In Malaysia, Indonesian migrants are showing an increasingly clear preference for informal transfer mechanisms compared to their counterparts in other countries. A little less than half of all Indonesian migrants overseas&—thought to be around 2 million&—are working in Malaysia. An increasing number of migrants are women, and the corridor is also marked by a high number of undocumented migrants. Despite the increasing flows of migrants, only about 10 percent of the estimated flow of remittances into Indonesia from Malaysia is transferred through the formal system. The extent of the preference fo.

'The Malaysia-Indonesia Remittance Corridor' finds that Indonesian migrants to Malaysia are showing an increasingly clear preference for informal transfer mechanisms compared to their counterparts in other countries. A little less than half of all Indonesian migrants overseas--thought to be around 2 million--are working in Malaysia. An increasing number of migrants are women, and the corridor is also marked by a high number of undocumented migrants. Only about 10 percent of the estimated flow of remittances into Indonesia from Malaysia is transferred through the formal system. The extent of this preference for the informal sector is unique to this remittance corridor. Indonesian migrants in other countries are using the formal sector far more than the migrants in Malaysia. In addition, Indonesian women and undocumented migrants in Malaysia especially find formal sector transfers either hard to access or inappropriate for their needs. This report gives an overview of the Malaysia-Indonesia remittance corridor and suggests policy avenues for improving access to formal remittance transfer channels; increasing the transparency of the flows and the cost structure; and facilitating remittance transfers, particularly for undocumented and female migrant workers.

This report identifies challenges in the migration process from Nepal to Qatar (related to high migration costs and their financing) and constraints in the remittance transfer process from Qatar to Nepal, which together limit the development and poverty reduction impact of remittance flows to Nepali households. The report analyzes migration practices, remittance transfer processes, and their underlying legal and regulatory framework in the Qatar-Nepal Corridor in order to provide policy recommendations that would help improve the scale and impact of remittance transfers from Qatar to Nepal, and enhance the integrity of migration and remittances in the corridor. These recommendations are especially important given that although Nepalis constitute around a quarter of the migrant labor-force in Qatar, they send home only 7 percent of total remittance outflows from Qatar. This corridor has several distinctive features. First, the majority of remittance flows from Qatar to Nepal are being transferred through officially regulated remittance channels. One of the reasons for this is actually the second feature of this corridor, namely, the officially managed migration process from Nepal to Qatar (as a result of which the majority of migrants are documented workers). The third feature is the contrast between the high competition and low prices of remittance services in this corridor on the one hand, and the contradictory rules and high costs incurred during the migration process on the other hand. Finally, as a by-product of the complex migration process which involves multiple players, financial transfers through informal mechanisms take place from Nepal to Qatar in order to pay the commissions of manpower agencies and middlemen. In Chapter I, the process of migration from Nepal to Qatar is explained and analyzed. Chapter II looks at the remittance transfer process from Qatar to Nepal. Chapter III provides an overview of the legal and regulatory framework underpinning remittance transfers in both in Nepal and Qatar. Finally, Chapter IV summarizes the main findings, identifies the main challenges and provides policy recommendations on how to improve the efficiency of the migration and the scale and impact remittance transfers in the corridor.

Several economies in the Caribbean region, especially from the lower-income group, are highly dependent on remittances. Between 1991 and 2006, the combined flows of total remittances reaching the Caribbean have averaged almost 17 percent annual growth, surpassing US$6 billion in 2005 and overtaking the region’s total ODA and FDI inflows. In addition, remittances represent more than 20 percent of the domestic gross domestic product (GDP) in some Caribbean countries and have played a significant role in lessening both balance of payment deficits and the impact of natural disasters to which the region is particularly vulnerable. This study undertakes an analysis of the various dynamics underlying the Canada-Caribbean remittance corridor, including Caribbean migration issues and diaspora dynamics, remittance market landscapes, and regulatory frameworks. The study is intended to assist Canadian and Caribbean national authorities to sustain the continued growth and competitiveness of their remittance industries, while protecting them abuse by criminals. The study particularly emphasizes continued policy improvements in each country’s regulatory framework to improve financial sector development and to enhance poverty reduction.

Island Southeast Asia was once a thriving region, and its products found eager consumers from China to Europe. Today, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia are primarily exporters of their surplus of cheap labor, with more than ten million emigrants from the region working all over the world. How did a prosperous region become a peripheral one? In The Making of a Periphery, Ulbe Bosma draws on new archival sources from the colonial period to the present to demonstrate how high demographic growth and a long history of bonded labor relegated Southeast Asia to the margins of the global economy. Bosma finds that the region’s contact with colonial trading powers during the early nineteenth century led to improved health care and longer life spans as the Spanish and Dutch colonial governments began to vaccinate their subjects against smallpox. The resulting abundance of workers ushered in extensive migration toward emerging labor-intensive plantation and mining belts. European powers exploited existing patron-client labor systems with the intermediation of indigenous elites and non-European agents to develop extractive industries and plantation agriculture. Bosma shows that these trends shaped the postcolonial era as these migration networks expanded far beyond the region. A wide-ranging comparative study of colonial commodity production and labor regimes, The Making of a Periphery is of major significance to international economic history, colonial and postcolonial history, and Southeast Asian history.

Malaysia is one of the most intriguing countries in Asia in many respects. It consists of several distinct areas, not only geographically but ethnically as well; along with Malays and related groups, the country has a very large Indian and Chinese population. The spoken languages obviously vary at home, although Bahasa Malaysia is the official language and nearly everyone speaks English. There is also a mixture of religions, with Islam predominating among the Malays and others, Hinduism and Sikhism among the Indians, mainly Daoism and Confucianism among the Chinese, but also some Christians as well as older indigenous beliefs in certain places. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Malaysia contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Malaysia.

Rural life in Southeast Asia is being transformed by new and intensifying processes of migration and mobility. Migration out of rural areas creates new forms of class mobility, familial relations, production processes and income. Migration into rural areas creates a new and sometimes marginalized workforce, contestation over resource access, and the juxtaposition of culturally different groups. At the same time, everyday mobility stretches the spatial boundaries of village and family life. The bounded space of the village is no longer adequate to understand the dynamics that are driving (and resulting from) rural social change. This collection of original studies explores the cultural, economic and environmental dimensions of intensifying migration and mobility in rural Southeast Asia at multiple scales. Diverse processes are explored including rural-urban flows, rural-rural movement, everyday mobilities, and international migrations into regional and global labour markets. Drawing on fieldwork in six countries across the region, these essays also explore what migration means for our understanding of class, citizenship, gender and the state in a rapidly changing part of the world. This book was based on two parts of a special issue of Critical Asian Studies.