Paper short abstract:

This systematic review explores the relation between ambivalence and the role of migration brokers. In doing so, the empirical experience of migration brokerage is read with the help of the theoretical elaboration of the literature about informality.

Paper long abstract:

This systematic review explores the relation between ambivalence and the role of migration brokers, who connect job-seeking migrants with employers. Despite its key role, migration brokerage is still understudied, as the dichotomous distinction between legality and illegality often tends to relegate brokerage either in human trafficking or in standard HR entrepreneurship. (Lindquist, 2012). Adopting the analytical lens of informality allows instead to disentangle the broker's ambivalence, its capacity of sustaining two positions at the same time. (Ledeneva, 2014) This characteristic, I will argue, is related to the role of the broker in connecting two or more different networks.

This review will include empirical studies about migrant workers published after 2000, and specifically cases of brokerage or forms of mediation in accessing the labour market.

The empirical contribution of this paper is to enhance our tools of detection of informal relations, by proposing a shift of focus toward the intermediaries that make complex networks possible. From a theoretical point of view, this paper contributes to the development of informality as a network-based phenomenon by pointing at its core trait -ambivalence- as instrumental to connecting different networks.

References

Ledeneva, A. V. (2014). Beyond Russia's Economy of Favours: The Role of Ambivalence.

Lindquist, J., Xiang, B., & Yeoh, B. S. (2012). Opening the black box of migration: Brokers, the organization of transnational mobility and the changing political economy in Asia. Pacific Affairs, 85(1), 7-19.