Producing ideal Bangladeshi migrants for precarious construction work in Qatar

The paper analyses the mediation of Bangladeshi construction worker migration to the Gulf and how multiple and unpredictable risks and opportunities are co-created by brokers, employers and the state. It examines how migrants navigate these to achieve imagined futures and their own role in co-creati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of ethnic and migration studies 2019-10, Vol.45 (14), p.2723-2738
Main Authors: Deshingkar, Priya, Abrar, C. R., Sultana, Mirza Taslima, Haque, Kazi Nurmohammad Hossainul, Reza, Md Selim
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
agency
Bangladesh
Brokers
Discourses
Employers
Insecure
Labor market
Labor migration
migrant construction work
Migrant workers
Migrants
Migration
Precarity
Stock brokers
subjectivation
Victims
Work
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Summary:The paper analyses the mediation of Bangladeshi construction worker migration to the Gulf and how multiple and unpredictable risks and opportunities are co-created by brokers, employers and the state. It examines how migrants navigate these to achieve imagined futures and their own role in co-creating precarity. The authors employ a relational lens to examine why aspiring migrants choose informal brokers over formal migration managers. The everyday practices of brokers in producing ideal Bangladeshi workers for the Qatari labour market and how this precarises migrant labour are unpacked. Migrant and broker interviews provide insights into the degrees of precarity experienced at different stages of the migration process. Entangled with these processes of precarisation are the strategies employed by migrant workers to resist precarity and transform their social and economic positions in the long term. The rich accounts presented in the paper provide evidence on the dialectical relationship between migrants and migration intermediaries which contrasts with popular discourses about brokers as exploiters and migrants as victims without agency.
ISSN:1369-183X
1469-9451
DOI:10.1080/1369183X.2018.1528104