Michiel Baas - The Migration Industry in Asia: Brokerage, Gender and Precarity

is currently an independent researcher based in London. In 2016, she earned a Politics Ph.D. from SOAS University of London with a research project on Karen migration based on extended fieldwork in Thailand and Myanmar (Burma). A postdoctoral research fellowship at Central European University in Hungary followed. Her academic interests lie at the intersection of political science, social anthropology, and geography and involve migration, borders, ethnicity, and power.

In recent years, there has been a gradual realization that migration cannot solely be understood by focusing on either sending or receiving side. Although increasingly studies of migration take a multi-sited approach, following migrants across the border and from migration decision to ongoing trajectories, an actual focus on what unites sending and receiving sides remains relatively understudied. Studies of transnationalism have partly stepped into this void by showing how various networks act as facilitators and lubricators of migrant flows, but often continue to presuppose an established network, an active diaspora and a certain history to a particular flow of migrants from A to B. However, research increasingly indicates that migrants in Asia no longer strictly rely on such networks and established migrant communities. Due to the commercialization of migration pathways (Baas ) also makes that increasingly migrants have no choice but to seek out the services of specialist in order to meet stringent rules and regulations. The emergence of a migration industry across Asia needs to be understood in this light.