Fostering Talent Fleet of Foot: The Need for Harmony and Depth

Over the past two decades, ASEAN has introduced a series of regional agreements to facilitate the movement of skilled workers. The grouping, however, does not have a specific definition for skilled workers and its initiatives only cover a sub-set of all skil led workers. Concurrently, individual member states have introduced their own immigration and talent policies to compete for highly qualified professionals. Together, these developments illustrate both the progress made and the remaining challenges in facilitating the regional mobility of skilled workers.

ASEAN has progressively developed a regional architecture that supports the movement of skilled professionals through investment, services and mutual recognition agreements as well as referencing qualifications. This is essential because ASEAN countries’ pursuit of higher-value manufacturing, knowledge-intensive services and digital transformation has intensified competition for talent or highly skilled workers. As ASEAN member states seek to strengthen industrial capabilities, increase innovation and raise productivity, attracting and retaining global talent has become an important component of national development strategies.

All ASEAN member states aim to provide a favourable investment environment and attract more foreign investment. This includes facilitating the entry of necessary human capital, including business persons and intra-corporate transferees. The agreements, such as the ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement (ACIA) and the ASEAN Agreement on the Movement of Natural Persons (MNP), aim to facilitate this type of mobility through binding agreements, although they differ in their scope and modalities (Table 1).

The other two agreements in Table 1 go far beyond the scope of the first two agreements, even though they are not binding. The Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs) cover selected professional services, while the ASEAN Qualifications Reference Framework (AQRF) provides a common reference point for national-level qualifications and therefore has a potentially much broader application. The AQRF covers academic, vocational and professional qualifications. Together, the two agreements expand the scope of skilled labour mobility in ASEAN beyond business persons and intra-corporate transferees.

Table 1. The Search for Talent

Although the four agreements provide complementary building blocks for the cross -border movement of skilled workers, they face different challenges in terms of both commitments and implementation. Under the binding agreements, countries differ in the coverage and depth of their commitments. Implementation challenges are multi-layered. Aligning domestic laws and regulations with regional requirements is onerous even when the agreements have entered into force. This applies for both investment and labour.

Pressing for greater mobility of skilled workers in ASEAN would require member states to move towards harmonising and deepening their existing commitments under the binding agreements.

For non-binding agreements (MRAs and AQRF), implementation is uneven: domestic regulatory barriers prevail and enforcement is weak. Implementation is also dependent on the readiness of national systems. For example, the application of the National Qualification Framework, a United Nations instrument for classifying a country’s qualifications according to outcomes, levels and progression, is highly diverse across ASEAN. Some countries such as Malaysia have relatively advanced national frameworks, while others are still developing or adopting their national frameworks. Myanmar, for example, does not have a national framework as yet, while Singapore has no single national framework but operates the Workforce Skill Qualification system. The diversity makes mapping national requirements with the region a difficult task. Moreover, the effectiveness of the AQRF requires buy-in from the private sector such as recognising and adopting the regional framework for determining the salary scales of their workers.

There is little data to support the impact of these agreements on the mobility of skilled workers regionally. But the prevalence of unilateral initiatives by various ASEAN countries to attract talent, especially in the digital sector, indicates that there is a growing demand for cross border digital workers. These workers, who are given digital nomad visas, bring specialised knowledge and skills and potentially help address the shortages of domestic talent. It also suggests that the demand for skills in the region is dynamic and shifting in line with the changing demands of economic development, both within ASEAN and globally. For example, there is growing interest to develop new capabilities such as digital, green and Artificial Intelligence (AI) skills.

As a regional translation device for comparing education and training qualifications across ASEAN member states, the AQRF can potentially accommodate these emerging areas when national systems recognise or accredit qualifications in the digital, green and AI-related fields. Its effectiveness, however, will depend on the extent to which national qualifications systems evolve alongside emerging new skills.

Pressing for greater mobility of skilled workers in ASEAN would require member states to move towards harmonising and deepening their existing commitments under the binding agreements. For the non-binding agreements, a possible step forward is to consider making these agreements binding on all members. This is unlikely to happen for all 11 member states; hence, it might be necessary to invoke the ASEAN-X principle for this to work. In other words, a smaller set of countries that are willing to embark on this journey would start first, while leaving the door open for others to join later. For successful implementation, it would require ASEAN member states to bring their domestic regulations into alignment with their regional commitments so that domestic legislation cannot be used as a barrier to the entry of qualified ASEAN skilled workers.

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