The business of labour migration intermediation has existed as long as people traded and migrated across territories, countries and continents. Recent technological innovations and the global expansion of production and trade have led to an unprecedented increase in international labour migration, providing a fertile ground for labour migration intermediaries. As many recipient countries have created high entry barriers, especially for low-skilled workers, migrants are often at the mercy of informal recruiters. In the worst case, they end up in the clutches of unscrupulous smugglers and traffickers. The growing trend towards informal labour migration intermediation creates regulatory challenges, which are discussed in the book. Which regulatory regimes are best suited to formalize the migration intermediation business, and to protect migrants from exploitation and abuse? Under what conditions will they most likely occur? The study uses a mix of qualitative methods, including a comparative analysis of the regulation of labour migration intermediaries in the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation. In both countries, international standards, particularly on human trafficking and private employment agencies, guided regulatory initiatives. Their outcomes, however, depended on a range of factors, including the creation of alliances between business and workers.

This book breaks new ground in scholarship on the politics of migration. The edited volume brings together in-depth case studies from Argentina, Tunisia, Japan, South Korea, the United States, Australia, the Philippines, China, and Saudi Arabia to showcase the complex interplay between migration politics and broader dynamics of regime change, state formation, and nation-state ideology. Challenging conventional wisdom, we reveal that political systems—whether liberal or illiberal, democratic or authoritarian—do not rigidly dictate migration politics. Instead, migration politics and political regimes co-produce one another. Our exploration delves into the roles of civil society, legal actors, employers, and international norms across diverse political contexts and bridges conversations around immigration and emigration politics. Uncovering unexpected similarities in migration policies across different political regimes at a time when states are increasingly adopting illiberal practices, this collection is essential for political scientists, sociologists, and migration scholars seeking a fresh perspective. Migration Politics Across the World offers an ideal vantage point for understanding the role of migration in state transformations and political changes around the world. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

Selecting migrants based on skill has become a widely practised migration policy in many countries around the world. Since the late 20th century, research on 'skilled' and 'highly skilled' migration has raised important questions about the value and ethics of skill-based labour mobility. More recent research has begun to question the concept of skill and skill categorisation in both government policy and academic research. Taking the view that 'skills' are socially constructed categories and highly malleable concepts in practice, this edited volume centres the discussion on the following questions: Who are the arbitrators of skill? What constitutes skill? And how is skill constructed in the migration process and in turn, how does skill affect the mobility? The empirical studies in this volume show that diverse actors are involved in the process of identifying, evaluating and shaping migrant skill. The interpretation of migrants' skill is frequently distorted by their ascriptive characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender and nationality, reflecting the influence of colonial legacy, global inequality as well as social stratification. Finally, this edited volume emphasises the complex, and frequently reciprocal, relationship between skill and mobility. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of Sociology, Human Geography, Politics, Social Anthropology, Economics, and Social Work. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

This book explores the daily survival strategies of people within the context of failed states, flourishing informal economies, legal uncertainty, increased mobility, and globalization, where many people, who are forced by the circumstances to be innovative and transnational, have found their niches outside formal processes and structures. The book provides a thorough theoretical introduction to the link between labour mobility and informality and comprises convincing case studies from a wide range of post-socialist countries. Overall, it highlights the importance of trust, transnational networks, and digital technologies in settings where the rules governing economic and social activities of mobile workers are often unclear and flexible.

The world of senior care provision and care work is changing rapidly. Across Europe, brokering agencies for live-in care workers have become powerful players in reshaping welfare systems, transnational care chains and working conditions. This volume draws together the latest research on live-in home care for seniors in Europe, exploring processes of commodification and marketisation, the transnationalisation of care work, the private household as a workplace, and workers’ contestation of the live-in care arrangement. Together, they depict far-reaching challenges in care provision and care work. "A must-read for anyone wishing to understand the changes in the political economy of care in the 21st century. A compelling exploration of the emergence of care brokerage and agency intermediation in Europe with a variety of examples from different countries and care settings." - Professor Sabrina Marchetti, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice "Essential reading. Rich empirical and conceptual work provides an exhaustive account of the commodification, marketisation, transnationalisation and exploitation in the care industry, all in the context of global and local inequalities. This is a group of amazing critical analysts who dare to confront some of the key contradictions of our current painful social transformation in European terrains." - Professor Attila Melegh, Corvinus University Budapest "An encyclopaedic account of the commodification and marketisation of transnationally-brokered senior home care provision across Europe. It pays close attention to the economic and social inequalities, as well as state policies, that underlie this new migration industry, and the collective efforts to contest and improve conditions of work and care. Home Care for Sale documents the geography of care chains within a divided Europe - a geography that both complements and disrupts conventional understandings of international care chains between the Global North and South. A must-read for those interested in senior home care, social reproduction, migration, border studies and the workings and repercussions of neoliberal state policies." - Professor Géraldine Pratt, University of British Columbia

To what extent is labour law an autonomous field of study? This book is based upon the papers written by a group of leading international scholars on this theme, delivered at a conference to mark Professor Mark Freedland's retirement from his teaching fellowship in Oxford. The chapters explore the boundaries and connections between labour law and other legal disciplines such as company law, competition law, contract law and public law; labour law and legal methodologies such as reflexive governance and comparative law; and labour law and other disciplines such as ethics, economics and political philosophy. In so doing, it represents a cross-section of the most sophisticated current work at the cutting edge of labour law theory.

If well managed, migration generates benefits for migrants, their countries of origin and the countries they settle in. For migrants, it can help them expand their skill sets and improve their standard of living. For destination countries, it can alleviate demographic pressures and foster cultural diversity. For origin countries, it can bring benefits associated with remittances and knowledge transfers. However, in reality, these benefits are rarely achieved, as migration policy failures frequently lead to suboptimal or even negative outcomes. Realizing the full potential of migration therefore demands we foster a paradigm shift toward the fair management of migration. Fair migration is driven by the desire to achieve a triple-win for migrants, destination countries and origin countries. In addition to outlining the key challenges and opportunities associated with fair migration, this volume examines the good practices of a variety of countries and institutions which highlight aspects of fair migration. The volume concludes with policy recommendations for effective and fair migration policymaking at the national and international levels. As a conceptual and empirical contribution to both national and international debates on managing migration, this volume aims to enrich discussions among policymakers, business leaders, civil society actors and scholars alike.

At a time when worker shortages have emerged as a global challenge, this highly original book bridges migration and labour studies to examine worker mobility and its management. This will be a valuable resource for both scholars and practitioners.

This is the first book in English to examine irregular migration from former Soviet states to the United States. It discusses reasons for migration; the profile of migrants; how the process works, how migrants obtain U.S. visas; where they work once arrived; and if they intend to return home.

For several decades, wealthy states, international development agencies and multinational corporations have encouraged labour migration from the Global South to the Global North. As well as providing essential workers to support the transformation of advanced economies, the remittances that migrants send home have been touted as the most promising means of national development for poor and undeveloped countries. As Immanuel Ness argues in this sharp corrective to conventional wisdom, temporary labour migration represents the most recent form of economic imperialism and global domination. A closer look at the economic and social evidence demonstrates that remittances deepen economic exploitation, unravel societal stability and significantly expand economic inequality between poor and rich societies. The book exposes the damaging political, economic and social effects of migration on origin countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and how border and security mechanisms control and marginalize low-wage migrant workers, especially women and youth. Ness asserts that remittances do not bring growth to poor countries but extend national dependence on the export of migrant workers, leading to warped and unequal development on the global periphery. This expert take will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of migration and development across the social sciences.