When the Asean Economic Community was officially launched in 2015, the rhetoric was intoxicating. A single market and production base. The free flow of skilled labor. A region where a Filipino engineer could compete on equal footing with a Singaporean counterpart, where a Filipino nurse could work in a hospital in Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok without facing high hurdles. It sounded like the beginning of a new era for Southeast Asia’s labor force of millions.
A decade later, a sobering tale has emerged. That promised future never arrived—and based on the latest data, it’s not coming anytime soon, if at all.
What the numbers say
In 2016, when the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Ronnel W. Domingo reported on the limited impact of Asean’s Mutual Recognition Arrangements (MRAs), there were exactly 1,252 engineers listed in the Asean Chartered Professional Engineers Register and 284 architects in the Asean Architect Register. These were the professionals who had jumped through the hurdles, completed the paperwork, and qualified to have their credentials recognized across all 10 member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
By 2026, the numbers have grown, but not in any meaningful way. There are now over 8,500 registered members of the Asean Chartered Professional Accountants. That sounds impressive, until one remembers that this is for a region of 680 million people with an economy nearing US$4 trillion. Thailand alone contributed 1,002 of those accountants. As for the Philippines, there is no record of a number—just silence.
Consider it: 8,500 accountants across 10 countries over 10 years. To put that in perspective, Indonesia—Southeast Asia’s largest economy—aims to send between 300,000 and 500,000 skilled workers abroad in 2026 alone. Those workers, however, aren’t heading to Asean neighbors; they’re targeting Japan, South Korea, European countries, and the United States.
Asean integration, as far as labor mobility is concerned, has proven to be a paper tiger.
No free movement
In 2014, Teresita Manzala, then chair of the Professional Regulations Commission (PRC), urged Filipino professionals to register as “Asean professionals” at a forum hosted by the Department of Science and Technology. Her advice was well-intentioned. “Goods, services, investments, and capital don’t move by themselves,” she said. “They are moved by people like you and me.”
But Manzala also made a crucial admission that policymakers have glossed over: the MRAs would not reduce or eliminate the rights, power, and authority of each Asean member-state. “This means that if a professional who registered in his own country wants to work in the Philippines, he or she still needs to get a temporary permit from the PRC to practice,” she said.
Thus, even after you register as an “Asean professional,” even after you prove your qualifications, even after you pay your fees and complete your continuing education, you still need a work permit. You still need a visa. You still need a local employer to recruit you. The host country can still refuse you for any reason, or no reason at all.
This isn’t free movement. This isn’t even particularly “facilitated” movement. It’s the same system that existed before Asean integration, just with an extra certificate you can hang on your bathroom wall.
Donald Dee, then acting president of the Employers Confederation of the Philippines, saw this clearly in 2016. “It was evident from these MRAs that Asean integration does not open a gateway for the free flow of the Philippine workforce to the other nations,” he said. “Much less would there be an inflow of workers from the other nations.”
Reality check
Where in Asean have overseas Filipino workers actually gone to? In 2014, there were a little over 200,000 OFWs deployed to the eight Asean countries that were then accepting workers. Singapore dominated, with 140,205—more than two-thirds of the total. Malaysia came second with 31,451. Brunei third with 11,748. Bringing up the rear were Vietnam with 4,082; Laos, 1,435; and Myanmar, 1,218.
By 2026, it has become clear that these intra-Asean numbers remain modest compared to demand from outside the region. The pattern hasn’t changed. Filipinos still go to Singapore if they stay in the region at all. Everyone else heads to the Middle East, to East Asia, to Europe, to North America.
Not only because that’s where the money and opportunities lie but also, crucially, that’s where the systems for hiring foreign workers are actually functional, predictable and transparent.
A 2025 survey of Singaporean workers found that 76,000 residents had worked full-time abroad for at least six months. Their top destinations were China (18.3%), the United States (13.6%), and Malaysia (10.1%). No other Asean country made the top three. Singaporeans—citizens of the region’s most advanced economy, with the most portable passports and the most sought-after skills—are not flocking to work in other Asean countries. They’re going to Shanghai, New York, and Kuala Lumpur.
