Abstract

Migration has always been a basic and universal human social behavior. After World War II，migration has become a supranational phenomenon worldwide，and the resulting impact of irregular immigration is the most prominent content. Since the 1970s，due to the growing number of irregular immigrants and the combined effects of the economic，social and political aspects of the cause have made it a global problem and general political issues. The “securitization” of the migration issues after the Cold War has resulted in shared vision of intransigence on irregular migration at national and international levels，thus producing various governance approaches.

Led by economic migration（labor migration），ASEAN’s internal migration flows began in the 1970s and expanded rapidly since the 1980s. Similar to the international migration tide，the process of rapid development of migration within ASEAN is also accompanied by irregular migration，which has become the fastest growing form of internal migration. This is resulted in broad impact involving economy，social security，politics and human rights and so on. How to control the growing influx of irregular migration on member states and region concerned is a major problem and challenge.

From the perspective of region level，this paper analyses irregular migration within ASEAN comprehensively，as a regional structural problem，its governance approaches include unilateral acts of states and bilateral mechanisms between countries of origin and target ones. Despite the absence of a common migration mechanism at the regional level，a multi-level type of migration governance has been formed. In terms of effectiveness，neither unilateral，bilateral nor multi-level governance system is able to contain irregular migration and the governance is a failure as a whole，which reflects the huge gap between the actual situation and the ways of governance. With the deepening integration process of ASEAN and widening gap of development among ASEAN members，irregular migration will continue to grow along with the intra-regional migration. Labor migration as an important modern resources in ASEAN integration process，if governed properly，will become a unique comparative advantages of resources in the global competitive environment. How to establish a proper governance framework is a big challenge for ASEAN. In the foreseeable future，ASEAN is unlikely to achieve the free flow of labor and it is also difficult to establish a unified regional migration mechanism due to the narrow nationalist ideology and the inherent defects of “ASEAN Way”. Improving the current multi-level migration governance system is a viable option by focusing on the leading role of ASEAN in migration governance，the improvement of state governance，the promotion of legal migration，upgrading skills training to immigrants and strengthening the protection of the rights of migrants.