Merchants of Migrant Domestic Labour | Book launch by Liberty Chee

Описание: On 12 Dec 2025, The Amsterdam Research Centre for Migration hosted the book launch of 'Merchants of Migrant Domestic Labour: Recruitment Agencies and Neoliberal Migration Governance in Southeast Asia', by Dr. Liberty Chee.

In her book, Chee discusses the market logic of recruitment agencies who deploy migrant domestic workers in Southeast Asia. Agencies are involved in all stages of worker migration trajectory – from their selection, to their training, and their management at the destination.

The book describes how and why these private actors play such an outsized role in this kind of worker mobility, and examines their relations with employers, workers and state apparatuses. It focuses on agents operating in the largest migrant sending countries (the Philippines and Indonesia) and receiving countries (Malaysia and Singapore) in Southeast Asia. These pioneering migration industries in the region have established practices and norms that have and continue to diffuse to other world regions.

During this launch event, chaired by Evelyn Ersanilli, Liberty Chee presented the key argument of her book. It was followed by comments from discussants Crystal Ennis and Leila Faghfouri Azar and a Q&A.

You can read or download the book at https://link.springer.com/book/10.100...

About the speakers:

Dr. Liberty Chee is an International Relations scholar doing interdisciplinary research on migration governance, feminist political economy, and the politics of knowledge of production.

Dr. Crystal Ennis is a University Lecturer and Global Political Economy scholar with expertise in labour markets and migration governance at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies.

Dr. Leila Faghfouri Azar is a Lecturer and Researcher in critical legal theory and decolonial approaches to law and justice at the Faculty of Law, University of Amsterdam.

Dr. Evelyn Ersanilli is an associate professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. Her works focuses on migration policy making.