The Involvement of Indonesian Civil Society Organizations in the Policy-Making Process of Migrant Workers Protection in ASEAN

Abstract

Indonesia is biggest sending country of migrant worker in the region. half of the number of Indonesian worker is undocumented migrant workers that vulnerable to be a victim of worker rights or human rights violation. The absent of regional policy of migrant worker protection in ASEAN, makes the issue get less attention in ASEAN multilateral framework. Then in 2007 the first regional policy of migrant worker appeared in ASEAN, in the process it involves CSOs from all ASEAN member states. While ASEAN itself is regional organization that conduct state-centric system which position state as a leading actor. This condition bring up a question how the involvement of Indonesian CSO in the policy-making process of migrant workers protection in ASEAN. Through the perspective of critical theory of Habermas, there is a space in the public sphere that can be used by CSO to emancipate migrant workers by conducting dialogue by establish and join network that is HRWG and TFAMW, then CSO can involves in the ASEAN policy making process of migrant workers protection.

The Prospect of ASEAN Migration Governance

“…ASEAN policy-making is state-centric, where policy-making is in the hands of the government and decided in the ASEAN Summit as the head of government meeting, ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) as a ministerial meeting, and sectoral body-level ministerial meetings (Septiyana, 2019). On the issue of migration, there are three governance sub-regions, namely the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East Asian Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA), and Maritime Southeast Asia.…”

“…In developing regional instruments, ACMW facilitates civil society organizations in drafting a regional policy on migrant worker protection adopted by ASEAN in 2017 to be a Consensus (Septiyana, 2019). Moreover, ACMW arranges programs such as the Reintegration Program for Returning Workers, Studies on Demand and Supply of Migrant Workers in sending and receiving countries, and Studies on Social Security Portability for Migrant Workers in All ASEAN Member Countries (ILO, 2019;Valenciano, 2017) and organizes a variety of dialogues among stakeholders on the issue of migrant workers, including with AICHR (US-Mission-to-ASEAN, 2019).…”