Temporary labour migration in Asia: The transnationality‐precarity nexus

Abstract Much of intra‐Asian labour migration is regulated on the basis of governing tools that aim at managing cross‐border movement of workers on a strictly temporary, employer‐tied basis. The key elements involved in the operationalization of strictly temporary migration are recruitment, remittances and return; these three ‘Rs’ are also central to global policy discussions around the migration‐development nexus. The core premise of this paper is that this strict framework results in a particular form of migrant precarity which in turn shapes migrant transnationality, leaving migrants with severely circumscribed labour agency. This leads to the argument that temporary migration paradigm as practiced in much of Asia constitutes involuntary transnationalism. The paper ends by arguing that based on proactive migrant rights activism, the involuntary character of transnationalism is being challenged by bringing a different set of ‘Rs’ into the discussion derived from global social policy and global justice perspectives: regulation, redistribution and rights.