Publications on Migrants

Viet Nam is a source country for labour migration with extensive outmigration for Vietnamese workers to countries in Asia and worldwide, actively supported by the Vietnamese Government as a key economic development strategy. Within the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), Vietnamese migration is largely irregular. Cambodia is the most popular destination, with an estimated 49,000 Vietnamese migrants in 20091 working in trades, services, and construction, and a further 1 million who relocated to Viet Nam between 1985 and 1998 and still have irregular status.

Internal migration in Thailand is largely from the north-eastern rural areas and the conflict-affected areas in the south to the Greater Bangkok region. Thai women tend to find employment in entertainment, sales, and garment work and men in such jobs as cleaners, drivers, and in factories. Thai nationals also work in small numbers in Lao PDR and China. 

The Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) of Mahidol University was selected by the National Committee for the Advancement of AIDS Prevention and the National AIDS Management Center (NAMc) to implement the Evaluation of the National HIV Prevention Program among Key Affected Populations and Prisoners in Thailand during 2010-2013.

This book explores new concepts and identifies critical themes in migration studies in ASEAN, with a focus on selected emerging trends, namely: various forms and degrees of environmental change and how these changes transform migration; labour, human trafficking and migration; migrant children; and gender.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the UNDP Asia-Pacific Regional Centre jointly convened this 2012 Consultation on the Memorandum of Understanding to Reduce HIV Vulnerability Associated with Population Movement, in order to formulate concrete national, bilateral and subregional activities to address the challenges faced by migrants and mobile populations in this area.

Migrant health issues have risen on the agenda of policymakers in the Asia-Pacific region in recent years, generating momentum at the very highest levels of government. The challenge now is how to translate this momentum into visible changes on the ground.

This Project Briefing explores the experiences of these people as they migrate, drawing on findings from a baseline study on their vulnerabilities, particularly to HIV and AIDS, as they move between their communities of origin in Nepal and Bangladesh to India. Although the baseline used quantitative and qualitative approaches, stories of harassment and violence emerge mostly from the qualitative elements.

This report presents the findings of a baseline study carried out in India and Nepal for CARE's Enhancing Mobile Population’s Access to HIV & AIDS Services, Information and Support (EMPHASIS) program. This program seeks to reduce the vulnerability of mobile populations to HIV & AIDS along two mobility routes between Bangladesh and India and Nepal and India. The objectives of this study were to understand the vulnerabilities faced by mobile populations by exploring the volume, pattern and drivers of mobility.

The research study highlights economic vulnerabilities as the primary driver of migration from Bangladesh to Mumbai (India) or Kolkata (India).

Various surveys and studies (e.g. Barbora et al., 2008; Theime, 2006) reveal that migrants are disadvantaged relative to the native population in terms of employment, education and health.