Emigration States: Migration-Development Policymaking in the Asia-Pacific

Matt Withers

ISBN 10: 1009318748 / ISBN 13: 9781009318747

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2025

About this Item

75 pages. 6.00x0.19x9.00 inches. In Stock.

Seller Inventory # x-1009318748

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Emigration States: Migration-Development Policymaking in the Asia-Pacific
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009318748
• ISBN 13: 9781009318747
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Brand New
• Weight: 0.15 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

Guestworker migration has become an increasingly prominent feature within the economic landscape of the Asia-Pacific. Longstanding regional disparities have underscored the emergence of fragile remittance economies where a structural reliance on labour-export has offered an unsustainable 'fix' for stubborn developmental challenges. Combining political-economic and Foucauldian frames of analysis, this Element reconciles the macroeconomic contradictions of remittance economies with the political logics bound up in emigration policymaking, contending that new modalities of governance have emerged in the transition from developmental to emigration states. Comparing the policy histories of four diverse remittance economies in the region – Myanmar, the Philippines, Samoa, and Sri Lanka – it frames emigration policies as complex, inward-facing interventions that simultaneously promote and constrain mobility to address counterpoised economic and political pressures. Important variations are explored though the example of gendered migration bans, whereby emigration states have situated women's bodies as sites for resolving contextually specific social tensions accompanying labour-export.