There has been little engagement between the organized labor and labor migration literatures. Studies of organized labor movements in Asia have traditionally focused on trade unions that organize workers in factories, in offices, and on the plantations of the countries in which those unions are based, or on international cooperation between such unions. Studies of migrant labor, on the other hand, have tended to emphasize the demographic features of labor migration flows, or the experiences of migrant workers in either their country of origin or their host society. Yet, with the help of local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), migrant workers from countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia are beginning to organize both at home and abroad. This article examines the emergence and operation of both migrant labor NGOs and migrant labor associations from a labor movement perspective. It focuses on the schism between the literature on labor migration, in which descriptions of migrant labor NGOs most often appear, and the literature on organized labor, which has generally ignored both the increasing significance of temporary overseas labor migration and the role of non-union bodies in the organization of labor. Examples from Indonesia and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China (hereinafter Hong Kong) are used to argue that the experiences of migrant labor NGOs and migrant labor associations should be taken more seriously by trade unions and by the scholars who study them.

Source: International Organization for Migration (2004). International Migration, vol. 42 (5)