Becoming a Migrant Worker in Nepal: The Governmentality and Marketization of Transnational Labor 9783839462126

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
List of Abbreviations
1 Introduction
Introduction
1.1 Nepali Labor Migration in the Global Economy
1.2 Research Approach and Guiding Questions
1.3 Structure of the Book
2 Conceptual Framework
Introduction
2.1 Towards a Political Geography of Labor Migration
2.2 Conceptualizing the Governmentality of Migration
2.3 The Marketization of Migrant Labor
2.4 Assembling the Conceptual Building Blocks
3 Methodological Approaches towards an Ethnography of Government
Introduction
3.1 Identifying the Research Context
3.2 Ethnographic Research Approach and Practice
3.3 Specific Tools of Analysis
4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration
Introduction
4.1 Governing through Recruitment
4.2 Governing Market Encounters
4.3 Governing through Instruction
4.4 Discussion: Governing Nepali Labor Migration and Migrant Subjectivities
5 Conclusion
Introduction
5.1 Governing Nepali Migrant Subjects—a Synopsis
5.2 Conceptual and Methodological Contributions
5.3 Empirical Contributions and Implications
References
Article's References
Newspaper Articles
Cited Primary Sources
Appendix: Interview Guidelines
Example 1: Guideline Recruitment Agencies (2018)
Example 2: Guideline Technical Skill Training Institutes (2018

Citation preview

Hannah Uprety Becoming a Migrant Worker in Nepal

Culture and Social Practice

Hannah Uprety, born in 1986, obtained her PhD in geography at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Her interests include migration studies, globalization and transnational labor, as well as poststructuralist, postcolonial, and feminist perspectives. She currently works in the social sector.

Hannah Uprety

Becoming a Migrant Worker in Nepal The Governmentality and Marketization of Transnational Labor

This publication was originally submitted as the author’s inaugural dissertation (Dr. phil.) under the title “The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration. Governing Migrant Subjectivities and the Transnational Marketization of Labor at the Faculty of Geosciences”, University of Münster, Germany. The dissertation was funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and Sybille-Hahne-Stiftung.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http:// dnb.d-nb.de © 2022 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Maria Arndt, Bielefeld Cover illustration: Photograph by Hannah Uprety, 2018 Translations from Nepali to English: Hannah Uprety, Amir Uprety Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-6212-2 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-6212-6 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839462126 ISSN of series: 2703-0024 eISSN of series: 2703-0032 Printed on permanent acid-free text paper.

Contents

Acknowledgements ............................................................................ 7 List of Abbreviations .......................................................................... 11 1 1.1 1.2 1.3

Introduction ............................................................................. 13 Nepali Labor Migration in the Global Economy ............................................. 15 Research Approach and Guiding Questions ................................................ 17 Structure of the Book..................................................................... 19

Conceptual Framework ................................................................. Towards a Political Geography of Labor Migration ........................................ 2.1.1 Transnational migration, translocality, and global labor ............................ 2.1.2 Identities and intersectionality in migration regimes............................... 2.1.3 The infrastructure of migration and the commodification of migrant labor ......... 2.2 Conceptualizing the Governmentality of Migration ........................................ 2.2.1 Governmentality—an analytics of power and subjectification ...................... 2.2.2 Geographical scale and global regimes of colonialism, development, and neoliberalism through the lens of governmentality ............................ 2.2.3 Governing through embodied practice ............................................. 2.2.4 Three themes in the governmentality of migration ................................. 2.3 The Marketization of Migrant Labor....................................................... 2.3.1 Economics as performative: conceptual premises ................................. 2.3.2 Core concepts on the formatting of markets ...................................... 2.3.3 Marketization and the governmentality of migrant labor ........................... 2.4 Assembling the Conceptual Building Blocks...............................................

23 24 24 28 30 35 35

3 Methodological Approaches towards an Ethnography of Government ................... 3.1 Identifying the Research Context......................................................... 3.2 Ethnographic Research Approach and Practice ........................................... 3.2.1 Situated knowledge production and positionality .................................. 3.2.2 An iterative-inductive journey towards multi-sensory research.....................

73 74 76 77 82

2 2.1

47 54 60 64 64 66 68 69

3.3 Specific Tools of Analysis ................................................................ 3.3.1 Discourse analysis................................................................ 3.3.2 Materiality and affect ............................................................. 3.3.3 Genealogy ........................................................................

89 89 95 98

4

Analysis:  The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration ......................................... 101 4.1 Governing through Recruitment ........................................................ 103 4.1.1 Labor migration as a solution and problem ........................................105 4.1.2 Recruiting into migrant subjectivities ............................................. 117 4.1.3 State government of migration and recruitment .................................. 133 4.1.4 “Subterranean” practices in the recruitment industry ............................. 144 4.1.5 Experiencing recruitment amidst competing technologies of government .......... 157 4.2 Governing Market Encounters ........................................................... 167 4.2.1 Interviews and practical skill tests as market encounters.......................... 170 4.2.2 Governing migrant workers abroad ................................................184 4.2.3 International techniques and dynamics of hiring Nepali labor ...................... 191 4.2.4 Singularizing the “Nepali worker” on the international market ..................... 199 4.2.5 Selections and differential hiring among Nepali candidates ....................... 214 4.3 Governing through Instruction .......................................................... 230 4.3.1 Towards the “qualified worker:” Technical and vocational training ................. 233 4.3.2 Competing instructions on recruitment and pre-departure conduct ............... 244 4.3.3 Directives and advice on health, safety, and rules abroad ......................... 257 4.3.4 Instructing towards the submissive and productive migrant worker ............... 273 4.3.5 Coaching towards development and self-marketization ........................... 288 4.4 Discussion: Governing Nepali Labor Migration and Migrant Subjectivities ............................. 304 4.4.1 Three pillars of the migration regime............................................. 304 4.4.2 Subjectification and marketization of migrant workers between coercive conduct and technologies of the self ............................ 312 5 5.1 5.2 5.3

Conclusion ............................................................................. 327 Governing Nepali Migrant Subjects—a Synopsis .......................................... 328 Conceptual and Methodological Contributions ........................................... 330 Empirical Contributions and Implications................................................ 332

References .................................................................................. 337 Newspaper Articles .......................................................................... 363 Cited Primary Sources ....................................................................... 368 Appendix: Interview Guidelines.............................................................. 373 Example 1: Guideline Recruitment Agencies (2018) ............................................. 373 Example 2: Guideline Technical Skill Training Institutes (2018) ................................. 374

Acknowledgements

The profound learnings and personal growth I experienced while working on this book have only been possible through the support of many others around me. My thanks go to Paul Reuber for the numerous creative exchanges we had over the past years. His encouragement and his unwavering confidence in my abilities have been profoundly helpful. I thank Susan Thieme for her kindness and the great inspiration I was able to gather from her earlier research on migration and Nepal. I also appreciate the generous financial support I received from the German National Academic Foundation and Sybille-Hahne-Stiftung. I am deeply grateful to the many people who have made my empirical research possible—who were kind enough to open their minds, their personal lives, and their workplaces to my curious gaze and my steady stream of questions. My particular thanks go to Rajendra Bhandari, MS Kapri, and Suman Tamang for their generosity, patience, and the many doors they opened for me and my further research. Ichharam Uprety, Arjun Hamal, Bishan Kharel, Dipesh Uprety, and Devraj Pathak—your ongoing willingness to share your personal experiences, your opinions, and your visions with me has had the most profound impact on this book. Thank you for your trust and for your readiness to let some of your “personal” become some of my “professional.” My sincere thanks go to Sitaram Bhandari for his companionship, his patience—and his fast motorcycle, which turned out to be a lifesaver during many long research days in Kathmandu Valley. I am also eternally grateful for the help and support I received from friends and family. Kirsten Linnemann provided invaluable comments on my work; but more importantly, our inspiring conversations and her unconditional emotional “first aid” have been something I will continue to cherish. My praise and thanks go to Imme Lindemann for her genius visual skills, her uplifting companionship, and her hands-on support. I also thank Matthias Hoenig, Elisabeth Militz, Cindy Sturm, Matthew Norman, Sarah Klosterkamp, Charlotte Sandoval, and Thomas Simon for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript—and, even more so, their kind and encouraging words. I am grateful to Stephanie Spahr for her presence during every phase of my life, to Judith Unterdörfler for her kinship and profound understanding, and to Julia Bruns for her both uplifting and grounding companionship. Finally, I thank my parents for their many sacrifices and unwavering support. My ultimate thanks go to my partner in life

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Becoming a Migrant Worker in Nepal

and beyond—Amir, who has been there for absolutely everything, and without whom none of this would have been possible. This book is dedicated to Milan, who has been my greatest gift and my best teacher. Hannah Uprety, June 2022

List of Figures Figure 1: Conceptual framework................................................................ 70 Figure 2: Iterative-inductive process of ethnographic research, conceptual development, and analysis between Germany and Nepal................................................ 83 Figure 3: Overview of the three central pillars of the Nepali migration regime. ..................102 Figure 4: Collection of typical visuals on recruitment agency websites. ......................... 107 Figure 5: Hand-crafted map titled “The World. ................................................. 113 Figure 6: Another hand-crafted map titled “The World.”......................................... 113 Figure 7: Video stills of recruitment agency commercial, broadcast on TV network ABC News.....118 Figure 8: Video stills and transcribed audio of recruitment agency commercial...................119 Figure 9a & b: Collection of buildings representing “returnee architecture” in Gajuri. ...........126 Figure 10: Video stills and transcribed audio of folk music video “Chinta chhaina kehi.” ........ ..129 Figure 11: Video stills and transcribed audio of pop song “Saili.”..................................131 Figure 12: Video stills and transcribed audio of folk song “Bidesh Jane Rahar.”................. ..131 Figure 13: Timeline of state policies on foreign employment. .................................. 139 Figure 14: Two vacancy announcements published in national newspapers. .................... 142 Figure 15: Snapshot of freelance recruiter Ramesh. ............................................148 Figure 16: Snapshot of broker Deepak. Figure 17: Snapshot of broker Dili Ram. ........................................................150 Figure 18: “We accept only direct candidates.”..................................................152 Figure 19: Text message with new “demand” on broker Sandeep’s cell phone. ....................154 Figure 20: A migrant candidate scans his fingerprint before participating in the first day of orientation. Figure 21: Migrant candidates waiting in front of fingerprint scanner after their first training session. ..............................................................................164 Figure 22: Migrant candidate stamps his fingerprint on his work contract during a predeparture briefing while his recruitment agent holds the document. Figure 23: View of online database during log-in process at orientation training center. ........164 Figure 24: A migrant candidate (left) is being filmed by an agent during pre-departure briefing. ......................................................................................166 Figure 25 & 26: Vacancy announcements published in the national newspaper Kantipur Daily. ......................................................................................... 172

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Becoming a Migrant Worker in Nepal

Figure 27: Some of approximately 150 candidates wait at selection event for various technical positions (Qatar). Figure 28: Some of about 40 candidates for the position of taxi driver (Qatar) wait at selection event. ............................................................................... 174 Figure 29: Waiting line at the registration desk during a selection event. Figure 30: Migrant candidates sit waiting to be called for their interviews and skill tests. ....... 176 Figure 31: Spatial layout at a practical skill test................................................. 177 Figure 32: Spatial layout at an interview event. ................................................ 177 Figure 33: A device of objectification next to a symbol of national identity: Recruitment agency cap next to a Dhaka topi, Nepal’s national headgear, at a recruitment agency in Lalitpur. Figure 34: A group of candidates, processed as one “lot,” while waiting for their flight from Tribhuvan airport to Malaysia. ........................................................... 193 Figure 35: Connections between the singularizing imagination of the “Nepali worker” and rationalities of value on the international migrant labor market. .......................... 206 Figure 36: Participants in a seven-day scaffolding course practice with their teacher (cap) at an agency-affiliated technical training center in Kathmandu. Figure 37: Theoretical session of a general hospitality training course at a vocational training center in Kathmandu. ................................................................ 235 Figure 38: Whiteboard during an English language course for security guards at a recruitment agency in Lalitpur. Figure 39: Security guard training on the rooftop of a recruitment agency in Lalitpur........... 235 Figure 40: Handbook for migrant workers, titled Pravas diary. Figure 41: Quarterly journal “Foreign Employment Bulletin.” .................................... 246 Figure 42: Video stills and transcribed audio of PSA in the style of a folk song...................248 Figure 43: Video stills and transcribed audio of PSA in the style of a telenovela ................ .249 Figure 44: Video stills and transcribed audio of PSA in the style of folk song ................. ...250 Figure 45: Signing a work contract during pre-departure briefing at a major recruitment agency in Lalitpur. Figure 46: Pre-departure briefing at a Lalitpur-based recruitment agency. ..................... 251 Figure 47: Participants waiting in the class room of an orientation training center in Kathmandu. Figure 48: Empty class room at an orientation training center in Kathmandu. .................. 259 Figure 49: Country brochure on Malaysia (Part 1). ............................................. 267 Figure 50: Country brochure on Malaysia (Part 2). ............................................. 268 Figure 51: Presentation on “Personality Development” and personal hygiene in kitchen stewardship class at Lalitpur skill center. ..................................................... 279 Figure 52: Warning about CCTV surveillance at an orientation training center. Figure 53: Notice of CCTV surveillance at a large recruitment agency in Lalitpur. .............. 283 Figure 54: Video stills and transcribed audio of PSA in the style of a telenovela................. 295 Figure 55: Three pillars of the Nepali migration regime. ....................................... 305 Figure 56: Constitution of the Nepali migrant subject. ......................................... 313

List of Abbreviations

ANT CBS CTEVT DoFE EUR FEIMS FEPB GCC GDP GRT GoN IOM MOFA MOLE MOLESS NAFEA NPR PSA SaMi TEVT UAE USD YSEF

Actor-Network-Theory Central Bureau of Statistics, Government of Nepal Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training Department of Foreign Employment Euro Foreign Employment Information Management System Foreign Employment Promotion Board Gulf Cooperation Council Grand Domestic Product Global Remittances Trend Government of Nepal International Organization of Migration Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ministry of Labor and Employment Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Services Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies Nepali Rupee Public Service Announcement Safer Migration Project Technical Education and Vocational Training United Arab Emirates US-Dollar Youth and Small Entrepreneur Self-Employment Fund

1

Introduction

In early spring of 2020, much of the hustle and bustle of our globalized economy came to an abrupt halt: Nearly overnight, countries around the world went into a multimonth lockdown, closing all “non-essential” businesses, banning most travel, and shutting down national borders in an attempt to slow down the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Although over the following months, many state governments gradually loosened their restrictions and tentatively explored a new sense of normalcy despite the crisis, the pandemic has undoubtedly been a global turning point. Aside from the staggering human toll of the disease itself, the necessary measures taken to slow down its spread will have social, economic, and political repercussions for years to come. Moreover, the crisis has shone a light on the current state of global society: Given the breathtaking speed at which the multiple variants of the virus have been spreading around the globe, the pandemic has demonstrated with utmost clarity how truly interconnected the world has become. But beyond this general insight, there are many other conditions coronavirus has revealed more clearly than ever, two of which are profoundly relevant to this book. First, the pandemic’s economic repercussions have shown just how much nearly every part of contemporary economic life has come to depend on an intricate global network. In 2020, production in many industries was stopped not only to slow down infection rates but also because global supply chains had broken down (e.g., Freiwah & Wolfsperger 2020; Lin & Lanng 2020; Maidenberg 2020). And just as today’s globalized economy cannot function without the mobility of goods, it cannot function without the mobility of human labor. Accordingly, 2020 saw agricultural and industrial activities in many countries come to a near standstill: They depended heavily on migrant laborers, many of whom had left their workplace to return home or—as in the case of many seasonal workers—were not allowed to enter their countries of employment to start or resume work (e.g., Brelie & Petit 2020; Hjalmarson 2020; Hurst 2020). Conversely, other migrant laborers were unable to travel home at all, instead being stranded for months without income and often under hazardous conditions in host countries that could or would not protect them from the risk of contracting the virus (e.g., Allinson & Sanders 2020; Grant 2020; The Straits Times 2020).

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Becoming a Migrant Worker in Nepal

This conundrum points to a second insight the pandemic has offered, which is an urgent reminder of the inequality that marks the current political and economic order. While coronavirus itself does not discriminate, the degree to which people have been affected by the crisis differs significantly. Those who have been suffering the most—in terms of the disease but also its social and economic repercussions—include refugees and migrant workers. Many of them live under precarious, overcrowded, and unhygienic conditions that were already problematic and degrading before the pandemic, but have now turned potentially life-threatening. Even wealthy countries like Germany, which has coped with the crisis comparatively well so far, were extremely slow to enforce basic hygiene standards in the housing and working conditions for migrant laborers in agriculture (Edelhoff et al. 2020), meat processing (Lee 2020; Staudenmaier 2020), and other industries—even though their labor is essential to the economy. Such disparities have been even more pronounced in global hubs for labor migration, such as the Gulf states and Malaysia, where many migrant communities have “face[d] the threat of a rampant outbreak” (Chulov 2020a; see also Hubbard 2020; Sherlock 2020; Sukumaran 2020).1 Even beyond the immediate health threat, the lack of income, financial compensation, and a political voice have left scores of them in dire circumstances. However, the pandemic did not cause any of these unequal conditions—it merely exacerbated them. Over the past three decades, scholars in political, critical, feminist, and economic geography (as well as neighboring disciplines) have argued that the latecapitalist global economy has only been able to thrive because it has consistently underpaid, undervalued, and exploited its migrant workforce (Hoang & Yeoh 2015; McDowell 2008; Mills 2003; Sassen 2008; Silvey 2012; Xiang 2012a). Frequently living and working under substandard conditions, migrant laborers have been described as “offshore proletariat” (Sassen 2001, 322) and “servants of globalization” (Parreñas 2015). Some scholars have observed that as a result of neoliberal globalization, migrant labor has increasingly become a cheap commodity in itself, with some countries building their brands as leading “exporters” or “importers” of labor (Jones & Pardthaisong 1999; Rodriguez 2010; Yeates 2009). While the majority of academic research, media reports, and public attention towards the topic has focused on workers’ conditions in their host countries, I argue that it is critical to also investigate the geographical and social contexts from which those migrants originate. Ultimately, regimes of labor migration can only be understood if one questions the conditions, practices, and mechanisms that have enabled and shaped their emergence in the first place, many of which are rooted in workers’ countries of origin. In light of this realization, the focus of this book is on Nepal, which—despite its 1

The predicament of undocumented migrants and refugees is even more acute: Displaced populations in refugee camps at the borders of the European Union and across the world have been forced to remain under unbearable hygienic conditions and faced severe humanitarian crises (e.g., Chulov 2020b). Similarly, undocumented migrants have been among those most vulnerable to the pandemic, while simultaneously facing a heightened risk of deportation. For instance, Malaysia has used the pandemic as an opportunity to launch yet another crackdown on its millions of undocumented workers (Al Jazeera 2020; BBC News 2020; see also section 4.2.2), which has not only created fear among them but also exacerbated the spread of the virus by keeping infected migrants from coming forward to get tested.

1 Introduction

relatively small population of 26.5 million—has become a major provider of low-skilled migrant labor to economies across Asia (Central Bureau of Statistics [CBS] 2012, 1).

1.1

Nepali Labor Migration in the Global Economy

A young democracy located in the Himalayas between India and China, Nepal looks back on more than two decades of political protests, struggle, and turmoil (Adhikari 2014; Einsiedel et al. 2012; Jha 2015; Lawoti & Pahari 2010; Lecomte-Tilouine 2013b). Following the peace agreement of 2006, a series of destructive earthquakes in 2015 (Subedi & Poudyal Chhetri 2019; Uprety et al. 2016), and the passing of a new constitution within the same year, Nepal has been busy trying to establish a new sense of normalcy. As a nation with a new political system and an overwhelmingly young population, at least 60 percent of which are below 30 years of age (CBS 2012, 65), the country faces many challenges on the road ahead. Yet, there are also many opportunities. Most of these—both challenges and opportunities—revolve around the national economy, workforce, and migration. Migrating abroad for employment has been an established practice among Nepal’s population for centuries (Gellner 2014, 136). However, in the past two decades, its popularity has reached unprecedented levels. According to census data from 2011, the number of international migrants over the previous decade had increased by a factor of 2.5 (CBS 2012, 2). At that time, two million Nepalis—constituting 7.5 percent of the total population—were currently abroad (ibid.), many of them under so-called “foreign employment” permits. The tremendous role labor migration plays in Nepali society is reflected through economic indicators as well. While Nepal already turned into a “remittance economy” (Seddon et al. 2001) in the late 1990s, the past decade, in particular, has seen a dramatic increase in financial remittances, which rose from USD 2.54 billion in 2010/11 to USD 8.79 billion in 2018/19 (Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security [MOLESS] 2020, 92). Today, official remittances constitute at least 28 percent of Nepal’s grand domestic product (GDP), rendering it the fifth-highest remittancerecipient country (relative to GDP) worldwide (World Bank 2019, 2). Part of these official remittances can be traced back to Nepalis studying abroad or working in highly skilled positions. However, more than half of them are sent by migrant workers in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries2 and Malaysia (MOLESS 2020, 93),3 who are primarily employed in low-skilled positions as cleaners, construction workers, and factory workers or as low-level personnel in hospitality, security, and other services (Ministry of Labour and Employment [MOLE] 2018, 58–59). 2 3

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), formed in 1981, consists of the six monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This statement explicitly refers to “official remittances,” since actual remittance flows from those regions are most likely significantly higher: First, money that originates from the Gulf or Malaysia but is re-routed through US-based remittance companies is currently being classified as sent from the USA (MOLESS 2020, 93). Secondly, those official data do not include the considerable amount of remittances that are being sent via informal channels, such as cash transfer by friends or family members and the traditional hundi system (see also section 4.3.5).

