From migrant to worker: Global unions and temporary labor migration in Asia

• Main Author: Soon, Jan Jan
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2019
• Subjects: HC Economic History and Conditions
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/27472/1/JCA%202019%201%203.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/27472/; http://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2019.1702710

Michele Ford has two central themes to her most recent book. The first is for migrant workers to be regarded primarily as workers with labour rights rather than as migrants caught between the precarity of their migration status and peripheral position in the employment relations regime. The second theme is for local labour unions in the destination countries to ultimately integrate labour migration regimes with employment relations regimes. The book is a compelling account of how local unions in Asian countries – with the number of unions varying according to destination country and employment sector – came to embrace temporary labour migrants, typically unskilled to semi-skilled blue-collar workers with limited-term contracts, and the efforts taken to accord them their rightful place within the countries’ employment relations regimes. In light of the many recent issues of migrant worker exploitation globally and in Asia particularly, the publication of this book is an opportunity for establishing a better understanding of the struggles of migrant workers and of local labour unions in adopting a promigrant stance.