This article considers legal segmentation in an Asian context. The analysis is concerned with “the exclusion from and gradation in employment protection” (Dingeldey et al. 2020). Four countries are examined here: China, India, Malaysia and Vietnam. Several factors distinguish these from those in regions such as Europe and North America and produce distinct labour market outcomes. One is the relative size of the workforce that operates outside the effective coverage of employment regulation. A second distinguishing factor concerns legal terminology that is not readily translated into Western languages. A third is legal history, especially the mismatch between statutory frameworks and the labour market resulting from colonialism.