On June 1-2nd, post-doctoral reseach fellow Dr Indrė Balčaitė attended an academic workshop ‘The Migration Industry: Facilitators and Brokerage in Asia’, organized by the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore (NUS). She presented a paper titled ‘Omnipresent Migration Brokerage in Thailand: Providing an Alternative to and Mediating Legal Procedures’ based on long-term fieldwork with low-skilled Burmese labour migrants.
The two-day workshop hosted around 20 invited speakers presenting their research on intra-Asian migration from the lens of brokerage and mediation. Given the rigid immigration rules and intergovernmental agreements for labour import, migration brokerage is as a vast and growing industry in Asia, cross-cutting the legal/clandestine dichotomy. Research presented spanned the sending and host countries in South, East, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Papers examined aspects of state involvement, knowledge production, il/licitness and exploitation and brokerage in the study abroad market.