Care and Control in Asian Migrations

This article takes the relationship between care and control as a starting point for ethnographically approaching the dynamics of Asian migrations. The pairing of care and control allows for a description of how migration takes shape through the historical development of entangled relationships – ranging from the supportive to the coercive – rather than strictly through dyadic relationships, social networks, structural forces, or as an effect of push-pull factors. Asian migration is thus approached as a socio-political field that is shaped through emerging forms of care and control which is shaped and constrained, for instance, by the state, market, social relations, brokers, and fellow travellers.