Cross-Border Labour Markets: The Problem of Embeddedness in Infrastructures

The notion of the embeddedness of markets in institutions (Polanyi 1957) and social networks (Granovetter 1985) is a cornerstone of economic sociology. This also applies to labour markets (Marsden 1999; Fligstein 2001; Granovetter 1995). Yet, when it comes to cross-border labour markets, not only institutions and networks are of vital importance for enabling the cross-border matching of labour power to jobs. What is also needed to move workers across borders and place them on jobs in destination states, are “migration infrastructures” (Xiang & Lindquist et al. 2012; Xiang & Lindquist 2014; Lindquist 2017). Through their seminal articles, Lindquist and his co-authors have drawn attention to these migration infrastructures over the past decade. However, “infrastructure” is used by these authors in a very broad sense, encompassing brokers and other intermediaries (hence: actors), networks, rules and regulations (hence: institutions), channels, and physical entities such as dormitories and accommodation camps, transportation facilities, and the like. Hence, in this understanding, among other things, infrastructures include networks and institutions. The planned presentation ties in with focusing on forms of embeddedness beyond networks and institutions that may, however, be considered equally important for the enabling of cross-border labour markets. A typology of migration infrastructures will be presented that will help to define the term more precisely and allow to shed light exactly on those infrastructures that are not actors, networks, or institutions. Furthermore, these infrastructures will be linked to other concepts, such as the logistics that make infrastructures available for cross-border labour markets (Krifors 2020), as well as the migration industries that provide both, and by doing so create new markets. Thus, the presentation seeks to contribute to an economic sociology of migration by considering the embeddedness of cross-border labour markets in migration infrastructures, logistics, and other markets as a particular feature of migration labour markets.