Taikongs and Calos: the role of middlemen and brokers in Javanese international migration

"This article discusses international migration from Java in the past and present and the role brokers have played in stimulating this movement. It describes legal and clandestine labor migration to Singapore, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia, the influence of employment brokers on the process, and the organization of the recruitment networks. The involvement of brokers is crucial but not always beneficial for the migrants. Migrants are dependent on the brokers and risk exploitation. In the case of movement to Saudi Arabia, there is a linkage with religious institutions and the Islamic pilgrimage."     

Temporary Skilled Migration to Australia: Employers' Perspectives1

With the 1996 introduction of a new visa making it easier for employers to sponsor skilled foreign workers, temporary skilled migration has become a significant component of international migration flows to Australia. This paper examines employers' reasons for sponsoring skilled workers from abroad, their modes of recruitment, the occupational skills they require, and their industry profile. We also discuss issues relating to the perception of a shortage of skilled workers, the extent that sponsoring foreign workers substitutes for investing in local training, and the role of networks in recruiting overseas workers. Many employers' now have a global view of labour recruitment. While this is understandable for multinational companies with global operations, many small businesses and public sector institutions are adopting the same strategy to obtain skilled labour which they say is in short supply in Australia. With the internationalization of the Australian economy, there is also an increasing demand for people with specialized skills and knowledge that is not available in Australia's relatively small labour market. An understanding of the demand factors motivating temporary skilled migration is crucial to effectively managing Australia's migration and labour trends.     

Institutionalizing Recent Rural Emigration from China to Europe: New Transnational Villages in Fujian

The prevalence of irregular migration from a small region in the central parts of Fujian province has associated Chinese emigration with organized crime, exploitation and opportunism in a range of popular and academic writings both in China and outside China. Although migration brokers (“snakeheads”) play an important role in maintaining migratory flows already underway, they should not be seen as the root cause of migration from Fujian. In this article, we report on recently conducted fieldwork in two villages in central Fujian characterized by large‐scale emigration to Europe. Emigration from this part of China is strongly embedded in local political, sociocultural and economic institutions and histories. Migration brokers are certainly a part, but not more than that, of these local institutions. We conclude that the local embeddedness of migration renders population mobility from each area in China highly specific, and broad generalizations on the causes, nature and direction of the totality of Chinese, or even Fujianese, migration are bound to misrepresent a highly complex reality.     

Baoren Baoguo: Zhongguo Xinwenshi De Lingyizhong Dufa [To Serve the Nation: Journalists as Prisms of Chinese Press History] edited by CHIN-CHUAN LEE

Social networking sites (SNS) have become an important vehicle for corporate communication. However, there has been little research on how East Asian firms use international SNSs to communicate with global stakeholders. This study compares the communication strategies of Chinese and Japanese companies on Facebook and Twitter and analyzes the public responses and complaints on these corporate SNSs. The results revealed that in addition to the traditional strategies of corporate ability (CA) and corporate social responsibility (CSR), Chinese and Japanese firms adopted the human interest (HI) strategy. The results showed that the Chinese companies in the study sample had a stronger preference for the CSR and interactive strategies, and they responded faster to online complaints compared with the Japanese firms, which were more likely to adopt the strategy of transferring in handling complaints. Moreover, “inviting participation into events” and “seeking specific feedback” were two types of interactive messages that received the highest numbers of responses from the public on Facebook, whereas “promoting sales” showed the highest engagement on Twitter. This study is the first to compare the effectiveness of different corporate response strategies for specific complaint topics on social media. Thus, it contributes to the literature on stakeholder–company interactions.     

Does “buyer beware” work in migration? Contracting between brokers and migrants in Vietnam

This article is an attempt to open the lid a little of the “black box of migration” i.e. brokers. Analysing contracts between brokers and labour migrants, we identify four different forms of exploitation of migrants by brokers: expropriation of skill premium, risk shifting, over‐charging, and non‐refund of deposits. Opportunistic behaviour by brokers, as evidenced by such exploitation, is seen as a market failure that is explained by human attributes and transactional characteristics. Given the rigidities in the human attributes of the contracting parties and the nature of migration as a risky multi‐period transaction, proposals are made for non‐market interventions, which can lead to more equitable contracting.     

Privileged Japanese transnational families in Hawaii as lifestyle migrants

This study of privileged Japanese families in Hawaii revisits the claim that East Asian transnational families relocate overseas either to improve their well‐being or to enhance their status through their children's international education. Existing scholarship has focused mainly on the second pattern of status‐seeking migration, conceptualized as ‘education migration’. By employing Benson and O'Reilly's concept of ‘lifestyle migration’, I consider the less widely studied case of migration strategies designed to increase well‐being. The central difference between the two types of migrants lies in the way that migrant women construct their gendered identity through their transnational split‐household arrangement – a freer self (lifestyle migrants) or a sacrificial self (education migrants). In conclusion, I call for further research on this neglected topic and propose an important dimension to facilitate lifestyle migration, gender.     

