Logistics of migrant labour: rethinking how workers ‘fit’ transnational economies

Abstract

New approaches to understanding the mediation of migration have emerged from literature on migration industries, migration infrastructures and migration brokerage. These studies point out the importance of economic processes in migration by studying how recruiters and brokers negotiate im/mobilities, within and outside the state. This article argues that there is a need to develop a complementing theorisation of the economies of migration, since the centrality of migrant labour, the role of employers, and the extraction of value from the transnational situation of migrants’ lives remain vague. Emerging scholarship around a logistics of migration that accounts for supply chain organisations and the quest for transnational interoperability is suggested for this purpose. The article utilises ethnographic data from Sweden on labour recruiters and employers in two sectors: the wild berry industry and the ICT industry. Logistics, the art and science of coordinating supply chains [Cowen, Deborah. 2014. The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade. University of Minnesota Press.], produces a commodification of im/mobility in specific contexts of labour and social reproduction. Migration, therefore, represents one, more or less integrated, aspect of extracting value. Critical perspectives on logistics have the potential to link the emerging frameworks on mediation with observations of how globalising markets affect migrant workers and their lives.