Education as Early Stage Brokerage: Cooling Out Aspiring Migrants for the Global Hotel Industry

Through an analysis of the field of hotel and restaurant management, a program popular among Filipino youth hoping to find work overseas, this paper argues that an integral, yet invisible, aspect of educating future migrant workers is “cooling out” working-class students for a hospitality industry that runs on low-wage, contractual labour. This practice of cooling out involves reorienting students’ ambitions towards blue-collar jobs that do not require college degrees, encouraging them to start from the bottom in pursuing their migration dreams. Based on qualitative interviews with 36 college educators and 25 students, this paper discusses how the cooling-out function serves as a form of migration brokerage, funnelling aspiring migrants into lower segments of the global labour market even before they leave their countries of origin. Yet, students do not question such practices, constructing a notion of working-class values that allows them to take pride in performing work that others might consider undesirable. This paper emphasizes the need for migration scholars to look beyond schooling as a stepping stone towards social mobility and unpack the role of higher education as part of a migration infrastructure that conditions aspiring migrants’ mobility.

教育作为早期的中介： 冷静有志流动者的头脑，为全球酒店业服务

关键词：劳工流动， 中介者，劳工流动基础设施，高等教育，服务行业工作， 菲律宾

通过对在那些希望在海外寻找工作机会的菲律宾青年中的一个非常流行的专业——酒店和餐饮管理——领域的分析，本文提出对未来的外籍劳工的教育中有一个内在但是无形的内容，即令工人阶级家庭的学生“头脑冷静“，准备服务于依靠低工薪和合同制劳工运作的酒店业。 ”冷静头脑“的做法包括将学生的理想重新定位为不要求大学学位的蓝领工作，鼓励他们从底层做起实现移民梦。本文根据对36位大学教育者和25名学生的定性访谈，探讨了这个” 冷静头脑“的功能是怎样起到一种移民中介的作用，甚至在有志成为流动劳工者离开出生国之前就已经把他们推向全球劳工市场中低端的部门。然而，学生们并不质疑这些做法，而是建构出一个工人阶级价值的观念，从而允许他们在从事别人可能会觉得”不体面“的工作时能为自己感到骄傲。本文强调，移民学者需要超越仅仅把学校教育看成社会流动的一个晋身之阶的观点，并去探究高等教育作为劳工流动基础设施的一部分在调控有志成为外籍劳工者的流动性中所起的作用。

Translated from English by Li Guo