Studi Emigrazione – marzo 1998 – n.129

With some 57 percent of the world’s inhabitants and three of the world’s four largest nations Asia must loom large in any discussion of global population trends. This is nowhere so true as in the analysis of interQational migration. However, some 30 years ago reviews of population trends in the region, such as that presented at the Second Asian Population Conference of 1972 (ECAFE Secretariat 1972) failed to mention international migration at ali, so limited was it in scale and significance at that time. In the late 1990s the situation is quite different with almost ali nations in the region being significantly influenced by movements across their boundaries. This transformation has to some extent been part of wider processes of globalisation which have seen international migration escalate in significance along with flows of capita!, information, goods and ideas. However, it has also been very much sha ped by the profound political, economie and socia! changes which have swept across the region in the last two decades.