ISAS Working Papers

Recruitment constitutes an important part of the process of temporary labour migration in Asia. Existing literature explicitly suggests that the rapid development of recruiting agencies and migrant networks has accelerated the growth of labour migration in Asia. However, most existing literature tends to focus on either the role of agencies or the role of networks in the recruitment process, not both simultaneously. Likewise, the economics of recruitment is almost inseparable from labour recruitment in Asia but it remains an area of peripheral interest in existing literature. This study argues that a holistic approach, meaningfully combining migrant networks and recruitment agencies, to highlight both the operational and economic aspect of recruitment, is needed to better understand the complexity of migrant recruitment dynamics in Asia. Focusing on the recruitment experiences of Bangladeshi migrants in the GCC states, this study examines the operational as well as economic aspects of recruitment. This paper reveals how migrant networks and recruitment agencies adapt to the changing practices of recruitment to funnel migrant workers to the GCC countries. Further, it explains how constellations of interests at different points in the system create the conflicts and contradictions throughout the recruitment process.