COVID-19 has stirred an outpouring of support for nurses, who are often the first responders in public health emergencies. But it has also shown up the looming shortage of nurses worldwide, and the costs of outmigration of health professionals from  developing countries that need them. Yvonne T Chua tells us more in this Reporting ASEAN article.

Click on the location points in this map to read thoughts from Filipinos, probably the world’s most globalized nations with over 10 million people overseas. Their thoughts provide a good lens through which to see how different, yet the same, our situations are during COVID-19.

The Philippines, the world’s top exporter of labour, is seeing group after group of overseas workers return after losing their jobs in the wake of the economic shock dealt by the COVID-19 crisis. The country has never seen anything like this in its 50 years of experience in labour exports. How will the pandemic change migration? Johanna Son of Reporting ASEAN reports in this Q&A chat.

Poor economic conditions at home and easy border crossings have meant that many Vietnamese are venturing to neighbouring countries like Laos and Malaysia for employment opportunities. Phuong Anh of Red Scarf magazine looks at the social cost of migration for work and the impact on the children of such migrants in this Reporting ASEAN story.

The reintegration of Southeast Asia’s migrant workers is as important as their departure and the remittances they send home to labour-exporting countries like the Philippines, Indonesia and Myanmar. But as Tess Bacalla explains in this piece for the ‘Reporting ASEAN’ series, ASEAN is unlikely to focus on reintegration when it is averse to addressing the issue of unskilled workers in the region in the first place.

In the second part of this series, Tess Bacalla looks into ASEAN’s challenge of trying to forge regional policy – and action – on labour migration, a topic that member countries have for long considered a touchy issue and have conflicting interests on.