Domestic work is unlike most other forms of labour. The workplace is not an office or a factory—it is someone else’s home. This creates a very particular kind of relationship between employers and workers, where everyday routines, boundaries, and even bodies come under close scrutiny. In this setting, ideas about cleanliness and hygiene take on special importance. My research on domestic work in New Delhi shows that employers often make judgments not just about work, but about the worker’s body—how they use space during menstruation, what and whom they touch, and how they are perceived to maintain hygiene.
These judgments are shaped by long-standing social hierarchies. Negative stereotypes about low-caste and Muslim domestic workers, for instance, are often expressed through the language of cleanliness and health. Concerns about hygiene become a way of reinforcing deeper assumptions about difference and social order. Looking closely at domestic work shows how economic exchange is intertwined with social and cultural meanings. It reveals how everyday practices—such as cleaning, cooking, and sharing space—can also become sites where inequality is reproduced.
In many cities in South Asia and Latin America, domestic workers are hired through informal networks, and wages are often negotiated privately. While it is often assumed that immigrants face discrimination in such arrangments, one surprising pattern emerges from my research on Nepali domestic workers in New Delhi: some employers in this market are willing to pay immigrant women significantly more—sometimes double—than local Indian workers for the same amount of work.
Why does this happen? The answer lies not in skills or experience, but in how employers perceive a shared culture. Many Hindu middle-class employers view Nepali workers as culturally similar—“like us”—while local workers, especially from lower-caste or Muslim backgrounds, are often treated as cultural outsiders. These perceptions shape hiring decisions in powerful ways. Employers actively construct ideas of the “ideal worker,” and these ideas are deeply tied to caste, religion, and social identity. This shows that hiring behaviour in the (domestic) labour market is shaped by cultural boundaries and everyday forms of exclusion. It also shows that the citizenship status of immigrant workers takes a backseat in such a dynamic as employers imagine the native workers as the cultural "other".
Migrant domestic workers are often portrayed as some of the most vulnerable workers in the global economy. Many face restricted rights, limited protections, and difficult working conditions, especially in countries where informal economic arrangments are predominant. My research on Nepali domestic workers in New Delhi confirms these challenges—but also complicates this picture. Migrant women are not simply passive victims in these settings. They make active choices about where to work and develop strategies to navigate uncertain and informal labour markets. These workers carefully select employers, construct their own ideas of what makes a “good” household, and use subtle tactics—such as appearing compliant or deferential—to secure stability and small perks at the workplace. At the same time, they compete with native workers, sometimes reinforcing existing hierarchies in the labour market, such as those based on religion and caste in the South Asian context. These dynamics show that even in highly unequal conditions, migrant workers exercise agency. Yet this agency often operates within—and ultimately reproduces—broader structures of inequality.
Stereotypical portrayals of migrants frequently appear in everyday media, such as WhatsApp forwards, comedy sketches, and online videos. While often presented as harmless humour, these representations reveal deeper social dynamics. For instance, my research on portrayal of Nepali migrant men in India shows that they are commonly depicted as naïve, overly loyal, or deferential, and as lacking “full” masculinity. Humour makes these stereotypes easier to accept in social settings, allowing them to circulate widely without being critically examined. At the same time, these portrayals create and reinforce certain boundaries. By depicting Nepali men as inferior or incomplete, they fortify an image of the Indian man as dominant and “properly” masculine. This dynamic draws on colonial ideas of masculinity and continues to shape how social boundaries are maintained today in independent South Asia. In this way, humour becomes a subtle but powerful means of reinforcing hierarchy and defining who belongs—and who does not.
Humour in popular Indian media often portrays Nepali men as “useful workers”—as caretakers, cooks, or security guards. While these depictions may seem light-hearted, they carry deeper assumptions about class and work. My research on this topic shows that these portrayals tend to limit the aspirations of Nepali characters, presenting them as naturally suited for service roles and unlikely to seek upward mobility. In doing so, they suggest that such positions are not just common, but somehow appropriate or expected. These ideas have longer historical roots, shaped by colonial ways of thinking about labour, masculinity, and social difference. By repeatedly linking Nepali men to specific kinds of work, humour helps normalise their concentration in lower-paid, informal jobs. At the same time, such portrayals serve a social purpose. They allow employers and audiences to maintain distance from migrant workers, while framing unequal relationships as natural or even justified. Looking closely at these jokes shows how humour can quietly reinforce assumptions about class, work, and belonging in everyday life.
