‘Give me my pathway!‘: multinational migration, transnational skills regimes and migrant subjectification

Abstract

In this article, I address the interplay between migration regimes and migrant subjectivities in stepwise multinational migration through a comparative analysis of biographical interviews with migrants in the healthcare and dairy farm work sectors in New Zealand. In both sectors, migrants' trajectories involve movements from Asia to locations in the Middle East, North Africa or Japan before arrival in New Zealand, and in some cases plans for onward migration. The analysis of these migration patterns and the narratives of migrants, reveal an emergent transnational skills regime that involves connected but uncoordinated systems of skills recognition; negotiating this regime occurs through increased attunement to migration on the part of multinational migrants, as well as adaptation to the expectations of authorities and employers. I conclude the article by suggesting that while multinational migration involves new opportunities for people on the move it also entails greater entanglement in the unequal conditioning of transnational migration.

Global Inequality, Mobility Regimes and Transnational Capital: The Post-Graduation Plans of African Student Migrants

“…Migration is stratified by migration policies which differentially assign status and rights to groups of migrants (Collins, 2020). In this case, the Chinese state restricts educationally channelled labour migration, shaping the trajectories not only of students who return home, but also those who migrate onward.…”

“…In order to delineate the nature of students’ embeddedness within global structures, this article draws on the related but more wide-ranging concept of ‘regimes of mobility’, one manifestation of global structural inequalities which may serve to mediate the agency of African student migrants (e.g. Collins, 2020; Glick Schiller and Salazar, 2013). Mobility regimes are intersecting systems that differentially allow and restrict migration across social groups.…”

Geographies of migration I: Platform migration

“…Migrant agency relates to many issues here, but it is particularly notable that migrants who move multiple times are able to do so because they become familiar with systems of migration governance, how to access reliable information, what kinds of industry and other actors are key to subsequent moves and awareness of how to present themselves as desirable migrants/workers (Collins, 2020;Walton-Roberts, 2020). In this regard, multinational migrations reveal very clearly the significance of platforms of infrastructure and industry in generating and shaping migration -migration, singular or multiple, does not just happen because of structural forces and nor is it only a result of individual choices, it is actively enabled and directed by diverse platforms that configure possibilities for moving in the world.…”

“…Multinational migrations can also be 'staggered' (Robertson, 2019) or 'provisional' (Collins, 2019) because migration and border control regimes are designed to restrict access to long-term residence while providing greater access to precarious time-limited migration statuses (Roberts, 2019;Tan and Hugo, 2017). Walton-Roberts (2020), for example, observes a 'two-step study-work (multistage) pathway' for nurses moving from India to Canada (see also Collins, 2020, for a related account on New Zealand). Nurse migrants in this context are channelled through skills policy and language testing towards a costly and prolonged process of enrolling in healthcare courses (as international students), taking on various work options (on temporary visas) and hoping to eventually transition to longer term residence.…”

“…Actors in migration industries connect people and places through the establishment of networks and through formal processes of placement, whether in regularised labour supply, educational systems or through trafficked mobility. Brokerage, thus, entails establishing platforms that actively work on the character of migration -establishing pathways or trajectories for migrants through complex systems (Collins, 2020;Wee et al, 2019), negotiating and managing labour relations and debt financing (Baey and Yeoh, 2018;Moniruzzaman and Walton-Roberts, 2018) as well as through cultivating conceptions of the ideal migrant/worker (Awumbila et al, 2019;Collins and Bayliss, 2020;Deshingkar, 2019;Picherit, 2019). The figure of the broker is often framed in moralistic terms, an actor who seeks profit through inducing, deceiving and victimising migrants while simultaneously disrupting the intent of state control of migration (Deshingkar, 2019;Rai, 2020).…”