Informal Brokers Research Articles

Migration, Brokerage and Recruitment

This research examines the unskilled labor migration using private intermediaries in South Korea. The study also reviews the Employment Permit System of South Korea in this regard. The empirical study took place in South Korea with a supplementary trip visiting the migration origin, Bangkok, Thailand. A qualitative method was used with the predominant part being a semi-structured interview with Thai undocumented workers in Daegu. This research fills the gap in the existing body of research by uncovering the process of undocumented labor migration in the discourse of culture of migration. The tolerant practice of the Thai Government towards undocumented workers has set an example to prospective Thai migrant workers who follow the undocumented path to go to Korea. The unique fuzzy attitude of some Thais led them to try their luck without a concrete plan to go to work in South Korea on a whim. The informal brokers find their role even they are excluded in the Employment Permit System of South Korea. They actively convey a positive but biased image of an easy path of undocumented labor migration as an alternative to the formal procedure.

Housing pathways of female-headed households in the informal settlements of Kampala: a qualitative study

The number of female-headed households migrating into cities is increasing. Female-headed households compete for limited housing options with other households with varying socio-economic capacities. As a result, women have to choose from several housing pathways, utilising available social capital that occasionally covers inadequate financial resources. This may sometimes lead to social conflict and exploitation by landlords and brokers. This article seeks to understand the influence of women’s social capital and networks on pathways that female-headed households pursue in Kampala city. Using a snowball sampling strategy, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and document analysis, the article explores female-headed households’ pathways for housing options. Participants (n = 40) in this study were identified from the Katwe informal settlement of Kampala city. Findings indicate that the strength of social ties generated through; family attachments, friends, and socio-economic involvement influences female-headed household pathways. To a lesser extent, the use of informal brokers also may influence housing pathways. The article calls for specific legislation and guidelines to regulate the informal brokerage practice and professionalise the client-broker relationship. For adequate urban housing planning to ensue, responsible authorities could incorporate into government policy the unique preferences of residential pathways and networks that bond female-headed households together.

Informality during migration, “conversion” within and across national spaces: Eliciting moral ambivalence among informal brokers

AbstractConditions of precarity, irregularity, and illegality are often associated with informality. Yet the functional and analytical value of informality as a condition and process underpinning the migration industry and infrastructure has yet to be fully investigated. This paper considers first, how is informality constructed within national space and across national spaces (i.e., transnationally) during migration? Second, in the context of migration, what does informality reveal of the binaries associated with legality/illegality and morality/immorality? Third, what does inhabiting informality as a “negotiated space” achieve for the various stakeholders who are involved in mediating migration? We address these questions through a study of how foreign domestic workers (FDWs) migrate from Myanmar to work in Singapore. Although FDWs can secure legal documents from Singapore (the receiving country), the government of Myanmar (the sending country) considered migration for domestic work illegal until it lifted a ban on such migration in April 2019. Even so, the government will to formalise and enforce legal migration in Myanmar has been lagging, alongside a lack of traction for multi‐stakeholder collaboration in this direction. Through discussing informality during the recruitment, training, and deployment stages, we draw attention to how informal brokers experience “moral ambivalence,” a condition that can be seen as a resource that illuminates new political and social subjectivities, as well as a means for the brokers to manage risks and uncertainties during migration.

Labour Protections for Overseas Chinese Workers: Legal Framework and Judicial Practice

Abstract The launch of China’s Belt and Road Initiative has brought attention to the dispatch of Chinese workers overseas. These vulnerable migrants are often charged high fees in China only to suffer wage abuses and work injuries abroad, where obtaining relief is often impossible. But what laws or regulations within China protect these workers, and how effective are they? This study takes an initial step towards answering those unexplored questions by analysing over 100 Chinese court decisions. While, for much of the China’s history, overseas workers were primarily seconded abroad by Chinese employers, a clear preference has emerged for sending workers through intermediary agencies that can charge fees and execute ‘service’ contracts. Nonetheless, the courts generally provide some relief to aggrieved workers who are dispatched through formal channels. However, a large number of workers go abroad through informal brokers. When disputes arise in these cases, judicial practice becomes very inconsistent. Ironically, workers sometimes fare better because the courts adopt a ‘strict liability’ approach that punishes the unregistered broker, ordering them to pay all compensation or refund all fees. But some judges punish the worker who entrusted an unregistered broker or worked abroad on a tourist visa. And other courts simply treat the matter as a contract or tort dispute. While aggrieved overseas workers who litigate in court face mixed results, this article also discusses why many workers never make it to the courthouse door. The conclusion offers proposals to enhance protections for overseas workers and discusses why it is important that China do so.

