More than 215 million people—approximately 3% of the world’s population—now live outside their country of birth (United Nations, 2009). Migration of individuals across international borders has socio-economic consequences both to the receiving and sending countries. One of the most important economic impacts of international migration is the amount of remittances sent home by migrants. World Bank (2011) estimated that developing countries received about $372 billion of remittances. Remittances serve as the second largest source of foreign reserves, next to exports of goods and services, for these countries. In addition, remittances benefit the poor households whose average income falls below the amount necessary to meet their most basic and non-food needs for the year.

This study focuses on the roles of international migration and remittances in the Philippines, which was ranked fourth in total international remittances received in 2009, after India, China, and Mexico (World Bank, 2012). The Philippine government refers to the temporary international workers or Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) as bagong bayani or new heroes. This epithet stems from the important roles that these migrant workers play: they often serve as the primary income providers for their families left in the Philippines, and their transfers are a source of foreign reserves for the Philippine economy.  

The colloquium presents evidence on three related research questions. The first is whether agricultural households in rural Philippines use remittances from OFWs, along with loans, and assets to mitigate the effect of negative shocks to their income. In particular, speaker Marjorie Pajaron will ask the question whether farmers depend on their network of family and friends when they encounter a natural disaster, like excessive rainfall or typhoon. The second is how migration affects the bargaining power within the household. Finally, she will discuss the remittance behavior of different types of migrants from the Philippines. 

Marjorie Pajaron joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center during the 2012–13 academic year from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa Department of Economics where she served as a lecturer.

She took part for five years in the National Transfer Accounts project based in Honolulu. Her research focuses on the role of migrant remittances as a risk-coping mechanism, as well as the importance of bargaining power in the intra-household allocation of remittances in the Philippines. Pajaron received a PhD in economics from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. 

Her recent working papers include: “Remittances, Informal Loans, and Assets as Risk-Coping Mechanisms: Evidence from Agricultural Households in Rural Philippines,” October 2012, Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Development Economics; “The Roles of Gender and Education on the Intra-household Allocations of Remittances of Filipino Migrant Workers,” June 2012; and “Are Motivations to Remit Altruism, Exchange, or Insurance? Evidence from the Philippines,” December 2011.

Malaysia’s 13^th general election is imminent and the opposition coalition (Pakatan Rakyat) is fragile. Inside the coalition, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and the secularist Democratic Action Party have little in common. PAS itself is split along generational lines and ideologically divided between reform-oriented pragmatists and hard-line Islamists. The youth wing of PAS is increasingly vocal in accusing the party of having abandoned key principles in the “Islamic struggle.” Based on anthropological fieldwork, Dominik Müller will review how PAS Youth members are contesting the party’s future in both political and cultural terms.

In Muslim politics in Malaysia, does increasing recourse to popular culture augur an incipient “post-Islamist” turn? Young Muslim activists in PAS are using YouTube and Facebook, commercial brands, celebrity personalities, and rock music to disseminate their call to “purify the struggle” for an Islamic state or “caliphate.” Do these “secular” media dilute if not drown out the politico-religious message? Or, given their popular appeal, do they render it all the more convincing? And with what implications for Islam and politics—in Malaysia and, analogously, elsewhere in the Muslim world?

Dominik Müller obtained his doctorate summa cum laude in 2012 from Frankfurt University, where he works as a research associate in the Department of Anthropology. His dissertation on Islam, politics, and youth in Malaysia will be published in 2013. His research project at Stanford, funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), examines patterns of socio-legal change in the Malay world.

The fastest growing economy in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is the Lao People's Democratic Republic. For a decade Steve Parker has been intensively involved on behalf of USAID as a resident adviser on economic and related legal reforms, first in Vietnam and for the last three years in Laos. In each country he has focused on helping the government fulfill the requirements of membership in the WTO. Vietnam joined the WTO in 2007 and Laos followed suit on 2 February 2013. He is also advising the Lao government on meeting its obligations under the ASEAN Economic Community that is scheduled for inauguration in 2015, and on implementing the 2005 U.S.-Lao PDR Bilateral Trade Agreement.  

Since the resignation of Indonesia’s authoritarian president Suharto in 1998, the country has made great strides in consolidating a democratic government. But it is by no means a model of tolerance. The rights of religious minorities are routinely trampled. Regulations against blasphemy and proselytizing are routinely used to prosecute minorities including atheists, Ahmadiyah, Bahais, Christians, and Shias. As of 2012 Indonesia had over 280 religiously motivated regulations restricting minority rights. 

Hard-line groups such as the Islam Defenders Front use narrow interpretations of local and national legislation as a key tool to suppress minorities. In 2006 two ministers in President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's cabinet jointly decreed stricter legal requirements for building a house of worship. The decree is enforced only on religious minorities, often when Islamists pressure local officials to refuse to authorize the construction of Christian churches or to harass those worshiping in “illegal” churches. More than 430 such churches have been closed since. Violent attacks on religious minorities have become more frequent—from 216 cases in 2010, to 244 in 2011, to 264 in 2012. What explains this record of intimidation? Can it be stopped, and if so, how?