15

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Becoming a Migrant Worker in Nepal

Given that migratory lifestyles have been part of Nepali society for generations, many of those practices have continued to this day. They include internal rural-tourban migration (e.g., Poertner et al. 2011; Whelpton 2005), permanent, temporary, or seasonal migration to India (e.g., Bruslé 2008; Gellner 2014; Sharma 2018; Thieme & Müller-Böker 2004, 2010), and enrollment in foreign armies (e.g., Des Chene 1991; Graner & Gurung 2003; Rathaur 2001). Compared to those traditional forms of mobility, however, the practices of labor migration that have emerged over the past decades are remarkable in several ways: a) First, the sheer numbers of labor migrants today exemplify how migration has become a constant presence in people’s lives: At the time of the 2011 census, one in four households reported at least one member to be currently abroad (CBS 2012). Although the numbers of new migrant workers declined in recent years after peaking at 520,000 in 2013/14, they still amounted to an average of 970 workers leaving the country each day in 2017/18 (MOLESS 2020, 4).4 b) Secondly, migrants’ destinations have diversified significantly. Migration to the traditionally leading receiving country India remains important today (Sharma 2018; Thieme 2006), yet requires no visas and is thus difficult to track. By contrast, official labor permits are now being issued for as many as 110 additional destinations (MOLESS 2020, 11). More than 80 percent of the workers receiving these official permits in recent years migrated to Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, or the United Arab Emirates (MOLE 2018, 11). c) Thirdly, there is a significant difference in the institutions and mechanisms by which those new forms of labor migration have been facilitated, formalized, and managed. Whereas migration to India largely escapes official regulations and often continues to be organized along traditional routes and kinship-based networks (Bruslé 2008; Poertner et al. 2011; Thieme 2006), labor migration to other destinations has been subjected to increasingly specific legislation (e.g., Government of Nepal [GoN] 1985, 1999, 2007, 2008, 2019). It is being regulated, supervised, and managed by its own administrative body, the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE), and several other state authorities. Furthermore, it is being facilitated by a mushrooming “industry” (Yeates 2009, 179) of migration-related occupations (recruiters, skill educators, orientation trainers, etc.) and businesses (including medical centers, insurance companies, and travel agencies). Along with public and other non-state entities that facilitate foreign employment today, those businesses function as an ever-growing “infrastructure of migration” (Lindquist et al. 2012, 10; see also Kern & Müller-Böker 2015). d) The fourth difference to earlier forms of migration lies in the critical public debate that has emerged around it on both the national and global scale. Over the past

4

While more recent numbers on yearly issued permits are available, data from the fiscal year 2018/19—when only 236,208 permits were issued (MOLESS 2020, 4)—is considered not representative due to a fifteen-months-long moratorium on permits for Malaysia, which artificially lowered migrant numbers (Subedi 2019; see also sections 4.1.3, 4.1.5).

1 Introduction

decade, human rights organizations and international media have increasingly condemned the substandard living and working conditions many Nepali migrants have faced in Malaysia and the Gulf countries (e.g., Amnesty International 2013, 2016; Best 2019; Pattisson 2013). They have also problematized the high rate of workplace accidents and the roughly 1,000 workers that died abroad each year over the past decade, the majority of whom officially succumbed to cardiac arrest and “natural causes”—although each of them had been declared medically fit before departure (e.g., Booth et al. 2013; Carvalho 2020). Such reports have also been increasingly corroborated by academic studies, which confirm Nepali workers’ frequent health problems and elevated risk of death (Adhikary et al. 2011; Joshi et al. 2011; Pradhan et al. 2019; Simkhada et al. 2018). Much of this critical media attention has focused on the kingdom of Qatar, which, in its preparations towards hosting the upcoming FIFA world cup of 2022, has relied heavily on millions of foreign workers from Nepal and other South Asian countries. Such media reports have frequently described Nepali labor migration as an experience workers did not enter willingly or knowingly, but one they were forced and cheated into. At the same time, the practice has also been praised, in Nepali national discourse and by international organizations, as a promising economic opportunity for improving migrants’ personal livelihoods and Nepal’s development as a whole (e.g., Jones & Basnett 2013; World Bank 2011). In this book, the severity of the human rights violations that so many Nepali workers have faced abroad will not be minimized. Neither will migrants’ possibility to gain vital income and a higher quality of life for their families remain unacknowledged. Yet, the study is not limited to either of those assessments. Instead, I argue that the contemporary experience of Nepali labor migration is far too complex to fit into a simple, dualistic narrative of “gain” or “loss.” This is particularly relevant when it comes to people’s paths towards labor migration and the social, economic, and political conditions that enable and shape those paths. As I will show throughout the book, the conditions that affect Nepali men’s and women’s decisions to migrate and that influence their experiences on the way towards foreign employment are tied to a wide range of factors—including gendered identities, discourses of modernizing and neoliberal development, political rationalities of government, and mechanisms of marketization. In their entirety, those conditions function not only as an “infrastructure” that enables migration but as a “regime” that produces migrant workers in the first place. It is this regime of Nepali labor migration that lies at the heart of the book.

1.2

Research Approach and Guiding Questions

The topic and approach of this study initially grew out of personal interest. After years of watching my own Nepali relatives and friends deciding to work abroad, and after witnessing some of the ways these decisions affected daily life in Nepal,5 I became increas5

For more information regarding my personal involvement in Nepal, see section 3.2.1.

17

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Becoming a Migrant Worker in Nepal

ingly curious about why and how foreign employment had become such a widespread practice among Nepalis. Initial research, which I conducted among returned migrants and their families prior to my dissertation project, allowed me to better understand people’s choices, behaviors, and perspectives on an individual level. However, it also helped me grasp how their personal experiences and decisions were inextricably tied to historically, geographically, and culturally specific concepts and practices. Up to that point, much of the scholarship on Nepali foreign employment had focused on migrants’ personal motivations, while investigations of broader structural factors had been largely limited to the country’s weak economy and high unemployment rate. Departing from such approaches, I set out to understand the social conditions that affect people’s decisions to migrate, their perceptions of a “successful” migration experience, and, most of all, their paths towards getting there. More specifically, I aimed to identify the specific steps, adjustments, and transformations—in terms of material and embodied practices but also personal mindsets and identities—that “produce” labor migrants before they even leave the country. Under this premise, I became particularly interested in the work of recruitment agents and freelance brokers but also the roles of the Nepali state, different training providers, and other social actors in and beyond Nepal. Drawing on recent debates in critical and feminist geography, as well as critical migration studies, I conceptualized these different institutions and social actors as constituting an “infrastructure of migration” (Lindquist et al. 2012, 10) and representing part of a larger “migration regime” (Schwenken 2018). In order to grasp those social configurations theoretically, I turned to Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, whose broad definition of “government” suggests that people’s conduct is led by practices and forms of thinking that go far beyond state interventions and instead encompass all aspects of their lives (Foucault 1982/2000, 341).6 Furthermore, the concept provides a lens to identify the government of both others and the self, thereby moving beyond the dichotomy of “coerced” and “voluntary” actions. Despite its relevance to my study, I engaged critically with the governmentality perspective as my research unfolded, expanding it particularly regarding its multi-scalar and embodied dimensions and its role in the study of migration. After gaining insights into how Nepali migrant labor had been commodified, I deepened my conceptualization of governmentality by integrating it with theoretical tools from the social studies of marketization and economization. Based on this conceptual framework, the book sets out to unpack the complex power dynamics and different forms of government that enable the contemporary regime of Nepali labor migration. To this end, it has been guided by the following research questions:

6

Following standard citation practice, references featuring two years, which are separated by a slash, indicate that the cited work (publication year and page numbers following the slash) was originally published in an earlier year (preceding the slash). Given the heterogeneous and nonchronological order in which Foucault’s work has been published, and in order to properly reflect his changing theoretical positions over time, I will also apply the same method when citing his oral lectures at the Collège de France, even though they were not formally published at the time of their delivery (see particularly section 2.2.1).

1 Introduction a) How has contemporary Nepali labor migration been governed? In particular, how are Nepali men and women being led towards becoming specific types of “migrant workers” before they even leave the country? b) How have those modes of government enabled and advanced the formation of an international market around Nepali migrant labor? c) What has been the role of institutions such as state authorities, recruiters, orientation training centers, and professional skills training providers, which function as an infrastructure of migration?

In order to answer those questions, the book draws on ethnographic research conducted in different localities in Nepal and the discourse analysis of extensive textual and audiovisual material used to govern Nepali migration. Methodologically, it has, on the one hand, been informed by a multi-sensory ethnographic approach that acknowledges the material, embodied, and affective dimensions of the social. On the other, it makes use of Foucault’s discourse-analytical and genealogical methods. While third-party material plays a significant role throughout my analysis, the book is primarily based on indepth insights I gathered among members of the Nepali migrant community and professionals working in the infrastructure of migration, who were kind enough to invite me into their lives and their institutions.

1.3

Structure of the Book

The book unfolds over five chapters. Following this introduction, chapter two introduces the conceptual framework, which lays the foundation for the empirical analysis. The framework consists of three main conceptual building blocks: •

•

Part one of the chapter sketches out what I identify as a political-geographical approach towards migration, which views the practice in the context of broader societal transformations, inequalities, and power dynamics. Drawing on debates in critical and political geography, critical migration studies, and feminist scholarship, the first section outlines my perspective on transnational migration, globalization, and the role of migrant labor in the global economy. On this foundation, section two introduces the term “migration regime” (e.g., Hess et al. 2018; Schwenken 2018) as a means to view migration from a structural perspective, yet simultaneously take into account individual migrants’ experiences and identities. Focusing on the part of such regimes that enables, facilitates, and regulates labor migration, section three spotlights the so-called “infrastructure of migration” (Lindquist et al. 2012, 10) and recent trends of an increasing commercialization of migration-related services. Part two develops the central theoretical lens that guides the empirical analysis: my conceptualization of the governmentality of migration. After introducing Foucault’s perspective and the main conceptual tools used in the study (section 1), I will explore three directions to expand and enrich my understanding of governmentality: Section two traces the spatial and multi-scalar implications of the concept, whereas section three draws on feminist theory to specify its embodied, performative, and

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•

affective dimensions. Section four returns to critical migration scholarship, identifying common themes in the government of migration and illustrating how the conceptual lens of governmentality can contribute to their investigation. Building on the empirical observation that the Nepali migration regime is significantly shaped by the commercialization of migration services and the commodification of migrant labor, part three introduces concepts from the studies of economization and marketization to better understand these processes. This complementary theoretical toolkit offers a reading of markets as performative processes that are framed through many different investments (section 1). It also provides a detailed understanding of the mechanisms of commodification and the formation of markets (section 2). Section three illustrates how the perspectives of governmentality and marketization can complement and mutually enrich each other in the study of labor migration.

The fourth and last part of the chapter integrates the three conceptual building blocks and points out their distinct roles in the overall framework. After summarizing its central tenets and revisiting the most relevant terminology, I will expand the general research questions posed in section 1.2 and translate them into five specific objectives that guide the empirical analysis. Chapter three discusses my methodological approach to the study. It begins by outlining the timeframe, institutional contexts, and geographical locations of fieldwork (part 1). Moving on to discuss the fundamental principles that have defined my research practice, I will reflect particularly on my own positionality, the iterative-inductive approach, and different methods of generating and processing research material—especially visual and multi-sensory ethnography (part 2). Finally, I will outline the specific tools used to analyze said research material, focusing on discourse analysis, multi-sensory and autoethnographic techniques, and an analytical angle that utilizes Foucault’s genealogical method (part 3). Constituting the most substantial part of the book, chapter four presents the insights from my empirical research and analysis. Here, it is important to note that the book does not follow the traditional scientific approach of neatly separating literature review, empirical findings, and their subsequent interpretation from each other. Based on the conceptual framework and the ethnographic and iterative-inductive paradigms that have informed the study, dividing those processes into seemingly distinct steps would be not only artificial but also misleading. Therefore, my own research insights are frequently discussed in the context of broader analytical arguments and in conjunction with contemporary academic debates. The analysis unfolds over three main parts, each of which represents a foundational pillar of the Nepali migration regime and thereby serves as a component to the government of migrant worker subjects: •

Part one focuses on the fundamental constitution of migrant subjectivities through recruitment into labor migration. It is not limited to the professional recruitment industry but understands recruitment as all forms of knowledge, practices, and techniques that address Nepali men and women as potential migrant workers and

1 Introduction

•

•

shape their trajectories towards migration. The analysis starts with the central problematizations, culturally embedded rationalities, and gendered subjectivities that represent the foundation of recruitment (sections 1-2). My investigation then turns to the Nepali state and the private recruitment industry as two institutional arenas that play a pivotal role in governing recruitment and migration (sections 3-4), before exploring the complex entanglements between both arenas and the resulting effects on aspiring migrants. Representing the second pillar of the regime, part two investigates the integration of migrant candidates into the international labor market. Focusing on practices of selection and hiring, section one provides a detailed examination of in-person job interviews and practical skill tests, which are identified as performative, asymmetrical market encounters (section 1). Following an overview of Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia as the main foreign labor regimes that host Nepali workers (section 2), section three traces the transnational practices of selective hiring that result from those regimes and identifies the calculations of value that shape said practices. Against this general outline of market dynamics, section four targets the specific rationalities and techniques intended to singularize Nepali labor on the market. Section five closes the circle and returns to mechanisms of selection, examining both the practical implementation and role of those techniques and the criteria of value that guide them. Part three examines the wide range of pre-departure information, training, and instructions that constitute the third component in the government of migrant worker subjects. After an outline of professional skills training programs and their growing role in the Nepali migration regime (section 1), section two unpacks the—often conflicting—forms of information and advice aspiring migrants receive on the recruitment process and their pre-departure conduct. Section three examines the directives given on migrants’ health, safety, and rules abroad, and spotlights orientation classes as a powerful technology of government. The remaining investigation turns to governmental interventions on workers’ personal mindsets and behaviors: Section four retraces techniques that govern aspiring migrants towards meeting international market values of submissiveness and productivity. Section five examines instructions that aim to increase development benefits by teaching workers to adopt rational remitting practices and become “entrepreneur[s] of the self” (Foucault 1979/2008, 226).

The fourth part of the chapter recapitulates, discusses, and deepens the core research findings. Based on a synopsis of the preceding, three-tier empirical analysis, I will identify five principal avenues in the constitution of migrant subjectivities. By investigating these five different modes of subjectification more closely, I will assess the dynamics between coercive modes of power and technologies of the self, before finally pointing out the inequalities that shape migrants’ access to those different forms of governing. The fifth and final chapter of the book summarizes the central insights of the study. It goes on to point out its conceptual and methodological contributions as well as areas that warrant further academic research. Drawing a final conclusion, I will highlight the

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book’s empirical value to contemporary scholarship on Nepali labor migration as well as the broader public debate in Nepal and beyond.

2 Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework that informs my analysis of Nepali labor migration consists of three main building blocks. The first one marks my general orientation towards the study of transnational labor migration, constituting what I define as a political geography of migration. The second building block represents the theoretical core of my approach, which is the conceptualization of a governmentality of migration. This conceptualization is complemented by a third building block, which entails my perspective on the marketization of migrant labor. As this indicates, the conceptual framework is located at the intersection of several academic debates in geography and beyond—ranging from critical migration studies, critical and political geography, and feminist scholarship to Foucauldian theory, global governmentality studies, and the social studies of economization and marketization. Importantly, this framework was not predefined at the outset of my research but rather evolved gradually over several years of fieldwork and analysis. As such, it is a reflection of my iterative-inductive and ethnographic research approach (see section 3.2), which—despite a general affiliation to critical migration studies and a basic lens of governmentality—was quite exploratory at its outset. Hence, the diversity of perspectives is a direct response to the rich ethnographic insights I gained during my empirical work. It is for this reason that each conceptual approach is incorporated intentionally and serves a specific purpose in the overall framework. Wherever this deliberate integration of different intellectual strands comes with a certain degree of theoretical friction, I consider it a productive friction, which engenders new and unique perspectives. Ultimately, it is precisely this conceptual kaleidoscope that lays the foundation for the detailed and multifaceted analysis this book has to offer. Representing the first conceptual building block, part one of this chapter outlines my basic approach to understanding the social processes at the center of this study—a political geography of transnational labor migration. Based on this general orientation, part two develops my conceptualization of the governmentality of migration, which is not only rooted in Foucauldian theory but also explores its spatial and scalar implications, its embodied dimensions, and its contribution to the study of migration. Complementing these insights with the third conceptual building block, part three introduces analytical tools from the studies of marketization and integrates them with my estab-

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lished conceptualization of the governmentality of migration. Finally, I will summarize the most relevant aspects of each conceptual component and point out their role in the overall framework before transforming this conclusion into five detailed objectives that guide my empirical analysis.

2.1

Towards a Political Geography of Labor Migration

In light of today’s globalized economy and the overwhelming changes in technologies of communication and transportation, the world has become more interconnected than ever before. At first glance, this appears to have vastly expanded people’s opportunities to determine the course of their lives. However, those transformations have also revealed and even exacerbated structures of difference and exclusion, which render access to such opportunities highly unequal. Among the wide range of contemporary transnational processes, practices of migration have shown to be particularly differential, which is why they need to be understood through a lens that is sensitive to structures of power and inequality. Throughout this first part of the chapter, I will develop such a critical and sensitive lens. In bringing together critical, feminist, and political perspectives on the study of migration and the broader social transformations that condition them, I will sketch out what I define as a political geography of labor migration. The first section outlines my basic approach to transnational mobility and, specifically, migrant labor in the context of our globalized economy. On that basis, section two explores how those processes can be thought of in terms of a “migration regime” and how this allows for a different perspective on the construction of migrant identities and practices. The final section focuses on a specific dimension of those regimes by highlighting the “infrastructure” that enables, facilitates, and regulates labor migration and discussing the trend of its increasing commercialization.

2.1.1

Transnational migration, translocality, and global labor

Over the past half-century, the world has become increasingly interconnected. At least since the 1990s, the ever-expanding economic linkages and rapid advances in transportation and communication technologies have been widely discussed across the social sciences. Recognizing globalization and transnationalism as the new norm, scholars in geography and beyond announced by the turn of the millennium that we had entered an “age of migration” (Castles & Miller 2004). Since then, human mobility and migration have taken an even more prominent role in social, economic, and political processes across the world. As of 2019, the number of international migrants reached 272 million, which is a 56 percent increase from two decades earlier (International Organization of Migration [IOM] 2020, 21). The Covid-19 pandemic notwithstanding, these numbers are expected to continue to rise, with many migrants retaining close ties to their families or relatives at their places of origin. Such ties often manifest in the form of financial remittances, which skyrocketed from an estimated USD 126 billion in 2000 to 689 billion in 2020 (ibid., 12).

