Safe migration and the politics of brokered safety in Southeast Asia

Abstract

The book investigates how the United Nations, governments, and aid agencies mobilise and instrumentalise migration policies and programmes through a discourse of safe migration.Since the early 2000s, numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs), UN agencies, and governments have warmed to the concept of safe migration, often within a context of anti-trafficking interventions. Yet, both the policy-enthusiasm for safety, as well as how safe migration comes into being through policies and programmes remain unexplored. Based on seven years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Mekong region, this is the first book that traces the emergence of safe migration, why certain aid actors gravitate towards the concept, as well as how safe migration policies and programmes unfold through aid agencies and government bodies. The book argues that safe migration is best understood as brokered safety. Although safe migration policy interventions attempt to formalize pre-emptive and protective measures to enhance labour migrants' well-being, the book shows through vivid ethnographic details how formal migration assistance in itself depends on -and produces -informal and mediated practices.The book offers unprecedented insights into what safe migration policies look like in practice. It is an innovate contribution to contemporary theorising of contemporary forms of migration governance and will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and human geographers working within the fields of Migration Studies, Development Studies, as well as Southeast Asian and Global Studies.

Scalability, Social Media and Migrant Assistance: Emulation or Contestation?

“…This has provided the development aid sector with a space to launch a range of migrationrelated aid programmes that attempt to assist migrants. Whereas earlier migration-specific aid was typically framed in light of anti-trafficking interventions, recent efforts take place under a widened focus on "safe migration" which attempts at addressing legal, social, economic and health aspects of labour migrants' work conditions (Molland 2021).…”

“…Although government agencies, international organisations (United Nations agencies, NGOs) or local Thai NGOs typically implement anti-trafficking and safe migration programmes, informal migrant self-help groups also play a key (albeit unacknowledged) role. Myanmar migrant workers are far more organised compared with Khmer and Lao migrants in the sense that they form extensive networks of informal associations (Molland 2021). The majority of these are apolitical and often ethnic-based or religiously orientated (commonly connected to Buddhist temples in Thailand).…”

“…6 It is beyond the scope of this essay to consider the reasons why Lao migrants decide against taking action. For a comparative analysis of Lao and Burmese migrants in terms of social organisation, see (Molland 2021).…”

“…This introduces an added oppositional dimension to MAM's relation with state authorities. Afterall, migrants' everyday experiences entail a general sense of either government failure in enforcing laws and regulation (e.g., employers complicit in wage theft with impunity) or worse; state authorities being predatory on labour migrants (e.g., police extortion of migrants) (Derks 2010b, Campbell 2018, Molland 2021). Hence, emulating state authorities also presents a credibility problem for MAM as this will undermine their reputation as an audacious advocate and mediator for migrants.…”

“…Although my fieldwork comprised several conventional ethnographic approaches (participant observation and interviews amongst aid agencies that assist migrants) I extended my research to include social media analysis. Whereas other parts of my research explore the everyday implementation of safe migration aid delivery (Molland 2021), this paper places primary focus on social media analysis of MAM's Facebook posts. My fieldwork approach draws on Fredrik Barth's seminal ethnography of Bali, where the multi-sited and multilingual context necessitates fieldwork assistants (Barth 1993).…”