New from IMR Migration Infrastructure, Policy, and Public Attitudes

December 7, 2020

The Winter 2020 edition of the International Migration Review (IMR) is now available online and in print through paid or institutional subscription. This edition is thematically sorted into four sections. The first section has articles about different aspects of migration infrastructure. The second section discusses migrant labor market outcomes, with a focus on education, employment, and selection. The third section examines migration policies across scales, such as local voting, geopolitical influences, and enforcement questions. The fourth section examines immigration and public attitudes focusing on political elites and media use. Lastly, this edition includes 11 book reviews which are free to access.

When does Social Capital Matter for Migration? A Study of Networks, Brokers, and Migrants in Nepal
Nathalie Williams, Christina Hughes, Prem Bhandari, Arland Thornton, Linda Young-DeMarco, Cathy Sun, and Jeffrey Swindle

This article addresses the contextual variation in the effects of social capital on migration considering migration brokers in Nepal. As it shows, many questions remain about how social capital works and why it has varying effects across places. This article argues that destinations where migration is logistically difficult to arrange give rise to brokerage industries and hypothesizes that migration brokers substitute for the informational capital typically provided by social networks. Empirical tests in Nepal support this hypothesis and show that social networks have an impact on migration to destinations where brokers are not available and effect on migration to destinations where brokers are available. The authors conclude that migration research should consider the growing role of migration brokerage agencies and how social capital is delimited by brokers and that migration scholars should also consider other consequences arising from migration brokers, which are increasingly common in many countries.

Translating People and Policy: The Role of Maid Agents in Brokering between Employers and Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore’s Migration Industry
Kellynn Wee, Charmian Goh, and Brenda Yeoh

This article analyzes the migration industries that facilitate the international movement of low-waged laborers with temporary contracts, including migration brokers who work in destination countries. In doing so, it highlights the arrival infrastructures that incorporate migrations in host societies. The authors use the concept of “translation” as a metaphor to understand how brokers actively fashion knowledge between and among different actors, scales, and settings. The arguments presented here are based on ethnographic research with employment agents who recruit women migrating from Indonesia to Singapore to work as domestic workers. As the analysis shows, migration brokers continually translate meaning across encounters between potential employers and employees at the agency shopfront through the interpretation of language, in the process, reproducing particular dynamics of power between employers and workers. The authors also show how brokers operate within the spaces and gaps between multiple sets of regulations to implement policy into migrant workers’ lives. This article contributes to the growing literature on labor-market intermediaries and migration markets by examining the process of translation and clarifying the power that migration brokers have in shaping the working and living conditions of international labor migrants.

MIGRATION INFRASTRUCTURE: BROKERS, CONSULATES, AND IMMIGRANT OUTCOMES

Translating People and Policy: The Role of Maid Agents in Brokering between Employers and Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore’s Migration Industry
Kellynn Wee, Charmian Goh, and Brenda Yeoh

Mexican Consular Protection Services across the United States: How Local, Social, Economic, and Political Conditions Structure the Sociolegal Support of Emigrants
Ricardo D. Martínez-Schuldt

MIGRANT LABOR MARKET OUTCOMES: EDUCATION, EMPLOYMENT, AND SELECTION

How Labor Market Integration Affects Perceptions of Discrimination: School-to-Apprenticeship Transitions of Youth with Migration Background in Germany
Kristina Lindemann

Immigration System, Labor Market Structures, and Overeducation of High-Skilled Immigrants in the United States and Canada
Yao Lu and Feng Hou

High Selection, Low Success: The Heterogeneous Effect of Migrants’ Access to Employment on Their Remigration
Louise Caron and Mathieu Ichou

MIGRATION POLICIES ACROSS SCALES: LOCAL VOTING, GEOPOLITICAL INFLUENCES, AND ENFORCEMENT QUESTIONS

The Role of Local Voting Rights for Non-Naturalized Immigrants: A Catalyst for Integration?
Mattias Engdahl, Karl-Oskar Lindgren, and Olof Rosenqvist

Migration Diplomacy and Policy Liberalization in Morocco and Turkey
Kelsey P. Norman

Who Signs Up for E-Verify? Insights from DHS Enrollment Records
Pia Orrenius, Madeline Zavodny, and Sarah Greer

IMMIGRATION AND PUBLIC ATTITUDES: POLITICAL ELITES AND MEDIA USE

Propagated Preferences? Political Elite Discourses and Europeans’ Openness toward Muslim Immigrants
Christian S. Czymara

Some Media Matter More Than Others: Investigating Media Effects on Attitudes Toward and Perceptions of Immigration in Sweden
Nora Elin Gabriella Theorin, and Jesper Strömbäck

BOOK REVIEWS

Immigration and the Politics of Welfare Exclusion. Selective Solidarity in Western Democracies
Edward Anthony Konning
Reviewed by Ester Serra Mingot

Precarious Hope: Migration and the Limits of Belonging in Turkey
Ayşe Parla
Reviewed by Juliette Tolay

Time, Migration and Forced Immobility: Sub-Saharan African Migrants in Morocco
Inka Stock
Reviewed by Ricardo Laremont

Human Geopolitics: States, Emigrants, and Diaspora Institutions
Alan Gamlen
Reviewed by Rilke Mahieu

The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles
Charles Piot & Kodjo Nicolas Batama
Reviewed by Faranak Miraftab

Bound for Work: Labor, Mobility, and Colonial Rule in Central Mozambique, 1940–1965
Zachary Kagan Guthrie
Reviewed by Alicia Hayashi Lazzarini

Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State
Shannon Speed
Reviewed by Kate Coddington

Offshore Citizens. Permanent Temporary Status in the Gulf
Noora Lori
Reviewed by James Sater

Sri Lanka’s Remittance Economy: A Multiscalar Analysis of Migration-Underdevelopment
Matt Withers
Reviewed by Sokchea Lim

Legal Passing: Navigating Undocumented Life and Local Immigration Law
Angela García
Reviewed by Austin Kocher

Immigration and the Remaking of Black America
Tod G. Hamilton
Reviewed by Maruice Mangum