The making and unmaking of precarious, ideal subjects - migration brokerage in the Global South

• Published in: Journal of ethnic and migration studies Vol. 45; no. 14; pp. 2638 - 2654
• Main Author: Deshingkar, Priya
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 26.10.2019; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Brokerage; Employers; Human capital; Immigration; Insecure; Kinship; Kinship networks; Labor market; Labor migration; Middlemen; Migrants; Migration; Occupations; Outsourcing; Slavery; Social interaction; Social networks
• ISSN: 1369-183X; 1469-9451
• DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2018.1528094

The migration literature is often underpinned by the idea that migrants are either completely ‘free’ agents, individually choosing how best to achieve returns on their human capital and resources (Sjaastad 1962) or ‘agents of development’ for their home countries and regions (Turner and Kleist 2013). Conversely they are viewed as exploited slaves, being pushed into low-paid occupations and controlled by middlemen and employers. Unsurprisingly, in many close-knit societies a process as expensive and life-defining as migration is rarely undertaken as an individual act and is shaped by complex social interactions within kinship networks and beyond (Lindquist 2012). Brokerage is ever-present in migrant labour markets around the world, variously interpreted as occupying the ‘middle space’ between migrants and the state, helping migrants navigate complex immigration regimes (Lindquist, Xiang, and Yeoh 2012; McKeown 2012; Schapendonk 2017), acting as an extension of the state seeking to outsource border controls (Goh, Wee, and Yeoh 2017) and colluding with employers to cheapen and commoditise migrant labour (Guérin 2013; McCollum and Findlay 2018). It is increasingly recognised that an understanding of contemporary migration is not complete without an understanding of the mediating practices that facilitate and constrain it (Coe and Jordhus-Lier 2011; Cranston, Schapendonk, and Spaan 2018).