Developing the Cross-Border Labour Market: Labour Crossings by Intermediaries

This chapter explores how intermediaries establish and run their own training schemes as skilled commodity production channels and how they mobilise relevant market actors to make and develop the cross-border labour market between Japan and Vietnam. Intermediaries transnationally mobilise both employers and migrants through these channels. Through these training schemes, intermediaries seek to select and train a certain level of commodity (skilled migrants) to have a shared understanding of the commodity and coordinate skilled migrants and labour users at the transnational level. Intermediaries implement labour crossings to create a cross-border labour market where a potential commodity (skilled migrants) and labour users meet beyond borders. Intermediaries intervene in this process to shape and adjust both skilled migrants’ and labour users’ understanding of the commodity and the cross-border labour market, how the commodity is exchanged, and its value at the transnational level. This chapter also demonstrates how intermediaries develop a cross-border labour market beyond Japan and Vietnam in other countries.