Participants of the conference International Political Economy of Labor Migration, Excursion to the Landschaftspark Nord at the site of a former Thyssen Steel smelting factory, Duisburg, Germany
Labor migration is a vast, global and highly fluid phenomena in the 21st century. The International Political Economy of Labor Migration conference, sponsored by ISA RC02 Economy and Society, and funded generously by the World Society Foundation, was organized by ISA board members Sandhya AS, Heidi Gottfried and Karen Shire. The event brought together over 100 participants from Europe, North and South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the MENA region, and South, East, and Southeast Asian. Presentations included perspectives of sending and receiving countries, exploring historical and contemporary research on the macro-structures, institutions, actors, policies and practices shaping global migrant mobilities.
The conference set out to gather recent and pioneering research on migrant mobilities in global (re)production networks, the partial liberalization of cross-border mobility, the rise of new sending states promoting migrant exports, migration development regimes, imperialism and migration in capitalist development, and the burgeoning of a contemporary for-profit migration industry with recruitment networks at the lead. Developments in migrant mobilities presage fundamental changes in world society. The conference highlighted contributions in three cross-cutting themes that explore the relationship between sending and receiving states, labor markets, development strategies, brokers, and the autonomous agency of migrants: 1) governance and the making of transnational labor mobilities and migrant labor regimes; 2) transformation and trans-nationalization of social reproductive labor; and 3) activism and resistance.
Program committee members Eileen Boris, Jenny Chan, Julie Greene, Nadya Araujo Guimaraes, Hans-Peter Meier-Dallach, Ngai Pun, Nicola Yeates and the above-named organizers guaranteed the participation of a strong representation of scholars from ISA category B & C countries (35% of all participants) and the inclusion of several panels and keynotes on historical global migration studies, regional migration regimes (South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America) and care migration. Highlights included the three plenary sessions:
I Migration Politics, with keynotes by RC02 members Eleonore Kofman and Rina Agarwala;
II Migration, Dissent and Dialogue chaired by Polina Manolova with contributions from four migrant advocacy organizations – Waling/Waling (Angie Garcia), Unite the Union (Khadija Najlaoui), Fair Mobility (Szabolcs Sepsi), and Stolipinovo in Europe e.V. (Polina Manolova); and
III Labor Migration and the Making of a US Empire with keynotes by historians Julie Greene, Justin F. Jackson and Madeline Y Hsu.
Recently published books by RC02 members were highlighted in two Book Salons:
Homecare for Sale: The transnational brokering of senior care in Europe edited by Brigitta Aulenbacher, Helma Lutz, Ewa Palenga-Möllenbeck and Karin Switer, 2024 Sage; and
Trafficking Chains: Modern Slavery in Society by Sylvia Walby and Karen Shire, 2024 Brill.
A total 67 individual papers were presented in 22 sessions. The panels on Migration Development Regimes and several panels on Care and Social Reproduction have, in revised form, been accepted as part of the RC02 program at the ISA V Forum in Rabat.
Hosted by the University of Duisburg-Essen, the conference took place in the heart of the Ruhr industrial region, at the intersection of the Rhine and Ruhr Rivers, where deep coal mining and the production of steel drove successive waves of migrant labor from the 19th to the 20th century, contributing to the so-called German economic miracle. The Ruhr region, despite its rich history of integrating migrant labor, is neither immune today from right-wing attacks on asylum seekers, nor from the tragic turn in social democratic politics embracing deportation and failing to address how private recruiters and extreme exploitation are impoverishing the labor migrants upon which the region continues to depend. Participants were invited to join excursions to the Landschaftspark Nord, the site of a former Thyssen smelting plant, shuttered in 1985 as one of the last in a wave of closures deindustrializing the region. Today the site retains the smelting facility ruins as an ode to industrial heritage in the region. The conference ended with a second excursion through the inner harbor, today one of the largest inland harbors in the world, and the terminus of the Chinese one-belt/one-road infrastructure initiative.
Alongside the main funder, the World Society Foundation, the conference benefitted from additional funding from the University of Maryland Center for Global Migration Studies, Wayne State University Fraser Center for Workplace Issues, the journal Critical Sociology, the DFG Research Training Group 2951 at the University of Duisburg-Essen and Bielefeld University, Cross Border Labor Markets, and the ISA Research Committee 02 Economy & Society.
The conference covered research areas that are relatively undertheorized in sociological and historical migration studies. In her paper on south-to-south migration RC02 member Anju Mary Paul and co-authors examined how high skilled migrants from South Asia and the MENA region favor working in the UAE due to several factors enabling cosmopolitan lifestyles. A panel organized by RC02 member Gracia Liu-Farrer on the Mobilities of Indonesian Migrants, with travel funding support from the Japan International Cooperation Agency, discussed the development of outmigration policies and infrastructures in Indonesia as part of a “skill sending regime.” A paper by Kaxton Siu presented research on the impact of Chinese FDI in Cambodia and Vietnam on creating a labor regime without enforcement of labor standards or representation of rural migrant workers, the different roles of both destination states, and the dynamics of NGOs and international organizations to restore labor standards. The paper by Binod Khadria and Ratnam Mishra in a panel discussing the recent work by Rina Agarwala on Migration Development Regimes, featured in the first plenary, critically assessed protections and development goals for migrants, largely absent in the UN’s sustainable development goals and marginalized in “management of migration” international policies. A spectrum of alternative political economic perspectives informed debates on the sociology of markets, thematizing Polanyi in conversation with Marxism and feminism.
New forms of transnational marketization and corporatization of domestic services emerged interwoven with the establishment of a new migration industry. Chains of brokering agencies play a leading role in transnational provision of nationally embedded domestic services and market making. Papers on Venezuelan women in Colombia and cross-border migration to Singapore highlighted the importance of south-south migration corridors.
The conference provided a comprehensive platform to analyze the complex dynamics of global labor migration, highlighting the interplay between governance, labor markets, social reproduction, and migrant agency. By fostering diverse perspectives and forging multidisciplinary dialogue, it underscored the urgent need for equitable policies and research to address the challenges and opportunities of transnational labor mobilities.
RC02 plans on hosting another forum on global labor migration in the future. A preliminary discussion of the next event will take place at the ISA Forum in Rabat.