2 Conceptual Framework

While much of early scholarly attention was paid to the economic and political factors of this growing global connectedness, the concept of “transnational migration” (Glick Schiller et al. 1992) has proven instrumental in grasping its social dimension. Originally proposed by anthropologists Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, the paradigm highlights “the multiplicity of involvements that transmigrants sustain in both home and host societies” (Basch et al. 1994, 8). Although migrants do settle and are physically grounded in particular places, it suggests, they are also more and more engaged and connected with people and activities in other locations. Ultimately, the approach was intended to not only describe a specific, increasingly widespread form of migration practice but rather redefine the understanding of migration at large: Whereas most earlier debates in geography and neighboring disciplines had been limited to the moment of physical relocation, transnational migration research was the first to expand that view to incorporate the multiple, circular, and open-ended border-crossing practices and relations beyond that moment (Bojadžijev & Römhild 2014; Levitt & Jaworsky 2007). By redefining migration as a non-linear, fluid, and multifaceted process, scholars from this field called for overcoming the static concepts—including spatial and cultural essentialisms—that had long dominated conventional migration research (Glick Schiller et al. 1992, 5). Hence, the most valuable contribution of the transnational migration paradigm lies not in its description of a temporal change in social practices but in the conceptual shift it caused in migration scholarship. Over the past two decades, this shift further led to a “mobility turn” (Hannam et al. 2006, 1–2; see also Cresswell & Merriman 2011, 11) in geography and neighboring disciplines. Arguing that mobility has always been a normal part of human existence, proponents of the “new mobilities” (Sheller & Urry 2006) paradigm reject the longstanding problematization of mobility and migration. They argue that migration should not be regarded as “an abnormal interruption in ‘normal’ sedentary life but [a]s an integral aspect of the life trajectories of many individuals and groups” (Salazar 2011, 586; see also Castles & Miller 2004, 278). Rather than remaining caught up in the why of migration practices, they draw attention to how people’s experiences are shaped by continuous dynamics between mobile and sedentary lifestyles. In this way, the debate reflects a greater ontological shift in the social sciences that increasingly emphasizes the fluid nature of (seemingly fixed) structures. In light of such novel perspectives on mobility and migration, the growing mobility and global interconnectedness have occasionally been interpreted as signs of a deterritorialized era. I disagree with that view, arguing that the intensification of global linkages and the fluidity of structures and boundaries have by no means undermined the roles of space and place. Instead, the study builds on a distinctly geographical approach to globalization, which argues that social processes, no matter how far-spanning, are always rooted in and tied to specific localities. Following Neil Brenner, I understand globalization as a dialectical interplay between the endemic drive towards time-space compression under capitalism (the moment of deterritorialisation) and the continual production […] of relatively fixed spatial configurations—for example, the territorial infrastructures

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of urban-regional agglomerations and states (the moment of reterritorialisation) […]. (1999, 435, emphasis in original) Agreeing with Brenner and recognizing the “multiscalar” (Sassen 2007, 6) character of globalization, scholars like Eric Swyngedouw have suggested that the concept should be reimagined as “glocalization” (2004, 25). This neologism implies that the influence of global processes and structures on supranational, national, regional, and local scales1 is not unidirectional—but that these processes only “touch down” by being transformed through the specific circumstances, conditions, and practices on each of those levels. Globalization, or glocalization, thus should not be understood as a top-down mechanism but rather as countless processes of multidirectional social transformation, which reshuffle earlier hierarchies of spatial configurations. Moreover, the emphasis on such “process[es] of rescaling” (ibid.) means that geographical scales are not understood as distinct, hierarchical entities or stable entities. Instead, scalar categories themselves are mutually constituted and “‘produced’; a process that is always deeply heterogeneous and contested” (ibid., 34). Such a deliberate step beyond the reification of scalar categories has also been one of the main goals of scholarship on transnational migration. The latter takes a particularly firm stand against “methodological nationalism” (Glick Schiller 2010, 110-11)—the implicit view that assumes the nation-state to be the quasi-natural “container” of the social, which long remained the dominant paradigm in migration studies. To be sure, rejecting methodological nationalism does not mean that the national scale should be ignored entirely for the sake of other scales. However, as Peggy Levitt (2004) explains, “[r]ather than privileging one level over another, a transnational perspective holds these sites equally and simultaneously in conversation with each other and tries to grapple with the tension between them.” Resulting from scholars’ wishes to live up to the above standpoint and, in that context, from a growing discomfort with the term “transnational,” more recent scholarship has emerged around the concept of “translocality” (Greiner & Sakdapolrak 2013; Smith 2011; Verne 2012b). Proponents of this debate argue that all migration practices, no matter how fluid, are ultimately grounded in material and embodied localities, which is why even global and transnational practices of migration need to be approached through a local lens. In aiming “to understand translocality in other spaces, places and scales beyond the national” (Brickell & Datta 2011, 4) and to examine “these spaces and places […] both through their situatedness and their connectedness to a variety of other locales” (ibid.), these scholars essentially introduce a geographical “rescaling” perspective into the study of migration. Whereas early debates on globalization, transnationalism, and transnational migration celebrated the idea of the “global village” as one of dissolving boundaries, where

1

Although the term “glocalization” might be read as prioritizing the global and local over other scales, Swyngedouw (2004) and Brenner (2004) reject this view. Instead, they emphasize that “in addition to the global and the local, a variety of other scales—including the body, the urban, the regional, the national, and the supranational—are likewise key arenas and targets of currently unfolding rescaling processes” (ibid., 45).

2 Conceptual Framework

people, cultures, goods, and ideas could be exchanged freely and equally, such scholarship often ignored the differential structures and massive inequalities in and around people’s mobility. As Michael Smith observes, “discourses of hyper-mobility […] fail to take into account the structures of domination and venues of power/knowledge that still facilitate or constrain human mobility and connectivity” (2011, 189). By contrast, the present study builds on the recognition that today’s processes of “deterritorialization and reterritorialization are [not only] mutually constitutive” (Brenner 2004, 64) but have been instrumental to the emergence of “new geographies of capital accumulation, state regulation, and uneven development“ (ibid.). In focusing on critical questions about (trans)locality, geographical scale, and the multiplicity of social structures, the research perspectives outlined above thus all shine a light on those very questions of power and difference. For instance, they reveal that the ability to move freely has not increased equally for everybody in this world. On the contrary, many existing mechanisms of inequality and exclusion have grown even more powerful over recent decades. As early transnational migration scholarship already pointed out in the 1990s, the growth and intensification of global interconnectedness were accompanied by a resurgence of a politics of difference (Glick Schiller et al. 1995, 50). Specifically, access to mobility and the promises of migration proves to be highly differential. As Mark Salter observes, inequalities have translated into an increasing global bifurcation of mobility, with “[c]itizens of the developed North hav[ing] a freedom of movement that is legitimated by domestic and international government structures […] [whereas c]itizens and refugees of the developing South […] are restricted in their movement” (2003, 2). At the same time, it is important to remember that this “power-geometry […] concerns not merely the issue of who moves and who doesn’t, […] [but] is also about power in relation to the flows and the movement” (Massey 1991, 25-26). While some groups might be highly mobile without ever being “in charge” of that mobility, others do not move at all, yet are still deeply affected by migratory practices in their surroundings (Mahler & Pessar 2001, 446). Today, this differential access to and power over certain experiences of mobility, which some have termed “spatial autonomy” (Weiß 2005, 708), has become one of the main factors and indicators of social inequality and difference. Seen from this perspective, even the label “migrant” itself can be recognized as an effect and tool of a politics of difference: After all, not everybody who changes places of residence by moving across space is considered a “migrant”—migrating individuals from privileged Western nations are typically categorized as “expats,”2 “international professionals,” or under other favorable terms. Thus, “migrant” and accompanying labels reflect and shape public perception of certain groups, which means they ultimately control their access to and experience of movement (Glick Schiller & Salazar 2013, 184). It is for this reason that Janine Dahinden warns scholars of migration not to take such socially ascribed categorizations for granted, as they often support dominant power

2

Short for “expatriates,” the colloquial term “expats” describes individuals who live and work in a country other than their native one. However, it is generally “reserved exclusively for western white people going to work abroad” (Remarque Koutonin 2015) and thus serves as a powerful marker of class, education, and racial privilege.

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structures and are “not necessarily meaningful for scientific enquiry or from an analytical point of view” (2016, 2213). Instead of remaining stuck in a closed debate that reifies its topic of study, she calls for a “de-migranticization” (ibid.) of migration research by engaging with broader social theory (for similar arguments, see Glick Schiller 2010; Tazzioli 2015, xvii). Furthermore, a broader, structural view also makes it possible to recognize migration as profoundly shaped by the late-capitalist, globalized economy—a system that produces not only many promises but also vast inequalities. Although migrant labor has been instrumental to the growth of the global economy we know today, the people involved in this labor have been given vastly different roles to play in it. As Saskia Sassen (2008) observes, global labor markets usually emerge at the top and bottom ends of economic systems, while mid-income sectors tend to remain centered in national labor markets. Whereas the top level is typically occupied by a small elite of transnational professionals, the lower end of the spectrum hosts large numbers of low-paid migrants in manual productive and reproductive labor. Despite their essential roles in many societies worldwide, most of these workers remain underpaid, undervalued, and in marginalized conditions. Pointing to such asymmetrical dynamics of valorization, scholars across feminist, political, and critical debates in geography and beyond assert that migrant workers have increasingly assumed the roles of new “serving classes […] [and] offshore proletariat” (Sassen 2001, 322) and essentially operate as “servants of globalization” (Parreñas 2015). This scholarship, with its critical assessment of the global division of labor and the neoliberal restructuring of the world economy, is central to my approach to the political geography of labor migration, as I will outline in the following sections.

2.1.2

Identities and intersectionality in migration regimes

As critical attention to the power structures and differential practices that shape transnational migration has grown over the past two decades, the term “migration regime” has gained significant popularity. Due to its increasingly widespread use across the social sciences, it is informed by a wide range of different theoretical backgrounds and agendas—from international relations, regulation theory, and Bourdieu to, as in this book, Foucauldian governmentality (Hess et al. 2018; Rass & Wolff 2018). While my conceptually-grounded interpretation of “regimes” will be discussed more in-depth in section 2.2.1, it can generally be said that my reading of the term is most closely aligned with critical migration and border regime studies (e.g., Hess & Kasparek 2010; Sciortino 2004; Tsianos & Karakayalı 2010; Walters 2015). This scholarship broadly defines migration regimes as heterogeneous ensembles of policies, discourses, and practices of various groups and individuals (including migrants) in the domain of migration (Tsianos et al. 2009, 2; see also Sciortino 2004, 32–33). Instead of focusing on individual migrants’ trajectories and trying to explain their reasons for migrating, the concept thus takes into view the larger political matrix geared towards the production, regulation, and restriction of migration. Taking an anti-essentialist, critical, and political stance, it rejects the economist and integrationist lenses that continue to dominate much of migration research (Hess et al. 2018, 262–264).

2 Conceptual Framework

Although my work has been strongly informed by critical migration regime studies, it also expands their perspectives in important ways. It particularly moves beyond the focus on restrictive regimes and the “borders-centrism” (Walters 2015, 8–10) that have characterized the debate in recent years. To this end, I take inspiration from Nina Glick Schiller’s and Noel Salazar’s “regimes of mobility” approach, which draws attention to the broader “relationships between mobility and immobility, localisation and transnational connection, experiences and imaginaries of migration […] [but also] the disparities, inequalities, racialised representations and national mythscapes that facilitate and legitimate differential mobility and fixity” (2013, 183). Based on this wider definition of the term, it is possible to consider not only the restrictive functions of migration regimes but their mechanisms of enabling, facilitating, and producing migration. Although the concept of regimes suggests a structural research approach, this does not mean that it disregards the experiences of individual migrants—quite to the contrary. Instead of reading those experiences through an individualist and actor-centered lens, however, I consider regimes and migrants to be mutually constitutive: While a migration regime affects migrants’ identities and practices, they, in turn, are instrumental in (re)producing and transforming the regime they are part of. My approach to understanding this dynamic has been significantly informed by feminist research on migrant workers in unequal global labor markets, which “[t]ak[es] identities and identifications as the core indicator of the reproduction of […] migrants’ social inequalities” (Plüss & Kwok-Bun 2012, 1–2). Rooted more generally in poststructuralist and feminist theory (which will be discussed in section 2.2.3), this part of migration scholarship conceptualizes migrant identities as “complex, multiple and fluid, continuously (re)produced and performed in different arenas of everyday life” (McDowell 2008, 491). In addition, it often approaches them through an intersectional lens. Intersectionality, a concept that was first introduced by feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989), suggests that individuals are always subjected to multiple categories of difference at once, which, in their “intersection,” can either reinforce or counteract each other. Importantly, I approach the term not as an overlapping of distinct, a priori categories but “by treating each division as constituted via an intersection with the others” (Anthias 2008, 13; my emphasis). Concerning the experiences of migrant workers, their ascribed race, gender, and class, as well as their age, geographical location, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and educational level, have been shown to crucially impact their roles in the global division of labor. For instance, intersections of gendered and racialized identities are frequently used “to reproduce and cheapen segmented labor forces within and across national borders” (Mills 2003, 42). In line with other scholars who argue that migration should be interpreted through an intersectional framework (e.g., Anthias 2008; Bastia 2014; Plüss & Kwok-Bun 2012), Helen Schwenken (2018) explicitly suggests an “intersectional migration regime analysis” that investigates the dynamics between migration regimes, gender regimes, and other structures of difference. While identities must always be regarded as historically and spatially contingent (McDowell 2008, 491), this is particularly important in the case of migrants, who tend to be embedded in multiple social structures at once. Usually, this means they “have

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to make sense of two often conflicting socioeconomic and status ladders, and to locate themselves somewhere along them using measurements that reflect the multiple places where they live” (Levitt & Jaworsky 2007, 139). Following Linda McDowell, my approach to understanding labor migrant identities thus takes into account the following questions: How are the gendered/classed/racialized identities of migrant workers subject to renegotiation on entering a different space? How do traces of the regulatory structures of ‘there’ affect being ‘here’? How do […] cultural assumptions about gender attributes and capacities, about appropriate tasks for, for example, particular gendered categories […] work out across space and time? (2008, 496) Ultimately, a growing number of studies demonstrate that migration regimes have a profound impact on migrant workers’ experiences, identities, mindsets, and behavior (e.g., Constable 2007; Fan 2004; Ong 2010; Parreñas 2015; Sharma 2006b). In particular, they are instrumental in prescribing “inherently desirable qualities of [a] preferred labor force” (Mills 2003, 43) and promoting imaginations of the “ideal” or “good migrant” (Findlay et al. 2013; see also Elias 2018; Gardiner Barber 2008; Liang 2011; MacKenzie & Forde 2009; McLaughlin 2010; Rodriguez & Schwenken 2013; Shubin et al. 2014). In order to better understand the power of such imaginations, which play a central role in my analysis, it is necessary to take a closer look at the state policies and private recruitment networks that facilitate labor migration.

2.1.3

The infrastructure of migration and the commodification of migrant labor

As argued in section 2.1.1, much of the vocabulary around migration needs to be treated carefully because of its constructed and political nature. The same applies to the term “labor migration,” which is why I want to clarify its use in this book. This is important to me because the label is potentially misleading: If “labor migrants” are defined as a distinct group of individuals, separate from other groups like “student migrants” or “refugees,” that would suggest that people’s complex mobile practices could be reduced to a single reason or purpose. Such an exclusionary reading fails to recognize that those categorizations are always socially constructed and can easily be instrumentalized for political ends.3 By contrast, my use of the term “labor migration” is not intended to define people’s intentions behind migrating but to describe a specific form of arranged and formalized transnational employment, which I will describe below. Although migrant workers play a vital role in the global economy, particularly because they predominantly occupy the most low-paid and low-valued positions, they often face negative public attitudes in their host societies. At the same time, the state governments of these countries are usually well aware of their reliance on that labor

3

For example, the label “refugees” has been increasingly fractioned in recent years to suit the political purposes of anti-immigration groups in many European countries; for instance, by defining asylum seekers from certain regions as “economic refugees” in order to undermine their claims to asylum (Zetter 2007; see also Pollock 2011).

2 Conceptual Framework

source, which is why many have introduced measures to foster immigration and simultaneously restrict the political and social influence of their foreign workforce. Especially in countries across Asia, the past decades have seen a massive expansion of formalized migration agreements that have the sole purpose of “importing” workers. In what Biao Xiang (2012a) describes as a “labor transplant,” those regimes readily invite migrant workers into the country—but only under severe restrictions of their rights: Their visas are always temporary and tied to fixed work contracts that specify the minimum and maximum duration of employment. Moreover, migrants’ legal avenues to change employers, choose their accommodation, bring dependents into the country, or obtain long-term residency status are either highly limited or non-existent (Hoang & Yeoh 2015, 1). Such arrangements of temporary, or “circular,” labor migration hold multiple financial benefits for host countries, as Rachel Silvey explains: By separating the workers from their families, and allowing the in-migration of only healthy, working-age migrants, labor importing countries lower the cost of socially reproducing their own populations. [They] benefit from the low cost of the foreign workers’ wages to support the social reproduction requirements of their own society, and they simultaneously effectively “offshore” the social reproduction costs of the migrant workers and their family members. (2012, 422) Due to the increasing formalization and highly selective regimes of admission in Asia and elsewhere, transnational migration has become a complex endeavor, which is only made possible by an ever-growing “infrastructure of migration” (McKeown 2012, 21). The recent scholarship that has emerged around this concept has advocated a “shift of attention away from the migrant towards a system or set of actors that move migrants” (Lindquist et al. 2012, 11), thereby opening a long-time “black box of migration research” (ibid., 9). Particularly in labor migration regimes across Asia, migrants’ experiences can only be understood by taking into account these facilitative, enabling, and regulative dimensions of migration. Due to their widespread formalization, Asian migration regimes have come to rely on systems of brokerage more than any other region of the world (Bélanger & Wang 2013, 39). While this has been seen as a reason for their efficiency in terms of migrant “output,” it is also widely considered responsible for workers’ high risk of exploitation and fraud (ibid.). At the same time, recent scholarship on intermediary networks and the broader infrastructure of migration suggests that it is problematic to demonize all brokers, as they often help aspiring migrants bridge otherwise “insurmountable social and cultural divides” (Abrar et al. 2017, 17–18). Furthermore, research has shown that individuals who serve as migration intermediaries usually have complex identities and positionalities, and that “distinction[s] between altruistic social networks and profitoriented brokers […] are often impossible to sustain in practice” (Lindquist et al. 2012, 9). Concerning the study of migrant workers’ identities (see section 2.1.2), however, the above insights on the infrastructure of migration point to a crucial factor that sets their experiences apart from those of other participants in the labor market: Whereas the identities of non-migrant employees are constructed and negotiated in and around the workplace, migrant workers undergo such processes already when they pass through

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the infrastructure of migration. Thus, their experiences, identities, mindsets, and behavior are shaped well before they actually leave the country and begin their employment abroad. For instance, Robyn Rodriguez and Helen Schwenken observe that “[i]t is in the recruitment process where many of the ideas of the ‘ideal migrant’ are (re)produced” (2013, 382). In a similar vein, Allan Findlay, David McCollum, Sergei Shubin et al. (2013, 147–148) suggest that the physical distance and the professional intermediaries between prospective employers and aspiring migrants render the abstraction and essentialization of workers’ qualities (for instance, based on gender, race, age, and nationality) particularly effective. Furthermore, the placing of such processes in the predeparture stage means they serve as tools to selectively facilitate or restrict migration for those who do not match dominant market expectations (ibid.). Hence, the infrastructure of migration, and particularly systems of brokerage, are essential to the creation and reinforcement of asymmetrical labor migration arrangements as they help (re)produce “a labour force that [is] viewed as undeserving of the rights and benefits given to citizens and that can be scapegoated during periods of economic downturn” (Eriksson & Tollefsen 2013, 189). One of the advantages of conceptualizing such facilitatory networks as part of an “infrastructure” is that this perspective avoids clear “distinctions between state and market, formal and informal, regular and irregular” (Lindquist et al. 2012, 8), which its advocates consider part of a Western bias that is unsustainable in research practice. At the same time, I argue that the facilitation of migration and the construction of worker identities also need to be examined in light of the recent advance of private market rationales and institutions, which are increasingly shaping all areas of life in societies across the world. This trend has certainly included the field of migration, which has seen the emergence of a veritable “migration industrial complex” (Yeates 2009, 178). A term intended to grasp this contemporary transformation in practices of and around migration is “migration industry” (Cohen 1997/2008, 145). While this concept refers to the “matrix of border-spanning businesses—labor recruitment, moneylending, transportation, remittance, documentation, and communication services” (Surak 2011, 1), it is important to note that its scope goes well beyond that of the infrastructure of migration since it may be linked to “both the facilitation and to the control of migration” (Sørensen & Gammeltoft-Hansen 2013, 4).4 The recent growth of migration industries in regimes worldwide is part of a larger political shift towards the “management of migration” (Geiger 2013, 25) and privatesector regulation of areas that had previously been governed by the state. However, the spread of private businesses that facilitate migration does not necessarily suggest a declining role of public institutions—but instead has, in many cases, resulted from migrants’ needs to navigate an ever-growing bureaucratic apparatus (e.g., Xiang 2012b). Furthermore, the trend of private migration management has not only been tied to the growth of private businesses but has been indicative of the rising influence of economic

4

Thus, the “migration industry” stands not only for businesses that facilitate migration but also for the privatization of immigration control through the outsourcing of previously public responsibilities to private security companies, airlines, and border agencies (e.g., Kasparek 2010; Sørensen & Gammeltoft-Hansen 2013).

