Migration Industry Research Articles

‘Cheap Merchandise’: Atrocity and Undocumented Migrants in Transit in Mexico’s War on Drugs

Undocumented migrants in transit in Mexico are victims of atrocity. The subject has been largely ignored by scholars, however, until recently when a number of migration experts became interested in the matter. Most observers argue that abuses suffered by migrants are the consequence of the ‘securitization’ of Mexican immigration policy. For them, Mexican authorities perceive migrants from Central America as a threat to national security and have hardened laws and migratory practices as a result, but there is insufficient evidence to support these claims. This article looks at the political economy of undocumented migration in transit in Mexico and the violence associated with it. It investigates the abuses suffered by migrants not as the result of supposed security policies but rather as the consequence of the interplay between local and global economies that generate profits from undocumented migration. The article explores the role played by state officials, cartels and ordinary Mexicans in the migration industry.

‘We are in the process’: The exploitation of hope and the political economy of waiting among the aspiring irregular migrants in Nepal

‘We are in the process’ was the phrase used by my Nepali interlocutors, soon-to-be migrants, who were waiting for their departure abroad for months on end. Based on conversations with irregular migrants, this paper explores the relationship between time and power, focusing on the political economy of waiting. It suggests that making people wait has become a key technique of governmentality used by the migration industry actors to control aspiring migrants’ movement, exploit their desires and hopes, and extract surplus value, turning the migration industry in Nepal into a major system of profiteering. Forcing aspiring migrants to wait in a state of suspense (not boredom) for departures that are imminent but not certain, unscrupulous brokers create an affective state in suspended subjects, which allows those in power to prey on migrants’ vulnerability and their hope for a better life, pushing many of the aspiring migrants into grave debt.

Sheltering as a destabilising and perpetuating practice in the migration management architecture in Mexico

ABSTRACT This paper discusses shelters in relation to the migration industry that shapes irregular migration from Central America to Mexico. Whereas the migration industry literature often separates migration facilitation from migration control, we instead position shelters at the intersection of the two domains. We use an assemblage approach to better understand how different institutions, policies, responsibilities, actors and discourses meet, clash and intertwine at shelters. Based on our ethnographic material, we distinguish three significant processes that characterise sheltering practices (attraction, multiple performativities, (dis)location) and analyse how these processes display different, sometimes contradictory, discourses and power relations. With these insights, we conclude that sheltering practices reinforce as well as destabilise migration management architecture in Mexico. They undermine the presupposed ‘rigidity’ of migration management, but they simultaneously attract violence and control, and incorporate state-like practices of administration and discipline. In particular, the notions of ‘humanitarian aid’ and ‘mobility control’ are floating signifiers in these practices in the sense that they are constantly open to different ascriptions of meaning. Following this observation, we consider the migration management architecture as a form of plasticity. Its shape and function might appear to be rigid, but it is able to bend, bow and change in forms rather easily.

Debt and (un)freedoms: The case of transnational labour migration from Vietnam

Transnational labour migration in Asia is largely organised by sophisticated networks of commercial brokers who thrive on highly restrictive migration regimes and disparities in the distribution of labour and employment across the region. The commercialisation of migration brokerage has important implications for migrants’ mobility and wellbeing, not least because of the inflated cost of migration and the increased financial pressure on migrant families as a result. While there is growing attention to debt in the migration scholarship, broader debates on the migration and development nexus continue to underestimate the significance of the issue. Drawing on qualitative research on Vietnamese migrant workers in Taiwan and their families in Vietnam, this paper provides nuanced insights into how debt shapes the ways migrants navigate the transnational migration industry and reproduces inequalities in labour-sending countries. Debt might enable or constrain people’s agency and mobility, a relationship that is not static but fluid and context-specific. The study shows that debt is vital for our understanding of transnational contract labour migration in Asia and emphasises temporality and subjectivity in migrants’ experience of and response to debt.

