Center for Culture, Organizations and Politics - Previously Affiliated

In this paper, I analyze the important but as yet little studied role of private recruitment and placement agencies in the social organization of modern labor migration. Examining the case of Philippine nurse migration bound for the United States, I present data collected from 35 agencies that connect nurses with employers for profit. These commercial agencies can be found in both the sending and receiving countries and they represent a core of the formal migration industry—a key actor in many of today’s international migration movements. I contend that commercial agencies not only build bridges between places, but they also profoundly shape the structure and process of international migration, from immigrant selection to integration. In this capacity, commercial agencies play a key role in several important, though less talked about procedures of migration such as the selection of employers as well as workers, the disciplining of these two sets of clientele, and the creation of new migration opportunities.