Storefront and Shopfloor Regimes: Relational Work and Control in the Migration Staffing Industry

• In Event: 20862 - Section on International Migration Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 11: Migration and Labor

Abstract

How do middlemen manage a transient migratory workforce? This article advances a relational approach to migration governance by examining the migration staffing industry’s management of labor mobility across borders. Drawing on seven months of ethnography and 31 in-depth interviews in Singapore and Indonesia, the author introduces the notion of transnational labor regimes to compare how two private employment agencies develop niche markets in domestic service. TransferMaids implements a storefront regime, offering a face-to-face platform that matches employers with experienced sojourners, who improvise their social skills to lure a discerning clientele. In contrast, FreshMaids concocts a shopfloor regime to instill obedience and emotional resilience in neophyte migrants, who undertake residential training in offshore facilities to serve consumers seeking entry-level domestics. This pre-departure educational system is complemented with post-arrival counseling to engender customer satisfaction. Stranded in an unequal migration system, jobseekers preserve their personhood through an amalgam of compliance and resistance.

Author

• Andy Scott Chang, Florida State University