Johan Lindquist
Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
Biao Xiang
Oxford University, Oxford, UK
Brenda S. A. Yeoh
National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge, Singapore
Keywords: Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Migration, Brokers, globalization, Asia, methodology Labour Recruitment
DOI: 10.5509/20128517
This special issue takes the migrant broker as a starting point for investigating contemporary regimes of transnational migration across Asia. The articles, which span large parts of Asia—including China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, as well as New Zealand—show that marriage migration, student migration, and various forms of unskilled labour migration, including predominantly male plantation and construction work and female domestic, entertainment, and sex work, are all mediated by brokers. Although much is known about why migrants leave home and what happens to them upon arrival, considerably less is known about the forms of infrastructure that condition their mobility. A focus on brokers is one productive way of opening this “black box” of migration research. The articles in this issue are thus not primarily concerned with the experiences of migrants or in mapping migrant networks per se, but rather in considering how mobility is made possible and organized by brokers, most notably in the process of recruitment and documentation. Drawing from this evidence, we argue that in contrast to the social network approach, a focus on the migrant broker offers a critical methodological vantage point from which to consider the shifting logic of contemporary migration across Asia. In particular, paying ethnographic attention to brokers illuminates the broader infrastructure that makes mobility possible while revealing that distinctions between state and market, between formal and informal, and between altruistic and profit-oriented networks are impossible to sustain in practice.
揭開移民黑箱:代理、跨國移動的組織和亞洲政治經濟的轉變
本期特刊以移民代理為出發點攷察當代亞洲的跨國移民體製。這些文章涵蓋了亞洲的大部分地區,包括中國、印度尼西亞、老撾、馬來西亞、新加坡、韓國、泰國、越南、以及新西蘭。這些研究顯示,婚姻移民、留學移民和各種非技術勞工移民、包括以男性為主的種植園和建築工作移民以及女性的家政、娛樂和性工作移民,都經由代理居間促成。雖然我們對移民為何離開家園以及他們到達目的地後的際遇已有所了解,但對於影響他們移動性的設施形式卻知之甚少。聚焦於代理有助於我們揭開移民研究中的“黑箱”。本期的文章主要不是關注移民經歷或描繪移民網絡,而是思考代理是如何將移動變得可能並如何組織移動的,尤其是其徵募和備檔的過程。基於這些研究所提供的證據,我們認為與社交網絡的研究方式相反,聚焦於移民代理為我們提供了一個批判性的方法論角度,從中我們得以思考當代亞洲移民轉變的邏輯。更重要的是,對代理的民族志研究不僅展現了使移民成為可能的廣泛設施,同時也顯示國家和市場、官方和非官方以及利他的和贏利的網絡等之間的區別在實踐中並不是絕對的。
Translated from English by Xin Huang
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