APMM Social Media Campaigns on Decent Work

Last September, the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) social media campaign focused on Decent Work, highlighting the gap between rights and lived realities of migrant workers. The campaign materials were produced in English, Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog, and Bengali to reach wider audiences and amplify migrants’ voices.

Migrant workers are often denied fair wages, safe working conditions, and freedom to organize, these are rights guaranteed by international labor standards. Instead of enjoying these rights, migrant workers often faced surveillance, discrimination, and repression when they spoke out, looking for justice and organized. 

APMM highlights the situation of lack of decent work faced by migrant workers in some countries. 

Migrant domestic workers in Singapore endure long working hours, low pay, exclusion from key labour laws, and high recruitment fees that often trap them in debt bondage with limited access to justice. 

Migrant performers’ income in Thailand is tied to tourism seasons and not enough to meet their needs. Women migrant performers also faced prejudice over their appearance and economic burden of pregnancy, when they can’t work and earn. Weak protection towards them has left them in precarious conditions. 

Seasonal migrant workers in South Korea face low wage, long working hours, unsafe housing, and occupational hazard. They have limited access to services and justice and many are pushed to become undocumented. 

Migrant workers’ rights to organize are also limited. In Malaysia, migrant workers are not allowed to form their own organizations. In the United Arab Emirates, In 2024, 57 Bangladeshi migrants were arrested simply for staging a peaceful protest in solidarity with struggles back home. In Hong Kong, strict regulations on protests forced migrant workers to be cautious when demanding their rights.

APMM together with network and grassroots groups developed the Global Compact for Migration (GCM) Indicators by Migrants and Refugees. These tools were created by migrants and refugees themselves through consultations and workshops, ensuring they reflect on-ground experiences.

The Indicators are grouped into seven clusters: access to justice; access to health, education, and social protection; women migrants’ rights and welfare; decent work; anti-trafficking; drivers of migration; and rights and participation. They have three main goals: to measure how governments uphold migrant and refugee rights, to guide concrete policy recommendations, and to ensure migrants play a meaningful role in shaping the GCM.

Read more about the GCM Indicators by Migrants and Refugees here