Executive Summary
overseas to achieve a given savings target. Closing the full cycle, the ability to finance a self-employment activity after return will be affected by the monetary costs of migration, wages abroad, and duration of stay at destination. Policy interventions that aim to influence any of these decisions or outcomes will thus, by the very nature of these links, also influence the others. It is thus critical for policy makers to consider these links when designing policies related to temporary migration. Making migration for South Asia safer and more productive thus requires interventions across the migration life cycle (figure ES.11). The migration life cycle is generally described as having four stages (Cho and Majoka 2020). The first stage is predecision, when a worker decides to migrate based on an understanding of the costs and benefits of migrating. The second stage is predeparture, when, after the worker has decided to pursue an overseas job, he or she can take steps to improve employability, find and secure a job, and obtain the necessary legal documents to migrate (clearances from national authorities, visas, passports, and so forth), and complete the logistical preparations for migration (tickets, financing). The third stage is when the migrant is employed overseas, and the final stage is after return to the home country. The recruitment process and access to information are important factors that affect monetary and nonmonetary migration costs specifically in the predecision and predeparture phases. However, migrant costs are also higher if the migrant travels to destinations with weaker labor laws and regulations, which is a significant issue during the third stage. At each stage of this process, migrants require information and support from the migration management system of both their country of origin and the destination country. Reducing volatility and improving sustainability will ultimately require sending countries to diversify the destinations to which they send their workers. Despite the enormous economic capacity of countries in high-income Asia (mainly the Republic of Korea and Japan) and their sophisticated labor migration policies, these countries have received relatively few South Asian migrants in recent decades. However, because of changing demographics, high-income Asian countries might substantially increase the intake of labor migrants from South Asia in the future. Labor mobility through memoranda of understanding, such as for the Republic of Korea’s Employment Permit System (EPS) program,
FIGURE ES.11
The four illustrative stages of the migration life cycle and common policy issues Predecision
Predeparture
During migration
Postmigration
Information on benefits of migration, process, costs, and systems
Technical training, language training, legal counseling
Financial training, remittance facilitation, worker protection and insurance
Reintegration, labor market reinsertion
Illustrative policy issues Source: Adapted from Cho and Majoka (2020).
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