PROBLEMS OF SALES FORCE: A STUDY WITH REFERENCE TO REAL ESTATE SECTOR

Real estate sector is one of the pre dominantly growing sectors in India as it is seen as both need fulfilment and as well as investment opportunity that gives stable returns over a period of time. Earlier the Indian real estate sector is in the hands of informal real estate agents and brokers. Now a days real estate sectors is growing in a more formal manner due to the government policies, rules and regulations. The government’s allowance of FDI into real estate and announcement of regional balanced development increased the employment opportunities further. As this sector is highly influenced by so many players the real estate firms started focusing on increasing the goodwill to reach the customers. One of the goodwill ambassadors for the companies, are the sales force as they will be in continuous contact with the customer throughout the process. Sales force face many professional problems during the delivery of their work. A study has been conducted to understand the problems faced by real estate sales force in their jobs in the select cities of Andhra Pradesh. Anova study, mean and standard deviation techniques were used to project the results. The study identified significant problems faced by real estate sales force and offered suggestions to real estate firms in Andhra Pradesh.

Victims of trafficking and modern slavery or agents of change? Migrants, brokers, and the state in Ghana and Myanmar

The authors provide critical insights into the creation of precarious and unfree labour in Ghana and Myanmar by examining the inner workings of the migration industry and the roles of brokers, the state and employers in positioning migrants in exploitative work in Libya, The Middle East, Singapore and Thailand. The evidence is based on in-depth interviews with returned and current migrant construction workers and domestic workers, formal and informal brokers, transport providers and other stakeholders. The research shows that brokerage is culturally embedded in local systems of reciprocity and closely depends on the collusion and cooptation of state actors. The research suggests that rather than viewing migrants and those who mediate migration in opposition and the state as a benevolent facilitator, they should be analysed as co-constituting systems of brokerage, irregular migration and exploitative work. The findings highlight the need for states to take greater responsibility in managing their own involvement in creating modern slavery. At the same time, the findings highlight the ways in which migrants use brokerage to exercise agency by taking advantage of irregular migration routes and informal employment.

Exploration of the Means of Getting to the City and Getting Employed among Young Female Domestic Workers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

While domestic workers in the city of Dar es Salaam are viewed to be mostly young girls from villages outside the city, very little is understood about how the girls at their tender age, and with limited experiences, manage to arrive in the city. Knowledge of how they are linked to employers is also inadequate. Drawing on the migration network theory, the article explores the means employed by the young female domestic workers to get to the city and to get linked to different employers in the city. It reveals support from parents, relatives, drivers, conductors and brokers as central modes of getting to the city and unveils informal employment agencies and brokers as significant means through which they get connected to different employers. The author recommends prompt measures to curb different means of trafficking and employing the young girls as domestic workers which violate their rights.

Producing ideal Bangladeshi migrants for precarious construction work in Qatar

ABSTRACTThe paper analyses the mediation of Bangladeshi construction worker migration to the Gulf and how multiple and unpredictable risks and opportunities are co-created by brokers, employers and the state. It examines how migrants navigate these to achieve imagined futures and their own role in co-creating precarity. The authors employ a relational lens to examine why aspiring migrants choose informal brokers over formal migration managers. The everyday practices of brokers in producing ideal Bangladeshi workers for the Qatari labour market and how this precarises migrant labour are unpacked. Migrant and broker interviews provide insights into the degrees of precarity experienced at different stages of the migration process. Entangled with these processes of precarisation are the strategies employed by migrant workers to resist precarity and transform their social and economic positions in the long term. The rich accounts presented in the paper provide evidence on the dialectical relationship between migrants and migration intermediaries which contrasts with popular discourses about brokers as exploiters and migrants as victims without agency.

