The study on “Managing International Labor Migration in ASEAN: A Case of
Thailand,” aimed to study policies and institution arrangement for managing
international migration as part of regional cooperation initiatives and bilateral
agreements. The study emphasized on the finding out why the current management
of sending workers and protecting workers has not been effective.
The data used for the analysis came from two main majority sources: 1) the
quantitative data, including primary data on possible solutions, strategies, the
secondary sources from Socio-Economic Survey (SES) and information where
necessary to explain the socio-economic impact of migrant worker families; and 2) the
qualitative study where collected from interview of key informants, focus group
discussion with families of migrant workers, governments, brokers, and etc.  As data
allow, cost benefit analysis for out migration as well as in migration from government
intervention programs was applied.     
The theory of push and pull factors were used for describing reasons forced
migrant workers to work overseas. As of the study, there was the evidence that
pointed out that poverty and indebtedness were push factor for both emigration and
immigration while higher income in the destination countries was the pull factor. The
study further found that both of emigration and immigration were beneficial in
various aspects including increase the gross domestic product (GDP) in both country
of origin and destination country. Remittance was an important source of the country
development budget, increase the level of national saving, and improve income
distribution.