2 Conceptual Framework

and entrepreneurial perspectives on migration and the increasing commodification of migrant labor (Jones & Pardthaisong 1999; Rodriguez 2010; Yeates 2009). To be sure, such considerations about the economic “use” and “value” of immigrants to host nations are not a historically new phenomenon (McKweon 2012, 23). However, contemporary policies aimed at harnessing migrants’ potential have become especially pronounced with the global rise of neoliberalism and privatization (Gammeltoft-Hansen & Sørensen 2013; see section 2.2.2). Reflecting a change in public perspective, which no longer problematizes practices of migration per se but rather their economic inefficiency (Jong 2016, 348), many states and supra-state institutions have moved from predominantly restricting migration to increasingly facilitating and fostering certain forms of cross-border mobility.5 Despite the positive rhetoric that frequently surrounds those policies, a growing number of scholars (e.g., Boucher 2008; Geiger & Pécoud 2012; Jong 2016; Kalm 2012; Meyer & Purtschert 2008; Sørensen & Gammeltoft-Hansen 2013) suggest they deserve critical and careful attention. For instance, the intent to resolve earlier “mismanagement” (Jong 2016, 348) of migration by making it “more orderly, predictable and productive” (ibid.) has led to the intense commercialization of migration-related tasks and services. The private companies now in charge of facilitating or restricting migration are often profit-oriented and operate outside of state control. Furthermore, the introduced systems of facilitation are usually highly selective and differential, which means the trend “disguise[s its] politics under an apparently neutral approach in terms of management” (Geiger & Pécoud 2012, 19). Economic and entrepreneurial views on migration have gained popularity not just from an immigration perspective but also among countries with large numbers of emigrants, many of whom belong to the Global South.6 This shift in perception has further advanced the commodification of migrants and other techniques that facilitate the emergence of markets around migrant labor. Migrant workers have increasingly been framed as “export products” that are vital to their home countries’ national economies (Ortiga 2017; Rodriguez 2010; Yeates 2009), which is why this book specifically incorporates concepts from the studies of economization and marketization (see part 2.3).

5

6

Based on this insight, the increasing formalization of migrant labor regimes across Asia can also be understood as part of the trend towards migration management. Although said formalization has involved a considerable expansion of the bureaucratic state apparatus, it has simultaneously led to the spread of commercial migration services. As Xiang suggests, these two trends are mutually reinforcing, as “[t]he centralized state in a liberalizing economy seems to need private agents in order to render individual mobility governable, migrants protectable and agents themselves ‘blamable’ and punishable” (2012b, 47). The term “Global South” refers to economically disadvantaged nations worldwide, particularly so in regions of Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Oceania. It has become an increasingly common alternative to Eurocentric terms like the “Third World” or “developing countries” as it “marks a shift from a central focus on development or cultural difference toward an emphasis on geopolitical relations of power” (Dados & Connell 2012, 12; see also Dirlik 2007). Furthermore, it “has [also] been employed in a postnational sense to address spaces and peoples negatively impacted by contemporary capitalist globalization […] [even] within the borders of wealthier countries” (Mahler 2017).

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Additionally, the idea of “managing migration” has, along with other factors, also informed a specific trend in migration regimes: the formation of a “migration-development nexus” (Glick Schiller & Faist 2010, 8). Over the past two decades, migration has increasingly been regarded as beneficial for the “development”7 of sending countries (e.g., Nyberg-Sørensen et al. 2002; World Bank 2011; 2019). Whereas out-migration had long been considered economically unsustainable and ultimately detrimental to the social and economic structures of sending countries, the turn of the millennium brought a drastic shift in international policy discourse towards highlighting the “positive impacts of migration on human development” (IOM & UNDP 2016, 1). In this discourse, individual migrants specifically have been reimagined as “development agents” (Faist 2008): They are expected to “develop” themselves and their home countries by gaining skills and professional experience abroad, and by participating in a transfer of technologies and cultural exchange. Most importantly, they are supposed to send financial remittances, which are “now widely seen as more important to development than official aid” (Munck 2008, 1235–1236). As a result of this “Global Remittances Trend” (GRT) (Kunz 2011, 15), migrants have become the target of political interventions and instructions on “correct” earning, remitting, and investing behavior, which are supposed to render their migration practice most “productive” for development (ibid.). Due to their personal nature, such interventions can have a profound effect on migrants’ practices and identities, as I will show towards the end of my empirical analysis. At first glance, fostering ways in which migration can improve people’s lives seems like a laudable endeavor. Accordingly, those perspectives have grown popular not only at the level of state policies and practical interventions but in academic debates as well. However, there are also several reasons why the migration-development nexus and the GRT need to be investigated with caution. For instance, empirical research shows that the goals of those interventions can vary significantly from migrants’ own visions for development (Dannecker 2009, 129). Moreover, Maria Schwertl laments that a complex social practice like “[m]igrants’ transnational activities [is] reduced to developmental logics” (2016, 259). In the same vein, Rahel Kunz (2011, 4) illustrates how migrants’ personal actions and entire lives are increasingly subjected to principles of economic “outcome” that reflect a spreading neoliberal and individualist doctrine. In doing so, she shows that GRT perspectives and policies are inextricably linked to the neoliberal restructuring of the global economy. Similarly, Gerard Boucher criticizes that those interventions take “the structure of the global capitalist system in its neoliberal form […] for granted [instead of] portray[ing it] as part of the problem” (2008, 1462). Rather than pointing out the ways in which global hierarchies play a significant role in reducing migrants’ rights and chances to a fulfilled and dignified life (see earlier sections), GRT advocates push a misleading “win-win” rhetoric that paints receiving and sending countries as partners who benefit equally from the practice (Khadria 2010). Referring to the strict regulations and limitations of workers’ rights in many migration regimes, Glick Schiller thus warns that “emphasi[zing] the benefits of transnational migration […] without addressing the 7

My critical approach towards the term “development” (see Escobar 1995; Rankin 2004; Rojas 2001) will be discussed in the context of global regimes of government, see section 2.2.2.

2 Conceptual Framework

severe and permanent restriction of rights that increasingly accompany this form of labour […] support[s] a regime of hyperexploitation […] [that] resurrect[s] older forms of indenture with limited rights and mobility” (2010, 124–25).

2.2

Conceptualizing the Governmentality of Migration

Whereas the first part of this chapter sketched out my basic, political-geographical orientation towards the topic of transnational labor migration, this second part develops the main theoretical framework of my analysis: a conceptualization of the governmentality of migration. In building this theoretical framework, I am rooted in the Foucauldian concept of governmentality. While Foucault’s broad and simultaneously intimate definition of government lies at the very core of the study, I do not remain limited to his perspective alone. Instead, I use it as a productive foundation for exploring several additional concepts that allow me to better comprehend the spatial, multiscalar, material, and embodied dimensions of government, as well as their relevance for the study of migration. By integrating Foucauldian theory with elements from the first conceptual building block, I will now expand, enrich, and specify my understanding of governmentality in several ways—including a critical geographical view of scale, a postcolonial and poststructuralist approach towards colonialism, development, and neoliberalism, a feminist conceptualization of performativity and affect, and critical perspectives on the selective faciliation, commercialization, and management of migration. Before exploring this wide range of perspectives, however, section one focuses on Foucault’s work on governmentality and introduces the main conceptual tools that will be used in the analysis. On this basis, section two specifies the spatial and multi-scalar dimension of government and, drawing on global governmentality studies, outlines colonialism, development, and neoliberalism as three global configurations of government that profoundly shape the Nepali migration regime. Section three pairs this largescale perspective with an investigation of the intimate materiality of government: Based on feminist theories on the political relevance of everyday embodied practice, I will develop a conceptualization of government as operating through performativity, emotion, and affect. In the final section, I will reapproach the critical migration scholarship through this established conceptual perspective and present three different angles of inquiry that reveal core overarching themes in the governmentality of migration.

2.2.1

Governmentality—an analytics of power and subjectification

The concept of “governmentality” (gouvernementalité) was introduced in the late 1970s by French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault.8 While it was initially overshad-

8

To be exact, the neologism “governmentality” had already been in sporadic use in earlier decades, for instance by Roland Barthes in the 1950s (Bröckling et al. 2011, 1). However, these initial versions of the term held a very different meaning, whereas it was “Foucault who first gave it significant theoretical content” (Walters 2012, 151).

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owed by some of his other work, the concept has, over the past three decades, inspired a growing research field across the social and political sciences. While these “studies of governmentality” (Bröckling et al. 2011, 9) are diverse in their subject areas and methodological approaches, they all share the same fundamental understanding of “government:” Unlike the conventional use of the term, this understanding is “in no way confined to the formal apparatuses of politics” (Walters 2012, 2) but rather encompasses a wide “range of forms of action and fields of practice aimed […] at steering individuals and collectives” (Bröckling et al. 2011, 1). The implications of this general definition can best be understood in the context of Foucault’s development of the term during his lecture series “Security, Territory, Population” at the Collège de France in 1977-78 (Foucault 1978/2009). In this course, he sets out to retrace the historical emergence of the modern state in Western European society, which leads him to expand his previous analytical apparatus on power in two major ways. First, while most of Foucault’s earlier work focuses on how power operates within particular institutions (like the hospital or the prison) and on the intimate level of individual bodies—what he conceptualizes as the “micro-physics of power” (1976/1995, 139)—he now aims to explore the role of larger configurations of power, specifically the state (Bröckling et al. 2011, 1–2). Instead of taking this configuration for granted, however, he is interested precisely in the processes and mechanisms by “which the modern state [has] become defined and deployed as a matrix of government” (Walters 2012, 39; my emphasis). Drawing on the historical usage of the word in Western Europe, he defines “government” not as naturally linked to political structures or to the management of states; rather, it designated the way in which the conduct of individuals or of groups might be directed—the government of children, of souls, of communities, of families, of the sick. […] To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible field of action of others. (Foucault 1982/2000, 341) In other words, Foucault thinks of government in a broad sense, as all “institutions and practices by which people are ‘led,’ from administration to education” (1980/1991, 176). His focus on mechanisms of “leading,” or rather “conducting” (conduire), ultimately cause him to reformulate his approach to power at large. For instance, he suggests the term “conduct” [as] one of the best aids for coming to terms with the specificity of power relations. To “conduct” is at the same time to “lead” others (according to mechanisms of coercion that are, to varying degrees, strict) and a way of behaving within a more or less open field of possibilities. The exercise of power is a “conduct of conducts” and a management of possibilities. Basically, power is less a confrontation between two adversaries or their mutual engagement than a question of “government.” (1982/2000, 341) It is the above emphasis on the possibilities and subtleties of government that marks the second important expansion in Foucault’s theory of power. Whereas his earlier work “insisted […] much on the techniques of domination” (id. 1980/1993, 204), he now argues that such techniques are

2 Conceptual Framework

only at one aspect of the art of governing people in our society. We must not understand the exercise of power as pure violence or strict coercion. Power consists in complex relations: these relations involve a set of rational techniques, and the efficiency of those techniques is due to a subtle integration of coercion-technologies and selftechnologies. (ibid.) According to this view, individuals and collectives are governed not only through strict and coercive mechanisms of power but also “by educating desires and configuring habits, aspirations and beliefs” (Li 2007a, 275) that inspire them to conduct themselves. These personal desires and beliefs are critical since, as Niklas Rose observes, the “general problematics of government […] concerns the best way to exercise powers over conduct individually and en masse so as to secure the good of each and of all” (1999, 23). From this perspective, Foucault thus devises a conceptual tool to decode effects of power even in governmental interventions that are commonly considered to be in the governed’s own best interests. Notably, this conceptual shift does not negate his earlier theories (as has occasionally been claimed) but rather expands them (Bröckling et al. 2011, 1-2). Instead of contrasting one form of power against the other, his core interest lies in the relations between them—the seamless transitions between external modes of conduct and subjects’ government of themselves. Although Foucault’s initial development of the term “governmentality” was tied explicitly to the historical formation of the modern state, his profound reconceptualization of government and power ultimately meant that governmentality came to stand for a “particular style of analysis” (Walters 2012, 38). Today, it is widely understood as a unique “analytics of government” (Dean 2010, 3) that puts the integration of coercive modes of power with forms of self-conduct at the center of attention. At the same time, governmentality remains a somewhat ambiguous term, which Foucault deployed differently in different contexts. In particular, he used it not only as a “framework to generate a novel perspective on the state” (Walters 2012, 12) or to denote his general reconceptualization of power—but also to describe the specific regime of liberalism, which he identified as a dominant mode of governing that had emerged in 18th century Western Europe (Lemke 2011, 45).9 Some of this inconsistency in Foucault’s usage can be explained by the fact that most of his publications on governmentality are based on notes or transcriptions from the lectures he held, articles he wrote, and interviews he gave during the last years of his life. Due to his premature death in 1984, his work on governmentality never found its way into a monograph. The diverse material that is available instead represents work that was still in progress and provides different snapshots in Foucault’s theoretical outlook, which he constantly challenged and evolved. Rather than seeing such ambiguity 9

For the sake of clarity, scholars of governmentality often differentiate between distinct emphases in Foucault’s usage. For instance, some suggest a twofold distinction between governmentality as (1) a broad analytical concept and research agenda on the one hand and (2) the specific, historically grown mode of liberal government on the other (e.g., Füller & Marquardt 2009, 94-95; Reuber 2012, 206). Alternatively, other scholars distinguish between three primary meanings, adding to the two above a third emphasis on “the conditions of possibility of the modern state” (Walters 2012, 12; see also Dean 2010).

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as a weakness, however, I value the conceptual potential and freedom it offers: It is one of the reasons why my own approach has been inspired by Foucault’s thought on governmentality rather than following it dogmatically. Over the past years, rejections of such “applicationism” (Walters 2012, 5) have grown louder among scholars of governmentality, who warn against treating the concept as a “passepartout” (Bröckling & Krasmann 2010, 32) or “unifying grid” (Tazzioli 2015, 3) that can simply be applied to a specific empirical area or topic. Ultimately, I recognize that any attempt to “normalize” this multifaceted concept by constructing a homogeneous narrative would not only contradict its own conceptual argument (which highlights friction over discursive closures) but also fail to grasp Foucault’s intent to spark inspiration rather than to prescribe a comprehensive theoretical framework (e.g., Foucault 1980/2000, 239). Nevertheless, governmentality undeniably provides a well-stocked analytical “toolbox” (id. 1974/1994, 523) that proves invaluable to the study. In working with those tools, my analysis also draws on more recent studies of governmentality, which have, since their emergence in the early 1990s, evolved into much more than just an “appendix” to Foucault’s thought but into a research field in its own right (Bröckling et al. 2011, 9).10 In the remainder of this section, I will outline the main concepts around governmentality that inform my analysis: After starting with the relations between rationalities and technologies of governing, I will point to the role of problematizations in laying the foundation to heterogeneous regimes of government. On this basis, I will focus on the centerpiece of my conceptual framework: the constitution of subjectivity through techniques of domination and self-conduct. Finally, I will discuss how these views on governmentality can be productively combined with Foucault’s “neighboring” concepts of discipline and biopolitics.

Rationalities and technologies of government By choosing the neologism “governmentality,” Foucault shifts the analytical gaze on government from the conventional question of who governs towards the how of governing, the “rationality [and] art of government” (Gordon 1991, 3). The choice of this terminology—“rationality” (Foucault 1978/2009, 294) and “art” (ibid., 102)—already implies that government does not occur accidentally but is always rooted in specific, premeditated forms of thinking. As Foucault explains, the analysis of governmentality needs to “examin[e] how forms of rationality inscribe themselves in practices […]—because […] ‘practices’ don’t exist without a certain regime of rationality” (1980/2000, 230). This conceptual focus on thought is in line with his earlier work, where he argues that the 10

The role of these studies of governmentality has been particularly significant in light of Foucault’s heterogeneous usage of the concept and the resulting room for interpretation, as well as the considerable time lag with which large parts of his work have been translated and published. While international interest in the concept first grew around the collection “The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality” (Burchell et al. 1991), which was mainly inspired by notes the authors had taken during Foucault’s lectures, the past three decades have seen a continuous translation and release of collections of his interviews, articles, and talks (e.g., Foucault 1997a, 1997b, 1998, 2000) and his courses at the Collège de France (e.g., id. 1976/2003, 1978/2009, 1979/2008, 1980/2014, 1981/2017), some of which are still forthcoming. For an overview of different waves of publication and reception of Foucault’s work on governmentality, see Bröckling et al. 2011, 7-10.

2 Conceptual Framework

construction of “knowledge” is so inextricably linked and co-constitutive to power that it should be thought of as the inseparable pair “power-knowledge” (1976/1995, 27). What distinguishes a rationality of government from other types of knowledge, however, is its direction towards specific aims of governing and its justification of certain practices to achieve those aims. Rationalities are thus normalized lines of thinking that systematize and order how things ought to be. Given that “before people or things can be controlled or managed, they must first be defined” (Huff 2020), rationalities include rules and standard procedures, classifications and calculations, strategies of ordering and control but also norms and values. Through their intentional and often programmatic character, they enable the emergence and implementation of practical governmental interventions—but are, in turn, continually produced and subverted by them. Hence, the analysis of governmentality would be incomplete if it focused on rationalities or forms of knowledge without examining their manifestation, reiteration, and subversion in practical governmental interventions. As Rose suggests, “[t]hought becomes governmental to the extent that it becomes technical, it attaches itself to a technology for its realization” (1999, 51). Thus, technologies of government comprise a variety of practical devices, techniques,11 and tools, including “practices of calculation, vocabularies, types of authority, forms of judgement, architectural forms, human capacities, non-human objects and devices, inscription techniques and so forth” (ibid., 52), which are directed to bring about certain outcomes in a governed population. As such, they are not limited to a mechanistic meaning that suggests a division between the “technological” and the “human” (Walters 2012, 64). Furthermore, they are not necessarily oppressive or dominating but also manifest in techniques of individual self-conduct. This definition of technologies makes it possible to recognize that it is not always grand symbolic or ideological formations of thinking that govern people’s behavior—but often their daily entanglement in seemingly mundane practices, routines, habits, and scripts of conduct (ibid.). Crucially, rationalities and technologies are not to be understood as two distinct sets of entities but rather become visible from different angles of observation. As I will show in my analysis, taking these complementary angles can be instrumental in retracing particular genealogical strands that have, only in their combination, caused specific forms of government to emerge.12 At the same time, I acknowledge that both dimensions are inseparably entwined and merely reflect different analytical approaches. Ultimately, it is precisely this amalgamation of rationalities and technologies—their mutual constitution but also the continuous friction between them—that renders forms of government effective and keeps them in perpetual transformation.

11

12

Foucault often uses the terms “technology” and “technique” interchangeably, with no obvious difference in meaning. In my own usage, I make a slight distinction between both terms: Whereas a “technique” denotes a specific approach, way, or mechanism (of doing something), I refer to “technologies” in the sense of larger governmental devices that may consist of various specific techniques, tools, and mechanisms. The image of “emerging” forms of governing is based on Foucault’s concept of “genealogy” (1971/1998, 369), which is discussed in section 3.3.3 as part of my methodological approach.

