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Theme: 3. Prosperity, the Pains of Growth and its Governance
Denise Spitzer
University of Alberta, Canada
Denise Spitzer
University of Alberta, Canada
Nicole Constable
University of Pittsburgh, United States
Denise Spitzer
University of Alberta, Canada
Marian Sanchez
University of Alberta, Canada
Irfan Wahyudi
Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia
Ratih Anwar
Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia
Migration has been promoted as a tool of development by institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Union and embraced by countries, including Indonesia and the Philippines, who seek to export labour migrants, and by those who hope to benefit from their labour under the framework of migration control. The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, as the recognized framework for improved migration governance, asserts that migration should not be driven by economic necessity due to the inability of people to engage in remunerative employment opportunities in their home country. Despite this, poverty induced out migration remains a reality in both Indonesia and the Philippines. In what is known as the migration and development nexus, temporary, circular migration is thought to contribute to household, community, and national poverty alleviation through the leveraging of both financial and social remittances. Remittances are meant to provide migrants and their families with access to resources that can raise them out of poverty, transforming them into agents of global capitalist development.
Thus constituted as ‘agents of development’ who bear a moral responsibility to family and nation, Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers are tasked with not just sustaining their families, but with enhancing the economy of their homelands through remittances shared with their networks in their countries of origin. Macroeconomic data and the recounting of individual success stories have generally underpinned this construction of migrants as national heroes for development reflecting the ‘neo-optimist’ view of the migration and development nexus. Nevertheless, migrant workers often contend with low wages and degraded and denigrating status, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on their primary research, presenters in this panel will forward the lived experiences of migrant workers, their families, and their communities at home and in their host countries to focus on the flows of migrants, money, ideas, and materials from Indonesia and the Philippines circulating through sites of labour migration, Hong Kong and the Republic of South Korea, that will disrupt the dominant discourse that temporary migration is a pathway to prosperity.
Presenter: Denise L. Spitzer – University of Alberta
Presenter: Marian C. Sanchez – University of Alberta
Presenter: Irfan Wahyudi – Universitas Airlangga
Presenter: Ratih Anwar – Universitas Gadjah Mada