In Indonesia, transnational labour migrations have become a major source of foreign currency over the past twenty years. On migration routes and abroad, migrants are often subjected to abusive, sometimes violent or even deadly experiences. Yet, the 'migration industry' can count on increasing numbers of candidates. Drawing on 20-month multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2006 and 2009 in Java (Indonesia), Kuala Lumpur (Malayisa) and Singapore, I explore how, under these circumstances, migrant workers relate to this risky adventure. As it appears, local conceptions of 'fate' help to overcome fear: as future is perceived in terms of destiny, and since destiny lies ultimately in the hands of God, dealing with potential risks is a matter of religious faith: Only by surrendering sincerely to Allah is the migrant able to secure his or her future in this dangerous milieu. In this cognitive framework, incidents are conceived of as cobaan Tuhan -godly trials -full of meanings, which are meant to test one's faith in God. And bad experiences, rather than being seen as 2 contingent, are perceived as godly signs, which need to be interpreted in order to comply with God's will. I aim to show how this worldview formulates risk and/or uncertainty in terms of nasib and/or takdir (fate; destiny). This relation to risk, in turn, challenges Western-centered risk theories in adding nuance to the relationship between agency and risk, by tracing a singular conceptual tension between risk and fate.

As organizations involved in the 2014-2016 Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak response in West Africa are now drawing lessons from the crisis, the "manufacture of consent" (Burawoy 1979) emerges as an important issue. Recommendations and public health interventions developed during the response were met with suspicion and often resistances by affected populations, pushing involved organizations and actors to reflect about the validity of their risk communication tools and concepts. These difficulties stressed the numerous shortcomings of risk communication practices, which proved inefficient in an unfamiliar social and cultural context. Many reasons can be pointed-out to explain this failure to communicate risks and public health measures effectively under these circumstances. They include: unrealistic goals for communication; lack of integration of social science skills and knowledge in communication guidelines and human resources; underestimation of the breadth of communication-related tasks; over-segmentation and lack of clarity of communication concepts and expertise (risk communication, crisis communication, social mobilization, and health promotion are all but a few of these categories). Among all these possible lines of inquiry, I want to address what can arguably be considered the most fundamental flaw of crisis communication during the West African EVD episode: its inability to take into account and analyze efficiently the context of the intervention.As organizations involved in the 2014-2016 Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak response in West Africa are now drawing lessons from the crisis, the "manufacture of consent" (Burawoy 1979) emerges as an important issue. Recommendations and public health interventions developed during the response were met with suspicion and often resistances by affected populations (Fribault 2015), pushing involved organizations and actors to reflect about the validity of their risk communication tools and concepts. These difficulties stressed the numerous shortcomings of risk communication practices, which proved inefficient in an unfamiliar social and cultural context.Many reasons can be pointed-out to explain this failure to communicate risks and public health measures effectively under these circumstances. They include: unrealistic goals for communication; lack of integration of social science skills and knowledge in communication guidelines and human resources; underestimation of the breadth of communication-related tasks; over-segmentation and lack of clarity of communication concepts and expertise (risk communication, crisis communication, social mobilization, and health promotion are all but a few of these categories). Among all these possible lines of inquiry, I want to address what can arguably be considered the most fundamental flaw of crisis communication during the West African EVD episode: its inability to take into account and analyze efficiently the context of the intervention.To discuss this point, I will start by proposing an informed definition-to the extent...

In Indonesia, transnational labour migrations have become a major source of foreign currency over the past twenty years. On migration routes and abroad, migrants are often subjected to abusive, sometimes violent or even deadly experiences. Yet, the 'migration industry' can count on increasing numbers of candidates. Drawing on 20-month multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2006 and 2009 in Java (Indonesia), Kuala Lumpur (Malayisa) and Singapore, I explore how, under these circumstances, migrant workers relate to this risky adventure. As it appears, local conceptions of 'fate' help to overcome fear: as future is perceived in terms of destiny, and since destiny lies ultimately in the hands of God, dealing with potential risks is a matter of religious faith: Only by surrendering sincerely to Allah is the migrant able to secure his or her future in this dangerous milieu. In this cognitive framework, incidents are conceived of as cobaan Tuhan-godly trials-full of meanings, which are meant to test one's faith in God. And bad experiences, rather than being seen as 2 contingent, are perceived as godly signs, which need to be interpreted in order to comply with God's will. I aim to show how this worldview formulates risk and/or uncertainty in terms of nasib and/or takdir (fate; destiny). This relation to risk, in turn, challenges Western-centered risk theories in adding nuance to the relationship between agency and risk, by tracing a singular conceptual tension between risk and fate.

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The article explores the interactions between transnational labour migration, multinational corporations’ (MNCs) location strategies, and public policies in the context of contemporary Malaysia. My main hypothesis is that the country’s position in global production networks is dependent on the presence of a large pool of foreign workers. To demonstrate this relationship, I develop the concept of ‘migration rent’ in order to account for the specific characteristics of migrant labour in Malaysia. By showing that this rent allows the optimisation of labour, as a production factor, beyond the sole issue of labour costs, the concept allows an explanation for why foreign direct investment does not move to lower-wage countries. By allowing and organising the recruitment of foreign workers on a large scale, the government has shaped territories where both capital and labour can be relocated to achieve effective production factor combinations. To understand this process, I articulate the concept of ‘combined relocation’, which describes transnational investment strategies where both capital and labour are moved to a third country—here Malaysia—under the former’s command. In so doing, the paper thus adds to the literature on MNCs’ spatial strategies, on transnational labour migration, and on Malaysia’s political economy.