Migration is often imagined as movement across borders. But for many aspiring migrants, everyday life is shaped just as much by waiting as by moving. My research on migrants-in-waiting in Kathmandu, Nepal, shows that waiting for job offers, interviews, departure dates, or the chance to return home becomes a central part of migrant life. These periods of waiting are not simply inactive or empty. They structure daily routines, relationships, and expectations.
For some, waiting is a neutral part of life. For others, it carries emotional weight—linked to uncertainty, pressure to provide, and gendered expectations. At the same time, even periods of working abroad can feel like another form of waiting: a temporary phase before returning home. These experiences show that migration is not a straightforward journey from one place to another. Instead, it is shaped by shifting rhythms of waiting and movement, which blur the boundaries between mobility and immobility, and challenge how we think about time, work, and migration.
Migration depends on a complex infrastructure of agents, institutions, and systems that make movement possible. But what happens when this infrastructure breaks down? The COVID-19 pandemic brought global migration to a near standstill. Yet migration did not simply stop. My research in the Nepal-Malaysia migration corridor reveals how brokers, agents or intermediaries played a key role in holding these systems together. Faced with disruptions, brokers adapted in creative ways. They reduced costs, cut back operations, and “stocked up” on resources and connections in anticipation of future mobility. These strategies allowed them not only to survive periods of immobility, but also to prepare for the resumption of migration. This highlights an important point: migration infrastructures are not stable or self-sustaining. They require constant maintenance and repair—much of which is carried out by intermediaries rather than governments. In this way, brokers are central to keeping migration systems functioning, especially in times of crisis.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, much of the attention in migration research and the media focused on the sudden stoppage of movement and its impact on migrant workers. But what about the brokers whose livelihoods depend on making migration happen? My research on the experience of brokers during the pandemic shows how they navigated the involuntary immobility and how these disruptions affected their markets and stability. Brokers are central to maintaining transnational migration, and when flows halt, they must adapt in creative—but sometimes risky and illegal—ways to restart mobility, navigating both commercial pressures and moral boundaries. In some cases, these strategies involve illicit practices that inadvertently put migrants at greater risk. The pandemic revealed how fragile migration infrastructures really are. Brokers’ efforts to maintain control highlight the difficult balance of power, agency, and vulnerability in transnational labour markets, showing that disruptions affected not only migrants, but the very systems that make migration possible - brokerage being an essential part of it.
We often think of markets as abstract systems of supply and demand. But in reality, they are also physical spaces where people meet, negotiate, and make decisions. In Nepal, migrant recruiters operate in a place known as the “Manpower Bazaar.” Here, being in the same space matters. Recruiters who are otherwise competitors regularly interact, exchange information, and form short-term alliances to deal with uncertainty and keep business going. These collaborations are temporary and strategic. Recruiters work together when it helps them, and compete when they must. Cooperation does not replace competition—it exists alongside it. What happens in this marketplace also shapes the experiences of migrant workers. The way recruiters interact can open up opportunities, but it can also create new risks and vulnerabilities for those seeking jobs abroad. Looking closely at everyday life in this bazaar shows that migration is not just about policies or contracts—it is also shaped by the spaces where decisions are made and relationships are built.
Many countries actively encourage people to work abroad because migrant labor and remittances are central to their economies. Yet when migrants face injury, debt, exploitation, unemployment, or difficulties returning home, responsibility for their wellbeing is often passed from one actor to another — from the state to recruitment agencies, NGOs, international organizations, and sometimes back onto migrants and their families themselves. Drawing on research on the question of migrant welfare in Nepal, I find that welfare is increasingly “managed” at a distance rather than guaranteed directly by the state. Migrants are expected to prepare themselves, protect themselves, and recover largely through their own family and community networks, even as the state continues to depend on their labor and earnings from abroad. Rather than disappearing, the state remains deeply involved, but it redistributes responsibility across a wider network of actors, reshaping what care, protection, and accountability look like in the context of labor migration.
We often assume that markets are purely contractual, where legal agreements replace social hierarchies. Yet the experiences of low-skilled, temporary migrant workers show a different story. These workers are uniquely vulnerable. Their legal status, indebtedness, and dependence on the state, employers, and intermediaries create layers of powerlessness. This leads to, what I call the "migrant condition" to signify the relationship between contract and status in migrant labour market. Contracts are meant to clearly define the terms of work. But for migrant workers, things are rarely that straightforward. Their social and legal position—such as their immigration status, access to resources, and dependence on employers or agents—shapes how these contracts are written, understood, and enforced. At the same time, the contracts themselves can make these dependencies worse. The result is a particular kind of insecurity. Migrant workers are not only bound by formal agreements, but also by unequal power relations that go beyond the contract. This makes their working conditions more fragile and harder to challenge.
