Maricar, Hairuni Haji Mohamed Ali; (2000) Migration, development and segmentation of workers in Brunei Darussalam. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This research examines the employment characteristics of the Brunei workforce as a whole and in selected industries. It focuses on the segmentation processes that create differences in the employment characteristics between different groups of workers in Brunei. The underlying hypothesis is that the incompatibility between job demands and skills supplies in Brunei exacerbates domestic labour shortages, leading to heavy dependence on foreign workers. Consequently, the employment structure has become segmented by types of occupation and economic sectors between different groups of workers. These differences are consequent upon the segmentation processes, created by the principal actors in the labour market: the government, employers and local workers. The study uses the inter-relationship framework model, i.e. the inter-play of the factors and mechanisms through the roles of the government-employers-workers team for analyzing the segmentation processes. The broader theoretical context of the study is the development process in Brunei, which largely depends on labour migrants. The relationship between development and labour migration, and the resultant workforce employment characteristics are examined. To provide empirical examples, the study examined the development processes of the NICs (Singapore), other ASEAN (Malaysia, Thailand) and the Arab Gulf countries. The objective is to identify and examine the factors and mechanisms that have created and sustained segmentation in their employment structure and how these factors and mechanisms compare with those identified for Brunei. The research findings suggest that generally the experiences of these countries and Brunei were quite similar, particularly the role played by foreign labour during the development process. But for Brunei, the development dilemma is that despite its small population, it is also attempting to reduce dependence on foreign labour through localisation policy. The outcome is increased dependence on foreign labour, a segmented employment structure and segmentation seems to have become a permanent feature of its employment characteristics.

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