N Piper
Biographic Data
| ID | 35276 |
|---|---|
| NAME | N Piper |
| GIVEN NAMES | N |
| FAMILY NAME | Piper |
| SIGNATURE | PIPER N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen Mary University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3993-8699 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 80 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 721 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 77 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
Interrogating temporary labour migration schemes
Temporary labour migration (TLM) schemes have moved from being peripheral policy ‘fixes’ to becoming a core structural feature of transnational labour governance. This paper critically interrogates these schemes through the lens of institutional precarity , which we define not merely as a set of downstream effects on migrants, but as a deliberate multiscalar structure of control that organises both the labour process and social reproduction. By a…
Mapping the players on/in the field of transnational policy networks
This paper analyses how transnational networks can be agents for policy change in the field of migrants’ rights by demonstrating how networks can cooperate to strategically use the wider institutional environment to push norm-violating States, and organisations, towards implementing policy changes. We show the conditions under which the hosting of a global mega-sports event - Qatar’s 2022 FIFA World Cup- can trigger transnational organising by a …
Dynamics of Transnational Labour Migration Revisited from a Crisis Complex Perspective
This article uses the notion of crisis complex to analyse the relationship between labour migration and crisis from an institution‐ and process‐oriented perspective. Such an interrogation is timely, given the increasingly crisis‐prone dynamics shaping global labour systems and migration governance, including recruitment, skills recognition and the political privileging of temporary labour — all reinforcing a structural reliance on migrant workfor…
The returnscape
The discussion of labor return migration has often framed workers’ reintegration and settlement within the migration-development debate, with a particular interest in promoting migrant entrepreneurship. This article extends such discussion beyond the confines of the development frame by providing a dynamic and diverse understanding of return using a bottom-up perspective. Building on the critical scholarship on labor return migration, it stresses…
The Elgar Companion to Migration and the Sustainable Development Goals
Analysing transnational labour mobility regimes
Labour regime analysis is enjoying a resurgence as a way of (re-)centring workers at the heart of questions concerning the organisation of production and social reproduction in the global economy (Baglioni et al, 2022). Migrant labour, and specifically the regulation of migrant labour, is part and parcel of these dynamics yet is often left to the sidelines of labour process studies. Bringing together six papers presented at the 2023 International…
Advancing the labour rights of migrant workers beyond Kafala
In the years following Qatar’s successful 2010 bid to host the FIFA World Cup 2022, there has been a significant shift in its engagement with the migrant labour rights discourse, and subsequent embarkment on significant reforms as the result of intense international scrutiny and advocacy action. The core feature of Qatar’s historically evolved transnational labour management system, Kafala, has become a key focal point of international advocacy e…
La agenda de derechos de los migrantes en la gobernanza mundial de la migración
This article discusses the institutionalisation of migration policy at the global level and its link to the debate on the migration-development nexus. Drawing on a decolonial theoretical approach and applied to the transnational migrants rights movement in Asia with a particular focus on the Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) as a regional network and its influence on Nepal, this article critiques the western-centric securitized and economistic approach…
Moving the goalposts in Qatar
This article traces the process which led the state of Qatar to take steps towards reforming its labour laws that had historically severely restricted the rights and freedoms of migrant workers who make up the majority of its workforce. Our premise is that the 2022 World Cup served as a catalyst for Qatar to enact significant labour reforms due to a complex array of events harnessed by the actions of key actors, notably the global labour movement…
When Food is Finance
The steady growth of international labour mobility has been one of the defining features of globalization. Alongside the liberalization of international trade, labour mobility has been a key dynamic propelling economic development in the new millennium. In recent years, migrant labour is increasingly regulated via temporary schemes, deepening and widening migrant precarity. This paper argues that a growing reliance on temporary migrant workers re…
Regulatory (Mal)Integration
This paper discusses the understudied situation of legally-resident migrants and their (in)ability to access employment rights that are otherwise available to Indonesians. In our analysis of the relevant institutional architecture and processes, we approach the issue of integration from a regulatory perspective. We used a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how migrants as high-income workers interface with the labor di…
