This pivot considers the emergence and functioning of the migration industry and commercialization of migration pathways in Asia. Grounded in extensive fieldwork and building on empirical data gathered through interactions and interviews with brokers, agents and other facilitators of migration, it examines the increasing co-dependence on, entanglement of and overlap between migrants, industry and state. It considers how for low-skilled migrants, migration is often not even possible without the involvement of the industry. As the opportunity to migrate has opened up to an ever-widening group of potential migrants, receiving nations have fine-tuned their migration infrastructure and programs to facilitate the inflow (and timely outflow) of the migrants it deems desirable. The migration industry plays an active role as mediator between migrants¿ desires and states' requirements. This pivot focuses on what unites sending and receiving sides of migration, going beyond presupposed established networks, and offering a clear conceptualization of the contemporary migration industry in Asia.

Michiel Baas is a Research Fellow with the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, Singapore. He holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Amsterdam. Most of his work centers on questions related to India, in particular with reference to the topics of migration, mobility and transnationalism.  

Introduction. Brokerage, Gender and Precarity in Asia's Migration Industry.- Precarity, migration and brokerage in Indonesia: insights from ethnographic research in Indramayu.- Brokered (Il)legality: Co-Producing the Status of Migrants from Myanmar to Thailand.- Understanding the Cost of Migration: Facilitating Migration from India to Singapore and the Middle East.- Unauthorized Recruitment of Migrant Domestic Workers from India to the Middle East: Interest Conflicts, Patriarchal Nationalism and State Policy.- An Industry of Migration Frauds? State Policy, Migration Assemblages and Migration of Nurses from India.