, higher recruitment costs for workers persist despite fee caps set by destination economies.