How the Box Became Black: Brokers and the Creation of the Free Migrant

Migration brokers and the organization of human mobility did not always exist in a black box. Before the early twentieth century, most attention from lawmakers, journalists and reformers actually focused on brokers and the infrastructure of human movement. By the late nineteenth century, however, three processes had begun to push migration brokers and infrastructure out of the limelight: 1) Brokers and middlemen were increasingly demonized as the source of migration evils. This happened at a discursive level of depicting brokers as padrones, crimps, smugglers and, more generally, as the remnants of pre-modern culture that undermined the benefits of migration. Laws to regulate brokers also had the practical effect of pushing many brokerage activities underground, even as they created new opportunities for brokers to help migrants negotiate the new legal requirements. This demonization of brokers came hand in hand with 2) the emerging ideal of the “free” migrant as an atomized, self-motivated individual. Brokers were thought to interfere with the freedom that was believed to characterized a genuine migrant. Finally, 3) the new immigration laws of the early 20th century focused on regulating entry at the border rather than the process of migration, and concentrated on the “free” individual migrant as the legitimate object of selection. The practical enforcement of these laws further made brokers invisible. Today, these combined factors continue to draw attention away from employers of migrants and broader structural processes and onto brokers as explanations for the inequities and exploitation surrounding migration.

箱子是如何變黑的：代理人和自由移民的產生

移民代理人與對人類移動的組織並不總是在黑箱中操作的。在二十世紀初以前，法律制定者、記者和改革者們關注的中心正是代理人和管理人類流動的設施。自十九世紀以來，有三個因素開始將移民代理人和這些設施推向暗處：首先，代理人和中人日益被妖魔化，成為了移民罪惡的源泉。在話語層面上，代理人被描述為包工頭、人販子和走私者。他們通常被表現為是前現代文化的遺留物，其存在損害了移民的利益。法律對代理人的約束也在實際上起到了將許多代理活動推向地下的作用，雖然這些法律也為代理人創造了幫助移民與新法律要求進行協商的新商機。與對代理人的妖魔化並行的是第二個因素，即新出現的“自由”移民作為個體化的自我激發的個人的理想。代理人因此被看作是干涉了被認為是真誠移民的象徵的自由。最後，二十世紀初的新移民法註重於對入境而非移民過程的管理，並集中於將“自由”個人移民作為挑選移民的合法目標。這些法律的實施進一步使代理人無形化。目前，這些因素繼續轉移對移民僱主和邊界的結構過程應有的關注，而將代理人作為造成移民中的不平等和剝削的原因。

Translated from English by Xin Huang