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My recent book responds to the growing presence of middle elements - intermediaries and migration agents - in the facilitation of labour migration, and advances an economic sociological explanation for their rising relevance in the contemporary migration landscape. Rather than treating the proliferation of agents as an organic development of neoliberal capitalism or attributing migrant precarity solely to their mediation, the book reconceptualizes brokerage as an institutionally constituted and contested market of migration services.
It argues that a market perspective offers fresh insights into why migration agents consolidate into a durable industry and how brokerage serves the interests of labour exporting, remittance-dependent emigration states such as Nepal. Most importantly, it offers an answer to why intermediaries persist despite the stabilization of migrant social networks and the expansion of state mechanisms that replicate and attempt to replace commercial brokerage. By examining market organization, the sedimentation of its practices, and struggles over market legitimacy, the book reveals how brokerage reshapes state– market relations, governance structures, and migrant labour processes for readers interested in migration, sociology of work, labour and migration policy.
Available at Palgrave webshop, Amazon, Hugendubel and Kinokuniya, among other platforms and libraries.
REVIEWS:
“Sandhya reappraises the much-maligned figure of the migration agent in authoritative fashion, combining sharp sociological analysis and rich ethnographic data to locate Nepalese dalals within a market contoured by state intervention and mediated through social relations. Methodically exposing how labour brokerage is organised and legitimised amid institutional dissonance, Agents of Migration moves beyond familiar portrayals of unscrupulous agents to offer an original and compelling account of how precarious migration is systemically produced. With relevance well beyond Nepal, this is essential reading for anyone studying migration intermediaries or emigration states.” - Matt Withers, Senior Lecturer of Sociology, Australian National University, and author of 'Emigration States Migration-Development Policymaking in the Asia-Pacific' (2025).
"In her path-breaking analysis on market-making, Sandhya explores the practices of intermediaries in labour migration. She conceptualizes the structures and processes involved as a market made up of service providers. The meticulously argued analysis helps us to better comprehend the role of state regulation, migrant networks and brokers in the governance of migration. This brilliant study is bound to become an essential guide for researchers reflecting upon market-making and possibly even market-breaking in a world marked by ubiquitous mobilities." - Thomas Faist, Professor of Sociology, Bielefeld University, and author of 'The Transnationalized Social Question: Migration and the Politics of Social Inequalities in the. Twenty-First Century' (2019)
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