Abstract
Southeast Asia accounts for nearly a tenth of total worldwide cross-border movements of migrant workers. Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, and Philippines make up the sending countries while Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand are the major destinations. Migrant worker movements are predominantly in production process and low- to medium-skilled sectors. It is not unusual for irregular or undocumented movements to take place. In not a few instances, migrants work under harsh and exploitative conditions. In recent years, however, ASEAN has taken steps to manage labor migration at the regional level. The paper argues that ASEAN has not managed these cross-border labor flows as well as it should particularly in terms of protecting and promoting the human rights of migrants. It will be difficult to establish the genuine building blocks for a regional human rights mechanism unless there is a diffusion of alternative universal norms and standards to what ASEAN already embodies. As long as states resist any attempt to weaken or question or deligitimize their capacity to determine who gets to enter, stay, and leave their jurisdictions, it will be difficult to establish an effective migrant rights framework for the region.