Bilateral labor agreements as migration governance tools
This Article discusses BLAs as tools of global labor migration governance, with a specific focus on gender. Drawing on our global database of 582 bilateral labor migration agreements (BLAs), we investigate the extent to which these governing instruments connect and align with relevant international normative frameworks, in particular the extent to which they represent gains, gaps or gaffs in terms of gender equality and the human and labor rights…
Migrant workers, the ILO and the potential for labour justice
The International Labour Organisation as nodal player on the pitch of networked governance
This article assesses the role of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as a player within the multi-actor sphere of global migration governance. The aim is to analyse the ILO’s leadership within this sphere that is characterised by shifting dynamics between rules-based and rights-based approaches as a result of the multiplication of actors and, given its normative predisposition, the effects on the ILO’s ability to advance migrant workers’…
Reflections on intersectionality
The term ‘intersectionality’ is usually attributed to Kimberlé Crenshaw, a legal scholar, who coined the term in 1989. In this paper, we reflect on how the concept has travelled through both space and time. We trace the longer history and more complex geography of intersectional approaches rooted in grassroots women’s movements in the Global South, where radical claims were made against the dominance of white, middle-class women’s analysis of the…
Sanitized boundaries, sanitized homes
This paper explores the “sporadic hyper-precarity” encountered by migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong when the city was hit by the Omicron outbreaks in early 2022. Migrant workers have long been suffering from job insecurity and structural vulnerability due to the contractization and flexibilization of work. The paper discusses how this structural vulnerability came to intersect with the health risks induced by the COVID pandemic. Adding to the…
Temporary labour migration in Asia
Much of intra‐Asian labour migration is regulated on the basis of governing tools that aim at managing cross‐border movement of workers on a strictly temporary, employer‐tied basis. The key elements involved in the operationalization of strictly temporary migration are recruitment, remittances and return; these three ‘Rs’ are also central to global policy discussions around the migration‐development nexus. The core premise of this paper is that t…
Governing regional migration from the 'bottom-up
This paper investigates the emerging regional governance of migration from the perspective of migrant rights activists and their strategies in advancing a rights-based framework in contrast to the ‘management’ (i.e. control-centred) approach typically championed by states. The key objective is to use the study of civil society activism, through its nodes and networks, to develop a ‘bottom-up’ approach as an alternative to the dominant perspective…
Regions and global migration governance
Although receiving increasing attention in multilateral settings, regional arrangements play a hitherto under-investigated role in global migration governance. Regional initiatives exist for intraregional mobility; migrant rights; refugee protection; or to counter unsolicited migration. Often, these initiatives have developed in different institutional settings and with little coordination. This article theorises the drivers of regional migration…
The 2022 Fifa World Cup, the exploitation of migrant workers, and the role of transnational governing networks
Over the past decade, the eyes of the world have been increasingly drawn to the exploitative working and living conditions faced by the two million migrant workers in Qatar. This is due to Qatar hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup, a mega-sporting tournament that could offer the potential to catalyse progress on human and labour rights as the event is of 'high profile nature and global reach'
Global Labor Migration
This article discusses the roots of the current governance system of global migration in relation to labor mobility from a critical policy and historical perspectives, by assessing the current state of global migration governance and key protection gaps regarding migrant workers, to then consider future avenues for research and advocacy to forward migrants’ human and labor rights. In the authors’ analysis of global migration governance, they cent…
Returning home empty handed
The crisis unleashed by COVID-19 has profoundly impacted the world of work, with many workers losing their jobs or with insufficient safety measures in place for those still in work. Migrant workers are among the precarious workforce that is employed in particularly affected sectors where they have been subjected to labour rights’ violations for a long time. The pandemic has further exposed and exacerbated the exploitation of migrant workers in p…
Political remittances and the diffusion of a rights-based approach to migration governance
This paper aims to address a rarely researched dimension of political remittances by moving from the (trans)national to the regional level, and from the individual to the institutional level of collective action. We base our analyses of the regional and institutional aspects on the case of the Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA), a regional network comprising migrants’ rights organisations that span across Asia (from West to East). Over the past two deca…
