ABSTRACT
South Asian countries have witnessed large outflows of migrant workers, especially to the Middle East including Gulf States, since the onset of the oil boom in the early 1970s. The governance of these flows and protection of their national workers emerged as major issues from the beginning. The major origin countries of South Asia revised their outdated migration laws and regulations in the late 1970s and 1980s. While some countries (Bangladesh and Nepal) have made substantive changes to the original legislation since then, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have not still managed to update their laws and regulations to deal with changing demands. The focus of most legislation has been on outflows of national workers (emigration), even where there are sizeable inflows of foreign workers (immigration). The objective of the chapter is to review the legal and regulatory frameworks relating to labour migration in South Asian countries in a comparative perspective. The chapter will discuss consistency of legislation with international instruments in general and those ratified, their adequacy in dealing with current challenges of migration governance, migrant protection and the migration-development nexus, and gaps in enforcement and access to justice. Based on the analysis, some recommendations will be made on the way forward.
