FORD
FOUNDATION PROJECTS
In 1999 the
former Migration and Multicultural Societies program of CAPSTRANS
received a US$300,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to study migration
issues in the Asia Pacific.
The APMRN
Secretariat coordinates three main research projects and a number of
smaller 'emergency' projects. In accordance with the conditions of the
Ford Foundation grant all projects are due to complete their research
by February 2002.
The three
main projects involve research teams in nine countries and were each
granted US$75,000 for their research. The emergency project budget was
US$50,000 and has been distributed to seven separate projects on the
decision of a committee composed of the Secretariat Director, the Chair
of the APMRN, and the APMRN Deputy Chairs.
Female
migration in the age of globalisation
This project
examined migration and its effects on families and communities in the
Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Yunnan Province in China. This
project was administered by Chulalongkorn University, Thailand under
the direction of Professor Supang Chantavanich.
Research
teams from Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and China surveyed 387
returnee migrants (133 in Indonesia, 98 in Thailand, 100 in the
Philippines and 56 in Yunnan) on their experiences, including the
impacts on their physical and mental health. From these interviews
10-15 women were selected for in-depth interviews in each country.
Parents and spouses were also interviewed, as were key informants.
Female
migration in the Asian region has become a significant issue for
researchers and governments since the 1980s. According to official
government statistics, over 60 percent of all new hirees from the
Philippines were female. For 1997-99 over 50 percent of all government
registered labour migrants from Indonesia were women. In Thailand,
nearly 20 percent of all officially registered overseas labour migrants
were women. An estimated 3000 women from Yunnan entered into sex work
in Thailand between 1990-1996.
The patterns
of male and female migration are in no way uniform. As preliminary
research for this project indicated, in some areas women were the
principle migrants. Marla Asis, of the Scalabrini Migration Center,
studied four communities in the Philippines and found three communities
saw predominantly male out-migration while women were the majority in
the fourth community.
Previous
research has focused on explanations of the phenomenon and the
vulnerable position of women migrants in highly gendered labour
markets. Commentators have mostly explained increasing female labour
migration as being a household rather than an individual decision,
suggesting that women migrate and return and do not consider their own
social and economic mobility outside the family.
Most studies
pay little attention to social consequences of women's migration and
women's own abilities. There is little examination of the impact of
women's labour migration on gender relations and little research into
the reintegration process.
The project
aimed to address the phenomenon of female migration from this
perspective. The four research teams met in July 200 to compare the
initial survey findings and presented a report at the APMRN's 4th
International Conference in Manila and have released a publication
Female Labour Migration in South East Asia: Change and Continuity which
is available from the Asia Research Center for Migration at the
Institute of Asian Studies at Chulalongkorn University Bangkok.
IRREGULAR
MIGRATION IN SOUTHESAST ASIA: DYNAMICS, PROTECTION AND POLICIES
This project
is administered by the Scalabrini Migration Centre in the Philippines
and involves Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Click here to view the
Executive Summary (pdf format).
RETURN
SKILLED MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT
This project
involves Australia, Bangladesh, China, Taiwan (unofficial member) and
Vietnam and is based in Wollongong. It examines return migrants and
migrants still abroad as agents of change.
This project
involves a number of Australian researchers including Associate
Professor Robyn Iredale (coordinator), Dr Fei Guo, Santi Rosario, Dr
Tana Li and, until recently, Professor Stephen Castles.
The Return
Migration Project held a successful Planning Workshop in Tokyo on 21-22
September 1999 and gave an update of its findings at the 2001 APMRN
conference in Manila. A final report is expected early in 2002.
The
Emergency projects
In addition
to these three main projects the Ford Foundation provided US$25,000 for
research coordination to help support the work of the APMRN
Secretariat, as well as an "Unallocated research budget" of US$50,000
to be used as seed funding for urgent new projects to be administered
by the APMRN Secretariat. These smaller projects are referred to as
emergency projects by the APMRN.
The first of
the Ford Foundation "Emergency projects" concerned the humanitarian
crisis in East Timor.
This was
considered by the APMRN committee to be an urgent issue worthy of
receiving Ford Foundation seed funding. Dr Chris McDowell, Visiting
Fellow to CAPSTRANS initiated an analytical study to monitor and
evaluate the humanitarian response to the East Timor crisis. The
concentration of effort in Darwin provided a unique opportunity to
observe the anatomy and orchestration of the response through
interviews with staff in the key agencies, attendance at coordination
and planning meetings, and the gathering and analysis of official
documentation. The report of this study was published in October 1999
as CAPSTRANS Research Paper No. 1 and is available in both PDF and in
hard copy from CAPSTRANS.
Vijay
Naidu's research on the Agricultural Landlords and Tenants Act (ALTA)
in Fiji examines the implications of population mobility brought about
by the expirey of land leases. With around 90% of all land in Fiji
under the effective control of the Native Land Trust Board (NLTB),
commercial agriculture is reliant on the willingness of the NLTB to
continue current arrangements. Naidu's research looks at Government
negotiation strategies with the NTLB, the prospects for farmers who
have rented land for decades and who may be left without a livelihood
if the land is resumed and policies of resettlement. Apart from
gathering much needed data on individual farmers' views about their
future, it is envisaged that research findings will form the basis of
policy recommendations designed to avoid or mitigate some of the
social, economic, environmental and political problems that may arise
from leases being extinguished.
In July of
2001 the Secretariat called for submissions for the last round of
emergency projects. In a competitive field the committee awarded funds
to:
- the Korean Migration Research Network for its
research on North Korean defectors and their lives and well-being after
defection;
- Indonesian co-ordinator Agus Dwiyanto (Population
Studies Centre, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta) for a policy study
on displaced persons in the era of regional autonomy which is a case
study on displaced persons in Pontianak, West Kalimantan; and
- Malaysian coordinator Diana Wong who is researching
political violence and migration in recent Acehnese migration to
Malaysia.
Robyn M.
Rodriguez (Berkeley/Ateneo de Manila) was granted a small amount of
funding to assist in her research into striking Filipino workers in
Brunei, as was DR Cynthia Hunter (Macquarie University, Sydney) for her
research into health risks to internally displaced persons in
Kalimantan.
These
publications are available by downloading them from this website.