From Asia to the World
Migration from Asia has become an important theatre of regional and international migration and thus the crucible of theoretical developments which have attracted global attention. This paper sets out to address this gap by outlining the cross-border, mostly South South, migration especially along corridors between and across East, Southeast, South and West Asia. Empirically, cross-border intra-regional migration in search for work and livelihood…
Asia Pacific Migration
The complex interconnections of the migration–development nexus
The contributions to this Special Issue focus on marginalised and neglected social issues associated with the migration–development nexus. It reports research on specific groups of migrants who have so far been left out of the current debate on the relationship between migration and development. This debate has tended to be dominated by structural and economic concerns. The ultimate aim of the special issue is therefore to unsettle the terms of t…
International Marriage in Japan
Despite an image of ethnic and cultural homogeneity, Japan in fact is host to significant minority populations. A considerable part of these minorities derive from flows of labour migrants from the Asian periphery to Japan-a process dominated by female labour migrants who work mainly in the entertainment and sex-related industries. One social phenomenon resulting from the presence of female labour migrants is the rise in cases of international ma…
Wife or worker? Worker or wife? Marriage and cross‐border migration in contemporary Japan
The global trend of increasing numbers of international couples can also be witnessed in Japan where Southeast and Northeast Asian women dominate numerically. This paper reviews the existing literature on marriage and migration exploring the connections between international migration for work and international marriage. It is argued that a dichotomous approach analysing migrant women as either migrants for marriage or overseas contract workers n…
Feminisation of Migration and the Social Dimensions of Development
This paper offers a first attempt at discussing the linkages between migration and development in reference to the feminisation of intra-regional migratory flows in Asia. It begins with a summary of the current debate on the ‘migration and development nexus’ with two objectives in mind: 1) to assess this debate's relevance to intra-regional migration in Asia; and 2) to redirect attention to the social dimension of feminised migrations and its rel…
Regions and global migration governance
Although receiving increasing attention in multilateral settings, regional arrangements play a hitherto under-investigated role in global migration governance. Regional initiatives exist for intraregional mobility; migrant rights; refugee protection; or to counter unsolicited migration. Often, these initiatives have developed in different institutional settings and with little coordination. This article theorises the drivers of regional migration…
Rights of Foreign Workers and the Politics of Migration in South‐East and East Asia
The issue of cross‐border migration in South‐East and East Asia is linked to the integration of regional, if not global, labour markets. The types of labour that are currently in demand have changed substantially since the 1990s in terms of (1) overall magnitude, (2) gender composition, and (3) increased diversification. This paper, however, focuses upon those workers classified as unskilled as they constitute numerically the largest and most vul…
Harnessing Hope through NGO Activism
This article explores the relationship between hope and agency in the contexts of migrant rights activism and alternative trading relationships created through social and environmental certification systems. Using interviews with key respondents from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), hope is assigned a positive role in the complex process of social change, providing that common goals can be agreed upon and achieved along the way. Two main lay…
Migrant Precarity in Asia
This article uses migrant precarity as a lens through which to analyse the issue of mobilization for migrants' rights by civil society. Such mobilization efforts are vital in light of the emergence of global migration governance, which tends to actively constrain considerations for migrants' human and labour rights. Asia's temporary migrants have been identified as a particularly precarious group of workers due to their specific position within t…
Temporary Migration and Political Remittances
The starting point in exploring possible linkages between migration and democratisation in this paper is the role of collective organisations in influencing and changing the direction and practice of political activism aimed at advancing the rights of migrants as foreign workers. Given the specific context of my discussion being temporary contract migration—the predominant form of (legal) economic migration in Asia today—taking a transnational pe…
Gendering the Politics of Migration
Although every aspect of the migration process is shaped by political factors and migration presents many political challenges on the domestic and international levels, the attention of political scientists in the United States and Europe has been limited to relatively few topics, including control over entry and exit, and issues of incorporation and citizenship. Work that considers the political aspects of migration from a gender perspective con…