Beyond liking or following: Understanding public engagement on social networking sites in China

Corporate pages on social networking sites (SNSs) have become the key platform where publics interact with companies and organizations around the world. Focusing on one of the most important world economies, China, this study explored the types of public engagement with corporate pages on leading Chinese SNSs as well as the motivations and antecedents that drive such engagement. Given the participatory and communal nature of SNSs, this study proposed a conceptual model incorporating social media dependency and several social relationship factors, including parasocial interaction, perceived source credibility, and community identification, that influenced Chinese publics’ engagement with companies on SNSs. We conducted a web survey with a random sample of 245 Chinese SNS users to test the proposed model. The results confirm that with the exception of perceived credibility, social media usage and relationship-oriented factors played a significant role in inducing public engagement in China.     

Enhancing the capabilities of emigration countries to protect men and women destined for low-skilled employment: the case of the Philippines

This study examined policies in receiving countries, evaluated their effectiveness in protecting low skilled Filipino migrant workers, and discusses the potential for quantifying and objectifying labor migrant gains or losses. Data were obtained from focus groups among 10 technical managers of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration and interviews with 10 policy-makers in order to establish a hierarchy of aims in labor migration and policy indicators. The aims are identified as good jobs abroad, an orderly process, efficient and fair recruitment, and easy transfers of remittances. Findings are that Philippine policies facilitate remittance transfers. Government was least effective in ensuring orderliness. Government was fairly effective in ensuring fairness and efficiency and ensuring good jobs overseas. It succeeded the most in ensuring that nationals can easily transfer their earnings. Allocation data reveal that more resources were expended on searching for good jobs and least on fairness and efficiency. Remittances increased after mandatory remittances were ended as imposed by the Marcos regime. De-skilling often resulted from overseas employment, but rehired workers received better pay on their second and third assignments. This research was exploratory and more research is needed for developing sensitive indicators and refining the process of evaluating key government policies. The Philippine Development Policy that encourages labor migration and protection of overseas workers is a necessity during the ongoing Asian economic crisis.     

Why Do Migrant Workers Intend to Extend Their Stay in Host Countries? The Case of Bangladeshi Workers in Malaysia's Manufacturing Sector

This article explores various factors resulting in temporary migrant workers' decisions to extend their stay in host countries by means of a case study of Bangladeshi factory workers in Malaysia. The employment mediation and passage fees paid to brokers and agents by Bangladeshi workers are very large compared with general living standards in Bangladesh. These large sums are increasing steadily as the number of persons desiring to work overseas increases. Malpractice by brokers and agents causes Bangladeshi workers to overestimate the amount of remittances they can send home, and hence they pay higher mediation and passage fees to brokers or agents. From a humanitarian point of view, the Government should strictly regulate the activities of agents and brokers and provide accurate information to those who plan to work in Malaysia. Statistical analysis suggests that the lower real remittances fall below the expected amounts, and the lower real wages are, compared with passage and mediation fees, the more will Bangladeshi workers wish to extend their stay. These facts imply that if future Bangladeshi migrant workers to Malaysia have the correct information about income levels and living expenses in Malaysia, and hence mediation and passage fees become cheaper, the likelihood of their intending to extend their stays will be much lower.     

The return of international labour migrants in the ESCAP Region

The social phenomenon of massive temporary international labor migration from the ESCAP region has emerged extremely rapidly. Within 10 years, the number of persons from ESCAP countries grew from a negligible one to 3.5 million. Related research and government policies have lagged behind this latest surge in migration. Most research conducted has been small-scale and lacks an analytical or theoretical framework. Policy formulation for temporary labor migration is difficult because most of the rapid growth in the industry has occurred as a result of private efforts, with a minimum of government intervention. It is now difficult, for the government to provide effective regulations or measures to stimulate and assist the process. Regulations on compulsory remittances or overseas minimum wages have proved to be unrealistic and, if not rescinded, are routinely circumvented. The most effective policies to assist return migrants may not be those which are intended to do so, but those which control the earlier stages of the migration process, such as recruitment, working conditions, and banking arrangements. The most valuable policies may also include those affecting education, training, employment, and general socioeconomic growth. Governments are recommended to provide social services for migrants and their families who are experiencing problems, and to institute community programs in areas with a large number of labor migrants. Governmental efforts to promote forms of labor migration beneficial to the workers would be valuable and should include measures to identify overseas labor markets for employing its nationals, government ot government labor contracts, and government participation in joint-venture projects. International migration should be analyzed in the context of theories and social change in order for governments to formulate effective measures for the reintegration of returning workers. Labor migration on the current scale has many social implications for the sending countries; relationships between employers and employees, the government and private sectors, and white and blue collar workers are affected. Social change and technological innovation will become more rapid, women's status and family roles will change markedly, and behavior is likely to become less conformist and more individualistic.     