Sub-Saharan leaders in Morocco’s migration industry: activism, integration, and smuggling

ABSTRACT The migration industry includes governments and private companies wanting to control and limit human mobility, but also nonstate actors who help facilitate it. This article addresses the multiplicity of roles that Sub-Saharan migrant activists and community leaders play in Morocco’s migration industry. The article draws on ethnographic research conducted in 2018 among 39 sub-Saharan activists and community leaders and 4 Moroccan activists throughout the Kingdom. I argue that while activists and community leaders are front line defenders of migrants’ rights, they are also caught up in the migration industry that emerged after the National Strategy for Immigration and Asylum (SNIA) was implemented in 2014. They attempt to enter the humanitarian aid or migration control sectors of the industry, but are often prevented from extracting monetary value from it due to racial discrimination. Migrant leaders turn to using their social capital to facilitate border crossings for other migrants in exchange for financial compensation. These activists and community leaders are instrumental in the mobility apparatus in Morocco as without them other sub-Saharan migrants would not have the information, networks, or support to access aid to stay in the country or continue their journey to Europe.

Punjabi irregular immigration to Italy and Spain: causes and consequences

ABSTRACT Since 1990, an irregular migration industry has flourished in different cities of Indian Punjab because of the eagerness among young men to emigrate at any cost and increased border controls imposed by the European Union. In Europe, the majority of irregular immigrants from Punjab end up in Spain or Italy due to continuous regularisation programmes, support from social networks and the availability of informal jobs. In this paper, with a thematic analysis of 72 in-depth interviews with irregular immigrants from Punjab in Italy or Spain, their relatives in Punjab and members of the host community, this paper explores the main causes and consequences of Punjabi irregular immigration in Italy and Spain.

Logistics of migrant labour: rethinking how workers ‘fit’ transnational economies

ABSTRACT New approaches to understanding the mediation of migration have emerged from literature on migration industries, migration infrastructures and migration brokerage. These studies point out the importance of economic processes in migration by studying how recruiters and brokers negotiate im/mobilities, within and outside the state. This article argues that there is a need to develop a complementing theorisation of the economies of migration, since the centrality of migrant labour, the role of employers, and the extraction of value from the transnational situation of migrants’ lives remain vague. Emerging scholarship around a logistics of migration that accounts for supply chain organisations and the quest for transnational interoperability is suggested for this purpose. The article utilises ethnographic data from Sweden on labour recruiters and employers in two sectors: the wild berry industry and the ICT industry. Logistics, the art and science of coordinating supply chains [Cowen, Deborah. 2014. The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade. University of Minnesota Press.], produces a commodification of im/mobility in specific contexts of labour and social reproduction. Migration, therefore, represents one, more or less integrated, aspect of extracting value. Critical perspectives on logistics have the potential to link the emerging frameworks on mediation with observations of how globalising markets affect migrant workers and their lives.

De-commercialization of the Labor Migration Industry in Malaysia

De-commercialization of the Labor Migration Industry in Malaysia

Israel’s return migration industry

ABSTRACT This article examines the emergence of Israel's return migration industry (RMI). It argues that alongside the state, repatriation projects of (mostly skilled) migrants are increasingly (co)-produced and carried out by a widening range of non-state actors (NSAs). Informed by a networked governance approach, which dictates greater collaborations between a loosely connected set of actors in both Israel and overseas, the new structure allows the state to delegate responsibility for selected functions to civic and private organisations and still govern repatriation efforts effectively. By highlighting the industry’s involvement in two distinct, yet interrelated, phases of the migration process, namely recruitment and (re)integration, the article attends to the range of actors engaged in repatriation initiatives, analyses their roles and explores the geographical scales at which they operate. In so doing, it offers a more nuanced understanding of the industry in return, a traditionally less explored phase in the migratory process.

The work that brokers do: the skills, competences and know-how of intermediaries in the H-2 visa programme

ABSTRACT This article analyses the skills and competence acquisition of migration entrepreneurs in the H-2 visa programme, a U.S. temporary worker scheme. This programme, which nowadays largely recruits Mexicans, is managed by a migration industry of labour contracting agencies, recruiters, document processors, and transporters. This article focuses on recruiters, in charge of selecting workers, and document processors, responsible for completing visa application forms. Hailing mostly from the rural working class, recruiters derive expertise from membership in the social world of the migrant. The competences of document processors closely track their belonging in the urban middle class, reflecting experiences of formal education which prepare them to deal with the bureaucratic interface of the programme. These migration entrepreneurs also acquire skills by cooperating and competing with colleagues, migrants, contracting firms, employers, advocates, and government officials – interactions that expose them the risks and benefits of a more expansive role in the brokerage apparatus.

