The Determinants of Immigrant Self-Employment in Australia

As a result of sustained and rapid economic growth since the middle of the 1980s, the Maldives currently enjoys a situation of full employment and a relatively high wage structure, as compared with other countries of SAARC.To maintain its tempo of economic growth, the country has therefore to depend largely upon expatriate Jabour from neighbouring countries, such as Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh.Many of these expatriate workers, particularly those who have low skills, are not easily assimilated into the relatively homogeneous Maldivian society.This paper has focused attention on the fact that although the organised sectors of the Maldivian economy have, comparatively recently, experienced shortage of Jabour, especially in tourism and the service sector, there is still a large pool of unemployed and underemployed workers in the unorganised sectors, such as in the fisheries.Many of these marginal and unemployed workers are women, and they live in remote islands, -away from the Male atoll.Poor educational facilities in the Maldives further contribute to the problem of relative underrepresentation of the Maldivians in the growth-oriented sectors of the economy.Suitable institutional reforms embracing better vocational training, better transport between islands, safer and culturally more acceptable work environment for women, and similar measures, would likely release a large untapped supply of Jabour and help overcome the current tight Jabour market situation.Nevertheless, the dependence on the expatriate Jabour would continue in the foreseable future.