Migration decision-making and migration industry in the Indonesia–Malaysia corridor

Abstract

This paper explores the involvement of migration industry (MI) in the migration system of Indonesia and Malaysia. The two countries share an extensive border and have much in common in culture and history but they are very different in geographical size, population and economic development, the latter being a main cause for labour migration from Indonesia to Malaysia. The changing context of government policies generates new niches for migration services taken up by formal and informal intermediaries, thereby confronting migrants with a varied migration-decision field and thresholds during their migration process. Much of the migration is legal, but a large part of it also takes place outside the control of the national governments. While taking mental processes in migration decision-making as starting point, we analyse how the MI, by way of fostering, facilitating and controlling geographic mobility and localised employment, connects to the production and negotiating of three migration decision thresholds faced by migrants.

Bridging the Institutional Gaps: International Education as a Migration Industry

“…The emergence, flourishing and persistent presence of such a migration industry has to do with the role it fulfils in bridging the institutional gap between labour market demands for foreign labourers and the lack of a political will to import them. Moreover, some of the migration industry's practices are the outcomes of governmental policies and regulations (Spaan and van Naerssen, ). It is the legal framework that makes semi‐legal or even illegal work a necessity, thereby making the education‐migration industry indispensable.…”

“…US$ 100-1,000 (depends on the services) governmental policies and regulations (Spaan and van Naerssen, 2018). It is the legal framework that makes semi-legal or even illegal work a necessity, thereby making the education-migration industry indispensable.…”

New directions in exploring the migration industries: introduction to special issue

“…Migration industry has evolved into a global business, encompassing professional private and public entities, but also intermediaries, with varying degrees of professionalism, emanating from social networks, be it friends, relatives or other community members (Lindquist 2010;Spaan 1994). Moving on from this, we can see that migration industry and social networks are not substitutes, but, are rather entwined and operate simultaneously, as manifested in the cooperation of recruitment agencies with individuals acting as informal subagents within migrant social networks (Harvey, Groutsis and van den Broek 2018;Spaan and Van Naerssen 2018).…”

“…Furthermore, we gain further insights into the question of how migrant's mobility processes are impacted by the various ways different actors of facilitation and control liaise, bypass each other, or work in a continuum of practices. This helps us to move away from the notion that the migration industry exists of clearly demarcated and static sub-domains, separating state actors from brokering services and non-profit actors (see also Spaan and Van Naerssen, 2018).…”

Legal Protection Model for Indonesian Migrant Workers

“…Legal migrants are mostly female, the irregular ones predominantly male (Adi 2003; IOM 2010). It also emphasized by Spaan and Naerssen (2017) that this number continues to grow every year so it requires its own management.…”