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Abstract The increase of migrant workers into the Kingdom of Thailand began in the mid-1980s and early 1990s when Thailand was in transition from a low-end labour-intensive economy, to a capital-intensive one. The role of migrant workers became even more evident when Thailand encountered the economic crisis of the mid-1990s. Current statistics indicate that Thailand receives more than a million migrant workers from neighbouring countries, including Myanmar, Lao PDR and Cambodia. This paper traces the five stages of the Royal Thai Government's (RTG) policies to managing cross-border migration and migrant worker issues in Thailand. It argues that despite the introduction of policies of management of the issue, migrant workers are vulnerable to human trafficking. Furthermore, as more often than not migrant workers are irregular migrants, they are treated as a risk to national security. As such they are vulnerable to labour exploitation. This paper analyses the problems in policy and legal enforcement between countries of origin and the RTG, suggesting ways in which these problems can be overcome to ensure compliance with international norms, and thus the responsibility of the RTG to its 'foreign workers'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Prenatal and delivery care are critical both for maternal and newborn health. Using the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data for thirty-two low-income countries across Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, and employing a two-level random-intercept model, this paper empirically assesses the influence of prenatal attendance and a wide array of observed individual-, household- and community-level characteristics on a woman’s decision to give birth at a health facility or at home. The results show that prenatal attendance does appreciably influence the use of facility delivery in all three geographical regions, with women having four visits being 7.3 times more likely than those with no prenatal care to deliver at a health facility. These variations are more pronounced for Sub-Saharan Africa. The influence of the number of prenatal visits, maternal age and education, parity level, and economic status of the birthing women on the place of delivery is found to vary across the three geographical regions. The results also indicate that obstetrics care is geographically and economically more accessible to urban and rural women from the non-poor households than those from the poor households. The strong influence of number of visits, household wealth, education and regional poverty on the site of delivery setting suggests that policies aimed at increasing the use of obstetric care programs should be linked with the objectives of social development programs such as poverty reduction, enhancing the status of women, and increasing primary and secondary school enrollment rate among girls. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]