Opening the black box of migration: Brokers, the organization of transnational mobility and the changing political economy in Asia

Pacific Affairs

Volumn 85, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 7-18

  Lindquist, Johan ^a   Xiang, Biao ^b   Yeoh, Brenda S A ^c  

^a STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

^b UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

^c NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE   (Singapore)

Author keywords

Asia; Brokers; Globalization; Methodology; Migration

Indexed keywords

EDUCATION; GLOBALIZATION; INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION; LABOR MIGRATION; MARRIAGE; POLITICAL ECONOMY;

CHINA; INDONESIA; LAOS; MALAYSIA; NEW ZEALAND; SINGAPORE [SOUTHEAST ASIA]; SOUTH KOREA; THAILAND; VIET NAM;

EID: 84930476933     PISSN: 0030851X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5509/20128517     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. This special issue is based on papers presented at the workshop "Opening the Black Box of Migration: Brokers and the Organization of Transnational Mobility," held at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, August 19-20, 2010. The workshop was organized by the editors and along with the authors we thank the other paper presenters and discussants: Julie Chu, Dadi Darmadi, Amarjit Kaur, Philip Martin, Rhacel Parreñas, James Sidaway and Per Ståhlberg. Funding was generously provided by the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT). Special thanks to the two anonymous reviewers of the introduction and to Hyung Gu Lynn and the staff at Pacific Affairs for their support.
2. Jeremy Boissevain, Friends of Friends: Networks, Manipulators and Coalitions (Basil Blackwell, 1974), 154.
3. See, for instance, Johan Lindquist, "Labour Recruitment, Circuits of Capital, and Gendered Mobility: Reconceptualizing the Indonesian Migration Industry," Pacific Affairs 83, no. 1 (2010): 115-132.
4. This is arguably a somewhat broader term than "migration industry;"
5. see Jon Goss and Bruce Lindquist, "Conceptualizing International Labour Migration: A Structuration Perspective," International Migration Review 29, no. 2 (1995): 317-351.
6. Sergio Sismondo, "Controversies," in An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
7. For an extensive review of the literature on migrant networks
8. see Steven J. Gold, "Migrant Networks: A Summary and Critique of Relational Approaches to International Migration," in Mary Romero and Eric Margolis, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Social Inequalities (Blackwell, 2005): 257-285.
9. See, for instance, Thomas Faist's defintion of "network" in The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration and Transnational Social Spaces (Oxford University Press, 2000), 51-52.
10. See Graeme Hugo, "International Migration in the Asia-Pacific Region: Emerging Trends and Issues," in D.S. Massey and J.E. Taylor, eds., International Migration: Prospects and Policies in a Global Market (Oxford University Press, 2004), 78, 94;
11. Douglas Massey, Joaquin Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouci, Adela Pellegrino and J. Edward Taylor, Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium (Clarendon Press, 1998), 190;
12. Lindquist this issue.
13. Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller, "Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences," Global Networks 2, no. 4 (2002), 301-334.
14. See also, Tim Bunnell, "Routes of Identity: Malay Liverpool and the Limits of Transnationalism," Pacific Affairs 83, no. 3 (2010), 459-480.
15. For instance, see the introduction as well as articles by Tom Boellstorff and Anna Tsing in Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo, eds., The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).
16. Middle space recalls the term "middle passage"-a metaphor for the Atlantic slave trade-which, as McKeown notes in his article in this issue, illustrates the importance of infrastructure and brokers in the migration process, more generally.
17. Xiang Biao, "Transplanting Labour in East Asia," in Yamashita Shinji, Makito Minami, David Haines and Jeremy Edes, eds., Transnational Migration in East Asia: Japan in a Comparative Focus (Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, Senri Ethnological Reports 77, 2008), 175.
18. See also Alan and Josephine Smart, who propose an alternative metaphor, "punctuation," in order to reconceptualize migrant flows and stoppages at the border to Hong Kong. "Time-Space Punctuation: Hong Kong's Border Regime and Limits on Mobility," Pacific Affairs 81, no. 2 (2008): 175-193.
19. Xiang, Transplanting Labour
20. For examples from the Philippines, see Robyn Rodriquez, Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010);
21. And Anna Guevarra, Marketing Dreams, Manufacturing Heroes: The Transnational Labor Brokering of Filipino Workers (Rutgers University Press, 2010).
22. Steven Vertovec, "Circular Migration: The Way Forward in Global Policy?" International Migration Institute (IM) Working Papers(2007), http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/pdfs/imi-working-papers/wp4-circular-migration-policy.pdf, accessed January 31, 2011
23. Graeme Hugo, "Best Practices in Temporary Labour Migration for Development: A Perspective from Asia and the Pacific," International Migration 47, no. 5 (2009): 23-74;
24. Alejandro Portes, The Fence to Nowhere: More than ever, we need to craft an accord on migrant workers," The American Prospect (October, 2007), 26-29.
25. Vertovec, Circular Migration," 2.
26. Jon Goss and Bruce Lindquist, Placing Movers: An Overview of the Asian-Pacific Migration System," The Contemporary Pacific 12, no. 2 (2000), 394.
27. See Xiang Biao, "Introduction," in Return: Nationalizing Transnational Mobility in Asia, eds. Xiang Biao, Brenda Yeoh and Mika Toyota (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming).
28. See Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell, Neoliberalizing Space, Antipode 34, no. 3 (2002): 380-404.
29. For examples of the Foucaultian "governmentality" literature
30. see Liisa Malkki, Refugees and Exile: From 'Refugee Studies' to the National Order of Things," Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995): 495-523
31. John C. Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State (Cambridge University Press, 2000);
32. Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat, eds., Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World (Princeton University Press, 2005)
33. Rodriquez, Migrants for Export. The most influential scholar who focuses on "statecraft" is
34. James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale University Press, 1998) and The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale University Press, 2009).
35. See, for instance, Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1999).
36. Global Commission of International Migration, Migration in an Interconnected World: New Directions for Action (Geneva: Global Commission of Internationl Migration, 2005), 70.
37. Jo Doezema, Sex Slaves and Discourse Masters: The Construction of Trafficking (Zed Books, 2010).
38. Philip Martin, "Merchants of Labor: Labor Recruiters in Asia," paper presented at the workshop, "Opening the Black Box of Migration: Brokers and the Organization of Transnational Mobility," Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, August 19-20, 2010.
39. For a particularly striking case of the rise of marriage migration in Taiwan
40. Sara Friedman, Marital Immigration and Graduated Citizenship: Post-Naturalization Restrictions on Mainland Chinese Spouses in Taiwan, Pacific Affairs 83, no. 1 (2010): 73-93.