The social order of transnational migration markets

Abstract

The 'infrastructural turn' in labour migration studies has shifted attention away from the experiences of migrants to the role of public authorities and private actors in facilitating migrant mobilities. As part of a broader turn towards studying transnational mobilities rather than immigration and settlement, this research shows that the formalization of transnational labour migration has made mobility both freer and more difficult. In this article, I reinterpret mobility infrastructures from a market sociological perspective. Transnational labour migration, I argue, is more clearly conceptualized as the organized 'making' of cross-border labour markets. Moreover, from a market sociological perspective the construction of cross-border labour exchanges is at the same time a question of how the uncertainties inherent in market exchanges are coordinated by market actors. In its focus on how exchanges across borders are possible at all, a market sociological perspective makes note of the conflicting interests, power imbalances and uncertainties that must be handled for a social order of transnational migration markets to emerge. An important question concerns whether alternatives to the less regulated neo-liberal market order that is evident in most migration corridors are possible and under what conditions. With reference to the challenges facing the regulation of cross-border labour markets, in my conclusion, I map an agenda for future research.

Brokered discrimination for a fee: the incompatibility of domestic work placement agencies with rights-based global governance of migration

“…In so doing, agencies profited from engaging in racialised and gendered discriminatory recruitment and employment practices. This paper thus advances our understanding of agencies' regulatory roles in transnational migrant labour markets (Jones, 2014;Shire, 2020) and as infrastructural governance actors (Goh et al, 2017;Xiang & Lindquist, 2018).…”

“…States and employers are actively implicated in these processes as well as agencies and migrant women (Lan, 2006;Rodriguez, 2010). The activities of placement agencies are influenced by multiple actors within transnational migration markets (Jones, 2014;Shire, 2020).…”

Making Migrants’ Input Invisible: Intersections of Privilege and Otherness From a Multilevel Perspective

“…As will be shown, these are based on a sexist, racist, and class-based construction of homogeneous groups of workers. Thus, in these transnational labour markets (Shire, 2020), we see both direct and legal (through explicitly exclusionary norms and practices) and indirect (through apparently neutral norms and practices) effects of de-professionalisation and an erosion of labour rights. Although these can be observed in the entire elderly care sector (Dammayr, 2019), in this case they are reinforced by the ethnicisation and transnationalisation of the labour market segment and a shifting of risks from the West to the East within subcontracting structures that is typical for transnational labour markets (Mense-Petermann, 2020).…”

“…The owner of Agency 2 frames the activity of his business as a kind of development aid: So the idea of our business model from my point of view is that we are talking about the principles of fair care [work], that we want to provide an honest and fair value for what we charge…and for people who come from an even more difficult situation we simply provide even more…don't we? Finally, let us look at the discriminatory effects caused by the specific way these transnational labour markets segments are regulated (Shire, 2020).…”

Beyond blue ocean? The roles of intermediaries in the cross‐border labour market between Japan and Vietnam

“…In Japanese, this term is used in the same way as the untranslated English one.2 In this study, I use 'intermediary' and 'broker' interchangeably, regardless of the legal meanings of these terms.3 Mense-Petermann (2020b; 2020a) andShire (2020) apply the term 'transnational labour market' , but in this study I employ the term 'cross-border labour market' . This term better represents the focus of this study, which is the activity of the intermediaries who influence the exchanges between Vietnamese labour and Japanese employers beyond borders.…”