Welfare brokers and European Union migrants' access to social protection

In spite of the existence of an extensive national and supranational legal framework, European Union (EU) citizens who exercise their right to freedom of movement to work in another Member State face numerous hurdles in accessing social protection. While recent scholarship on street-level bureaucracy and on migration and welfare has shed light on the role of discretion and stereotypes in access to rights, little is known about the processes through which such hurdles are overcome. In this article, we focus on a specific strategy which is the recourse to what we call “welfare brokers”. These actors offer assistance to EU migrants to overcome specific cross-border administrative challenges in the area of social protection that derive from their use of the right to freedom of movement. Relying on qualitative data collected with brokers and Romanian migrants working in Germany, the article also demonstrates that welfare brokers attempt to transform the norms, bureaucratic practices and representations that condition access to these entitlements. The article concludes by underlining how the existence of a brokerage industry is a sign of existing inequalities in the exercise of freedom of movement within the EU.     

Emigration dynamics in Pakistan

This study of emigration dynamics in Pakistan focuses on Pakistan's position as one of the world's leading manpower exporters. The study opens with a review of the history of international labor from the subcontinent. The second section looks at the problems with the collection of data on international migration and then considers the volume of international migration, migrant destinations, return migration, undocumented migration, and the stock of migrant workers abroad. The third section describes the economic and demographic context for overseas migration through a consideration of gross national product and the remittances of migrant workers, growth in gross domestic product, poverty and income distribution, the state of the population, labor force and employment, a profile of migrant workers, and the government's employment policy. The political and social context for overseas migration is the topic of the next section, and the discussion centers on emigration policy, institutional arrangements for manpower export and the welfare of migrants, and the economic resettlement of return migrants. Consideration of the future trends in international migration from Pakistan focuses on the cyclic nature of overseas labor migration, the existence of networks to facilitate such migration, uneven distribution of enabling resources in Pakistan, the paucity of available data, and governmental/cultural factors that promote and restrict such migration. It is concluded that both individual Pakistanis and the government consider overseas migration a positive force but that a reliance on such an ad hoc measure has costs that have not been considered by Pakistan's policy-makers.     

Who Wants to Work for Japanese Companies? A Case in Malaysia

This study examined the factors associated with job‐pursuit intentions for Japanese companies among young, college‐educated Malaysian respondents. Building on the frameworks of Japanese‐style management and the organizational image theory, the study examined the perceived images of Japanese companies and their relations to the actual job‐pursuit intentions among potential job seekers in Malaysia. Using two types of surveys—one based on students (prospective new graduates), and the other based on mid‐career workers—we found that a positive image of Japanese companies’ human resource management was attractive to both types of potential job applicants. Images related to skill training and monetary compensation were more appealing to students, whereas the image of career development was more appealing to mid‐career workers. We also found that Japanese companies tend to attract members of the workforce who are talented in job‐specific skills and professional knowledge in the Malaysian context.     

The Singapore state's response to migration

Migration trends in Singapore are traced since 1819. Immigration has been encouraged to advance economic development. Local and international factors fuel migration to Singapore. Singapore depends upon foreign labor. Population growth has been mainly due to migration from China, India, Malaysia, and countries surrounding Singapore. Independence in 1965 led to policies aimed at controlling high population growth. Policies became pronatalist after 1987. Foreigners in 1998 were over 18% of the total population, which was six times the number in 1970. About 2000 Singaporeans per year emigrated during the 1990s. Singapore is encouraging overseas industrial development. In 1997, the Prime Minister called for recruitment of foreign talent in order to meet the challenges of an increasingly globalized world, low fertility, and an aging society. Economic planners recommend short-term migration of unskilled foreign workers who would be a revolving pool to fill jobs natives do not want. Singapore is promoting arts and culture in order to keep people in Singapore. The government has issued assurances that natives will have first priority on jobs, education, and training. Singapore's ability to absorb workers will depend upon its economic performance.     

Town–gown relationships: Exploring university–community engagement from the perspective of community members

An increasing number of colleges and universities have developed strategies for community engagement. The engagement, however, has been one-sided in that colleges and universities send students, faculty, and staff members out into the community. The current investigation sought to further broaden the definition of community engagement by exploring the benefits that can be accrued by a university when community members are encouraged to explore the cultural, intellectual, athletic, and artistic benefits that are provided in college and university campuses.     

