Economic crisis deepened migration because expelled workers resisted and employers demanded them back

Evidence

The Asian Crisis of 1997-98 caused significant changes in migratory patterns. Laborimporting countries tried to reduce dependence on foreign workers through nonrenewal of contracts and expulsion of undocumented workers. In Malaysia, for example, the government announced that up to a million workers would be sent home and there were mass roundups of illegals, who were confined in special camps before being sent back to Indonesia and the Philippines. However, there was great pressure for emigration from countries like Indonesia, where the crisis led to soaring unemployment. In any case, Malaysian plantation owners soon found that they could not manage without foreign workers. Even unemployed Malaysians were not prepared to do this type of work. The plantation owners lobbied for a halt to the expulsion policy. In fact the number of migrant workers deported was quite small, and new recruitment started again fairly rapidly. By 1999 Asian economies were recovering and migration resumed. In the long run the crisis actually exacerbated the income differential between the least developed countries and the better-off economies. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3881

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the law-merchant and private-judges material on labor markets failing without willing foreign workers, and to the governance-of-mobility literature.
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to ‘On Sacrifice’ theme of elites shaping policy against economic reality — here plantation owners force reversal of expulsion policy.