Fair Recruitment for Mekong Migrant Workers: Examining Progress and Gaps Along Migration Corridors to Thailand and Japan

Formal labour migration remains an important source of employment, income and skills development for workers across the Greater Mekong Subregion. However, many migrant workers continue to face excessive recruitment fees and migration-related costs, alongside limited access to accurate, rights-based information. Despite ongoing government reforms and industry initiatives to improve recruitment practices and information provision, significant challenges remain. This collaborative study by the Mekong Migration Network (MMN), with support from Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, examines two key issues affecting workers migrating through formal labour channels: recruitment fees and related costs for workers migrating from Myanmar to Thailand, and from Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam to Japan; and access to rights-based information during the pre-departure stage. The study explores these challenges in the context of recent policy developments and initiatives to reduce recruitment costs, including fee caps and zero-recruitment-fee models, as well as efforts to strengthen Pre-Departure Orientation (PDO) and Pre-Departure Training (PDT).

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