Translating People and Policy: The Role of Maid Agents in Brokering between Employers and Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore’s Migration Industry

There has been a surge of recent interest in the migration industries that facilitate the movement of migrants, particularly that of low-waged laborers engaged in temporary contracts abroad. This article extends this research to include migration brokers working in destination contexts, thus drawing analytical attention to the arrival infrastructures that incorporate migrants into host societies. Based on ethnographic research involving the employment agents who recruit women migrating from Indonesia to work as migrant domestic workers in Singapore, we use the concept of “translation” as a broad theoretical metaphor to understand how brokers actively fashion knowledge between various actors, scales, interfaces, and entities. First, we argue that through the interpretation of language, brokers continually modulate meaning in the encounters between potential employers and employees at the agency shopfront, reproducing particular dynamics of power between employers and workers while coperforming the hirability of the migrant worker. Second, we show how brokers operate within the discretionary space between multiple sets of regulations in order to selectively inscribe the text of policy into migrant workers’ lives. By interrogating the process of translation and clarifying the latitude migration brokers have in shaping the working and living conditions of international labor migrants, the article contributes to the growing conceptual literature on how labor-market intermediaries contour migration markets.

Legal aid services in Spain within the migration industry debate. Public policy, business or social compromise?

ABSTRACTThe objective of this article is to examine the unexplored role of public defenders who provide legal aid services to immigrants within the debate on the migration control and rescue industries. Although these services are provided by bar associations, public organizations that group private professionals, they are paid for with government funds due to regulations guaranteeing the right to legal defence. The main argument and conclusion of this article is that although lawyers working in these services receive public compensation for the legal aid they provide, they generally become public defenders due to personal beliefs, such as a commitment to protecting the rights of foreigners.

Je viens d’Alep, itinéraire d’un réfugié ordinaire

Je viens d’Alep, itinéraire d’un réfugié ordinaire

Choreographing the rhythms of encounter in Singapore's maid agencies

This paper builds on Lefebvre's concept of rhythmanalysis in order to extend our understanding of geographies of encounter in everyday social life. Focusing on the encounters that take place at maid agencies that match migrant domestic workers with local employers in Singapore, we develop the conceptual construct of choreography to show how bodies in spaces of encounter are rhythmically ordered to move through space in particular ways at specific speeds and times. The concept is also useful in studying encounters between migrants and citizens not just as serendipitous events but as purposively designed. Foregrounding the tangled relationalities that exist between maid agents, domestic workers, and employers, we show how employers’ interactions with the materialities of the migration industry – such as the spatial arrangement of the maid agency and the biodata used in the selection of workers – set particular diagrammatic rhythms into motion, prefiguring corporeal migrant–local encounters before they begin. We depict migrant women's punctuated rhythms of moving and waiting, revealing how the eurythmia of the maid agency both conceals and is dependent on the arrhythmia of their bodies. Finally, by emphasising that choreography requires both design and performance, we investigate how migrant women are able to overturn the ordering of rhythms through improvisational moments. Attending to the practices of the maid agency allows us to reveal how relations of power between migrants and locals are reproduced within contexts of temporary labour migration.

Haciendo-lugar vía huellas y apegos: las personas migrantes africanas y sus experiencias de movilidad, inmovilidad e inserción local en América Latina. Introducción al dossier temático REMHU 56

Resumen Este artículo introductorio al dossier temático traza los conocimientos y estudios existentes sobre la actual migración africana subsahariana hacia y por América Latina, y propone una perspectiva del haciendo-lugar para su análisis. Tal enfoque analítico permite incluir y vincular las experiencias y prácticas de las personas migrantes con una mirada más estructural que tiene en cuenta regímenes de movilidad y la industria de la migración. Más allá de una victimización o esencialización de las personas migrantes africanas, así se puede llegar a una mejor comprensión de sus compromisos de corta o larga duración con los lugares en los cuales habitan o que atraviesan en sus trayectorias; compromisos que afectan y se desarrollan tanto a un nivel material como social y emocional.

