‘The Biggest Problem We Are Facing Is the Running Away Problem’: Recruitment and the Paradox of Facilitating the Mobility of Immobile Workers
研究亚洲收费招聘机构如何通过日常互动构建和正常化对孟加拉国家政女工的剥削性控制，揭示其既促进全球流动又限制工人流动的悖论角色。
Fee-charging recruitment industries in Asia have become gatekeepers to temporary employment in low-wage occupations for millions of migrant workers. One of these jobs is live-in domestic work in private households. Increasingly, workers’ recruiters are depicted as contributing to their precarious, sometimes exploitative, working conditions. However, these narratives misunderstand the systemic and regulatory functions of agencies as transnational labour market actors. This article analyses the relationship between domestic work placement agencies in Jordan and Lebanon and their clients (the employers) as they negotiate the recruitment of women from Bangladesh. Drawing on data from 146 qualitative interviews, it addresses the mechanisms of how exploitative, controlling practices are constructed and normalised by agencies in their everyday interactions with their clients as well as with workers. The article argues that placement agencies play a paradoxical role; whilst facilitating global mobility they also broker worker immobility.