Rumors and Refugees: How Government-Created Information Vacuums Undermine Effective Crisis Management

Although more than 800,000 displaced people arrived in Greece by sea in 2015, fewer than 5 percent applied for asylum in this first country of arrival. Instead, they either traveled northward informally or remained in Greece in legal limbo. The resultant chaotic conditions deprived many refugees of the benefits of asylum and formal relocation procedures, and also reduced the Greek government's popularity among natives. We argue that governments, regional and international organizations, and aid groups can undermine compliance with their own policies by mishandling information dissemination. Common crisis-management tools—such as frequent policy changes, information dissemination limits, and ad-hoc policy implementation—can easily backfire. Information mismanagement can lead people to develop deep distrust in government and aid organizations, and instead turn to informal brokers like smugglers. To assess our theory, we draw on over 80 discussions with migrants and refugees in Greece, on 25 semistructured interviews with aid workers and government officials, and on weekly rumor correction newsletters produced by the nongovernmental organization Internews. We conclude that governments must prioritize effective communication and policy transparency, especially in crisis contexts.

Reassembling Indonesian Migration: Biometric Technology and the Licensing of Informal Labour Brokers

ABSTRACTThis article takes as its starting point the Indonesian government’s attempt to license informal brokers – field agents, or petugas lapangan – who recruit migrant workers that are sent to destinations across Asia and the Middle East. The licensing programme utilises biometric fingerprint technology in order to reinforce the boundaries of the Indonesian migration assemblage through the rearticulation of the category of the broker. The article argues that this programme and the attempt to license informal brokers through technology should be conceptualised not strictly in relation to the securitisation of migration, nor as a response to fragmentation in the wake of neoliberalisation, but more broadly in relation to concerns with regulating brokers that lead back to the Dutch colonial era.

Interactions Between the Local and the Global: Brokers and go-betweens within the Portuguese State of India (1500 - 1700)

It is commonplace to locate the First Global Age in the period between 1500 and 1800 and present the European Overseas Expansion as one of the main levers of this process. However, interactions occurred locally and many localities were involved in the process. Recent and not so-recent historiography has stressed how cross-cultural and cross-imperial relations as well as cooperation and self-organization mechanisms have to be taken into consideration in order to understand the dynamics and the outputs arising from such a globalization process. This paper argues that the achievements required for the building of a global world depended to a great extent on agents of mediation, operating as formal and informal brokers and go-betweens. Following the fruitful path opened long ago by Michael Pearson, this contribution will develop an empirical analysis of the performance of such agents, within the Portuguese State of India, in the domains of economy, society and knowledge transfer.

Social Workers as Transition Brokers: Facilitating the Transition From Pediatric to Adult Medical Care

Transition from pediatric to adult medical care and the significant psychosocial considerations impacting this developmental process are a primary focus in health care today. Social workers are often the informal brokers of this complex and nuanced process and are uniquely trained to complete biopsychosocial assessments to understand the needs of patients and families and address psychosocial factors. Their extensive knowledge of resources and systems, along with their sophisticated understanding of the relationship issues, family dynamics, cultural implications, and basic person-in-context approach allow for unique collaboration with the health care team, family, and community supports to develop successful transition plans and programs.

Beyond fragmentation and disconnect: Networks for knowledge exchange in the English land management advisory system

The growing multifunctionality in agriculture, combined with privatisation of previously public agricultural extension services, has resulted in a pluralistic land management advisory system. Despite benefits in terms of increased client orientation and greater advisor diversity, it is argued that these changes have resulted in the fragmentation of the land management advisory system and a reduction of interaction within the advisory system and between the advisory system and science. Hence, concerns have been voiced as regards the capacity of the advisory system to be able to incorporate new knowledge, resulting in a growing interest in how advisors obtain and construct the knowledge necessary for offering adequate advisory services to their clients. In this article we explore how advisors within the English land management advisory system (land agents, applied ecologists and veterinarians) develop and optimise their knowledge by engaging in different kinds of networks (centralised, distributed and decentralised), each of which employs a different type of social capital. Key findings suggest that to obtain the knowledge needed to solve complex queries of clients, advisors use distributed networks and draw upon informal ‘communities of practice’ within their own advisory profession characterised by bonding social capital, but also draw upon broader ‘networks of practice’ involving multiple advisors from different advisory professions, which rely on bridging social capital. The employment of decentralised networks which rely on linking social capital, to solve complex queries or develop new services, for example through contacts with scientific institutes, appears to be less developed, despite brokering activities of the professional associations. Whereas fragmentation and disconnect due to competition and epistemological differences do play a role; they do not appear to prevent overall knowledge exchange among advisors within and across different professions. Assumptions of a collapse of interaction within the land management advisory system are not supported by the evidence, as there appears to be much bonding and bridging social capital. However, to optimise interactions between professions, and between advisors and the science system, either informal brokers or formal brokers in the form of professional associations or other organisations could play a bigger role.