Globalisation and regulation of citizenship-Filipino migrant workers in Japan
Women migrants in the global economy
Huge advances have been made in deepening and expanding our knowledge of gendered migration over the last decades in both theoretical and methodological terms. Empirically it is, however, still the case that North-South migration is at the basis of most theorisations, leaving the characteristics of South-South migration at the margins. In this paper we, therefore, shift the focus to intra- and trans-regional migration in a South-South context in …
Temporary economic migration and rights activism
n Temporary contract migration schemes have experienced a revival in Europe. Such schemes mean that a significant number of migrant workers have limited access to rights and entitlements, let alone full citizenship. The temporary nature of their migration poses obstacles to traditional ways of organising workers. This changing landscape of migration dynamics, thus, requires a changing landscape of migrant rights activism also. \n \nThe focus in t…
Temporary labour migration in Asia
Much of intra‐Asian labour migration is regulated on the basis of governing tools that aim at managing cross‐border movement of workers on a strictly temporary, employer‐tied basis. The key elements involved in the operationalization of strictly temporary migration are recruitment, remittances and return; these three ‘Rs’ are also central to global policy discussions around the migration‐development nexus. The core premise of this paper is that t…
Retrenched and Returned
Situating data from a pilot study conducted in the Philippines within the research literature, we examine the impact of the recent global economic crisis on the experiences of Filipino migrant workers and their families in the context of previous economic upheavals. In so doing, we highlight the gendered effects of shifts in the global economy and detail government response to the premature return of migrant workers to the Philippines primarily d…
Japanese women studying abroad, the case of the United States
Feminization of Labor Migration as Violence Against Women
International labor migration has emerged as an increasingly regionalized phenomenon, with flows within East and Southeast Asia having gained great momentum. An expanding number of women are taking part in these cross-border movements in the search for work, to the extent that migration scholars have been referring to this development as the “feminization of labor migration.” This article examines the debates and issues concerning intersections b…
Labor Migration, Trafficking and International Marriage
Despite the fact that the phenomenon of labor migration has always involved the active participation of independent women, conventional migration studies have typically ignored gender- specific analyses. This is related to prevailing definitions of labor and the nature of women's work in general, as well as to globally restrictive immigration policies. Current experiences of female immigration—particularly from Asia, the biggest exporter of femal…
Alternative Regionalism from Below
Most literature on migration governance has addressed the global level, and it has done so primarily from a state‐centric and top‐down perspective, with little regard to the role of civil society organizations in shaping its direction. Moreover, in an institutional sense, except for the EU , the regional level has only received scant attention, which is surprising given the significance of intra‐regional migration flows elsewhere. The Association…
Returning home empty handed
The crisis unleashed by COVID-19 has profoundly impacted the world of work, with many workers losing their jobs or with insufficient safety measures in place for those still in work. Migrant workers are among the precarious workforce that is employed in particularly affected sectors where they have been subjected to labour rights’ violations for a long time. The pandemic has further exposed and exacerbated the exploitation of migrant workers in p…
Democratising Migration from the Bottom Up
This paper discusses the link between international migration and democratisation from an actor-oriented perspective on the basis of the mobilising efforts by key civil society actors engaged in the promotion of the rights of migrant workers through developing strategies towards movement building and by capitalising on political opportunities that have appeared on the global level. Being pitched at the global level and at organising patterns via …
Migrant Worker Activism in Singapore and Malaysia
The political space given to non-governmental organizations to respond to the economic and legal problems experienced by migrant workers is heavily restricted in Malaysia and Singapore. The relative political weakness of their respective civil societies has been the focus of some research, albeit to a lesser extent with specific reference to their labor sectors, raising questions on what this implies for migrant labor activism. By exploring the d…
Management Versus Rights
The global governance of labor migration reflects two major trends: one supports neoliberal migration management priorities and another addresses human rights, with the latter subordinated to the former. This subordination of human rights to other, market-related, priorities parallels global governance priorities in general. While some international organizations address the need for protection of migrant rights, their specific on-the-ground prog…
