Wikipedia source excerpts
Migrant workers who work outside their home nation are also known as foreign workers. They may also be called expatriates or guest workers, especially when they have been sent for or invited to work in the host country before leaving the home country.
The International Labour Organization estimated in 2019 that there were 169 million international migrants worldwide. Some countries have millions of migrant workers.
Like many nations, South Korea started as a labour exporter in the 1960s before its economic development in the 1980s changed it to a labor importer.
In 1993, the Industrial Trainee Program was established to meet the needs of migrant workers. It provided work for foreigners as trainees in small and medium-sized businesses. However, these workers were considered trainees and not official employees, so they could not receive protection under Korean labour laws. On 14 February 1995 Guidelines for the Protection and Management of Foreign Industrial Trainees provided legal and social welfare for migrant workers. The Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers which states that "a foreign worker shall not be given discriminatory treatment on the ground that he/she is a foreigner", was put into force on 16 August 2003. Later that year the numbers of migrant workers multiplied dramatically.
Even though there has been a drastic rise of migrant workers in Korea and policies are in place for their protection, the lack of cheap labour in Korea has forced the Korean community to condone the maltreatment of illegal migrant workers, and other unsavoury practices. In response, the Korean government has increased the quota for migrant workers by 5,000, to 62,000 individuals in 2013. In addition, on 31 January 2013, the minimum wage for migrant workers increased to 38,880 KRW for eight hours per day or a monthly rate of 1,015,740 KRW.
Programs were put into place to protect migrant workers and ease their integration to Korean society. Programs sponsored by the government such as Sejonghakdang (세종학당), Multicultural Center of Gender Equality and Family Program, Foreign Ministry Personnel Center Program, and Ministry of Justice Social Integration Program provide free Korean language lessons for migrant workers. In addition, by fulfilling all the requirements of the Ministry of Justice Social Integration Program, migrant workers can apply for Korean citizenship without taking the Naturalization exams.
The E-9 Non-professional Employment visa was launched in order to hire foreigners to work in the manual labour field. The visa is only limited to people that come from 15 Asian countries including, the Philippines, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Cambodia, China, Bangladesh, Nepal, Kazakhstan, Myanmar and East Timor. A new visa, known as the C-3 visa, was launched on 3 December 2018 which allows one to stay in South Korea for up to 90 days within the visa's validity period of up to 10 years with no restrictions on the number of visits to the country. The visa is specifically designed for professionals like doctors, lawyers or professors, graduates who are enrolled in four-year-plus programs in South Korean universities and those with master's degrees or above from overseas. The visa is only granted to people from 11 Asian countries those being Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
Traditionally, South Korea has appeared to largely accept overseas ethnic Koreans such as the Koreans of China and other Asians. Under the Employment Permit System launched in 2004 for foreign worker registration, 55% of those registered in 2007 were ethnic Koreans, mostly Chinese nationals of Korean descent. Among those who weren't ethnic Koreans, most were Asian with the largest groups being the Vietnamese, Thais, Mongolians, Indonesians and Sri Lankans. In 2013, there were 479,426 foreigners working in South Korea and holding nonprofessional working visas and 99% of them came from other Asian countries with ethnic Koreans from China at 45.6%, Vietnamese at 11.8%, Indonesians at 5.9%, Uzbeks at 5.1%, ethnic Chinese at 4.2%, Cambodians at 4%, Sri Lankans at 3.9%, Thais at 3.9%, Filipinos at 3.8% and Nepalis at 3.3%. The vast majority of foreign workers in South Korea come from other parts of Asia with most coming from China, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Central Asia.
Since taking office in June 2025, President Lee Jae Myung has pursued a policy shift aiming to reduce South Korea's reliance on low-wage foreign labor, arguing that the heavy reliance on migrant workers in key industries undermines domestic wage levels.
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is currently a net emigration country, however in recent years a gradual rise in immigrant workers in Sri Lanka has coincided with the decline in the departure of Sri Lankans leaving the country for overseas employment. As a result, the country has now been transitioning from a country that only sends workers overseas to one that both sends and receives migrant workers. Thousands of foreign workers have entered the country from other Asian countries to work in Sri Lanka with 8000 coming from China and others coming from Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh and India. In addition to lawfully residing and working foreigners in the country, there are those that have over-stayed their visas or have illegally entered the country. In 2017, there were 793 investigations on unauthorised workers in the country and 392 foreign nationals were removed. The number of illegal Nepali migrants hiding in Sri Lanka prompted Nepal to launch an investigation in 2016 in order to crack down on the illegal movement of its citizens into Sri Lanka. An estimate from a Sri Lankan minister in 2017 put the number of foreign workers in the country at 200,000. However this number has been disputed.
Women migrate in search of work for a number of reasons and the most common reasons are economic: the husband's wage is no longer enough to support the family. In some places, like China, for instance, rapid economic growth has led to an imbalance in the modernization of rural and urban environments, leading women to migrate from rural areas into the city to be a part of the push for modernization. Other reasons include familial pressure, on a daughter, for instance, who is seen as a reliable source of income for the family only through remittances. Young girls and women are singled out in families to be migrant workers because they have no viable alternative role to fulfil in the local village. If they go to work in the urban centres as domestic workers, they can send home money to help provide for their younger siblings. Many of these women come from developing countries, and are low skilled. Additionally women who are widowed or divorced and have limited economic opportunities in their native country may be forced to leave out of economic necessity. Migration can also substitute for divorce in societies that do not allow or condone divorce.
Impact on roles within family
In terms of migrant labour, many women move from a more oppressive home country to a less oppressive environment where they have actual access to waged work. As such, leaving the home and obtaining increased economic independence and freedom challenges traditional gender roles. This can be seen to strengthen women's position in the family by improving their relative bargaining position. They have more leverage in controlling the household because they have control over a degree of economic assets. However, this can lead to hostility between wives and husbands who feel inadequate or ashamed at their inability to fulfil their traditional role as breadwinner. The hostility and resentment from the husband can also be a source of domestic violence. Studies have also been done which point to changes in family structures as a result of migrant labour. These changes include increased divorce rates and decrease in household stability. Additionally, female migrant labour has been indicated as a source for more egalitarian relationships within the family, decline of extended family patterns, and more nuclear families. There is also a risk for infidelity abroad, which also erodes the family structure.
Researchers identified three groups of women to represent the dimensions of gender roles in Singapore. The first group is made up of expatriate wives who are often reduced to dependent spouse status by immigration laws. The second group are housewives who left work in order to take care of the children at home. Although they are from the Singaporean middle class, they are stuck at almost the same level and share status with the third group, foreign domestic workers. Because of global economic restructuring and global city formation, the mobility of female labours is increasing. However, they are controlled through strict enforcement and they are statistically invisible in migration data.