ABSTRACT
Theorising transnational labour migration in a ‘global’, ‘post-colonial’ and ‘late capitalist’ world is a complex undertaking. Somehow less decipherable in terms of clear colonial or imperial histories, or through a hegemonic frame of global capitalist development, it is difficult to make presumptions about what propels millions of people to transgress national borders in search of greener pastures. The conditions of much of this migration are, of course, economic. The ‘miracle’ economies of East and Southeast Asia have generated much intra-regional migration throughout the 1980s and 1990s, for example, and the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s has prompted several governments to alter their policies on guest workers. Yet a purely economic analysis of labour migration tends to eschew more nuanced understandings of the intersections between cultural and economic politics in the Asia-Pacific region. Given that labour migration has also seen the increased importance of hundreds – if not thousands – of political organisations, there is a need to ask different questions about how labour migration might also be transforming Asian cultural politics. These organisations assert pressure for social change which transgress clear national boundaries, and the networks produced through advocacy programmes provide interesting insights to emerging political spaces where activists negotiate the meanings of transnational labour migration.