Reflections on intersectionality
The term ‘intersectionality’ is usually attributed to Kimberlé Crenshaw, a legal scholar, who coined the term in 1989. In this paper, we reflect on how the concept has travelled through both space and time. We trace the longer history and more complex geography of intersectional approaches rooted in grassroots women’s movements in the Global South, where radical claims were made against the dominance of white, middle-class women’s analysis of the…
Globalisation of Asian migrant labour
2001). Globalisation of Asian migrant labour: The Philippine-Japan connection. Journal of Contemporary Asia: Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 533-554
International Marriage in Japan
Despite an image of ethnic and cultural homogeneity, Japan in fact is host to significant minority populations. A considerable part of these minorities derive from flows of labour migrants from the Asian periphery to Japan-a process dominated by female labour migrants who work mainly in the entertainment and sex-related industries. One social phenomenon resulting from the presence of female labour migrants is the rise in cases of international ma…
Labor Migration, Trafficking and International Marriage
Despite the fact that the phenomenon of labor migration has always involved the active participation of independent women, conventional migration studies have typically ignored gender- specific analyses. This is related to prevailing definitions of labor and the nature of women's work in general, as well as to globally restrictive immigration policies. Current experiences of female immigration—particularly from Asia, the biggest exporter of femal…
War and Memory
History is amoral: events occurred. But memory is moral; what we consciously remember is what our conscience remembers
Transnational women's activism in Japan and Korea
This article is about the transnational links formed between the Korean and Japanese women's movements in their campaign on behalf of the victims of 'military sexual slavery' during the Second World War. There is a growing literature that examines such networks. Yet, a deeper understanding of the emergence and activities of transnational advocacy networks is needed, particularly in the context of political opportunity structures. Social scientist…
Globalisation of Asian migrant labour
2001). Globalisation of Asian migrant labour: The Philippine-Japan connection. Journal of Contemporary Asia: Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 533-554
Transnational Advocacy Networks, Female Labor Migration and Trafficking in East and Southeast Asia
The aim of this article is to advance political economy and politics into migration studies by analyzing the role of transnational advocacy networks working on issues of trafficking and labor migration in East and Southeast Asia. Drawing on some empirical research, but mainly offering conceptual ideas, we demonstrate the importance of gender not only in trafficking and labor migration but also in transnational advocacy. First, we contextualize tr…
Globalisation and regulation of citizenship-Filipino migrant workers in Japan
Feminization of Labor Migration as Violence Against Women
International labor migration has emerged as an increasingly regionalized phenomenon, with flows within East and Southeast Asia having gained great momentum. An expanding number of women are taking part in these cross-border movements in the search for work, to the extent that migration scholars have been referring to this development as the “feminization of labor migration.” This article examines the debates and issues concerning intersections b…
Wife or worker? Worker or wife? Marriage and cross‐border migration in contemporary Japan
The global trend of increasing numbers of international couples can also be witnessed in Japan where Southeast and Northeast Asian women dominate numerically. This paper reviews the existing literature on marriage and migration exploring the connections between international migration for work and international marriage. It is argued that a dichotomous approach analysing migrant women as either migrants for marriage or overseas contract workers n…
An Introductory Overview
Bridging Gender, Migration and Governance
This paper examines international labor migration within the broader framework of social justice and ‘politics of migration’ from a ‘bottom up perspective.’ In view of governments' inability or lack of political will to deal with labor migration issues from the perspective of migrant workers' well-being, it is very much up to non-state actors, such as NGOs, to take up the role as advocates to assert pressure on policymakers. Conceptually, this li…
Gender and Migration Policies in Southeast and East Asia
This paper is concerned with how existing migration policies affect individual migrant women's choices, in particular, with the advancement, or consolidation, of a migrants' rights perspective. The focus is thereby on those migrants classified as unskilled, who constitute the largest and most vulnerable category among migrants. The analysis of migration policies has conventionally been approached from a state/government‐centred viewpoint that see…
Japanese women studying abroad, the case of the United States
Rights of Foreign Workers and the Politics of Migration in South‐East and East Asia