The Elementary School Teacher, the Thug and his Grandmother: Informal Brokers and Transnational Migration from Indonesia

This article considers the emergence of informal brokers in the context of an increasingly formalized regime of transnational labour migration from Indonesia. Following the 1997 Asian economic crisis and the fall of the Suharto regime, there has been a dramatic increase in documented transnational migration to Malaysia at the expense of undocumented migration. In this process, a growing number of private agencies have come to control the increasingly deregulated market for migrant recruitment. These agencies, in turn, depend on informal brokers who recruit migrants in villages across Indonesia to work on palm oil plantations and as domestic servants in countries such as Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. This article takes these informal brokers as a starting point for considering the current Indonesian migration regime, using ethnographic data from the island of Lombok. Along with offering a description of brokering practices, the article argues that the dual process of centralization of migration control and fragmentation of labour recruitment has created a space of mediation for individuals who can navigate bureaucratic process while embodying the ethical qualities that convince Indonesian villagers to become migrants.

Custodians of Memory

ABSTRACTThe paucity of female deponents asked to give evidence before the Westminster equity courts has led some historians to conclude that women were marginal figures in disputes concerning local customary law and land use rights. This article adopts a qualitative approach, examining the oral testimonies provided by women to gain insight into the parameters of female knowledge and experience of landscape and the division of local resources. It is argued that women played a central role as informal brokers of economic power, mediated through the construction, maintenance and longevity of household knowledge and memory.

Mobile Money: Afghanistan

Jan Chipchase and Panthea Lee with an Introduction by Bill Maurer Mobile Money: Afghanistan INTRODUCTION by Bill Maurer Money and banking services are taken for granted in western countries. The trust and confidence we have in our currency, as well as in our savings and checking accounts, goes largely unquestioned. And yet, in much of the world, that kind of security is unknown. Over half the world’s population lives without reliable bank - ing institutions. They live in a world rife with theft, graft, and bribery. “Cash stuffed under the mattress” is a real phenomenon, and in many places, it’s a more reliable way to guard and access one’s life savings. Money is transferred as it has been for centuries—through informal couriers or hawala brokers who operate on an honor system. There is an opportunity and a need for a new way of sending money to oth ers, and a new way of banking. The near-universal presence of the mobile phone is offering just that opportu- nity, while also providing possibilities for bettering the lives of millions. “Mobile money”—applications for transferring small amounts of money, or offering basic savings accounts and other services—is generating excitement among develop- ment practitioners, the donor community, technologists, microfinance experts, user-interface designers, academics, and many others. Jan Chipchase is Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at frog design, a glob- al design and innovation company. Prior to this role he worked for almost a decade as a strategist in Nokia’s Los Angeles design studio and Principal Scientist in the Nokia Research Center, Tokyo. Panthea Lee is Co-founder & Principal of Reboot, a consultancy dedicated to develop- ing improved services and systems in governance, international development, and civic media. Previously Panthea was with UNICEF’s innovation practice working on a variety of technology for development initiatives. Bill Maurer is director of The Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion at the University of California, Irvine. © 2011 frog design innovations / volume 6, number 2

Women: The Gatekeepers of Urban Neighborhoods

: This paper is based on an ethnographic study of strategies of neighborhood defense in a working class ethnic community in Green point, Brooklyn. The author explores women's efforts to resist racial change. White non-Hispanic women in Green point are the guardians of the neighborhood, acting as local observers of street life and serving as informal brokers in the local real estate market. The position of these women at the center of informational exchange is an important source of informal power for them and has long-term consequences for the neighborhood.