Disrupted becomings: The role of smartphones in Syrian refugees’ physical and existential journeys

This paper explores the role of smartphones in facilitating the journeys of predominantly young, male Syrians following the onset of the civil war. Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted with Syrian refugees who have reached Denmark but are at different stages of the asylum process, it traces the multiple disruptions they have experienced and delves into the ways in which they navigate in their search for a better life. Their smartphones are shown to be vital tools in a myriad of ways at all stages of their physical and existential journeys starting from their lives in Syria and then Turkey, the boat crossing to Greece, overland through Europe, seeking asylum and settling into Denmark. The concept of ‘chronic disruption’ is developed to capture the ways in which refugees are constantly facing new hurdles in their lives, which smartphones play a key role both physically and existentially in their attempts to overcome. This paper makes an original contribution to migration studies by bringing together an analysis of the role smartphones play as part of migration infrastructure, both in facilitating access to the migration industry and shaping migrants’ journeys, aspects which are rarely brought together in one study.

Contested Ground: Network Governance in Australia's Migration Industry

AbstractThis article challenges current understandings of the Australian migration industry's position in a network governance framework by shedding light on Registered Migration Agents’ (RMA) lived experiences of their profession. Using qualitative interview data collected from ten migration intermediaries across Australia, this article examines their experiences of their role in relation to the state and industry bodies. Placing migration intermediaries at the meso‐level of analysis, between macro‐level forces of the state and micro‐level agency of their clients, I argue primarily that the migration industry of Australia is a “contested ground” where intermediaries are embedded within complex negotiations with the state and legal frameworks, whilst also negotiating their legitimacy in a stigmatised profession. The findings of this study reveal migration intermediaries’ experiences of network governance as pivotal stakeholders, operating within a space characterized by complex configurations of autonomy and bureaucratic control.

The Migration Industry and the H‐2 Visa in the United States: Employers, Labour Intermediaries, and the State

AbstractResearch on the migration industry has demonstrated the wide variety of roles played by private actors in international migration. However, so far little of this work has attempted to quantitatively measure the size and composition of these industries within particular migration schemes. Using the case of the H‐2 temporary working visa in the US, this article looks to better understand the prevalence, impact, and dynamics of the private labour intermediaries that offer services to US employers looking to hire workers from abroad. Using data from applications to hire foreign workers made to the US Department of Labor, this article finds that private intermediaries are extensively involved. Their broad inclusion raises questions of public and private authority in the visa programme, as the use of private intermediaries becomes necessary for employers to access and navigate the state institutions that oversee the programme.

The Education‐Migration Industry: International Students, Migration Policy and the Question of Skills

AbstractThis special section specifically focuses on student‐migrants and the way they are being catered to by an emerging education‐migration industry. The articles included build upon the observation that especially within the Asia‐Pacific region there is an increasing conflation and entanglement between categories of international students and skilled migrants. This has led to an emerging “industry” that facilitates study‐abroad trajectories and acts as broker for two‐step migration pathways. This Introduction aims to situate the research presented here within the broader context of a burgeoning field of research which examines the growing popularity of international education across the Asia‐Pacific region; the way its emergence is increasingly entangled with specific ambitions that skilled migration programmes cater to; and the way highly regulated skilled migration programmes have given rise to a migration industry in general.

Bridging the Institutional Gaps: International Education as a Migration Industry

AbstractThis article examines the education‐migration industry that has channelled students from China and Viet Nam into Japan over the past three decades and discusses the conditions for the emergence of such an industry, the major actors and the reasons for their changing roles and practices. It argues that the education‐migration industry in Japan emerged because of the discrepant institutional logics. Japan's reluctance to open the door for labour import, despite its acute labour shortage, has turned international education into a sanctioned channel of labour migration and thereby created opportunities for international education to become a thriving migration industry. As long as this institutional gap remains, government regulations will only create new sources of power and profits for brokers who can navigate complex regulations and employ illicit means to satisfy the legal requirements. The education‐migration industry is therefore a derivative of Japan's immigration regime and actively interacts with government policies.