Taking the view that 'skills' are socially constructed categories and highly malleable concepts in practice, this volume centres the discussion on 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?

Gracia Liu-Farrer is Professor of Sociology at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, and Director of Institute of Asian Migration at Waseda University, Japan. Her research examines immigrants' economic, social and political practices in Japan, and the global mobility of students and professional migrants.

Brenda S.A. Yeoh is Raffles Professor of Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Research Leader of the Asian Migration Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, NUS. Her research interests include the politics of space in colonial and postcolonial cities, and gender and transnational migration in Asia.

Michiel Baas is Senior Research Fellow with the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle Germany. His research focuses on questions of (transnational) migration; the body, gender and masculinity; and artificial intelligence. His most recent book is titled Muscular India: Masculinity, Mobility and the New Middle Class (2020).

1. Introduction-Social construction of skill: an analytical approach toward the question of skill in cross-border labour mobilities 2. Skilled or unskilled? The reconfiguration of migration policies in Japan 3. Shifting employabilities: skilling migrants in the nation of emigration 4. Becoming global talent? Taiwanese white-collar migrants in Japan 5. Who are the fittest? The question of skills in national employment systems in an age of global labour mobility 6. Intermediaries and transnational regimes of skill: nursing skills and competencies in the context of international migration 7. The work that brokers do: the skills, competences and know-how of intermediaries in the H-2 visa programme 8. From cooks to chefs: skilled migrants in a globalising culinary field