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This paper explores how migration infrastructure conditions migrant mobilities within receiving states. The paper examines two infrastructural case studies, language testing and housing markets, in relation to Asian ‘middling’ migrants, that is, the relatively educated and skilled but not elite, who arrive in Australia on temporary visas. The analysis highlights the interplays and dependencies of different ‘logics of operation’ (Xiang and Lindquist, 2014) of infrastructure in relation to these migrants’ status mobilities and housing mobilities within the receiving society. The paper draws on data from in-depth narrative interviews with migrants to also understand how infrastructure produces perceptions and meaning-making around the migration process. This analysis reveals that, in this empirical context, migration infrastructure produces varied kinds of spatio-temporal insecurity as much as it mediates mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The increase of migrant workers into the Kingdom of Thailand began in the mid-1980s and early 1990s when Thailand was in transition from a low-end labour-intensive economy, to a capital-intensive one. The role of migrant workers became even more evident when Thailand encountered the economic crisis of the mid-1990s. Current statistics indicate that Thailand receives more than a million migrant workers from neighbouring countries, including Myanmar, Lao PDR and Cambodia. This paper traces the five stages of the Royal Thai Government's (RTG) policies to managing cross-border migration and migrant worker issues in Thailand. It argues that despite the introduction of policies of management of the issue, migrant workers are vulnerable to human trafficking. Furthermore, as more often than not migrant workers are irregular migrants, they are treated as a risk to national security. As such they are vulnerable to labour exploitation. This paper analyses the problems in policy and legal enforcement between countries of origin and the RTG, suggesting ways in which these problems can be overcome to ensure compliance with international norms, and thus the responsibility of the RTG to its 'foreign workers'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Obstacles to internal migration in China contribute to inefficiency, inequality, and land degradation. Academic and policy debate has primarily focused on discrimination against rural migrants on arrival in urban areas. Meanwhile, barriers to migration out of rural areas have received less attention. This paper examines the role of incomplete rural property rights in the migration decisions of rural households. We examine the relationship between tenure insecurity and restrictions on land rentals, and participation in outside labor markets. The results indicate that tenure insecurity reduces migration. This relationship is particularly pronounced on forest land, which has implications for the conservation of recently replanted forest areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]