posted on 2024-09-05, 22:08authored byMaureen Hickey, Pitra Narendra, Katie Rainwater
This working paper provides an overview of migration policy analysis in academic and policy (‘grey’) literature for Southeast Asia, as well as a brief outline of the current migration policy environment in each of the eleven states of the region. The firstpart of the paper examines the major categories and forms of migration policy in Southeast Asia, and considers the ways in which policy has been understood, theorised and analysed both within and outside academia. This paper differs from a number of otheranalyses, many of which are referenced here, as it is primarily concerned with the current state of theoretical analysis and scholarly research on policymaking rather than with a country-by-country evaluation of migration policies, or with bilateral or multilateral comparisons of national migration policies and border regimes. The second section does, however, shift focus to the national level and provides a brief synopsis of the major migration issues, migration policies and migration policy agreements for each of the eleven countries in the Southeast Asia region, identified here in alphabetical order as the State of Brunei (Brunei), the Kingdom of Cambodia (Cambodia), the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (East Timor), the Republic of Indonesia (Indonesia), the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos), the Federation of Malaysia (Malaysia), the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (Myanmar/Burma), the Republic of the Philippines (the Philippines), the Republic of Singapore (Singapore), the Kingdom of Thailand (Thailand), and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Vietnam). The commonly used name for each country (shown in parentheses) will be used throughout the remainder of this paper.