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Problematizations, regimes of government, and counter-conduct The above observation that all rationalities and technologies are geared towards specific aims already indicates that any governmental intervention is based, at its root, on the identification of a problem that is supposed to be overcome. This process of problematization is discussed at different stages of Foucault’s work, with its use and interpretation slightly shifting over time (Faubion 1998, xxxviii-xl). For the purpose of my analysis, I understand the concept as the transformations of the difficulties and obstacles of a practice into a general problem for which one proposes diverse practical solutions. It is problematization that responds to these difficulties […]: in connection with them, it develops the conditions in which possible responses can be given; it defines the elements that will constitute what the different solutions attempt to respond to. This development of a given into a question, this transformation of a group of obstacles and difficulties into problems to which the diverse solutions will attempt to produce a response, this is what constitutes the point of problematization and the specific work of thought. (Foucault 1984/1997a, 118) Following the above explanation, problematization is thus the process by which a set of conditions or practices becomes defined under a particular name and identified as a “problem.” It is in response to such a definition that those conditions or practices can subsequently become the object of specific rationalities and programmatic technologies aimed at resolving them. Hence, problematizations are essential to justifying governmental intervention towards certain issues by rendering them governable in the first place (Dean 2010, 38). At the same time, they themselves are only possible because they draw on already-hegemonic norms and values, which those conditions or practices appear to violate. The large sets of rationalities and technologies that have emerged around particular problems (or bundles of problems) can be defined as “regimes” of government. The term regime appears repeatedly throughout Foucault’s work, for instance, when he explains the notion of “regime[s] of truth” (1979/2008, 18). However, he also uses it with respect to governmentality, arguing that “[t]he state is nothing else but the mobile effect of a regime of multiple governmentalities” (ibid., 77). However, Foucault does not elaborate on the term as much as he does on others, which is why some studies of governmentality have chosen different concepts to denote a similar meaning, such as “dispositif” (e.g., Bührmann & Schneider 2010; Timpf 2003). In the context of this study, the term “regime” is particularly valuable because it both reflects the Foucauldian perspective and ties in with its recent usage in migration studies (see section 2.1.2). One of the strengths of the concept is that it reflects the targeted arrangement of governmental practices around a particular “problem” or population, yet also expresses the heterogeneity and contradictions by which those practices coexist and come into effect. For instance, Mitchell Dean suggests: [R]egimes of government […] involve practices for the production of truth and knowledge, comprise multiple forms of practical, technical and calculative rationality, and are subject to programmes for their reform. […] Practices of government cannot be

2 Conceptual Framework

understood as expressions of a particular principle, as reducible to a particular set of relations, or as referring to a single set of problems and functions. They […] should be approached as composed of heterogeneous elements having diverse historical trajectories, as polymorphous in their internal and external relations, and as bearing upon a multiple and wide range of problems and issues. (2010, 38-40) Thus, although rationalities and technologies of government do emerge based on certain problematizations and may be bundled into specific strategies, regimes are never streamlined towards a single goal but always remain an array of heterogeneous, contradictory, and contested practices. As such, they hold space for a variety of opposing and competing rationalities, which often coexist without open friction but instead subtly contradict and subvert each other. Similarly, the integration of certain forms of knowledge and techniques of government is usually not seamless but marked by ruptures and negotiations. Furthermore, this heterogeneity applies not only to the intentions behind governmental interventions but even more so to their effects: As I will show at the end of my analysis, they can, depending on collective categorizations and other factors of difference, affect particular groups or individuals in highly unequal ways. Hence, any seemingly streamlined regime of government that emerges in a study of governmentality must be recognized as an interpretive construction. While the identification of a particular regime provides the “broad strokes” of analysis that are necessary to outline an object of study, it ultimately serves as a backdrop against which to reveal the non-linearity, multidirectionality, and the contradictions of government (Rose 1999, 21). In line with its poststructuralist approach, an analytics of government precisely intends to reveal the “cracks” in regimes, since it is these (often hidden) ruptures, contradictions, and subversions that create the space from which something different may be imagined, and change can occur. While the term “regime” allows for a broad, structural view, many of such frictions and subversions actually take place at the level of the subject. While governmentality emphasizes the ways in which individuals govern themselves to seamlessly follow hegemonic orders, it simultaneously holds space for techniques of the self that resist dominant technologies of government. Instead of the word “resistance,” however, Foucault prefers a different term: During his lecture series “Security, Territory, Population,” he introduces the concept “counter-conduct” (contre-conduite), which he defines as “struggle against the processes implemented for conducting others” (1978/2009, 201). Although this idea implies that individuals can explore some degree of freedom from dominant techniques of governing, Foucault does not suggest that forms of counter-conduct are exterior to a regime. Reflecting his definition of power as a productive force, he instead emphasizes that points of resistance and subversions are always immanent—and even constitutive—to hegemonic formations of power (id. 1978, 95). In “The Will to Knowledge,” he asks: Are there no great ruptures, massive binary divisions, then? Occasionally, yes. But more often one is dealing with mobile and transitory points of resistance, producing cleavages in a society that shift about, fracturing unities and effecting regroupings, furrowing across individuals themselves, cutting them up and remolding them, marking off irreducible regions in them, in their bodies and minds. Just as the network of power

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relations ends by forming a dense web that passes through apparatuses and institutions, without being exactly localized in them, so too the swarm of points of resistance traverses social stratifications and individual unities. (ibid., 96) As expressed in the above quote, Foucault is particularly interested in subtle ruptures and subversions, which are not distinctly located within particular individuals or institutions but rather traverse and fracture them. Accordingly, forms of counter-conduct are not a blanket rejection of government per se (id. 1978/2009, 231). Instead, they reflect efforts “not to be governed like that, by that, in the name of those principles, with such and such an objective in mind and by means of such procedures, […] not for that, not by them” (id. 1978/1997b, 28; emphasis in original). Hence, techniques of the self always contain aspects of adaptation to hegemonic norms and, simultaneously, components of counter-conduct.13 They generally reproduce and iterate dominant governmental orders, yet through this act of iteration, they also gradually chip away at them by creating subtle shifts, subversions, and expansions.14 Although these changes may seem minor at first glance, their effects compound and can ultimately lead to profound transformations. It is for this reason that challenges to dominant rationalities or techniques, particularly those that occur at the seemingly small level of everyday practice, play an important role in my analysis (see also section 3.3.3). Even if such minor tectonic shifts can sometimes not be felt at a broader level and do not appear on any conventional scale of measurement, they cause minute cracks and fissures that may eventually be part of a larger rupturing event.

The constitution of the subject amidst modes of coercion and self-conduct As I argued, the perspective of governmentality provides a unique lens for examining the integration between the “government of others […] [and] the government of oneself” (Milchman & Rosenberg 2010, 62). As such, it reveals effects of power not only in external techniques of governing but also, for instance, when individuals internalize particular rationalities and readily conduct themselves accordingly without any “need” for coercive measures. As this example shows, the boundary between both modes of governing is, similarly to that between rationalities and technologies, highly fluid and represents a shift in perspective rather than a clear-cut distinction (Dean 2010, 38). Nevertheless, this shift profoundly impacts the conceptualization of the subject and its constitution, which is at the core of my analysis. Throughout his work, Foucault views the subject not as a fixed entity with an internal essence but as a continually changing “form” (1984/1997a, 290) that is fundamentally shaped by external circumstances and power relations (Kelly 2013, 514). In this light, the effect of government is not “to influence the behavior of fully formed ‘subjects’ who 13 14

For more detailed discussions of “counter-conduct,” see Davidson (2011), Dean (2010, 21), Linnemann (2019), Odysseos et al. (2016). The terms “iterate” and “iteration” (also “iterability”) were coined by Jaques Derrida (1988), who suggests that each repetition of a speech act entails subtle shifts in meaning and usage (Lucy 2004, 56-57). While a deeper discussion of the concept would exceed the limitations of this book, the idea of the continuous reiteration and subversion of meaning through citational practices will be explored further with regard to the concept of performativity (see section 2.2.3).

2 Conceptual Framework

exist outside of or previous to relations of government, but rather to shape the very formation and re-formation of subjectivities” (Hannah 2016, 2). In other words, regimes of government do not only govern a body of people but render said body governable in the first place. Hence, governmentality makes it possible to examine large configurations of power, yet do so through the intimate lens of the subject (Bröckling et al. 2011, 1–2). While I originally started the research for this study with the intention to investigate the broad regime of Nepali labor migration, over the course of my research and analysis, my conceptual understanding and focus grew15 towards recognizing that this intention ultimately placed the formation and government of the Nepali migrant subject at the heart of my analysis. As Matthew Hannah states, “[i]t is through the construction of subjects that larger social orders are established and stabilized, rendering government both an individualizing and totalizing force” (2016, 2). Thus, the study of governmentality is not just an analysis of regimes of rationalities and technologies—but rather part of a project Rose calls the “genealogy of subjectification” (1996, 23). The reason for this dual conceptual focus lies in Foucault’s understanding of the subject, which he sees as much more than a mere symbolic or discursive construction but as constituted “in real practices—historically analyzable practices” (1983/1997a, 277). Hence, subjectivity, described by Foucault as a particular, continually changing “type of relationship to oneself” (1984/1997a, 290), is a direct reflection of practical techniques of governing. Foucault’s earlier work, for instance on the asylum, the hospital, and the prison, mostly focuses on the constitution of the subject through dominating and coercive modes of power, a process of objectification that he terms “subjection” (assujettissement) (e.g., 1976/1995, 184). From the perspective of governmentality, subjection remains a valid and powerful mode of subjectification. For example, Foucault suggests that “these [dominating] power relations characterize the manner in which men are ‘governed’ by one another; and their analysis shows how, through certain forms of ‘government,’ […] [the] subject is objectified” (1982/1998, 463). At the same time, however, governmentality—with its new conceptual emphasis on forms of self-conduct—turns additional attention to the ways in which government works not against the subject but through it. In other words, government entails a second, more active mode of subjectification, one in which “the subject constitutes itself” (Kelly 2013, 513). While there is some controversy about the appropriate term and translation to denote this form of self-constitution, I refer to it as “subjectivation” (subjectivation). In doing so, I rely on Foucault’s own usage since “Security, Territory, Population,” where he, with regard to procedures of individualization during the Christian pastorate, introduces the concept by differentiating it from processes of “subjection” (assujettissement) (1978/2009, 184). In this light, I apply “subjectification” as a general term to describe the combination of both processes that contribute to the constitution of the subject, thereby emphasizing the processual nature of subjectivity.16

15 16

As stated in the introduction to this chapter, my conceptual framework evolved gradually as part of an iterative-inductive approach, which is discussed in section 3.2.2. The translations and meanings of the different terms mentioned here have been discussed controversially and remain heterogeneous throughout recent literature. For instance, assujettissement has, by some, been translated as “subjectification” (sometimes with diverging or unspeci-

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Hence, the concept of governmentality is tied to a great expansion of Foucault’s conceptualization of subjectivity—as something that is constituted not only through practices of subjection, or objectification, but also through practices of subjectivation, i.e., techniques of the self. As such, it is part of a larger shift in Foucault’s interest, who directed most of his attention during the last years of his life to the concepts of ethics, freedom, and the active formation of the subject (Foucault 1982/2000, 326–327). For the conceptual approach of my own analysis, this means that processes of subjectification are profoundly practical, and that, conversely, forms of self-conduct are inextricably linked to the (trans)formation of subjectivity—an argument Foucault aptly expresses in the following quote from a 1981 talk, where he defines “technologies of the self” as techniques that permit individuals to effect […] a certain number of operations on their own bodies, their own souls, their own thoughts, their own conduct, and this in a manner so as to transform themselves, modify themselves, and to attain a certain state of perfection, happiness, purity, supernatural power. (1981/1997a, 177) However, although the emphasis on techniques of the self suggests that the subject is conceptualized in a somewhat active fashion, this does not mean that those techniques are entirely independent processes. Since individuals’ efforts to govern themselves are, as argued earlier, profoundly shaped by the hegemonic orders they are embedded in, the same applies to processes of subjectification, as Foucault explains in a 1984 interview: fied meanings, e.g., Bröckling et al. 2011; Milchman & Rosenberg 2010; Rose 1999,), whereas the English equivalent that is more commonly used in Foucault’s translated publications and those of other scholars is “subjection” (e.g., Foucault 1976/1995, 26; see also Kelly 2013; albeit also with different or sometimes unclear meanings, cf. Butler 1997; McGushin 2007). Conversely, some authors do not refer to the term subjectivation at all, instead tying both modes of the constitution of subjectivity to the term assujettissement, which they understand in a dual sense (e.g., Bröckling et al. 2011; Rose 1999). This interpretation is likely based on Foucault’s usage of the term in the “The Will to Power,” where he refers to “subjection [assujettissement] [as] their constitution as subjects in both senses of the word” (Foucault 1978, 60). However, such studies ignore that Foucault already introduces the term “subjectivation” (subjectivation) in his 1978/79 lecture series “Security, Territory, Population” (during which he also develops his concept of governmentality), where he describes it as one of the procedures of individualization in the Christian pastorate (1979/2009, 184). While the term receives no further attention in later lectures of that particular series, it gained an increasingly prominent role during the last years of Foucault’s work, where he focused on sexuality, subjectivity, and freedom. Recently, more and more of his lectures from these later years have been translated and published in English (e.g., id. 1980/2014, 1981/2017); however, the concept of “subjectivation” has received only limited attention as of yet. For a more detailed discussion of this term and Foucault’s conceptualization, see Bonnafous-Boucher (2010); Kelly (2009); Milchman & Rosenberg (2010). With the described controversy in mind, I have decided on the following usage in this book: I choose the term “subjection” to denote assujettissement, which I understand—in concordance with Foucault’s most common use—as the objectifying effect of power that is associated with technologies of domination and coercion. Thus, the concept implies both the experience of subjugation and the formation of a subject in the sense of “the passive subject, the test-subject, the subject of the king” (Kelly 2009, 87). By contrast, I consider the active self-constitution of the subject through technologies of the self to be aptly and most consistently described by Foucault as “subjectivation” (subjectivation; see also ibid., 88). Finally, I choose the term “subjectification” to summarize all aspects in the constitution of the subject (see also Burchell 1996, 20) and to emphasize that subjectivity is not a state but a process and dynamic relation.

2 Conceptual Framework

[I]f I am now interested in how the subject constitutes itself in an active fashion through practices of the self, these practices are nevertheless not something invented by the individual himself. They are models that he finds in his culture and are proposed, suggested, imposed upon him by his culture, his society, and his social group. (1984/1997a, 291) Hence, even practices of subjectivation continuously mirror external circumstances and governmental interventions, whether these are subtle shifts in values or explicit instructions that inspire particular forms of self-conduct. Ultimately, the perspective of governmentality thus allows us to view the constitution of subjectivity in the light of hegemonic power relations, yet still recognize its active components and potentials for change. In order to understand the co-constitutive interaction between coercive forms of government and technologies of the self, the investigation of subjectivity is, therefore, crucial. The subject is the nodal point where both modes of governing meet—where “technologies of domination of individuals over one another have recourse to processes by which the individual acts upon himself and, conversely, […] where techniques of the self are integrated into structures of coercion” (id. 1980b; cited in Burchell 1996, 20). While techniques of domination and techniques of the self engender different processes of subjectification, they ultimately become one—albeit a ruptured, fragmented one—in the subject.

Towards a critical engagement with discipline, biopolitics, and beyond Foucauldian theory As stated at the beginning of this section, governmentality is not to be seen as a contradiction to Foucault’s earlier concepts on power but rather as an expansion. For instance, in his lecture series “Subjectivity and Truth,” he suggests that his previous studies “concerning confinement and the disciplines […] constitute elements in th[e] analysis of ‘governmentality’” (Foucault 1981/2017, 294; my emphasis).17 Rather than contrasting different forms of power against each other, I consider it more fruitful to explore how these different forms converge or intersect in regimes of government. Over the course of my research and analysis, I recognized that these concepts are able to complement the perspective of governmentality, for instance, by providing a lens to describe the specific character of certain techniques of governing. In this book, the two additional forms of power I incorporated into my analysis are discipline and biopolitics. While these concepts are elaborated on further at different points in my analysis (see sections 4.1.3, 4.3.3-4, 4.4), I will introduce them briefly here.18

17

18

However, as Foucault’s usage of the term “governmentality” shifts depending on different contexts (see footnote 15), this interpretation, too, is context-specific. For instance, during his “governmentality” lecture in “Security, Territory, Population,” when he focuses on governmentality as a historically-grown form of liberal and subtle power, he suggests that it forms a “triangle” (1978/2009, 108) with sovereign and disciplinary power. While both terms are far more complex that they are given credit here, a more comprehensive discussion would exceed the scope of this book. For a more in-depth conceptualization of biopolitics, see Lemke (2011) and Fassin (2011); for a discussion of discipline, see Murdoch (2005).

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The idea of disciplinary power is most extensively discussed in Foucault’s seminal work “Discipline and Punish” (1976/1995), where he traces the “birth of the prison” and the emergence of a particular mode of power that, in 18th -century Western Europe, increasingly replaced sovereign power (ibid., 264). By investigating discipline, he turns attention to the mechanisms that work within and through the individual and ultimately produce “docile bodies” (ibid., 135). In his following monograph, “The Will to Knowledge” (1978), Foucault defines discipline as a form of “biopower” (ibid., 140), which—unlike techniques that repress and take away life—places the administration and calculated management of human life and human bodies at its center. This “power[,] whose highest function was perhaps no longer to kill, but to invest life” (ibid., 139) was instrumental in the expansion of capitalism, which “would not have been possible without the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and the adjustment of the phenomena of population to economic processes” (ibid., 141). As the end of the above quote implies, Foucault also recognizes another form of biopower—“biopolitics” (1976/2003, 245), which does not operate at the level of the individual body but is directed at “the regulatory control of the population” (Lemke 2011, 36). Following his work on governmentality, Foucault’s 1978/79 lecture series on the “Birth of Biopolitics” (1979/2008) focuses on biopolitics as a set of technologies and rationalities of government geared towards fostering and administrating the life and health of a population. Hence, both discipline and biopolitics can be identified as two forms of government, “two poles around which the organization of power over life [is] deployed” (id. 1978, 139). Retracing the historical role of these poles in European society, Foucault argues that disciplinary techniques of governing first manifested in institutions such as “universities, secondary schools, barracks, workshops” (ibid., 140), whereas biopolitics led to “the emergence, in the field of political practices and economic observation, of the problems of birthrate, longevity, public health, housing, and migration” (ibid.). Over the course of my research, I increasingly recognized the importance of these forms of government to my analysis, which is why I deliberately include them as additional tools to sharpen my conceptual lens in the study of governmentality. As such, they complement my investigation that, as outlined throughout this section, seeks to identify the emergence of a particular regime of government, including the forms of knowledge that transform a set of conditions into the object of practical interventions, and “the characteristic techniques, instrumentalities and mechanisms through which such practices operate“ (Dean 2010, 31). Importantly, this agenda of governmentality recognizes rationalities and technologies of governing not as stable. Instead, it especially focuses on “how practices and thinking about these practices constitute themselves mutually, or more precisely: how they translate into each other” (Bröckling et al. 2011, 11), thereby emphasizing the covert and overt frictions, contradictions, and dynamics that accompany this process. To conclude, then, the perspective outlined here makes it possible to analyze the political not as a given object of study, but as something that is continually produced by defining problems and devising possible solutions, by establishing distinctions between different fields of government, and by invoking specific subjectivities. It is particularly this constitution of the subject—specifically, the migrant subject—that lies at the heart of my analysis. However, as it is through different modes of subjectification that practices of government shape and stabilize broad

2 Conceptual Framework

configurations of power, I will not remain limited to the intimate level of the individual migrant but investigate the Nepali migration regime at large. Despite this rich theoretical foundation, my conceptual framework is, as argued earlier, not defined but rather inspired by Foucault’s thought. While I make use of his innovative redefinition of “government” as well as certain vocabulary that has proven useful to me, I also remain cautious of universalist narratives and of the “governmentality lens becom[ing] instead a filter” (Walters 2015, 5; emphasis in original). This is especially important, I argue, with regard to my particular research, which is embedded in a markedly different geographical, historical, and cultural context than the Western European nation-state Foucault tended to write about. Following William Walters’ suggestion, then, this book engages with governmentality in a productive yet critical manner: Akin to software code or a “particular kind of intellectual technology[…] [, its] continued viability and usefulness […] depends, as with all technologies, on the recurrent work of patching, troubleshooting and upgrading” (id. 2012, 45). While the perspective of governmentality allows me to investigate how government works, I particularly care about also conceptualizing specific social processes in order to grasp why such an investigation is important (Joseph 2014, 73–74). This exploration takes place in the following sections, where I will integrate governmentality with different insights from the political geography of migration that I developed in part one of this chapter.

2.2.2

Geographical scale and global regimes of colonialism, development, and neoliberalism through the lens of governmentality

When it comes to spatial configurations, Foucault repeatedly acknowledges that space and place play an instrumental role in the constitution of social orders—for instance, when he points out how techniques of power have materialized in the spatial fabric of particular institutions (e.g., Foucault 1976/1995; see also Murdoch 2005, 53–54). Instead of treating space as a neutral signifier, he thus considers it essential to historicizing power relations and comprehending their contingencies and transformations (Tazzioli et al. 2015, 6–7). However, because his own work on space predominantly focuses on the constitution and effects of micro-spaces, such as the prison, it was long considered more relevant to local formations of power than those on a larger scale (Walters 2012, 109). Yet this is not necessarily the case: Following Foucault’s conceptualization of the social as inextricably linked to and constituted through space, spatial formations of any scale can be analyzed as productive vehicles of power. Moreover, from the perspective of governmentality, it is possible to recognize spatial categorizations and scales themselves as forms of knowledge and techniques of governing (see Foucault 1980a, 69–70). At the same time, it is true that Foucault himself does not elaborate on the spatiality of larger social configurations. Furthermore, his analysis is almost exclusively rooted in Western European society, while questions of supranational formations of power (e.g., colonialism), particularly so in other parts of the world, were not part of his agenda (Tazzioli et al. 2015, 6–7). In order to explore such questions from a perspective of governmentality, it is thus necessary not to “confine ourselves to the finite set of analytical tools which Foucault left behind” (Walters 2012, 114). Over the past

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two decades, a growing number of scholars have begun to venture into such new and uncharted terrains (both in the conceptual and geographical sense) and thereby contributed to a heterogeneous research field of “global” or “international governmentality” studies (e.g., Bonditti et al. 2017; Guzzini & Neumann 2012; Kiersey & Stokes 2011; Larner & Walters 2004; Neal 2011; Walters 2012). Rather than constituting a coherent debate, global governmentality studies represent a wide range of research approaches and topics, from supranational alliances of states and the international government of trade and finance to technologies of security, border controls, humanitarianism, and development.19 Some of those studies provide important insights on the broader geographical context in which the governmentality of Nepali labor migration needs to be seen. Before exploring those insights, however, I will first enrich and expand the critical geographical view of space and scale that constitutes part of the first conceptual building block of this book by reading it through the perspective of governmentality. Only after setting this conceptual foundation, I will then draw on global governmentality studies to outline three large-scale regimes of government that are particularly relevant to my analysis: colonialism, development, and neoliberalism.

