Predatory Princes and Princely Peddlers: The State and International Labour Migration Intermediaries in China

Private recruitment agents have been a major concern of policy makers in international labour migration. The agents are seen to undermine state authority, the market order, and migrant rights. It is commonly suggested that their role can be curtailed or even eliminated if administrative red tape of migration control is cut down (a liberal approach), or regulation on the intermediary business is tightened up (an interventionist approach). The Chinese government has done both in different times since the 1980s, but only to make the process of recruitment more complicated and private agents more powerful. This paper explains why. Based on seven years’ field research and documentary study, the article provides an ethnographic account of the change of the practice of international labor recruitment in China, especially in relation to systemic reforms, between 1980 and 2008. The centralized state in a liberalizing economy seems to need private agents in order to render individual mobility governable, migrants protectable, and agents themselves “blamable” and punishable. If limited centralization of state power gave rise to the earlier forms of intermediary (e.g. tax farming), intermediary agents today result from governmental practices of the highly centralized state. As such, private agents should not be construed as autonomous entities located between demand and supply, or between migrants and states, they are instead an integral part of a complex structure of governance.

掠奪成性的王子與慷慨的小販：中國國家與國際勞工移民中介之間的關係

私營徵募機構一直是國際勞工移民政策制定者的主要煩惱。這些機構被認為是損害了國家權威、市場秩序和移民的權利。通常認為如果政府削減移民管理的繁瑣規則（自由主義方法）或對中介生意加強管控（干預主義方法），他們的角色是可以被制約甚至被根除的。中國政府自1980年代以來在不同時期裏對這兩種方法都採用過，其結果是徵募過程變得更複雜，而私營機構變得更強大。本文旨在對這一現象進行解釋。基於七年的田野調查和文獻研究，本文提供了對中國的國際勞工徵募實踐及其變化的民族志研究，尤其是其與1980到2008年間體製改革之間的關係。在一個中央化的政權和自由化的市場之間，私營機構的存在似乎是必要的。它們使個人移動性變得可管理、使移民得以受保護、而這些機構本身還擔當了被“指責”和被懲罰的對象。如果說國家權力有限的集中化滋長了最初的中介形式（如包稅製）， 那麽當前的中介機構則是高度集中化國家的政府實踐的產物。因此，私營機構不應被理解為是處於需求與供應之間或移民與國家之間的自主機構，它們實際上是政府複雜結構的有機組成部分。

Translated from English by Xin Huang