Cutting down and stocking up: how migration brokers negotiate mobility disruptions

Abstract

ABSTRACT Migration infrastructures are susceptible to disruptions and necessitate ongoing maintenance and repair to ensure the smooth facilitation of mobility flows. While the prevailing notion attributes the mending of infrastructures primarily to state initiatives, this paper seeks to enhance the understanding of how non-state actors execute maintenance and repair, especially in times of unprecedented disruptions. By examining the experiences of labor and education brokers operating within the Vietnam-Japan and Nepal-Malaysia migration corridors during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study explores the ways these intermediaries navigated disruptions in migration infrastructures and devised creative solutions to surmount contextual constraints arising from these disruptions. It argues that migration brokers “make do” by adopting the tactic of cutting down, and the strategy of stocking up. These practices are adopted not only to survive and wait out the infrastructural disruptions but also to anticipate and prepare for a post-pandemic scenario of resumed mobility. With a focus on brokerage practices during times of immobility, the paper shows how migration brokers maintain migration infrastructures and subsequently highlights their crucial roles in the ongoing process of infrastructuring migration. While states and border regimes continue to be highly relevant in how migrants move, the role of the brokers in mending infrastructural disruptions points to the dynamic nature of migration brokerage and challenges the misconception of self-perpetuating migration infrastructures.