5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Cross border labor markets are defined as the voluntary and competitive exchange of labor across territorial jurisdictions. While power imbalances, problems of the valuation of labor power, regulating competition and ensuring cooperation are characteristic of labor markets generally, the uncertainties that arise in cross-border labor markets are anchored in global inequalities between sending and receiving countries, legacies of colonialism that ethnicize and racialise labor, and the dependence of migrants on credits and brokers, often mandated by out- and in-migration states outsourcing the governance of migration. Migrants often arrive into destination markets and jobs with considerable debts and their civil rights denied, which in turn makes them vulnerable to exploitation. Advanced industrial economies and the global value chains that form the productive infrastructure of the global economy depend heavily on migrants for their economic growth. The papers in this panel explore the actors and forms of agency that challenge the extreme commodification of migrant labor, the legal and social resources they draw on to do so, and the outcomes for migrants, their families and their communities of origin.