This document reports on the Policy Workshop on International Migration in Asia and the Pacific (Bangkok, October 15-21, 1985), which was organized and funded by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the UN Fund for Population Activities, and whose objectives were to 1) review the results of 7 studies initiated at a similar conference the preceding year, 2) relate the research findings to government policies for return migrant reintegration, and 3) make and disseminate policy recommendations to ESCAP regional governments. The subjects of the 7 studies concerned 1) decision making processes and the value orientation of return migrants, 2) Korean migrants returning from the Middle East, 3) return migration in Mediterranean basin countries, 4) return migration in Sri Lanka, 5) Thai return migration, 6) Filipino return workers, and 7) return migration's effects on a Tongan village. Conference attendees came from Australia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga, and Italy. The workshop concentrated on migrants returning from jobs in the Middle East, since in 1983, 3.5 million ESCAP overseas workers were employed in that region. The workshop's agenda included 1) return migration measurement, 2) government and private company policies, 3) reintegration of return workers, 4) return migration in Mediterranean basin countries; 5) the village level impact of international migration, and 6) policy formulation for return migrants. The most important recommmendations made by the workshop were that 1) a major study should be undertaken to ascertain the numbers and skills of migrant workers in the Middle Eastern receiving countries, 2) this study should estimate future Middle Eastern labor demand, in terms of volume and skills, and 3) the study should be conducted under appropriate experts appointed by the ESCAP secretariat, and should report their findings as soon as possible.

This publication presents the current migration policy debates in Asia, which are largely influenced by recent macroeconomic and labour market developments in the region.

The research reports and statements by government representives contained in this volume were presented at the Policy Workshop on International Migration in Asia and the Pacific held at Bangkok from 15-21 October 1985. The workshop was the final activity of a 2-year Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) project on international migration policy in Asia and the Pacific, funded by the UN Fund for Population Activities. The 2nd phase of the project includes the studies reported in this volume, which were intended to be exploratory. They were meant to assess the current state of knowledge regarding return migration and to identify critical issues that would require further investigation. 5 of the studies are concerned with return migration from temporary employment, primarily in the Middle East. Because many of the labor-sending countries of the Mediterranean basin experienced a rapid expansion of labor emigration (largely to northern and western Europe) and a contraction of the flow and increase in return migration prior to current trends in Asian labor migration, it was felt that a background paper on that experience would be value to policy makers in the ESCAP region. Migration from the Pacific sub-region of ESCAP is both of more variable duration and less heavily labor-oriented than temporary migration from Asian countries to the Middle East. The workshop's objectives were 1. to bring together researchers and policy makers to review carefully the results of the 7 studies carried out as part of the project, 2. to relate the research findings to feasible government policies for the reintegration of returning labor migrants, and 3. to make and disseminate policy recommendations to governments in the ESCAP region.

Against a background of past, limited examples of international cooperation, and ambitious hopes for extensive future efforts, this volume puts two related questions to the empirical test: under which conditions are states prepared to cooperate over international migration, and what form - bilateral, multilateral, formal, informal - will this cooperation take?