Labor migration is a global issue. Greater flow of peoples across national boundaries created new challenges including limited legal rights, discrimination, social exclusion, and the lack of social security, especially for migrant workers. These challenges become complex in Asia and the Pacific region, which is composed not only of migrant countries of origin but also long-standing and emerging countries of destination. To strengthen migrant worker’s protection, entering into social security agreement is a viable option among economies to ensure the portability of social security entitlements among their migrant workers.
Within the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) region, the Philippines has an existing security agreement with Canada and Japan. Applying the concept of Regime I (Holzmann, Koettl, and Chernetsky, 2005), this research examined the portability of social security benefits through the contextual and operational framework of social security agreements. The social security agreement is a notable means of harmonizing social protection, thus resulting in equality of treatment between origin and destination countries. Moreover, migration profiles, social security systems, and labor market characteristics are critical factors that affect the scope of the social security agreements.
