Seasonal Labor Mobility in the Pacific : Past Impacts, Future Prospects

The Pacific islands have weak economic growth and limited structural changecompared to the rest of developing Asia. Remoteness and low economic densityare two causes. To mitigate these constraints, bilateral arrangements withAustralia and New Zealand let Pacific workers seasonally migrate to accesshigher-paying, more dynamic labor markets. Managed circular schemes aredesigned to benefit employers in labor-intensive sectors like horticulture, Pacificworkers with limited employment opportunities in their own countries, and thecommunities providing workers. Several studies show large, positive impacts,but more general development impacts have been harder to find. Likewise, clearquantitative evidence of positive impacts in host countries has been hard toobtain. In this paper, we review the main seasonal labor mobility schemes in thePacific and provide new evidence on community-level and aggregate impacts