Governmentality and geographical scale What can a governmentality perspective that views space as relational and co-constituted through power contribute to the study of globalized or transnational processes? For one, it offers an anti-essentialist view on geographical scale, recognizing “the ‘global’ or the ‘international’ a[s] simply the most recent versions of categories for thinking about relations between states or empires, or between metropolis and colony, land and sea, and so on” (Dean 2010, 238). Based on that realization, it is possible to investigate the different conditions that have led to the emergence of those categories of spatial ordering—from certain forms of knowledge (such as international relations and international law) to different practices (such as diplomacy and global governance) and institutions (such as international courts or supra-state and non-state organizations) (ibid.). Furthermore, by integrating the concept of “rescaling” (Brenner 1999, Swyngedouw 2004) and its rejection of scales as fixed hierarchical entities (see section 2.1.1) with the perspective of governmentality, categories like the “national” or the “global” can be viewed as integral parts of governmental regimes. As such, they do not serve as platforms and vehicles that facilitate particular forms of governing—but are, themselves, 19

According to Walters (2012, 83), other studies have addressed the rationalities and practices of governing in the name of globalization, the biopolitics of international systems of states and supranational formations, and the governmentality of state sovereignty, war, and peacekeeping. Yet others have investigated the technologies of security and border controls, regimes of development and humanitarianism, the government of trade and finance, and other programs and technologies of (neo)liberal government. Given their wide range of topics and approaches, Walters suggests that studies of global governmentality should not be understood as a specifically-formed research field or school but rather as “a constellation […] and purposeful act of grouping” (ibid., 84) that “brings together an assortment of works not because they already have a great deal in common […] but rather for the purposes of making them interact” (ibid.).

2 Conceptual Framework

constituted by particular forms of knowledge and technologies. In this vein, James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta (2002) argue that the production of certain scales and the naturalization of their authority over alternative spatial categorizations are the results of an ongoing, continuously contested governmental effort. Based on this insight, geographical scales like the “national” or the “regional” do play a role in my own analysis—however, not as fixed containers or neutral platforms for governmental practices. Instead, I regard these categorizations, such as the international market sphere or the Nepali nation-state, as contested processes that have emerged based on particular rationalities and technologies of governing. Although the practice of Nepali labor migration is clearly embedded in transnational relations, my investigation begins at the local level, which means I will first examine those processes in terms of the specific historical, social, and cultural circumstances they are rooted in. For this reason, it is often necessary to expand the lens of governmentality by exploring concepts that are locally specific, culturally sensitive, and empirically grounded. This includes a critical stance towards some analytical categories that are frequently considered universal in Western academic scholarship. For instance, distinctions between “formal” and “informal” processes, or between a formal global economy and local “moral economies,” are not taken for granted but replaced by categorizations that, based on my ethnographic insights (see part 3.2), appear more appropriate and productive to me. It is only through this locally specific lens that my analysis approaches larger formations in and beyond the Nepali migration regime. On the one hand, I acknowledge that specific local rationalities and technologies of government are always embedded in and interact with regimes of broader geographical scopes. On the other, it is precisely one of the strengths of the governmentality perspective that empirical insights do not have to be strung together into seemingly homogeneous strategies of governing—but that it allows precisely for the contingencies, fractures, and often contradictions in formations and mechanisms of power. Furthermore, incorporating my earlier insights on processes of rescaling and “glocalization” (Swyngedouw 2004; see section 2.1.1), I recognize that many of those frictions and ruptures occur as part of the dynamics between different, co-constituting scales (see also Rankin 2004, 58). Based on this geographically-informed approach to governmentality, it is possible to investigate how particular rationalities spread on a global scale yet shape people’s everyday practices in locally specific ways—but also how technologies and institutionalized mechanisms on supranational or national scales are, in turn, appropriated, negotiated, and sometimes redefined by locally-embedded forms of knowledge. Since regimes of different scopes always overlap or intersect in complex ways, they simultaneously reinforce, iterate, and subvert each other. This emphasis on the complexity of multiscalar dynamics is mirrored in Foucault’s own views on the relations between grand strategies and small tactics of power, which he explains in “The Will to Knowledge:” No “local center,” no “pattern of transformation” could function if, through a series of sequences, it did not eventually enter into an over-all strategy. And inversely, no strategy could achieve comprehensive effects if did not gain support from precise and tenuous relations serving […] as its prop and anchor point. There is no discontinuity between

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them, as if one were dealing with two different levels (one microscopic and the other macroscopic); but neither is there homogeneity (as if the one were only the enlarged projection or the miniaturization of the other); rather, one must conceive of the double conditioning of a strategy by the specificity of possible tactics, and of tactics by the strategic envelope that makes them work. (Foucault 1978, 99–100) In order to fall into the trap of implicitly assuming either the discontinuity or the homogeneity that Foucault describes above, I follow Walters’ suggestion to approach certain sets of practices by acknowledging a loose “family resemblance” (2012, 105) to largescale regimes yet also employing specific mid-range concepts and qualifiers that allow a more precise analysis. Keeping this caveat in mind, I will now outline the three global configurations that are particularly relevant to my analysis, starting with colonialism.

Colonialism as a global regime of government Although Nepal has never been formally colonized (see section 4.1.1), colonial forms of knowledge and technological remnants have fundamentally shaped the practice and government of Nepali labor migration. This begins with remote forms of influence, such as the broad reconfiguration of international economic structures and political hierarchies, which has affected all countries of the Global South. Since the era of European colonialism and capitalist imperialism lasted for multiple centuries, its legacy of particular “transnational flows of capital or bodies, global imaginary geographies, [and] national stereotypes” (Legg 2007a, 265) continues to the present day. One of the most powerful of these legacies lies in the practice of labor migration itself. While mobility has always been a part of human life (Castles & Miller 2004, 278; see section 2.1.1), the colonial project introduced a form of labor mobility that was unprecedented in its scale and degree of organization. As Prakash C. Jain asserts, “[o]ne of the most important features of colonial enterprises was their social organisation around the forced labour systems” (1988, 189). Starting with the slave trade and indentured service, this organized labor mobility soon became instrumental to the expansion of the colonial regimes, particularly so the British Empire (Swingen 2015). Ultimately, British imperialism relied on a wide range of resources, but perhaps none more so than human labor. Losing their main source of that “resource” with the end of the transatlantic slave trade, the British turned to residents of their crown colony British India. In organizing the labor migration of countless South Asians to locations all over the world and establishing economic structures that relied on such “imported” labor, they laid an essential foundation for today’s globalized economy (e.g., Kaur 2004, 66–68; Rajan & Oommen 2020, 1). Furthermore, the colonial remnants that can be traced in many contemporary migrant labor arrangements provide a powerful explanation for the inequalities that shape so many of these practices today: After all, those arrangements were never intended to be equal but were designed with a disempowering agenda that, from their inception, relied on the dehumanization and commodification of human labor. While much of postcolonial scholarship draws on Foucault’s discourse theory (e.g., Hall 1990; Spivak 1985), explicit engagements with the concept of governmentality have been rare. However, it has proven a promising angle of investigation, which can provide a more profound understanding of colonial power. One such valuable conceptual

2 Conceptual Framework

expansion is offered by David Scott (1995, 1999), who challenges the long-time focus of postcolonial theory on the symbolic or discursive character of power. By instead examining its institutional mechanisms and its practical organization in contingent and often discontinuous projects, he emphasizes the technical, material, and practical character of colonial government (1999, 31). Taking a global perspective, Barry Hindess (2001) illustrates how colonial imaginary geographies served as powerful rationalities of governing. According to him, the global project of colonialism was fundamentally grounded in an imperialist division of the world’s population into different groups of governmental subjects. Those included socalled “hopeless cases,” or populations that were rendered entirely invisible, but also “subjects of improvement” and subjects that were considered to deserve “the ethos of welfare” (ibid., 100-101). As I will show at different points in my analysis (see sections 4.1.1-2, 4.2.4-5, 4.3.5), many of those imaginaries remain powerful today. One of the main ways in which they have entered contemporary configurations of government is through the global project of development.

Governing (through) development As Mark Duffield argues, mentalities and technologies of colonialism, such as those described above, have laid the foundation for “a global biopolitical divide between ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’ population” (2007, 225). His argument builds on the “postdevelopment” debate (e.g., Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1994; Kothari et al. 2019; Pigg 1992; Rahnema & Bawtree 1997; Sachs 2019), which issues a scathing critique of “[t]he development discourse […] [as] the central and most ubiquitous operator of the politics of representation and identity in much of Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the postWorld War II period” (Escobar 1995, 214). As one of the debate’s most vocal proponents, Arturo Escobar argues that interventions to stimulate the “development” of poor countries have not only failed to counter existing inequalities of power but were designed to reinforce them: By declaring Western capitalist modernity as the norm and ideal of human existence, development has justified the external intervention into internal processes in countries defined as “underdeveloped” and imposed models to which these countries had to subject, thereby consolidating Western hegemony. Escobar particularly emphasizes that these interventions have produced homogenized subjects, who are able to perceive themselves only in terms of their poverty, lack, and “underdevelopment.” In identifying development as a continuation of the colonial project, he argues it is fundamentally based in the construction of the poor and underdeveloped as universal, preconstituted subjects, based on the privilege of the representers; the exercise of power over the Third World made possible by this discursive homogenization […]; and the colonization and domination of the natural and human ecologies and economies of the Third World. (ibid., 53) While Escobar and other representatives of the debate operate from a Foucauldian vocabulary of “apparatus” and “discourse,” the concept of governmentality allows for an interesting shift in perspective: Institutions and interventions of development can now be recognized as technologies that have enabled the government of large parts of the

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world’s population over the past seventy years. These forms of governing (through) development have been accompanied by profound social and political transformations, as Cristina Rojas (2004) points out. She argues that they have emerged to not only based on colonial structures of power but also through the “internationaliz[ation] […] [and] developmentalization of aid, specifically a change in mentality [that] allow[ed] a nationalization of the social in the state apparatus and its multilateralization in international institutions” (ibid., 98). This involvement of development with international institutions and its orientation towards economic processes indicate that it has also been closely intertwined with another regime of global scale, which I will discuss now under the term “neoliberalism.”

Neoliberal governmentality Over the past decades, few words have been as widely and as controversially used in the social sciences as “neoliberalism.” Foucault himself probably played a role in the term’s ascent, since he considered liberal mentalities and techniques of governing to have been central to the emergence of the modern state (Foucault 1978/2009). In fact, most of his own investigation of “governmentality” was so closely intertwined with the study of liberal governmentality that he often conflated both terms (e.g., 1979/2008; see also section 2.2.1). As a result, liberalism has received significant attention in governmentality studies and has become one of the most studied regimes of government (e.g., Barry et al. 1996; Bröckling 2015; Dean 2010; Dzudzek 2016; Hindess 2001, 2004; Lemke 2011; Mattissek 2008; Rankin 2004; Read 2010). At the same time, the use of the term “neoliberalism” has not been specific to governmentality studies but pervades all social sciences and much of public discourse. As a result, its meaning has become increasingly vague, and it has been criticized for turning into an empty buzzword. At the core, however, neoliberalism commonly denotes a particular liberal school of thought, political-economic project, and ideology (Rankin 2004, 14–31). More specifically, it can be described as a specific variant of liberalism that has emerged as a critique of the post-Second World War European welfare state and led to a fundamental restructuring of the global political and economic landscape over the past forty years. This restructuring has generally been associated with policies such as privatization, deregulation, trade liberalization and marketization; economic phenomena such as the rise of transnational corporations and the power of global financial markets within capitalism; institutional developments such as the growing prominence of international economic institutions (IMF, WTO, etc.); and ideological shifts such as the valorization of the market over the state. (Larner & Walters 2004, 8) Compared to other approaches, governmentality studies tend to focus less on (neo)liberalism as an ideology but rather emphasize the “arts, tactics and practices of governing” associated with its rise (ibid., 4). In line with Foucault’s primary interest, many of his followers have analyzed liberalism, or its contemporary manifestation in neoliberalism, as a “mode of reasoning and set of techniques of government that aim to extend the form of the market to all of life” (Anderson 2014, 133). In this respect, the concept of governmentality has been particularly helpful in revealing the ways in which neoliber-

2 Conceptual Framework

alism has led to a profound reformulation of subjectivities, specifically by “artificially arrang[ing] or contriv[ing] forms of the free, entrepreneurial and competitive conduct of economic-rational individuals” (Barry et al. 1996, 23–24). Some scholars of governmentality have argued that at our present moment in time, global regimes of practices need to be understood primarily in terms of neoliberalism, as it constitutes today’s most dominant form of government (Joseph 2014, 74). Others have disagreed and criticized the “liberal bias” (Walters 2012, 71) of many governmentality studies. For instance, Walters argues that governmentality should not remain limited to the lens of neoliberalism, which has grown into a term too general to explain specific empirical phenomena (ibid., 121). For the purpose of this book, I heed the latter advice and reference neoliberalism not as an abstract, large regime. Instead, I employ it as a limited tool to shed light on the following two institutional formations, which I already introduced as central to the study (see section 2.1.3): a) The first formation concerns recent institutions and rationalities of migration management and the corresponding advance of a private industry to facilitate and regulate migration. Compared to other forms of mobility, formalized temporary labor migration has been particularly affected by the neoliberal restructuring of the global economy. Today, private-market rationalities inform many of the ways in which state and non-state institutions govern migrant labor(ers), and have spurred both the increasing formalization and privatization of migration regimes. Many of those institutions have played an active role in commodifying migrant labor and establishing a transnational market around this commodity (Ortiga 2017; Rodriguez 2010; Schwenken 2018; Yeates 2009). During my research, I observed that such institutions and processes have profoundly shaped the Nepali migration regime. In order to understand this trend better, the book explicitly draws on the social studies of economization and marketization, which represent its third conceptual building block (see part 2.3). b) The second formation concerns institutions and interventions towards “development.” As argued earlier, the regimes of development and neoliberalism are inextricably linked. Although concepts of economic growth and progress had always been central to the idea of development, the global spread of neoliberal doctrines and policies in the 1980s brought those aspects even more to the forefront (Duffield 2007, 227). Rojas has tracked the project’s transformations since its emergence from practices of philanthropic aid and states: “The debt crisis of the 1980s transformed aid from a national strategy of states towards one where aid sought to integrate national economies into a global liberal order. […] [N]eo-developmentalism relies much more heavily on the market” (Rojas 2004, 98). As different studies of governmentality (e.g., Cruikshank 1999; Ilcan & Lacey 2011; Li 2007b; Rankin 2004) illustrate, neoliberal development has profoundly redefined subjectivities of the governed: Programs today are rooted in a logic of “empowerment” (Cruikshank 1999), which highlight participants’ individual responsibilities and guide their self-conduct. With regard to migration, neoliberal rationalities were instrumental in the reframing the relationship between migration and development (Schwertl 2016) and led to the emergence of the Global Remittances Trend (GRT) in the early 2000s (Kunz

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2011; see also section 2.1.3). This trend, which includes the “discovery” of migrants as “development agents” (Faist 2008), has engendered various technologies aimed at changing migrants’ behavior in order to harness their individual potential. Colonialism, development, and neoliberalism are often discussed as distinct regimes of government. However, as this section has shown, they are closely interlinked and even constitute each other. These entanglements and potential compound effects will be taken into account in my analysis. Moreover, I will particularly focus on how each global regime intersects and interacts with configurations on national and local levels in Nepal. This, however, is only possible based on an appropriate conceptualization of the local, material, and embodied dimensions of government, which are discussed in the following section.

2.2.3

Governing through embodied practice

In recent debates in geography and beyond, Foucauldian theory—like poststructuralist thought in general—has been criticized for remaining too attached to regimes of representation and not accounting enough for the materiality of the human experience (e.g., Thrift 2007). However, considering that the technological dimension of power is actually central to the concept of governmentality, it is not at all incompatible with materialist perspectives (Philo 2012, 510–511). As indicated previously, the “analytics of government is a materialist analysis in that it places […] regimes of practices at the centre of analysis” (Dean 2010, 40–41). Moreover, even Foucault’s earlier work emphasizes that power is expressed through material structures and embodied practices. Particularly in his study of discipline (1976/1995), micro-spaces and local material arrangements are discussed as both manifestations and techniques of power (Murdoch 2005, 56–57). This conceptualization of the micro-physics of power remains relevant even in broad configurations of government, as those investigated in this study: As I will show at different points in my analysis (see sections 4.2.1, 4.3.4), even regimes of vast scope are ultimately rooted and enacted in local material technologies, micro-spatial arrangements, and embodied practices. However, much of the scholarship on governmentality—at least from its earlier years—privileges forms of knowledge and premeditated strategies over the practical and material dimension of government. Foucault himself says, at one point, that he is more interested in “the art of governing, that is to say, the reasoned way of governing best” (Foucault 1979/2008, 2) than “the development of real governmental practice” (ibid.). While this approach was increasingly challenged since the late 1990s (e.g., Kunz 2011; Li 2007b; O’Malley et al. 1997), which informed a shift towards the technological dimension of governmentality, much research today still focuses on those aspects of governmental techniques that are exerted via plans, policies, and written strategies. By contrast, my own ethnographic research (see section 3.2) increasingly led me to examine not only what is being contrived, planned, and designed but also what is actually being done in practice—and the ways those two things often contradict each other. Following Tania Murray Li’s suggestion, I aim “not [to] privilege one [dimension] over the other” (2007b, 27) but rather to investigate precisely the intersection of “governmen-

2 Conceptual Framework

tal interventions (their genealogy, their diagnoses and prescriptions, their constitutive exclusions) and […] of what happens when those interventions become entangled with the processes they would regulate and improve” (ibid.). Unlike more narrow readings of governmentality, I thus embrace a broad definition of “government,” which explicitly includes the seemingly mundane, everyday practice, and often unverbalized technologies that shape people’s conduct. In order to accomplish such a study of governmentality at the intersection of what is planned and what is being done, several additional tools are required. While this agenda is closely intertwined with my ethnographic research practice (see section 3.2), this current section focuses on the theoretical components of my approach. These components are mainly rooted in feminist theory and its conceptualization of everyday practice as political, the subject as embodied, and the body as a site of power (e.g., Mohammad 2016; Mott 2016; Weedon 1997; Wucherpfennig & Strüver 2014). On that foundation, my approach to governmentality is enriched by an understanding of how forms of government inscribe themselves on and work through the body. This theoretical expansion, which I will outline in the present section, is twofold: First, I will deploy the concept of performativity to show how embodied and material practices function as techniques of conduct and self-conduct. In a second step, I will focus on what I consider a specific form of embodied practice—affects and emotions—and discuss how they can be seen as vehicles or catalysts that are instrumental to the effectiveness of governmental interventions.

