ES.11 The four illustrative stages of the migration life cycle and common policy issues

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

Source: Adapted from Cho and Majoka (2020). Illustrative policy issues

show that further diversification toward high-income Asia could be beneficial for South Asian migrants and their home countries because of much lower migration expenditures and a lower risk of human rights violations by employers than in the GCC countries.

Entering these newer markets will require changes in the profile of the migrants being sent. Currently, most migrants from South Asia are in lower-skilled occupations, reflecting the demands of current destinations (primarily GCC countries and Malaysia). Destinations that offer higher wages and better protections for workers—such as Korea—require additional skills, even for jobs in labor-intensive sectors such as agriculture. These skills include language knowledge in addition to noncognitive skills such as teamwork and collaboration. For other markets, such as Japan and Hong Kong SAR, China, where there is growing demand for caregivers (childcare and care of the elderly), the supply of such professionals will have to increase, as will the supply of skills development services to train aspiring migrants to become caregivers. Line agencies responsible for managed labor migration may also need to have the capacity to take proactive measures, such as identifying potential demand for different types of workers from new and existing markets. This information will be critical for reorienting the skills development architecture and gaining a detailed understanding of the scope for foreign labor offered by those markets.

Some institutional frameworks, such as high-quality bilateral labor agreements, can serve to reduce costs while also providing avenues into new markets, both new destinations and new types of professions. One is the Korean EPS, which is managed directly by Human Resource Development Korea and open to Bangladesh and Nepal. Migrating to Korea for temporary work through this program costs the Bangladeshi migrant approximately US$900. Migrants are paid Korean minimum wages, are able to change employers, have access to grievance redressal mechanisms, are covered by Korean labor laws against abuse and exploitation, and receive reintegration support (including a lump-sum payment) to Bangladesh upon completion of the contract period. The program is managed entirely by the Korean government, and it offers high-quality intermediation, whereby employers’ needs for skills and workforce size are closely monitored to facilitate rigorous matching of migrant workers to employers.

Administrative capacity in the sending countries will need to increase if government-to-government programs such as the EPS or the Bangladesh-Malaysia government-to-government program are to be used further in the future. The improved migration outcomes and lower costs of intermediation are attributed to the public provision of services such as job matching and screening. However, this public provision requires substantial investments in government capacity for sustained service delivery. The Bangladesh-Malaysia government-to-government program experienced excess demand from aspiring migrants, with about 1.4 million eligible candidates applying for the 30,000 vacancies. The Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment’s in-house recruitment agency, Bangladesh Overseas Employment and Services Limited, administers programs that are similar to, albeit smaller than, the Korean EPS. However, the EPS is a channel for relatively modest migrant labor demand from Korea (relative to labor demand from GCC countries, for example), with a total of roughly 30,000 workers needed from all sending countries combined.