This policy brief examines the employment conditions of migrant workers in Thailand’s agricultural sector, drawing on interviews and a survey of 528 documented and undocumented workers from Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Myanmar. The findings highlight major structural problems, including restrictive employer registration models that do not reflect migrants’ reality of working for multiple employers, widespread debt caused by recruitment and document broker fees, wage inequality, absence of weekly rest days, unsafe housing, lack of protective equipment, and limited access to health insurance and compensation funds.

Despite many migrants being registered, over 30% remain undocumented, and only a small proportion enter through regulated MOU channels. The brief proposes key policy actions, including adopting ILO Conventions 87 and 98, ensuring all agricultural workers are covered by minimum wage and labor protections, expanding access to health and accident insurance, regulating border employment schemes, and creating a new agricultural employment model that recognizes full-time, multi-employer work.

Overall, it calls for stronger legal protections, fairer recruitment systems, and improved enforcement mechanisms tailored to the unique nature of agricultural labor in Thailand.

Access: open

Date: N/A

Organization: Mahidol Migration Center

Language: English/ Thai

Country: Thailand