Andreas Harsono is widely published. He co-wrote In Religion's Name: Abuses against Religious Minorities in Indonesia (Human Rights Watch, 2013). His commentaries appeared in 2012 in outlets ranging from The New York Times to The Myanmar Times. Other writings include My “Religion” Is Journalism (2010), a collection of his Indonesian-language essays. In 2003 he helped establish the Pantau Foundation, which trains Indonesian journalists and defends media freedom. In 1999 he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship on Journalism at Harvard. He co-founded the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (Bangkok,1998), the Institute for the Study of the Free Flow of Information (Jakarta, 1995), and the Alliance of Independent Journalists (Jakarta, 1994). Earlier in his career he edited Pantau, a monthly Indonesian magazine on journalism and the media. Still earlier he worked as a reporter for The Nation (Bangkok) and The Star (Kuala Lumpur). He describes himself as a “journalist-cum-activist”—an identity richly illustrated by his career.

Related Resources

Indonesia: Religious Minorities Targets of Rising Violence (HRW, press release)

Indonesia: Rising Violence Against Religious Minorities (HRW, slideshow)

In Religion’s Name: Abuses Against Religious Minorities in Indonesia (HRW, report)

For years former diplomat and academic Kishore Mahbubani has closely studied the changing relationship between Asia and the United States and its consequences in works like Can Asians Think? and The New Asian Hemisphere. In The Great Convergence, his new book, he assesses East and West at a remarkable turning point in world history and reaches an incredible conclusion.

China stands poised to become the world’s largest economy as soon as 2016. Unprecedented numbers of the world’s population, driven by Asian economic growth, are being lifted out of poverty and into the middle class. And with this creation of a world-wide middle class, there is an unprecedented convergence of interests and perceptions, cultures and values: a truly global civilization.  

A full 88% of the world’s population lives outside the West and is rising to Western living standards, and sharing Western aspirations. But while the world changes, our way of managing it has not and it must evolve. The Great Convergence outlines new policies and approaches that will be necessary to govern in an increasingly interconnected and complex environment. Multilateral institutions and world-wide governing organizations must be strengthened. National interests must be balanced against global interests. The United States and Europe must share power and China, India, Africa and the Islamic world must be integrated. And the world’s increasing consumption must be balanced against environmental sustainability.

About the Speaker

From 1971 to 2004 Kishore Mahbubani served in the Singapore Foreign Ministry, where he was Permanent Secretary from 1993 to 1998, served twice as Singapore’s Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), and in January 2001 and May 2002 served as President of the UN Security Council.

Mahbubani is the author of Can Asians Think?, Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust Between America and the World, and The New Asian Hemisphere: the Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.

Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines have listed him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world, and in 2009 the Financial Times included him on their list of Top 50 individuals who would shape the debate on the future of capitalism. In 2010 and 2011 he was selected as one of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers.

The world has undergone major drastic changes in the last two decades driven by several major factors, eg, explosion of human population and connectivity. Such changes seem further accelerated in recent years and it seems that our future becomes more uncertain and unpredictable. The Fukushima Nuclear Accident awakened us and led to creation of Independent Investigation Commission by the National Diet of Japan; The Commission Report revealed some of the fundamental issues of Japan’s nuclear policy. Meanwhile, multi-stakeholders’ engagement has become critical in various social affairs and in policy making domains within and across national boundaries, and has contributed in significant ways to affect the processes of addressing and impacting global agenda, such as climate change, food and water, energy, urbanization, biodiversity, human capital with shifting the balance of economy and power. In my view, the principles of our society may be changing quite fast heading somewhat differently from our conventional norm. The science community can and should contribute to these issues in nurturing future leaders, but in what way?

Kiyoshi Kurokawa is a graduate of University of Tokyo School of Medicine, trained in internal medicine and nephrology, in US 1969-84; Professor of Med, Dept Med ofUCLA Sch Med (79-84), Chair, Univ Tokyo Faculty of Med (89-96), Dean of Tokai Univ School of Med (96-02, President of Science Council of Japan (03-07), Science Advisor to Prime Minister (07-09), Board member of A*STAR (06-00), Bibliotheca Alexandria (04-08), Khalifa University (08- ), Okinawa Institute of Science and Tech (06- ), Global Science and Innovation Advisory Board of the Prime Minister of Malaysia (11-); President of Intl Soc Nephrology (97-99), Inst of Medicine of US Academies (92). Recently, chaired Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission by the National Diet of Japan (Dec 11-July 12). AAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award (2012), ‘100 Top Global Thinkers 2012” of Foreign Policy.

In recent years, China has had several confrontations with Vietnam, the Philippines and most recently Japan, over maritime sovereignty issues in the South and East China Seas. The popular press and specialists alike often portray these disputes as a clear indication of Beijing's growing willingness to coerce or intimidate its neighbors and disregard international norms and laws in the pursuit of its national objectives. Some observers associate Chinese behavior with a long-term strategic plan to dominate the Asia-Pacific. Dr. Michael D. Swaine, a senior associate in the Asia Program and a China national security specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, will offer his interpretation of the interests, motives, and policies driving Chinese behavior in this potentially volatile area, and assess the implications for the United States and other Asian powers.

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Michael Swaine joined the Carnegie Endowment as a senior associate after twelve years at the RAND Corporation. He specializes in Chinese security and foreign policy, U.S.–China relations, and East Asian international relations. One of the most prominent U.S. analysts in Chinese security studies, he is the author of more than ten monographs on security policy in the region. At RAND, he was a senior political scientist in international studies and also research director of the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy.

Swaine was appointed as the first recipient of the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy Chair in Northeast Asian Security in recognition of the exceptional contributions he has made in his field.

Prior to joining RAND in 1989, Swaine was a consultant with a private sector firm; a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley; and a research associate at Harvard University. He attended the Taipei and Tokyo Inter-University Centers for Language Study, administered by Stanford University, for training in Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.