This open access book discusses the socio-political context of the COVID-19 crisis and questions the management of the pandemic emergency with special reference to how this affected the governance of migration and asylum. The book offers critical insights on the impact of the pandemic on migrant workers in different world regions including North America, Europe and Asia. The book addresses several categories of migrants including medical staff, farm labourers, construction workers, care and domestic workers and international students. It looks at border closures for non-citizens, disruption for temporary migrants as well as at special arrangements made for essential (migrant) workers such as doctors or nurses as well as farmworkers, ‘shipped’ to destination with special flights to make sure emergency wards are staffed, and harvests are picked up and the food processing chain continues to function. The book illustrates how the pandemic forces us to rethink notions like membership, citizenship, belonging, but also solidarity, human rights, community, essential services or ‘essential’ workers alongside an intersectional perspective including ethnicity, gender and race.

The research reports and statements by government representives contained in this volume were presented at the Policy Workshop on International Migration in Asia and the Pacific held at Bangkok from 15-21 October 1985. The workshop was the final activity of a 2-year Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) project on international migration policy in Asia and the Pacific, funded by the UN Fund for Population Activities. The 2nd phase of the project includes the studies reported in this volume, which were intended to be exploratory. They were meant to assess the current state of knowledge regarding return migration and to identify critical issues that would require further investigation. 5 of the studies are concerned with return migration from temporary employment, primarily in the Middle East. Because many of the labor-sending countries of the Mediterranean basin experienced a rapid expansion of labor emigration (largely to northern and western Europe) and a contraction of the flow and increase in return migration prior to current trends in Asian labor migration, it was felt that a background paper on that experience would be value to policy makers in the ESCAP region. Migration from the Pacific sub-region of ESCAP is both of more variable duration and less heavily labor-oriented than temporary migration from Asian countries to the Middle East. The workshop's objectives were 1. to bring together researchers and policy makers to review carefully the results of the 7 studies carried out as part of the project, 2. to relate the research findings to feasible government policies for the reintegration of returning labor migrants, and 3. to make and disseminate policy recommendations to governments in the ESCAP region.

The European Union (EU) is one of the most favored destinations for immigrants in the world. The subject of migration has been moving up the policy agenda of the EU for some time now. This increasing emphasis will continue with the EU 2020 (post-Lisbon) Strategy, which refers to the potential contribution of migration to EU growth and promotes the idea of labor mobility. Faced with an aging population, possible labor and skills shortages in the economies, and the need to compete for talent with countries such as Australia, Canada, and the United States, the EU is beginning to see legal migration as an opportunity and is thus taking a more proactive approach toward it. 'Migration and Skills: The Experience of Migrant Workers from Albania, Egypt, Moldova, and Tunisia' aims to unravel the complex relationship between migration and skills development. Based upon extensive field surveys carried out by the European Training Foundation and joint analysis of data with the World Bank, the book paints a precise picture of potential and returning migrants from four very different countries two traditional (Egypt, Tunisia) and two new (Albania, Moldova) sending countries. It describes the skills these migrants possess, the extent to which migrants are able to use their skills and training while abroad, and the impact that the experience of migration has on their skills development. The book also offers suggestions on how the governments of countries sending migrants and countries receiving them could move towards more eff ective policies for managing legal migration flows. Policies that address the increasingly circular nature of migration benefit all parties involved. By studying the phenomenon of migration in detail, 'Migration and Skills: The Experience of Migrant Workers from Albania, Egypt, Moldova, and Tunisia' seeks to promote a better understanding of the human faces behind migration: who they are and what they can offer, both to their host countries and their origin countries to which they return.