The issue of cross‐border migration in South‐East and East Asia is linked to the integration of regional, if not global, labour markets. The types of labour that are currently in demand have changed substantially since the 1990s in terms of (1) overall magnitude, (2) gender composition, and (3) increased diversification. This paper, however, focuses upon those workers classified as unskilled as they constitute numerically the largest and most vul…
Harnessing Hope through NGO Activism
This article explores the relationship between hope and agency in the contexts of migrant rights activism and alternative trading relationships created through social and environmental certification systems. Using interviews with key respondents from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), hope is assigned a positive role in the complex process of social change, providing that common goals can be agreed upon and achieved along the way. Two main lay…
Justice for Migrant Workers? The Case of Foreign Domestic Workers in Hong Kong and Singapore 1
The trend in Western liberal democracies is to extend to long-term residents most, if not all, the legal rights of citizens and improving their access to citizenship for immigrants and their descendants. The situation is different in developed East Asian societies, where the most migrant workers work under short-term contracts without the possibility of becoming equal members of the political community. It is argued that the special circumstances…
A Problem by a Different Name? A Review of Research on Trafficking in South‐East Asia and Oceania
10.1111/j.0020-7985.2005.00318.x
Introduction to special issue
Out of a total of 38 million people living with HIV/AIDS globally today, the Asia-Pacific is home to about 7.4 million – a figure which constitutes a sharp rise to previous years. In absolute numbers, infections in Asia are projected to exceed African figures within a decade. This has largely to do with economic changes towards market-based capitalism, widening socioeconomic disparities and increased levels of mobility (internal and cross-border)…
Rights of Foreign Domestic Workers — Emergence of Transnational and Transregional Solidarity
This paper explores the notion of an emerging transnational or transregional labor solidarity of foreign workers across the Southeast and East Asian region as well as Europe by investigating migration as an instrument of political transformation through the concept of transnationalism. The issue of solidarity is analyzed through the lens of non-governmental activism as represented by trade union and NGOs, two types of organizations with different…
Gender Practices in Contemporary Vietnam – Lisa Drummond and Helle Rydstrøm
Gendering the Politics of Migration
Although every aspect of the migration process is shaped by political factors and migration presents many political challenges on the domestic and international levels, the attention of political scientists in the United States and Europe has been limited to relatively few topics, including control over entry and exit, and issues of incorporation and citizenship. Work that considers the political aspects of migration from a gender perspective con…
Migrant Worker Activism in Singapore and Malaysia
The political space given to non-governmental organizations to respond to the economic and legal problems experienced by migrant workers is heavily restricted in Malaysia and Singapore. The relative political weakness of their respective civil societies has been the focus of some research, albeit to a lesser extent with specific reference to their labor sectors, raising questions on what this implies for migrant labor activism. By exploring the d…
The “Migration-Development Nexus” Revisited from a Rights Perspective
This paper provides a conceptual discussion of the inter-linkages between rights-based approaches to development and economic migration. Rather than focusing on a legalistic understanding of migrants' rights, the starting point of this paper is the perspective of political processes involved in voicing and claiming rights by incorporating a transnational and activist perspective to assess the potential for enhancing the lives of migrant workers, …
Feminisation of Migration and the Social Dimensions of Development
This paper offers a first attempt at discussing the linkages between migration and development in reference to the feminisation of intra-regional migratory flows in Asia. It begins with a summary of the current debate on the ‘migration and development nexus’ with two objectives in mind: 1) to assess this debate's relevance to intra-regional migration in Asia; and 2) to redirect attention to the social dimension of feminised migrations and its rel…
La Convention sur les travailleurs migrants en Asie
En Asie comme ailleurs, aucun pays de destination de migrants (Japon. Corée, Malaisie et Singapour principalement) n'a, jusqu'à aujourd'hui, ratifié la Convention. Parmi les pays d'origine (Bangladesh et Indonésie principalement) les Philippines se distinguent par une forte mobilisation et des avancées significatives en matière de droits des migrants, sous l'impulsion, récente. d'une société civile qui s'appuie sur des réseaux transnationaux, À p…
Political science (68 works) · Sociology (57 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (52 works) · Economics (51 works) · Law (47 works) · Politics (39 works) · Political economy (35 works) · Law (30 works) · Geography (28 works) · Economic growth (27 works)