Technologies of government as performative Much of the feminist debate around performance and performativity was sparked by Judith Butler’s monographs “Gender Trouble” (1990) and “Bodies that matter” (1993). There, she developed a concept of performativity that draws on Foucault’s and Jaques Derrida’s theories of power and subjectivity but also John L. Austin’s (1955/1962) speech act theory. Austin, who was a linguist, introduces the term to describe that some utterances do not merely describe reality but are—like the declaration “I pronounce you man and wife,” actions that shape reality in themselves (Butler 1993, 232). Based on Austin’s conclusion “that speech itself is performative—it is generative of the thing it merely purports to name” (McCormack 2009, 134), Butler reframes performativity from a linguistic to a social phenomenon (Strüver & Wucherpfennig 2009, 107). Working from a theoretical vantage point of Foucault and Derrida, she explores the formation of the subject in order to deconstruct the heteronormative construction of sex and gender. Specifically, she argues that gender and sexual identity are neither a reflection of a prediscursive material reality nor the mere performance of a pre-determined script, but political processes that are continually reproduced in discursive practice. Hence, “performativity must be understood not as a singular or deliberate ‘act,’ but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names” (Butler 1993, 2). Based on this redefinition, Butler’s concept of performativity does not only specify the notion of the decentered subject as a continuous project or practice—but she also emphasizes its embodied dimension by showing how identity is inscribed on the body

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(ead. 1990, 174). Materiality, then, which is often considered “fact” and thus rarely questioned, is revealed to be an expression of power, specifically “power’s most productive effect” (ead. 1993, 2). Yet performativity describes more than just the performance and enacting of normative scripts and practices. Instead, it refers to the ways in which discursive acts reproduce and challenge those norms (Boeckler et al. 2014, 130). In fact, the very idea that material realities are produced via repetitive, citational practices is what—in each repetition and each performative act—gives room for deviating from identity scripts and subverting hegemonic norms (Boucher 2006, 112–115). By reframing gender and sexual identity as fluid practices that continually reproduce, iterate, and subvert the hegemonic “grid of cultural intelligibility through which bodies, genders, and desires are naturalized” (Butler 1990, 194), Butler’s concept of performativity has had a profound impact on gender and queer studies. Even beyond feminist theory, it is now common to conceive of “[m]asculinity [and] femininity [as] a diverse set of practices and the relationships between different forms of […] performances by differently placed bodies [as] structured by sets of power relations” (McDowell 2009, 132). However, performativity is by no means limited to gender or sexual identity but addresses all aspects of the subject. Rather than emphasizing one constructed category over another, the concept implies an intersectional perspective (Strüver & Wucherpfennig 2009, 120–121, see section 2.1.2). Thus, subjectification as a performative process needs to be thought of in terms of multiple categories of identity and difference, which are simultaneous reproduced and negotiated, and both reinforce and counteract each other. Applying this perspective to my own work, I understand migrant subjectivities as a set of multiple and contradictory scripts and practices: Although they are ultimately grouped under the simple label “migrant,” they are shaped by numerous factors of difference, including gender, age, education, class, caste and geographical place. While Butler argues that performative acts cannot be reduced to language but always include material and embodied dimensions (ibid.), her own work largely operates within a terminology of discourse and discursive practice. By contrast, other voices in the debate have emphasized the role of embodied practice and performance, arguing to “explicitly connect [those] performances with performativity” (Schurr 2012, 197). For example, Nicky Gregson and Gillian Rose (2000) suggest that Butler’s performativity may be fruitfully combined with other theoretical traditions that have highlighted the performed dimension of identity and social practice.20 From this perspective, everyday embodied practices are more than just performances of pre-existing scripts—instead, it is precisely through such performances that those scripts are continually reproduced, challenged, and rewritten. Gregson and Rose also pinpoint the difference between both terms when they argue that “performance—what individual subjects do, say, ‘act-out’ and performativity—the citational practices which reproduce and/or subvert discourse

20

For instance, they refer to the work of sociologist Erving Goffman (1956), who conceptualized “the self [as] a performed character” (1956, 252; cited in Gregson & Rose 2000, 433). Furthermore, they cite contemporary feminist research on labor regimes, arguing “that workers are expected to comport themselves in particular ways; that there is a form of script, more or less explicit, which governs the behaviour expected of workers, including their forms of speech and frequently too their specific embodiments, including their dress” (ibid., 436).

2 Conceptual Framework

and which enable and discipline subjects and their performances—are intrinsically connected, through the saturation of performers with power” (Gregson & Rose 2000, 434). Considering materiality and embodied practice to be not only an effect of knowledge formations, but to challenge and redefine those very formations has profound implications for my reading of governmentality: If we recognize government as technological and practical, and practice as performative, we can conclude that rules of government are constantly negotiated and rewritten in everyday practice. Expanding the above quote by Gregson & Rose, embodied performances that are saturated with power are performative, which means they work as norms and shape reality. In other words, they become programmatic and function as technologies of government themselves. Hence, performativity can expand the conceptualization of governmentality by emphasizing how people’s daily practices do not just follow a governmental “script,” but how each performative act is an act of governing oneself and others. Not only does performativity make explicit that subjectification and self-conduct are deeply material and embodied processes, but it also allows us to recognize how bodily and materialized performances (if expressed from a position of power) can direct others to conduct themselves accordingly. Although this conceptualization diverts from some readings of governmentality (e.g., Dean 2010, Walters 2012), I understand government as not necessarily based on meticulous planning and strategizing—not even as something that is always “thought through” or can be expressed verbally. Based on the feminist notion that seemingly mundane practices are deeply political, they, too, can function as technologies of government. It is on this basis that my analysis considers everyday (inter)actions in local settings as an essential dimension of the Nepali migration regime: It takes into account not only the top-down interventions of government crafted in administrative offices and distinctly political arenas—but also the ways in which seemingly unpolitical local practices direct people’s conduct and inspire their techniques of the self. One particular avenue I will explore is how migrant returnees govern not only themselves but also their communities by performing and rewriting certain rationalities and technologies, from recruitment to remittances and return (see sections 4.1.2, 4.3.5).

Governing through affect and emotion In explicitly taking into account rationalities and practices that are not necessarily “rational” or cannot be expressed verbally, my conceptualization of governmentality includes the dimension of emotions and affects. Over the past two decades, scholarship on this topic has gained significant attention across the social sciences and humanities, so much so that some scholars now herald an “affective turn” (Bakko & Merz 2015). Despite this recent surge in interest, however, studies of the body, emotions, and affect already have a long tradition in feminist scholarship. Guided by the recognition that the “personal is political” (Anderson 2014, 6), such scholarship reaches back to the 1980s, for instance, to Arlie R. Hochschild’s (1983) influential work on the management and commercialization of emotions in labor. However, over the past twenty years, interest in the topic has emerged across different disciplines and from a wide range of theoretical perspectives. As a result, the terms “emotion” and “affect,” which were of-

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ten used interchangeably in earlier scholarship, have become the subject of conflicting interpretations. Emotions are widely understood as “dynamic, felt relations between bodies, happenings, spaces, and things” (Thien 2016, 1), which cannot be understood in isolation but always need to be analyzed as part of social relations. Accordingly, extensive research in feminist geography and beyond has focused on emotions in terms of not only “mental and corporeal [but also] social and cultural, and spatial and historical elements” (ibid.; see, e.g., Ahmed 2004/2014; Bondi 2005; Davidson et al. 2005; Kingsbury & Pile 2014). By contrast, scholars drawing on assemblage theory, non-representational theory, and other approaches in new materialism have distanced themselves from such a socially-embedded research agenda. Instead, they suggest a more abstract, impersonal perspective on affect, which they reconceptualize as a flow or force largely outside of and inaccessible to systems of representation and meaning (e.g., Massumi 2002; McCormack 2003; Thrift 2008). Despite the controversy around different interpretations of affect (Wetherell 2012, 17-24), this diversity can also be considered less of a divide and more of a productive encounter: Without a doubt, the heterogeneity and intensity of the debate have enriched the theorization of affect and emotion in ways that might not have come about otherwise. Recognizing this productivity, a growing number of scholars has “advanc[ed] conversations that move beyond the past divide, whether staking space for ‘more-thanrepresentational’ […] geographies, or actively reflecting on the differences and the similarities of these approaches” (Thien 2016, 3). As the term “more-than-representational” (Lorimer 2005; see also Bakko & Merz 2015, Schurr 2014) suggests, such approaches take into account the social embeddedness of affect and, thus, its political nature. Simultaneously, they also acknowledge it as a mode of experience that partly escapes our ability to grasp it—at least through verbalization or any other conventional methods of research. In other words, “a more-than-representational approach does not understand practices as a product of discourse, but as constitutive of the world in their own right” (Müller 2015b, 410), yet it still considers them deeply political (Ahmed 2004/2014; Anderson 2016; Berlant 2011; Hemmings 2005). Reflecting my own approach to affect, the book does not get caught up in trying to establish a distinct line between the “representational” and “non-representational,” or between its conscious and pre- or subconscious dimensions, but rather remains focused on its governmental implications: Hence, I do not imagine affect as a unique ontological essence or some abstract, autonomous, pure, and disembodied force. Instead, I follow Ben Anderson’s definition that “[a]ffects are always-already imbricated with other dimensions of life without being reducible to other elements” (Anderson 2014, 14). In other words, I consider affect “a kind of free radical that (in different people and also in different cultures) attaches to and permanently intensifies or alters the meaning of—of almost anything” (Sedgwick 2003, 62).21 Rather than seeing it in oppo-

21

Thus, my understanding of both emotion and affect builds on feminist theory and its rejection of the Cartesian distinction between “mind” and “body,” which holds reason and emotion/affect as separate entities. In light of the long-standing dominance of such thinking across the social sciences, as well as its rational, disembodied notion of the individual, feminist theory has been

2 Conceptual Framework

sition to the discursive or representational, I recognize that “it is the discursive that very frequently makes affect powerful, makes it radical and provides the means for affect to travel” (Wetherell 2012, 19).22 From this perspective, my analysis of affect does not preclude the consideration of formations of knowledge but rather entails focusing on how “representations function affectively and how affective life is imbued with representations” (Anderson 2014, 13–14). In doing so, I recognize that affect is an integral part of architectures of power and thus is differential in itself (2004/2014, 4). As Divya P. Tolia-Kelly argues, individuals and collectivities are differently capable of affecting and being affected because of their access to social/geopolitical power […] It is thus critical to think plurally about the capacities for affecting and being affected, and for this theorization to engage with the notion that various individual capacities are differently forged, restrained, trained and embodied (2006, 215–216). Following the above argument, I aim to investigate affect in terms of its specific embodied, historical, geographical, and cultural context. A framework I have found to be particularly helpful in this regard is Margaret Wetherell’s, who suggests thinking of affect less as a force and more as a practice of “embodied meaning-making” (2012, 90). She states: “An affective practice is a figuration where body possibilities and routines become recruited or entangled together with meaning-making and with other social and material figurations. It is an organic complex in which all the parts relationally constitute each other” (ibid., 19). By defining affect as a practice, Wetherell also alludes to its continuous and processual nature, which often takes a citational form. Affect belongs fully or “originally” neither to the discursive nor the more-than-representational realm. Accordingly, feelings are not “expressed” but rather completed in discourse (2012, 21–24). How, then, does this definition of affect shape my perspective of governmentality? For one, I argue it is not in contradiction to the concept, although its interlinkages might not yet have been discussed extensively. In Foucault’s own considerations on governmentality and subjectification, affect plays at least an implicit role in that technologies of the self are usually guided by the subject’s desire “to attain a certain state of happiness” (1997a, 225). Similarly, Rose implies that the practice of self-conduct is always one where “[t]he desires, affects and bodily practices of persons get connected up with ‘expert’ ways of understanding experience, languages of judgement, norms of conduct” (1999, 92). However, so far, studies of governmentality that have taken an explicit focus on affect or emotion are rare. Interest in the topic seems to have been sparked only in the last few years, which is reflected in a small but growing number of publications (Barrios 2017; Marquardt 2016; Rudnyckyj 2011; Tucker 2016; Winkler 2020).

22

instrumental in advancing a new concept of “subjectivity [that] encompasses unconscious as well as conscious dimensions and is not abstract but embodied” (Weedon 1997, 173). Offering a similar imagery, Martin Müller proposes “that affect and emotion are the tertium quid of the social and the material, making the socio-material hold together or fall apart” (Müller 2015a, 36; emphasis in original).

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In my own approach, I consider affect and emotion as crucial to understanding some of the mechanisms and effects of government. Expanding Anderson’s (2014, 14) earlier quote, I aim to investigate how rationalities and technologies of government function affectively and how affective life is structured by regimes of government. Considering those regimes to be “imbricated” with affect and emotion, I suggest that both frequently serve as the instrumental vehicles that give governmental interventions the very momentum they need to be effective. In other words, the discrepancies in individual bodies’ capability of affecting and being affected directly correlate with how effectively certain rationalities and technologies can govern specific subjects. Despite their role in reinforcing structures of difference, affects and emotions can also mend fragmented and potentially contradictory elements of governmental regimes, for instance, by working as a bridge between coercive technologies and techniques of the self. Based on those considerations, my analysis of governmentality considers not only “rational” and verbalized dimensions of government. Instead, it pays attention to, for example, feelings of shame, which can be a powerful force of normalization that deters individuals from breaking the scripts of the “ideal” or “good migrant” (Findlay et al. 2013; see also Elias 2018; Gardiner Barber 2008; Liang 2011; MacKenzie & Forde 2009; McLaughlin 2010; Rodriguez & Schwenken 2013; Shubin et al. 2014; section 2.1.3). Another powerful form of affect is fear, which can serve as an essential catalyst for various technologies of disciplinary and particularly coercive power. Conversely, and drawing on previous scholarship on the emotional dimension of migration (e.g., Boccagni & Baldassar 2015; Brooks & Simpson 2013; D’Aoust 2013), I will also address how hope and “the promise of happiness” (Ahmed 2010) shape migrants’ subjectification and techniques of the self. At the same time, I acknowledge that the role of affect in the government of subjects and practices far exceeds one-dimensional emotional labels like the ones above. Instead, I aim to consider all forms of government as imbued with affective practice—even and especially when it exceeds the limits of one’s awareness and cannot be grasped or named. Such investigation requires not only a theoretical conceptualization but, as I will discuss in part 3.2, a specific methodological approach, including a readiness to “us[e] the [own] body as a tool in the research process” (Longhurst et al. 2008, 209; see also Dewsbury 2010, 327).

2.2.4

Three themes in the governmentality of migration

Based on the concept of governmentality that was developed over the previous sections, I will now take a look at how such a perspective can offer additional insights on issues around migration. Importantly, this section does not suggest one universal approach to the governmentality of migration. Rather, each such investigation should reflect the specific ways in which migration has been governed in different contexts across the world—which has, in recent years, already resulted in quite heterogeneous conceptual and empirical approaches (e.g., Bigo 2002; Fassin 2011; Hoang 2016; Lui 2004; Rudnyckyj 2004; Tazzioli 2015; Walters 2015). Despite this heterogeneity, however, I identify three different angles of inquiry that reveal important overarching themes in the governmentality of migration: (1) governing through the selective restriction and facil-

2 Conceptual Framework

itation of migration, (2) governing (labor) migrant subjects, and (3) governing towards particular effects of migration. While all of these themes have received attention from previous scholarship, much of which I have introduced as the first conceptual building block of the book (see section 2.1), they do not represent any preformed debates. Moreover, most of the referenced studies do not explicitly work from a perspective of governmentality. In interpreting this wide range of studies through my established conceptual lens and rearranging them under the three themes, I aim to put them in conversation with each other, reveal essential commonalities in the government of migration, and point out what a governmentality perspective can contribute to such investigations.

Governing through the selective restriction and facilitation of migration Perhaps the most obvious way of governing migration is by restricting and directing in- and outflows of migrants into and out of states or other territories. For this reason, most studies that have approached migration from a perspective of governmentality focus on the “politics of borders and boundaries, temporality and spatiality, states and bureaucracies, detention and deportation, asylum and humanitarianism” (Fassin 2011, 214). Accordingly, Martina Tazzioli defines “migration governmentality [as] the multilayered and heterogeneous set of technologies, discourses and policies concerning the production of borders and their differential functioning, and at the same time the regulation of people’s movements” (2015, xi). In line with this view, a growing number of migration scholars have researched the emergence and functioning of border regimes. The regulation and management of migration have been examined especially concerning the increasing securitization and the global war on terror (e.g., Amoore 2006; Bigo 2002; Meyer & Purtschert 2008). Much research has also focused on refugees as the people who are most affected by such regimes (Hess et al. 2017; Hess & Kasparek 2010; Lui 2004; Steuerwald 2014; Tsianos et al. 2009); at the same time, the effects of such regimes on other groups of migrants have been investigated as well (e.g., D’Aoust 2013, 2014; Gardiner Barber 2008). As some of those studies show, a governmentality perspective makes it possible to recognize single policies and practices as part of larger projects of governing. It enables us to question and contextualize the emergence of such policies in historical terms but also set it in the context of global or transnational rationalities and technologies. By conceptualizing those practices as part of regimes of migration, however, previous scholarship has pointed out the many heterogeneities, fragmentations, and contradictions that shaped them (Hoang 2016, 3; Tazzioli 2015, xix). Aside from such large-scale insights, governmentality also provides us with tools to investigate specific practical techniques employed to govern migration, from biometric border technologies (Amoore 2006; Pero & Smith 2014) to more subtle policies that foster refugees’ “voluntary return” (see also Dünnwald 2013; see also Steuerwald 2014). Thus, it draws attention to how migration is restricted not only via techniques of domination and coercion but also by influencing values, rationalities, and subjectivities to inspire individuals’ self-conduct. As this indicates, regimes that discipline and conduct migration extend well beyond the physical borders of territories.

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Furthermore, many studies have argued that in recent decades, border regimes have become increasingly sophisticated and differential: Whereas some forms of migration are being subjected to ever-growing restrictions, other practices of cross-border mobility have been openly promoted and fostered. As discussed in section 2.1.3, this change has been described as a shift from the primary restriction of migration to a practice of “migration management” (Faist 2008; Geiger & Pécoud 2012; Kalm 2012; Meyer & Purtschert 2008). The selective facilitation of migration has not only been directed towards high-skilled professionals from economies of the Global North, but it has also affected other forms of cross-border mobility. As argued in section 2.1.3, it has led to the emergence of highly restrictive regimes that, particularly so in countries throughout Asia, foster a formalized arrangement of temporary labor migration (e.g., Bélanger & Wang 2013; Elias 2018; Hoang 2016; Kaur 2009; Lindquist 2010; Xiang 2013; Ye 2014). While the above phenomena are already being addressed by critical migration scholarship, an additional governmentality lens can help illustrate how the differentiality of migration regimes has not been coincidental, but the result of specific governmental interventions. In particular, such interventions can be tied to large-scale configurations of government, such as neoliberalism and development. On this basis, the perspective can shed light on the commercialization of migration, a trend spurred by the outsourcing of previously public responsibilities to private companies but also the creation of an increasingly complex bureaucratic apparatus. Similarly, it is helpful when investigating the advance of neoliberal rationalities and technologies among state and supranational entities, such as a private “management” approach that treats migration as an economic enterprise (Geiger & Pécoud 2012; Jong 2016; Kunz 2011; Rodriguez 2010; Sørensen & Gammeltoft-Hansen 2013). However, as I argued in section 2.2.2, diagnosing the role of large governmental projects is only one aspect of a governmentality analysis, which should rather investigate the specificities, contradictions, and ruptures that shape a particular regime. This, too, is a valuable contribution to the study of migration management since it can trace the emergence of locally-specific techniques that enable and regulate selective migration flows.

Governing (labor) migrant subjects As outlined in section 2.1.2, the practices and identities of individual migrants have received considerable attention in contemporary migration research (e.g., Anthias 2008; Brah 2003; Brooks & Simpson 2013; Hoang & Yeoh 2015; Mills 2003). Here, a governmentality lens offers useful tools for grasping not only the regulation of migrants—but the very production of migrant subjectivities. As Lan Anh Hoang (2016) argues concerning her study on Vietnamese migrants in Taiwan, the securitization of borders needs to be understood not only as restricting certain migration flows but as implementing specific technologies (such as illegal status) to produce subordinate migrant subjects. Such techniques can be especially impactful on migrant laborers, who are increasingly subjected to rationalities and technologies of commercialization that aim to produce useful workers “for export” (Rodriguez 2010; see also Jones & Pardthaisong 1999; Yeates 2009).

2 Conceptual Framework

Research on this topic identifies “state strateg[ies] where labour export is actively promoted as part of national development” (ibid., 178) and, moreover, highlights the ways in which state government and private industry overlap and interact with each other (e.g., Elias 2018). This includes, for instance, the public and private education system, which may adapt the education and training of potential migrant workers to meet the needs of overseas job markets (e.g., Ortiga 2017). Probably the most crucial role, however, is played by the recruitment industry, which has been shown to implement numerous technologies aimed at producing the “ideal migrant” (Findlay et al. 2013; see also sections 2.1.2-3). Their measures geared towards generating “high quality” migrant workers go far beyond the field of professional skills but instead include profiling and training related to gender, class, ethnicity, and nationality (Gardiner Barber 2008; McLaughlin 2010; Ye 2014). Frequently, they intervene deeply in migrants’ personal lives, prompting them to manufacture specific bodily forms, habits, values, and identities (Constable 2007; Fan 2004; Liang 2011; Rodriguez & Schwenken 2013; Sharma 2006; Rudnyckyj 2004). Again, while much of the research on this topic does not work explicitly from a perspective of governmentality (for exceptions, see Hoang 2016; Rodriguez & Schwenken 2013; Rudnyckyj 2004), such a conceptual lens can provide valuable new insights. Governmentality offers a unique conceptualization of migrants’ conduct and subjectification, for instance, recognizing their attempts of character-building and self-improvement as techniques of self-government. Furthermore, as I will show in my analysis, the conduct of migrant workers and their constitution as governable subjects are not only relevant at an intimate level but fundamentally shape the formation of the migration regime at large.