If the region’s wealthiest nation can’t make intra-Asean labor mobility work for its citizens, what chance do Filipino workers and professionals have?
Brain drain
The irony is that the MRAs were sold, in part, as a way to keep talent within the region. Instead, Dee warned in 2016, they would “only exacerbate the drain of Filipino professionals, technicians and other skilled labor to the more developed nations in need of their services.”
In Indonesia, the labor export policy is actively shifting away from low-skilled domestic work toward professional and technical jobs, such as welders, hospitality workers, and healthcare professionals. The target recipients are Japan, South Korea, Europe, and the US. The SMA/SMK Go Global initiative was set up to train vocational and high school graduates for international labor markets.
Indonesia celebrates brain drain as a development strategy. Remittances from Indonesian migrant workers reached 212 trillion rupiah (US$13.6 billion) through the third quarter of 2025—a 38.6% increase from the previous year. That’s money coming home, building houses, paying for education, starting businesses.
The Philippines has been in this labor export game for decades longer than Indonesia and knows it better than any Asean country. But instead of leveraging Asean integration to open new, high-quality pathways for Filipino workers, the Philippines has been burdened with a system that offers little more than token recognition.
Actual labor mobility
More than the ineffectual MRAs, bilateral deals have actually worked better for labor mobility.
Vietnam and Singapore aren’t waiting for Asean to get its act together. They’re negotiating their own arrangements, tailored to their own economic needs, outside the multilateral framework that was supposed to solve these problems.
In June 2025, Vietnam and Singapore announced the Innovation Talent Exchange (ITX) program. In its first year, 300 highly skilled workers will be exchanged between the two countries, increasing to at least 1,000 annually thereafter. The program covers data science, cybersecurity, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, semiconductors—the actual growth industries of the 21st century.
Salaries for Vietnamese workers in Singapore are expected to be US$3,000 to $5,000 per month, with some positions offering double that. The program has clear rules, clear pathways, and—most importantly—clear implementation timelines.
Unfortunately for Asean, this appears to be the preferred future of labor mobility in Southeast Asia: bilateral, targeted, and pragmatic. The alternative—the grand vision of a single market—has proven to be a bureaucratic fantasy, as what the whole vision of Asean regional integration has been.
Only hot air
It’s time to do away with Asean integration policies that emit political hot air and diplomatic platitudes while delivering nothing for the workers they claim to serve.
The problem with the Asean approach to labor mobility is that it lazily tried to shortcut the process. Free movement of labor must go hand in hand with the free movement of people. And free movement of people must be buttressed with common standards for social protection, transferrable benefits, regional standardization of qualifications, and—most critically—trust between member-states.
The European Union’s Schengen platform for labor mobility took 11 years from the political agreement of July 1984, to the treaty signing of June 1985, the operational convention of June 1990, and finally, full implementation in March 1995. The mutual recognition of professional qualifications in the EU is backed by a single unified legal framework for both permanent and temporary employment through directives that have the force of law and enforced by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Asean has none of these.
Asean operates on the self-proclaimed principles of non-interference and consensus, a narcissistic way of saying that no member-state can be compelled to do anything it doesn’t want to do.
The system is designed to preserve national discretion at every turn. In 2026, 11 years after the Asean Economic Community was launched, Filipino professionals seeking work in another Asean country confront the same barriers they faced in 2015. They still need a job offer, a visa, and a work permit from the host country. The MRA gives them a certificate that might impress an employer but doesn’t compel any government to let them in. In any given year, the host country can still decide that it doesn’t need foreign workers, regardless of how many Asean professionals have registered.
Asean also needs to confront the reality that labor mobility without social protection is exploitation. A Filipino nurse working in Thailand under an MRA still needs to figure out healthcare, housing, pension contributions, and bringing in family members. None of these are addressed by the current framework.
The integration that was supposed to open doors for workers of the Philippines and those of other Asean countries has, in practice, kept them exactly where they were. CS
The author states that the writing of this article was AI-assisted.
Read more: The illusion of Asean’s economic integration
