The Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) continues to develop policies concerning the migration of the Cambodian workforce overseas as a way of increasing domestic economic growth and combating unemployment. The primary destinations for Cambodian workers are South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand. As regular migration for labor increases so does irregular migration.1The Report focuses on the migration of women to Malaysia (for domestic work) and men to Thailand (to work in agribusiness), analyzing the rules that govern regular migration while identifying legislation that can be employed to protect those who become victims during irregular migration and be used against those who perpetrate and profit from it. The stories of Samneang (a Khmer man migrating to Thailand) and Sopheap (a woman recruited to work in Malaysia) are used to illustrate different processes of labor migration and how the relevant laws can be applied in these contexts. The characters have been created to serve the purposes of the report and, while based on the experiences of actual migrants, do not refer directly to specific individuals.
Cambodia’s Labor Migration
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