Private companies' engagement in the labour market integration of refugees: An exploratory study of the city of Stuttgart,Germany

Private companies of all sizes may engage in the integration of refugees into the labour market. Taking the case study of the highly industrialised German city of Stuttgart, this study explores the motivation of (a) private large-scale international enterprises including (automotive and high-tech companies) and (b) family-owned small- to medium-sized companies (private social enterprises, suppliers to the automotive industries, architecture, and engineering companies) to do so. The research further explores the companies' challenges, opportunities and the lessons learned throughout the process. Utilising the principles of Grounded Theory, a qualitative case study approach is applied with in-depth interviews with private companies, civil society, public private partnerships and experts. The findings show that the arrival of a large number of refugees during 2015/2016 has increased the engagement of the companies, increased their cooperation with other sectors, and has correspondingly led to some innovative initiatives in refugees' labour market integration and policy advocacy. The call for the engagement of the private sector and the existence of employment-related policies such as tolerated work permits (Ausbildungsduldung/Beschäftigungsduldung) were essential to create sufficient incentives for private companies to engage in the training and employment of refugees. However, the insecure residence permits and bureaucratic procedures in the public sector mostly discouraged their engagement. Our research shows that the two company types had different possibilities, different approaches towards refugees and faced different challenges while engaging in refugee labour market integration.     

Great walls over African rivers: Chinese engagement in African hydropower projects

Recent acceleration of Chinese engagement in African hydropower is attracting increasing attention and concern. Yet there is scant research and little reliable data on this engagement. This article analyses Chinese hydropower engagement based on a new, verified dataset. We examined over 100 projects reported by the media and lists compiled by other organizations, amassing case studies for each project using desk research, interviews and field visits. We demonstrate that Chinese engagement in African hydropower is often overestimated in both numbers and value. Further, misunderstanding and myths abound regarding Chinese financing and construction practices. This evidence‐based understanding provides a firmer foundation for advocacy, research and efforts by other companies and funding agencies to co‐operate with Chinese actors in this controversial sector.     

International Labour Migrants' Return to Meiji-era Yamaguchi and Hiroshima: Economic and Social Effects

International labour migration from Meiji era (1868–1912) Japan was intensely concentrated: over 60 per cent of the 29,000 participants in the government-managed Hawai'i emigration programme ( kan'yaku imin , 1885–1894) came from seven coastal counties around the Hiroshima-Yamaguchi prefectural border in southwest Japan. Almost half of the emigrants became long-term settlers instead of returning to their hometowns, but this paper examines what happened to returning emigrants and to their home communities. Since the migration was primarily economic in nature, the effect of migrant earnings was carefully monitored and is frequently cited by scholars. Surveys showed high rates of debt repayment and savings, and improved living conditions, but investment and entrepreneurship were limited. High-emigration regions rarely became economic centers of any importance. Less carefully studied are non-economic effects, partially because the labour programme was structured to minimize contact with Hawaiian or Caucasian culture, and thus returnees had little cultural experience to transfer to their hometowns. Local officials in Yamaguchi seemed proud of the lack of social change. Even long-term sojourners, who returned due to family needs after a decade or more overseas, exhibited no readjustment difficulties. Returnees, particularly in Yamaguchi, sometimes moved on to Japanese colonial territories, creating multilateral and complex relationships with overseas communities. This sojourning migration, like contemporary analogs, was a powerful form of poverty relief in the midst of dislocating globalization, but did not produce a rise in entrepreneurship or a Westernization of local culture. Because this sojourning migration was structurally similar to our modern-day patterns, it provides evidence of the longevity of those patterns and the possible long-term effects, and raises questions about our expectations for migration policy.     

Cross-border mobility,inequality and migration intermediaries: Labour migration from Nepal to Malaysia

This article aims to contribute to labour recruitment policy by demonstrating the relations between cross-border mobility and inequality through the lens of migration intermediaries. Drawing on thematic analysis of the MIDEQ project's in-depth interviews with Nepalese labour migrants (n = 20) in Malaysia, this research reveals the range of migration intermediaries along the recruitment chain, and shows contradictory roles played by migration intermediaries: they help migrant workers access employment and other opportunities thus overcoming inequality in mobility, whilst simultaneously reproducing socio-economic inequalities and the unequal power relations experienced by migrants. Hence, we identify a “middle space effect” that links migration processes with migration outcomes, reconstructing socio-economic inequalities in mediated migration. We highlight the role of state policies regarding migration and labour in co-producing such inequalities, and the embeddedness of middle space intermediaries in unequal global power dynamics, and we offer policy suggestions on regulation of labour recruitment and employment.