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Migration Infrastructure

Author

Listed:
  • Biao Xiang
  • Johan Lindquist

Abstract

type="main" xml:id="imre12141-abs-0001"> Based on the authors’ long-term field research on low-skilled labor migration from China and Indonesia, this article establishes that more than ever labor migration is intensively mediated. Migration infrastructure – the systematically interlinked technologies, institutions, and actors that facilitate and condition mobility – serves as a concept to unpack the process of mediation. Migration can be more clearly conceptualized through a focus on infrastructure rather than on state policies, the labor market, or migrant social networks alone. The article also points to a trend of “infrastructural involution,” in which the interplay between different dimensions of migration infrastructure make it self-perpetuating and self-serving, and impedes rather than enhances people's migratory capability. This explains why labor migration has become both more accessible and more cumbersome in many parts of Asia since the late 1990s. The notion of migration infrastructure calls for research that is less fixated on migration as behavior or migrants as the primary subject, and more concerned with broader societal transformations.

Suggested Citation

  • Biao Xiang & Johan Lindquist, 2014. "Migration Infrastructure," International Migration Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48, pages 122-148, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:intmig:v:48:y:2014:i::p:s122-s148
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/imre.2014.48.issue-s1
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Niels van Doorn & Darsana Vijay, 2024. "Gig work as migrant work: The platformization of migration infrastructure," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 56(4), pages 1129-1149, June.
    2. Heike Hanhörster & Susanne Wessendorf, 2020. "The Role of Arrival Areas for Migrant Integration and Resource Access," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(3), pages 1-10.
    3. Hanhorster, Heike & Wessendorf, Susanne, 2020. "The role of arrival areas for migrant integration and resource access," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 105234, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Manolova, Polina & Schlee, Thorsten & Wiese, Lena, 2024. "Multiple Prekarisierung - Zur Lebenslage osteuropäischer Migrant*innen in urbanen Sozialräumen: Am Beispiel der beiden Duisburger Stadtteile Hochfeld und Marxloh," IAQ-Report 2024-10, University of Duisburg-Essen, Institute for Work, Skills and Training (IAQ).
    5. Heike Hanhörster & Susanne Wessendorf, 2020. "The Role of Arrival Areas for Migrant Integration and Resource Access," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(3), pages 1-10.
    6. Mengwei Tu, 2022. "Institutional Gap and Mobility–Immobility Transition: International Students’ Study-to-Work Experience in China," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 27(4), pages 1094-1103, December.
    7. Wang, Sean H., 2017. "Intra-Asian infrastructures of Chinese birth tourism: agencies’ operations in China and Taiwan," SocArXiv q6ba2, Center for Open Science.
    8. Tilmann Heil, 2021. "Interweaving the Fabric of Urban Infrastructure: Senegalese City‐making in Rio de Janeiro," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(1), pages 133-149, January.
    9. Tekalign Ayalew Mengiste, 2018. "Refugee Protections from Below: Smuggling in the Eritrea-Ethiopia Context," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 676(1), pages 57-76, March.
    10. David Wilson, 2022. "People as infrastructure politics in global north cities: Chicago’s South Side," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 40(1), pages 165-179, February.
    11. Martina Tazzioli, 2020. "Governing migrant mobility through mobility: Containment and dispersal at the internal frontiers of Europe," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(1), pages 3-19, February.
    12. Moritz Altenried, 2024. "Mobile workers, contingent labour: Migration, the gig economy and the multiplication of labour," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 56(4), pages 1113-1128, June.
    13. Sameer Prasad & Jason Woldt & Harish Borra & Nezih Altay, 2022. "Migrant supply chain networks: an empirically based typology," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 319(1), pages 1331-1358, December.
    14. Weiqiang Lin & Johan Lindquist & Biao Xiang & Brenda S. A. Yeoh, 2017. "Migration infrastructures and the production of migrant mobilities," Mobilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(2), pages 167-174, March.
    15. Ruta Nimkar & Abdullah Mohammadi, 2023. "A Widening Moral Rift: The Complex Interactions between EU Externalization and Afghan Border Ecosystems," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 709(1), pages 46-64, September.
    16. Antea Barišić & Mahdi Ghodsi & Michael Landesmann, 2024. "Technological Push and Pull Factors of Bilateral Migration," wiiw Working Papers 242, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    17. Hartmann, Sarah, 2024. "Smoothness as a quality of care: An STS approach to transnational healthcare mediation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 347(C).
    18. Rebeca Raijman & Nonna Kushnirovich & Yahel Kurlander, 2024. "Between Marketization and Demarketization: Reconfiguration of the Migration Industry in the Agricultural Sector in Israel," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 43(2), pages 1-24, April.

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