Why Low-skilled Migration Matters?

• Author: Pranoto Iskandar - Nicola Piper
• Position: Institute for Migrant Rights, Cianjur, Indonesia - University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
• Pages: 577-581

e Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law

ISSN: 2338-7602; E-ISSN: 2338-770X

http://www.ijil.org

© 2014 e Institute for Migrant Rights Press

IJICL’s Note

Why loW-skillEd MiGration

MattErs

Pranoto Iskandar & Nicola Piper

Institute for Migrant Rights, Cianjur—Indonesia

University of Sydney, Sydney—Australia

E-mail: pranotoi@imr.or.id; nicola.piper@sydney.edu.au

Migration is now widely acknowledged as an issue that requires con-

certed coordination beyond the national level.1 As many studies con-

rm, if it is managed properly, migration can produce enormous

potential for migrants and their families, region and beyond.2 To be

clear, this position applies not only to the so-called high-skilled but

also, more importantly, to low-skilled migrants that have been viewed

unfavorably in Southeast Asia,3 including, from the perspective of the

1. See e.g., Jagdish Bhagwati, Border beyond Control, 82 F A. 98-104

(2003) (advocating the view “[t]he world badly needs enlightened immigra-

tion practices to be spread and codied. A World Migration Organization

would begin to do that by juxtaposing each nation’s entry, exit, and resident

policies toward migrants, whether legal or illegal, economic or political, skilled

or unskilled. Such a project is well worth putting at the center of policymakers’

concerns).

2. See e.g., L P, L T P C: B  G-

  G L M (2006).

3. Susan Kneebone, e Governance of Labor Migration in Southeast Asia, 16

G G 383-96 (2010) (Noting that ASEAN’s human rights ‘ap-