Stream of jobless migrant workers returning from abroad adds to local misery

• Ian MacKinnon
• The Guardian
• Monday 6 April 2009

Migrant labourers across south-east Asia are on the move. Workers cast from lucrative overseas jobs are returning home. The stream is matched by domestic migration, as unemployed labourers who trekked from the countryside for jobs head back to villages.

For the Philippines in particular, one in 10 of its more than eight million people worked abroad as nurses, domestic labour or in factories. Thousands are returning home as factories shut.

In Vietnam, about 500,000 of the 45-million strong workforce is overseas, but the government fears the return of many of these will add to pressures squeezing the economy. Their remittances made up 8% of gross domestic product in 2007. The imminent influx will compound the effect of a dramatic slowing of the economy where manufacturing exports account for 40% of GDP. Last year 30,000 lost their jobs, but the forecast for this year is that another 300,000 to join them. Most have little choice but to return to families in the countryside.

The picture in Cambodia is even worse. The garment industry producing for the US and Europe accounts for 94% of the country's exports. It shrank by 4% last year, eliminating 27,000 jobs out of 300,000. Optimistic forecasts predicted a further 3% contraction in 2009, with the loss of 19,000 jobs, but orders dried up in the first three months of the year. With no unemployment benefits, labourers have no option but to return to families and subsistence farms in the countryside.

A tide of unemployed migrants has sparked fears of social unrest. The UN's International Labour Organisation estimated unemployment across Asia-Pacific could hit 7.2 million between 2008 and 2009, and accelerate to 23.3 million if the recession deepens.

In Thailand, where the economy depends on exports of goods and services for 73% of GDP, thousands have lost jobs in manufacturing grounded in automotive and electronics exports, although they are cushioned by a modest social security net for up to six months. The economy is set to shrink by up to 3% this year.

Malaysia predicts that 4.5% of its workforce will be jobless this year, up from 3.7% in 2008. It aims to cancel visas for up to 60% of the 2.1 million foreign migrants in the country when their contracts end, sending them back to Bangladesh and Vietnam among others.