Recruitment agents and brokers are often blamed for the exploitation and hardships faced by migrant workers. Governments and civil society groups frequently portray themselves as morally and socially separate from these market actors, treating brokers as an unfortunate or even predatory part of migration. But research on migration agents in Nepal tells a more complicated story. While the state publicly distances itself from brokers, it also makes migration for work nearly impossible without them. Through laws, regulations, and bureaucratic procedures, the state actively makes the market of these agents, giving them a necessary role in the migration process. In this way, brokers are not simply outside actors operating in the shadows; they are part of how labour migration is governed in emigration conutries like Nepal. The market itself becomes a tool through which the state regulates who gets to migrate, how they migrate, and under what conditions.
Migration brokers are often demonized because they are associated with fraud, overcharging, document manipulation, and other illegal practices. While these abuses are real, research shows that such activities do not happen outside the system — they are often tolerated, ignored, or even enabled by bureaucrats and state officials. At the same time, much of the exploitation migrant workers face actually begins at the destination side of the migration corridor, particularly with employers and workplace conditions that remain difficult to regulate across borders. Yet public blame tends to fall most heavily on brokers. Interestingly, research on migration brokers in Nepal also shows that many brokers themselves try to stay as close as possible to legal channels, since legality gives them social standing, political connections, and access to larger business opportunities. In practice, the worlds of “legal” and “illegal” migration are deeply entangled, shaped not only by criminal actors but also by the everyday functioning of states, markets, and cross-border labour systems.
Markets do not survive simply because there is demand for them. They need trust, legitimacy, and ongoing support from both the state and society. Research on migration brokers in Nepal shows this clearly. Brokers constantly face challenges to their legitimacy — from government attempts to banning their work in certain migration routes to public suspicion that brands them as dalals, or exploitative middlemen. In response, brokers work hard to rebuild trust and justify their place in the migration system. Some pursue certifications and “ethical recruitment” labels, others support migrant families through donations and community work, while some seek protection through political connections and lobbying. The migration brokerage market, then, is not something that naturally sustains itself; it survives through continuous efforts by market actors to gain acceptance, credibility, and recognition.
Intermediaries are often viewed with suspicion and distrust. Across a wide range of economic and social domains, they are frequently criticized for being mercantile and for extracting value without actually creating it. From financial brokers and real estate agents to recruitment agencies, consultants, and migration agents, intermediaries are often portrayed as actors who profit from connecting two (or more) parties that could, in principle, interact directly and independently.
Despite the challenges to their social legitimacy and the societal developments that could potentially eradicate the need for intermediation, intermediaries remain remarkably resilient. For example, technological innovations facilitate contact between buyers and sellers, workers and employers, citizens and states, reduce transaction costs of accessing connections and bridge structural gaps between two sets of actors. Yet, intermediaries continue to proliferate. In fact, instead of making intermediation redundant, technology may have created space for new forms of intermediation (platforms for instance). Within the context of labour markets, other social developments including solidification of social networks that could aid job search or institutionalization of certain state mechanisms that replicate intermediation in labour markets, such as job centers, have also failed to fully replace intermediation. Instead, many contemporary markets and governance systems appear more dependent on intermediaries than ever before. This raises an important question: why do intermediaries prevail?
My recent book ‘Agents of Migration’ discusses this matter at length. It argues that we need to view intermediaries as responses to specific structural conditions in order to understand their continued relevance. Intermediaries emerge because they perform functions that other institutions are unable or unwilling to fulfil. They remain relevant and thrive because direct access to institutions is still challenging, expensive, or impossible for many. Their prevalence often reflects the varied interests surrounding their intervention. This, however, does not imply that their relevance is not challenged. On the contrary, they constantly face criticism from the state and the society and are required to routinely seek social and political legitimacy towards their work and identity in order to remain relevant. Like any other socially embedded market actors, commercial intermediation cannot take the institutions around it for granted. In such a context, the persistence of intermediaries suggests that the issue may not be whether intermediation should exist, but rather what forms of intermediation are most effective, accountable, and equitable.