Making Mobility a Market: Actors and Interests in Organization and Governance of Circular Migration Markets

Sandhya A.S

While people migrating from one place to another is not a new phenomenon, having a market dedicated to services pertaining to migration is. A wide range of commercial actors, including – but not restricted to – employment intermediaries (or “brokers” in more common parlance), constitute the backbone of this market. While part of the aim of the project is to understand the functional role and institutional necessity of these commercial actors in cross-border exchanges of labor, it is also to understand the role and interests of the state, especially the sending state, in co-creating migration corridors with specific labor-importing countries. Taking the Nepal–Malaysia corridor as the case study and exploring the interaction between the state(s) and the intermediaries on both sides of the market, the project uses qualitative research methodology to understand the public–private partnership in organization and governance of migration markets across borders. By approaching migration markets as cross-border institutions-in-the-making, the project will contribute directly to a transnational sociology of labor markets and labor governance.

Publications by Sandhya A.S