1. The Pacific Labour Mobility Survey, Wave One
The Pacific Labour Mobility Survey (PLMS) is multi-country survey of temporary migrant workers in Australia and New Zealand (under the PALM and RSE schemes) and households (migrant and non-migrant) in several origin countries in the Pacific. The household and worker surveys focus on temporary migration (i.e. labor mobility) but are purposively omnibus in nature, covering different topics, schemes, and origin and destination countries. The PLMS is a long-term collaboration between the ANU Development Policy Centre and the World Bank. Wave Two is being fielded in 2025.
PLMS Wave One was completed in March 2023, covering 2,085 PALM (short and long schemes) and RSE workers in Australia and New Zealand and 4,241 households in Kiribati, Tonga, and Vanuatu. The Tongan household survey was mostly done face-to-face (with a phone-based supplement later) and the remaining household and worker surveys were all phone-based. The data from Wave One was summarized in a joint ANU-World Bank report released in November 2023 and is publicly available, completely deidentified, along with all survey documentation through the World Bank Microdata Library at the link below.
Note that this project, both the first wave and the second, is supported with funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Our (ANU) contribution is supported through the Pacific Research Program Phases I and II.
Data and documentation: https://microdata.worldbank.org/index.php/catalog/6420
2. Remittance costs in the Pacific
Together with Hiroshi Maeda and Daniel Suryadarma, we compiled a short high-frequency database of remittance costs in the Tonga-Australia and Tonga-New Zealand corridors. As these data are not readily available, we recorded them manually from the two competing remittance cost comparison websites SaverPacific and SendMoneyPacific, after a short pilot period. The audit highlighted key differences between the two products, presumably led to some minor product changes in both, and has provided an important baseline and set of key facts for future interventions to help reduce realised remittance costs in the region.
We’ve provided the raw data complied below, and strongly encourage remittance transfer websites to allow such information to be downloaded by researchers from their back ends rather than manually or by web-scraping, since it does exist.
Additional remittance cost and behaviour data, as used in the paper, is available in the PLMS (above) and the Remittance Diaries (below).
Data and documentation: [coming soon]
3. Migration attitudes and perceptions in Australia
Together with Alyssa Leng and Terence Wood, we’ve run what is to the best of our knowledge the first detailed and nationally representative survey to understand Australians’ knowledge of migration levels and migrant characteristics and their policy preferences. Unlike most migration surveys, we break down migration by type—for example, temporary and permanent, skilled and unskilled, country of origin, students, and so forth—and also include a substantial component focused on new Pacific migration policies.
The survey had embedded in it four randomly-assigned experimental information treatments (with each treatment arm covering around 1000 individuals) to test how different types of information affects peoples’ policy preferences. Many questions were asked of respondents before any experimental treatment exposure, which preserves a sample size (the untreated control group plus all four treatment arms) much larger than most other surveys on these topics for these questions.
All the data, which came to us completely de-identified, will likely be published in the Australian Data Archive or OSF shortly for anyone to use and extend.
Note that this survey was supported with funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through the Pacific Research Program.
Data and documentation: [coming soon]
4. Coming soon also, but feel free to email me for in the meantime
a. Indonesian palm oil, deforestation, and fire
District area under cultivation and production, compiled from DAPOER (2000—10) and estate crop yearbooks (2015)
District and village agro-climatic suitability for various crops (calculated from FAO-GAEZ)
Palm oil firms by village, compiled from the 2016 Economic Census, and panel data on processor establishments (manually created by inspecting Google Earth imagery for each firm with coordinates)
Smallholder area planted by village (calculated from the 2013 Agricultural Census)
Thermal hotspot detections by district (2000—15) and village (2015—18)
Village level tree cover change (2000—15), calculated by Shuhao Zhang for his master’s paper
Experimental data from “Fight fire with finance”, including our village survey
Historical peat land maps
b. Mining and drought in PNG
Mine locations compiled with assistance from Colin Filer (Kelly Samof’s masters project)
2015—16 drought exposure (various master’s student projects)
2015—16 DHS coordinates to district mapping (via PNG NSO)
c. Deforestation in the Pacific
TBA
d. Financial diaries in Fiji
Small Firm Diaries Fiji
Remittance Diaries. Please note that the raw data for these two studies cannot be shared for confidentiality reasons. They involves relatively small sample of participants and weekly transaction level information over many months.
Note that these two projects were supported with funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through the Pacific Research Program, along with various other sources for the global Small Firm Diaries project (see the main SFD website for details).