[working papers / books] 

WORKING PAPERS ON ASIAN LABOUR is a prepublication series inaugurated in 1997 by the International Research Programme Changing Labour Relations in Asia (CLARA) to highlight and promote research and scholarship in the field of labour relations in Asia. Through distribution of these works CLARA hopes to encourage international discussion and exchange. This vehicle of publicizing works in progress or in a prepublication stage is open to all scholars working in the field of labour relations in Asia. In this context, research by scholars from outside CLARA can also be disseminated as a WORKING PAPER.

CLARA: Working Papers on Asian Labour

1. Prabhu Mohapatra, Andrew Wells, Samita Sen, Asian Labour. A Debate on Culture, Consciousness and Representation. Amsterdam, 1997. (PDF, 67 Kb)

2. Jan Breman, Otto van den Muijzenberg, Ben White, Labour Migration in Asia. Amsterdam, 1998. (PDF, 99 Kb)

3. Jan Breman, A Study of Industrial Labour in Post-Colonial India. Amsterdam, 1998. (PDF, 248 Kb)

4. Xin Meng, The Economic Position of Women in Asia. Amsterdam, 1998 (.pdf, 256 Kb.)

5. Rosanne Rutten, High-cost Activism and the Worker Household: Revolutionary Activism among Phillippine plantation workers. Amsterdam, 1998. (PDF, 90 Kb)

6. Amarjit Kaur, Women's Work: Gender and Labour Relations in Malaysia. Amsterdam, 1999. (PDF, 928 Kb)

7. Peter Boomgaard, Labour in Java in the 1930s. Amsterdam, 1999 (PDF, 151 Kb)

8. Shigeru Sato, Labour Relations in Japanese Occupied Indonesia, Amsterdam, 2000(.pdf, 139 Kb)

9. Edsel E. Sajor, Are They Incompatible? Modern Farming and Non-Market Labour in the Northern Philippine Uplands, Amsterdam, 2000 (.pdf, 115 Kb)

10. Babette P. Resurreccion, From Erosion Control to Food Crisis Management - Changing gender divisions of labor in a Philippine upland village, Amsterdam, 2000 (.pdf, 171 Kb)

11. Adapa Satyanarayana, "Birds of Passage"; Migration of South Indian Labour Communities to South-East Asia; 19-20th Centuries, A.D., Amsterdam, 2001 (.pdf, 143 Kb.)

12. Peter Wad, Transforming Insdustrial Relations : the Case of the Malaysian Auto Industry, Amsterdam, 2001 (.pdf, 142 Kb)

13. Erman Erwiza, Hidden Histories: Gender, Family and Community in the Ombilin Coal Mines (1892-1965), Amsterdam, 2002 (.pdf, 114 Kb)

14. Yoko Hayashi, Agencies and Clients: Labour Recruitment in Java, 1870s-1950s, Amsterdam, 2002 (.pdf, 370 Kb) [updated version, July 2003]

15. Rohini Hensman, The Impact of Globalisation on Employment in India and Responses from the Formal and Informal Sectors, Amsterdam, 2001 (.pdf, 126 Kb)

16. Elena Ruiz Abril and Ben Rogaly, Migration and Social Relations: an Annotated Bibliography on Temporary Migration for Rural Manual Work, Amsterdam, 2001 (.pdf, 157 Kb)

17. Rachel Silvey, Transnational Domestication. State Power and Indonesian Migrant Women in Saudi Arabia, Amsterdam, 2004 (.pdf, 150 Kb)

Those interested should write to
CLARA, International Institute of Social History, Cruquiusweg 31, 1019 AT, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Telephone + 31-20-6685866, Fax + 31-20-6654181,
e-mail chlia@iisg.nl

Making Money Off Migrants. The Indonesian Exodus to Malaysia
Sidney Jones
Hong Kong: Asia 2000 Ltd and University of Wollongong: Centre for Asia Pacific Transformation Studies, 2000
ISBN 962-7160-83-0, 159 pp.

Making Money Off Migrants is a case study of the plight of the migrant worker. While it focuses on the experience of Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia, many of the problems described would be familiar to migrants In the United States or Germany. It examines the stages through which migrants move from recruitment in their villages to their travel to a departure point in Indonesia to arrival in Malaysia and often, to eventual arrest and deportation. It shows the abuses they can suffer, including extorting and illegal detention, long before they ever reach Malaysia; the often dangerous journeys that undocumented migrants attempt, in part because official procedures are too costly and burdensome, and the difficulties they encounter on the Malaysian side, from unpaid wages to lack of recourse in case of employer abuse. It shows how the dividing line between documented and undocumented workers becomes very blurred, with workers wishing to go to Malaysia legally often becoming the victims of unscrupulous Indonesian officials. And it sets these problems in the context of the ever-changing policies of the Indonesian and Malaysian governments. The book concludes with a plea to recognise the importance of protecting the rights of migrant workers.

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