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1. Precarious Geographies: Migrant Labor in China’s Network Production

Author:
Na Fu
Publication Date:
03-2025
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
As industrial production decentralizes, rural China has become a new hub for networked manufacturing, blurring the boundaries between factory and home. Migrant workers are returning to their hometowns to set up workshop-style facilities, driven by labor shortages, infrastructure improvements, and digital connectivity. Na Fu's study examines how mobility, once seen as a path to opportunity, now reinforces labor precarity, reshaping spatial and economic relations under China’s evolving network production system. Na Fu holds a Ph.D. in Politics from the New School for Social Research and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at China Initiative at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Her research explores the intersections of digital labor, political economy, and smart production, focusing on how technological advancements reinforce social inequities and drive resource extraction in industrial transformations. This event is hosted by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.
Topic:
Economics, Manufacturing, Migrant Workers, and Production
Political Geography:
China and Asia

2. Measuring the Spatial Misallocation of Labor: The Returns to India-Gulf Guest Work in a Natural Experiment

Author:
Michael Clemens
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
‘Guest workers’ earn higher wages overseas on temporary low-skill employment visas. This wage gap can be used to measure gaps in the productivity of workers due to where they are, not who they are. This paper estimates the effects of guest work on Indian applicants to a construction job in the United Arab Emirates, where an economic crisis allocated guest work opportunities as-good-as-randomly among several thousand families. Guest work raised the return to poor families' labor by a factor of four, with little evidence of systematic fraud.
Topic:
Migration, Labor Issues, Migrant Workers, and Guest Workers
Political Geography:
India and Asia

3. Human Rights of Non-Status Migrants in Japan

Author:
Kazue Takamura and Erik Martinez Kuhonta
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Institute for the Study of International Development, McGill University (ISID)
Abstract:
Japan employs a mandatory detention policy toward non-status migrants, including asylum-seekers. This practice triggers a set of human rights concerns that are in conflict with international human rights law. The number of asylumseekers has increased sharply from 1,202 in 2010 to 10,901 in 2016. Yet, the country’s refugee acceptance rate was a record low of 0.25 percent. Migrant detainees often experience fundamental human rights violations, including the lack of access to legal representation, prolonged periods of detention, inadequate health care, and unexplained deaths in detention facilities. Japan’s immigration authorities normalize their closed-door policies toward asylum-seekers by questioning the “refugeeness” of asylumseekers and labeling them as “fake asylum-seekers.” It is necessary to facilitate active and sustainable multi-stake holders’ collaboration among NGOs, municipal governments, health professionals, lawyers, and scholars in order to challenge the state’s human rights violations toward migrants.
Topic:
Human Rights, International Law, Immigration, Asylum, and Migrant Workers
Political Geography:
Japan and Asia

4. Migrant Workers’ Access to Justice at Home: Nepal

Publication Date:
06-2014
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
Much attention has been directed to the exploitation of low-wage migrant workers in the Middle East, where harms are commonplace and severe, and access to justice is limited. But the story of labor migration begins and ends at home. Migrant Workers’ Access to Justice at Home: Nepal is the first comprehensive analysis of how laws and institutions in Nepal succeed or fail in protecting migrant workers from harms suffered during recruitment or while working in the Middle East. The study finds that despite Nepal’s efforts to protect migrant workers, it often falls short in holding private recruitment companies and individual agents accountable. The report presents detailed short- and long-term recommendations for government and civil society advocates that address the failures of Nepal’s migrant worker policies by treating workers as holders of defined, enforceable rights.
Topic:
Civil Society, Human Rights, Migration, Labor Issues, Justice, Migrant Workers, and Political Rights
Political Geography:
Asia and Nepal