Over the centuries, Southeast Asia has been a highly mobile place, with frequent large-scale and small-scale population movements. During the period of colonisation, national boundaries were drawn up and borders created. Today, some countries in the region maintain strict border controls, while other borders are more porous, allowing freer flows of people. Temporary labour migration to external places with greater wealth has long been seen to improve family livelihoods in the poorer sending countries. More recently, international remittances have been counted in national budgets and lauded for their contribution to economic growth and a rise in living standards. However, Southeast Asian scholars tend to be critical of that mainstream thinking because it imagines extensive economic benefits for the sending country. However, remittances from temporary labour migration rarely benefit the poorest of the poor in the nation or lead to a more equitable distribution of wealth. There is also the problem of illegal labour migration and its links to human trafficking. Southeast Asia includes both sending and receiving countries for temporary labour migrants. In domestic terms, the main pattern of labour migration is rural to urban. Brain drain has been identified as a downfall due to the out-migration of professionally qualified people from the most economically under-developed nations in the region.