Globally, public debate over international migration has become increasingly intense over the past few years. Some governments, especially in ageing societies, are newly opening doors to migrant workers and concurrently looking at programmes to support multiculturalism. Others are presently reforming or creating labour laws for domestic workers, applicable to both nationals and migrants. However, recent polls and elections in other countries highlight that channelling xenophobia towards migrant workers is a potent political instrument (Grosfoguel, Oso, and Christou, 2015; Miller-Gonzalez and Rensmann, 2010). Negative attitudes towards migrant workers are expressed in varied contexts through discriminatory actions, such as limiting or denying entry, exclusion from access to services, or exclusion from a number of labour protection regulations applicable to national workers, including social protection.

In 2010, the International Labour Organization (ILO) conducted a large-scale public opinion survey of 4,020 nationals in four Asian migrant destination countries – the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand – to assess public attitudes towards migrant workers. The findings indicated somewhat greater support for migrant workers in the Republic of Korea and Singapore than in Malaysia and Thailand due to greater interaction with migrant workers in those countries. Overall, however, the 2010 survey findings revealed that the majority of respondents in all countries held unfavourable attitudes towards migrant workers (ILO, 2011).

Now, nearly a decade later, the TRIANGLE in ASEAN programme (ILO) and Safe and Fair programme (ILO and UN Women) have conducted a similar survey of 4,099 nationals to track trends of attitudes in three of the above countries. One of the original four countries was changed, with the Republic of Korea replaced by Japan, given its emergence as an important destination country for low-skilled migrant workers in Asia. Certain questions from the first survey were repeated to allow for identification of longitudinal changes in public support for migrant workers.

This 2019 study also adds questions on women-specific issues, including attitudes to ending violence against women migrant workers; to decent work in women-dominant occupations of domestic work and sex work; to social protection including maternity leave; and to non-discrimination, including during pregnancy

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