ABSTRACT
This chapter engages in the infrastructural turn in migration studies, in general, and in the study of Asian migrations, in particular. The growing interest in infrastructure follows both from transformations in how migration is organised in practice and a lack of conceptual tools in making analytical sense of these transformations. Most succinctly, we argue that transnational migration is increasingly managed through infrastructural developments as opposed to the control of bodily movement per se. In other words, this points to the importance of shifting attention to the formation of platforms and material basis for mobility rather than strictly tracking migrant mobility or engaging with migration policy and management. More specifically, the chapter is concerned both with a new methodological approach and with linking migration studies more closely to broad intellectual and political debates. Our field of concern is the patchwork sociotechnical forms that make transnational migration possible, focusing in particular on the cases of China and Indonesia.