Governing towards the effects of migration The third theme in the governmentality of migration does not concern the government of migration flows or migrant subjectivities per se—but rather how those forms of government are used as a tool to provoke certain social, political, or economic outcomes. This conceptual focus moves the spotlight from the governing of migration to the governing through migration. In doing so, it reveals how the facilitation, restriction, and regulation of specific forms of cross-border mobility serve as technologies to diffuse social and political tensions in migrants’ home countries and abroad (e.g., Jones & Pardthaisong 1999). Furthermore, such a research agenda focuses on the economic profit that fuels state and non-state strategies to promote labor migration. In this regard, critical studies on the migration-development nexus already demonstrate how migrant subjectivities and practices are shaped to maximize economic output while reproducing hegemonic economic and political structures (see section 2.1.3). Although the nexus has been convincingly analyzed through a variety of conceptual frameworks, including the Foucauldian terminology of “discourse,” “apparatus,” and “dispositif” (Dannecker 2009; Glick Schiller & Faist 2010; Schwertl 2016), the governmentality perspective, again, offers some additional merits. As Rahel Kunz (2011) demonstrates in her governmentality analysis of the GRT and its implementation in Mexico, this conceptual perspective moves beyond

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the forms of knowledge and emphasizes the technological and practical mechanisms of the regime. As studies on the governmentality of poverty and development (e.g., Cruikshank 1999; Ilcan & Lacey 2011; Li 2007b; Rankin 2001; Rojas 2004) show, it is vital to recognize the subtle rationalities and technologies of development inscribe themselves in subjects and their everyday practices. Hence, a research angle on the government through migration can provide profound insights on the production and conduct of migrant subjectivities—as well as those of the non-migrant population. As indicated earlier, the three themes outlined here do not represent pre-established debates or projects of government that can clearly be distinguished from one another. Instead, they represent angles of inquiry that emphasize different aspects of governing—sometimes within the same regimes. As such, those angles are not mutually exclusive but may very well overlap and complement each other during empirical research. The same applies to my analysis, which touches on each of the three themes at a different stage. However, whereas the facilitation and restriction of migration have received considerable attention from previous studies of governmentality, this study focuses specifically on the government of migrant subjectivities and the “outcomes” of their migration.

2.3

The Marketization of Migrant Labor

As stated in the previous section, the government of labor migration has increasingly been shaped by economic rationalities that redefine migrant labor as a “human resource” and a “product” to be exported to foreign labor markets. While global trends like neoliberalization and migration management are useful starting points for putting this shift into a meaningful context, the specific practices, mechanisms, and technologies that constitute it can be comprehended much more clearly if they are conceptualized as part of the formation of a market. Following my perspective on the social processes of and around migration (see part 2.1) and the theoretical foundation from which I approach them (see part 2.2), this part of the chapter introduces a third conceptual building block into my framework: One that draws on the social studies of economization and marketization, particularly so the geographies of marketization. In the following section, I will briefly outline the main theoretical premises of this relatively young research field. On that basis, the second section introduces the main theoretical concepts that will be employed in my analysis. The third section then illustrates how those concepts can be fruitfully integrated with my perspective on the governmentality of migration.

2.3.1

Economics as performative: conceptual premises

Over the past two decades, a growing number of scholars of different disciplines have proposed a new conceptual approach to understanding economic processes. Under the heading of the social studies of economization and marketization, this scholarship rejects conventional views of “the economy” as a distinct entity that emerges quite naturally out of human societies and, as such, can be distinguished from “the social” (Callon

2 Conceptual Framework

1998). Instead, it investigates the plural processes of economization: As Koray Çalışkan and Michel Callon argue, “the term ‘economization’ […] denote[s] the processes through which behaviours, organizations, institutions and, more generally, objects are constituted as being ‘economic’” (Çalışkan & Callon 2010, 2). One modality of economization that is particularly relevant for this study is the establishment of markets, or what has been termed “marketization” (ibid.). Rather than treating markets as natural entities or neutral platforms for exchange, geographers such as Marc Boeckler and Christian Berndt (2012, 203) suggest that functioning markets are always the result of profound societal transformations as well as specific investments. Accordingly, a research agenda inspired by the “geographies of marketization” (ibid.) focuses on the ways in which markets are continually generated, stabilized, ordered, and reproduced—but also how they may fail and dissolve (Ouma 2015, 22). One important theoretical pillar of that approach brings us back to the concept of performativity.23 Based on a reading of performativity as “the interweaving of ‘words’ and ‘actions’—of representations and interventions” (MacKenzie et al. 2008, 5), Michel Callon (2008) argues that economists do not describe an objective world “out there” but rather—via their theories, models, and sometimes more direct interventions—actively participate in creating that world. Based on this realization, it is necessary to critically investigate the performative constitution of large economic paradigms and regimes but also “how [specific] markets are practically performed and (re)produced as sociotechnical agencements embracing a calculated and monetarized exchange of goods and services” (Boeckler & Berndt 2012, 209). As the previous quote indicates, studies of marketization are heavily influenced by assemblage theory (e.g., Deleuze & Guattari 1987) and actor-network-theory (ANT) (e.g., Callon 1984; Latour 2005). By defining markets as “sociotechnical agencements” (Callon 2008, 319), scholars of marketization conceive of them as “a bundle of practices (structured spatial and temporal manifolds of action) and material arrangements (assemblages of material objects, persons, artefacts, organisms and things)” (Boeckler & Berndt 2012, 209). Importantly, those hybrid arrangements are not passive but instead considered to shape agency by unequally distributing the capacity to act among different social agents (Berndt & Boeckler 2011, 1060). From this conceptual perspective, markets attain stability only as a result of selective and exclusionary “framings” (Callon 2008, 321). The framing of markets includes various constructions and investments that enable the marketization of particular commodities, yet also covering up the many difficulties, conflicts, and politics that accompany those processes (Berndt 2015, 1868). When markets are constructed as seemingly natural, neutral, and coherent entities, “the destructive socioecological or exploitative labor relations into which a commodity’s production might have been embedded are black-boxed” (Ouma 2015, 36). In light of this realization, studies of marketization try to unravel the hidden social and material relations, the contradictory processes, differ-

23

Although the social sciences of economization and marketization conceptualize performativity in slightly different ways than what I proposed in chapter 2.2.3—for instance, sometimes also referring to it as “performation” (Callon 2008, 330)—the fundamental premise and meaning of the term remain unchanged.

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ent locations, stages, investments, and technologies that contribute to the making and marketization of a commodity. In this respect, they somewhat continue in the tradition of research on global commodity chains and its conceptual descendants, which retrace the linked processes or “the set of inputs that culminate[…] in [a commodity], including prior transformations, the raw materials, the transportation mechanisms, the labor input into each of the material processes, the food inputs into the labor” (Hopkins & Wallerstein 1977, 128). In their attempt to essentially “de-fetishize” commodities by making visible the hidden relations and messy conditions of their emergence, geographies of marketization also have commonalities with geographic and ethnographic research that formed around the intention to “follow the thing” (Cook 2004). At the same time, their conceptual affiliation with ANT makes studies of marketization quite distinct: Drawing on a theoretical framework that highlights the processual nature of all things, any seemingly stable and ordered market is seen as the result of a profound material, technical, spatial and political effort, which is—based on multiple exclusions and abstractions—a deeply political process. For instance, Berndt (2015, 1870) argues that framing and reframing occur via the decontextualization of marketization processes, the abstraction from their messy political details, and their reimagination as simple technical problems. Based on this insight, geographies of marketization try to “take seriously the specificities of techno-culturally assembled and institutionally situated markets, including their contingent processes of construction through everyday practice […] and their various invocations in political debate” (Muellerleile & Akers 2015, 1782).

2.3.2

Core concepts on the formatting of markets

Processes of marketization rely on social transformations across all geographical scales. At the same time, a considerable part of “[t]he investment to make markets work is […] microgeographical” (Boeckler & Berndt 2012, 203). Specifically, scholars have identified three interconnected dimensions in the framing of markets, which I will outline briefly. First, all markets revolve around the transfer of commodities in exchange for money. However, such commodities do not simply exist but need to be understood as an achievement: As Stefan Ouma explains, “for something to become a commodity, it needs to be qualified and rendered a tradable object in the first place” (2015, 32). Thus, markets rely on the conversion of entities into detached and calculable commodities. While there are various processes that enable commodification, the following three are particularly valuable for my analysis: a) Objectification: Perhaps the most basic step towards commodification is the transformation of entities into objects. Objectification causes those entities to become “detached” from the complex relations and circumstances that shape their emergence (ibid., 35). The abstraction of goods from any contexts that might make them unique is a key step of what Çalışkan and Callon call “pacifying goods,” a process that transforms them “from entangled beings into passive things” (2010, 6). Although this passivity is essential to commodification, it does not mean that entities with

2 Conceptual Framework

pacified agency have no capacity to act at all. Instead, the term suggests that their “qualities […] are stabilised so as to prevent the emergence of unexpected qualities that might disrupt calculations as to their performance or value” (Henry & Roche 2016, 98). For this reason, another process that is central to the pacification of goods is their stabilization—or “standardization” (Callon & Muniesa 2005, 1235). b) Standardization: A commodity always needs to be measurable and valuable “according to specific collective modes of qualification” (Ouma 2015, 32). However, those modes are usually subjected to conflicting ideas and interests, which means that processes of evaluation are affected by multiple uncertainties and ambiguities. Therefore, every commodity requires “processes of standardization that transform it into an entity described in both abstract and precise terms, certified and guaranteed by a series of textual and material devices” (Çalışkan & Callon 2010, 7–8). By allowing entities to become stable, tradable things with “objective” traits, processes of standardization thus play a significant role in their qualification and the formation of their market value. c) Singularization: A third process essential to commodification is singularization. As Ouma argues, an entity “not only has to be detached from its original context of production and owner but also reattached to its buyer; that is, it has to enter the world of the buyer and be accepted as a legitimate, useful, and/or signifying good” (Ouma 2015, 36). By constructing specific properties that define a good as singular and uniquely matched to consumers’ demands, this step occurs simultaneously to processes of objectification (Callon & Muniesa 2005, 1234). Especially in postFordist markets, in which the large number of similar commodities leads to high competitive pressures, singularization has become a vital step of commodification (ibid.). The processes described above do not occur by themselves but rely on calculative agencies, which determine the factors that define and qualify a good—and thereby turn it into a measurable and quantifiable commodity. Hence, marketization is far from a neutral process, but one that relies on a sharp “ontological divide” (Çalışkan & Callon 2010, 5) between, on the one hand, entities that are pacified and measurable so that they can be transferred across space and between communities (Henry & Roche 2016, 98), and, on the other hand, agencies “that are able to engage in operations of calculation and judgment” (ibid., 6). In other words, markets are profoundly asymmetrical spaces (Ouma 2015, 39–40). This becomes most visible in instances when commodities and calculative agencies meet, which can be seen as a third dimension of marketization: the formatting of market encounters. Market encounters include not only the moment when commodities are actually exchanged but also the spaces where different calculative agencies meet throughout the entire process of marketization—be it at the stages of conception, production, circulation, or consumption (Çalışkan & Callon 2010, 14–16). Due to this heterogeneity of circumstances, market encounters are formatted not only by participating bodies but by a variety of technical and organizational devices. As tangible situations, which “ground[…] the processes of objectification, qualification, calculation and detach-

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ment in the situated performances of market agents” (Ouma 2015, 43), those encounters are important empirical access points to investigate the practical formation of markets.

2.3.3

Marketization and the governmentality of migrant labor

A significant amount of current marketization scholarship focuses on inanimate commodities like natural resources, food items, and products. However, recent studies have shifted attention to the commodification and marketization of living beings or the services they provide, including “the industrialization of the life sciences” (Çalışkan & Callon 2010, 6) and the marketization of biomedical practices and reproductive services (Schurr & Militz 2018). Patterns of migration have become a new—albeit still rare—topic of investigation as well, be it concerning the marketization of education services as a factor for student migration (Findlay et al. 2017) or “the economization of migrant labor” (Pero & Smith 2014). As argued in sections 2.1.3 and 2.2.4, migrant labor is increasingly being commodified and constructed as an export product, while practices of migration have become the object of management efforts to render them more “productive.” Based on the third conceptual building block outlined here, my analysis approaches those trends not only in terms of migrants’ commodification but also as part of a greater effort of marketization. While concepts of neoliberalism, privatization, and migration management have their use in recognizing broader societal transformations, the theoretical lens of marketization studies points to the microgeographical reframings and investments necessary to accomplish such changes—right down to the level of the subject. For instance, Berndt (2015) employs concepts of marketization to problematize how individuals are increasingly redefined as responsible market subjects. He argues that “individual risktaking and entrepreneurial behavior [are incentivized by] templates, frameworks and programs […], all designed to enable the marketization of various policy fields by shifting the attention from the market more generally to the individual market subject” (ibid., 1869). In their focus on strategies, programs, and techniques geared towards achieving certain transformations that also affect the formation of subjects, studies of economization and marketization show important parallels to the research agenda of governmentality. Furthermore, scholarship on both marketization and governmentality ultimately aims to deconstruct seemingly coherent formations (such as regimes, markets, and categories like the “state” or the “economy”) by revealing the multiple and contested practices, techniques, and material investments required for their generation. Although the theoretical foundations of marketization studies—with assemblage theory’s emphasis on the necessary effort and simultaneous transience of assemblages and ANT’s broad conceptualization of “agency” (Latour 2005, 51)—differ significantly from Foucauldian theory, they are not necessarily incompatible. On the contrary, similarities between the theoretical frameworks are increasingly being pointed out (e.g., Müller 2015a, 36; Legg 2011; Walters 2012, 48).24 Furthermore, while some ontological and epistemological dis24

For similar approaches that investigate the formation of commodities or markets from a perspective of governmentality, see Gibbon & Ponte 2008; Miller & Rose 1990.

2 Conceptual Framework

crepancies between those approaches might remain unresolved, such friction can also be productive and ultimately enriching. On this basis, I argue that marketization scholarship offers a valuable expansion to my conceptualization of governmentality. For instance, it draws attention to the ways in which particular rationalities and technologies that govern Nepali migration have advanced the formation and stabilization of a transnational market around migrant labor. Furthermore, the studies of marketization enable me to comprehend and dissect those particular techniques of governing and mechanisms of commodification with a level of specificity that would otherwise be impossible. At the same time, the perspective of governmentality remains vital in my analysis, too, as it shows how those technologies are geared towards governing people’s conduct and thereby constitute migrant subjectivities. While Nepali migrant labor may have been marketized, it is only through the lens of governmentality that these commodities can be simultaneously conceptualized as subjects, who are as much governed by coercive forms of power as they are by technologies of the self.

2.4

Assembling the Conceptual Building Blocks

As stated earlier, each of the theoretical concepts and research insights discussed throughout this chapter represents an essential part of my conceptual framework. Based on the detailed insights collected so far, the roles these different perspectives play in my analysis can be summarized as follows: The most basic conceptual building block is my view of Nepali labor migration against the backdrop of a globalizing economy and the rise of transnational migrant labor regimes. I recognize those recent societal transformations as deeply unequal and differential in terms of both the access to specific forms of transnational mobility and workers’ participation in (and benefits from) them. Inspired by the mobility turn, my investigation does not dwell on the why of labor migration but rather aims to address the how, thereby departing significantly from a majority of earlier research on Nepali migration. In particular, I will focus on those parts of the migration regime that serve as an infrastructure of migration, while remaining aware of the increasing role of privatization, management, and development approaches in this field. One of the crucial insights from previous scholarship in this field is that the “migrant” is not a neutral category—but one that is constructed based on multiple intersecting markers of identity and difference. This continuous (re)constitution of the migrant subject is one of several processes that can be understood far more precisely from the theoretical perspective of governmentality. By analyzing Nepali migration through a governmentality lens, I will focus on the ways in which the different rationalities and technologies that operate via the infrastructure of migration do not only enable practices of migration but are geared towards governing them. Thanks to Foucault’s definition of government, my analysis critically investigates both coercive modes of conduct and more subtle forms of government that inspire technologies of the self. As a result, I recognize aspiring migrants as neither entirely free actors nor passive victims of an exploitative industry or state. Instead, they

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may simultaneously be constrained by external conditions and actively participate in (re)producing those very conditions. Rather than juxtaposing a structural view against the study of individual migrants (which some migration scholarship does), I understand the regime of Nepali labor migration as produced and negotiated precisely through migrants’ technologies of the self and, thus, the constitution of migrant subjectivity. In other words, it is by investigating the rationalities and technologies of governing Nepali migration at large that I will unpack the intimate processes of becoming a “migrant.” In response to questions and challenges I encountered during my research, I specified and expanded my conceptualization of governmentality concerning its spatial and scalar implications, its embodied, performative, and affective dimensions, and its relevance to (the study of) migration regimes. For instance, I regard techniques of government as always manifesting in locally specific ways, yet also acknowledge their entanglement with configurations of global scale, such as colonialism, development, and neoliberalism. Drawing on feminist scholarship that emphasizes the political relevance of everyday practice and the body as a site of power, my definition of governmentality goes far beyond the strategies and programs formally crafted by an administrational apparatus. Instead, it recognizes performativity, emotions, and affect as important dimensions of government, which frequently serve as essential vehicles that render particular rationalities and techniques of governing effective. Concerning the governmentality of migration, my conceptual approach pays particular attention to the selective facilitation of migration, the conduct of migrant subjects, and the instrumentalization of migration for the sake of governing other sociopolitical domains. As a final addition to the conceptual framework of the book (see Figure 1), I investigate how the Nepali migration regime advances the formation of a transnational market around migrant labor. Based on conceptual tools from the geographies of marketization, I particularly focus on techniques of commodification, the role of evaluative and calculative agencies, and the formatting of market encounters. By combining these conceptual lenses, I aim to reveal how central rationalities and technologies simultaneously govern migrant subjects and enable their transnational marketization.

Figure 1: Conceptual framework.

(Source: I. Lindemann & H. Uprety 2020).

2 Conceptual Framework

Although this conceptual framework, which is visualized above, is rooted in a wide range of academic debates, the conceptual tools and terms that are applied in my analysis are deliberate and straightforward. At its core, this terminology builds on the concept of governmentality, from its general definition of government to the conceptualization of fragmented regimes and the distinction between rationalities and technologies. In particular, it centers on the subject—or, more precisely, migrants’ subjectification, technologies of the self, and forms of counter-conduct. Additionally, this conceptual toolkit is expanded in three main ways: First, it is complemented by a vocabulary that identifies large-scale regimes of government, including colonialism, development, and neoliberalism, while simultaneously remaining open to modes of governing that are so locally specific that I might not (yet) have a name for them. Secondly, it employs concepts that reveal the performative, emotional, and affective dimensions of governmentality. Thirdly, it incorporates insights and terminology from the studies of marketization—such as a view of markets as performative processes that result from significant efforts of “framing,” including processes of commodification, the emergence of calculative and evaluative agencies, and the formatting of market encounters. As stated in the introduction to this book, my research has been guided by the question of how Nepali labor migration has been governed, particularly how migrant subjects are being generated, conducted, and marketized while passing through the infrastructure of migration. Building on the conceptual framework and the terminology introduced throughout the chapter, that general interest can be broken down into the following specific objectives: a) Investigate the practical tools and technologies that have been deployed to govern aspiring labor migrant subjects as they pass through the Nepali infrastructure of migration. Identify the underlying rationalities and other forms of knowledge that inform those governmental interventions, and the resulting relationship between techniques of coercive power and migrants’ self-conduct. b) Track how Nepali labor migration has been rendered technical and become the object of governmental rationalities by retracing the influence of global and regional formations of power, as well as their reinforcement, transformation, or disruption by locally specific configurations. c) Grasp the material, performative, and embodied dimensions of those technologies, and the ways in which governmental schemes are not only planned but realized in everyday practice. d) Understand how those forms of governing commodify migrant subjects, format market encounters, and reproduce international calculations of value; and thereby function as mechanisms of the marketization of Nepali migrant labor. e) Consider the ambivalences, contradictions, and competitions between different rationalities and technologies of different contexts and scopes, as well as migrants’ practices of counter-conduct, by which they subvert particular forms of governing.

Each of the above objectives reflects a different analytical dimension that will be explored during my analysis. Ultimately, each of them is essential to understanding the

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generation and government of Nepali migrant subjects and Nepali labor migration at large.

3 Methodological Approaches towards an Ethnography of Government

As the conceptual framework developed in the previous chapter continually evolved over the course of my research, it is closely intertwined with my methodological approach. For this reason, it is essential to allow sufficient time and space to explain the specific research context, methodological paradigms, and analytical tools that shaped this approach. At its core, my research consisted of two parts: (1) ethnographic fieldwork and (2) the collection of complementary documents and material from third parties. The ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in different locations in central and western Nepal (see below) took place in three field visits of altogether six months over the span of three years (2015-2018). The research settings included recruitment agencies, informal brokers, orientation training centers, skills training providers, state and civil society institutions, and a community of returned migrants and their families. Research material was generated from a wide range of sources, including audio-recorded interviews, photographs, fieldnotes, as well as audio and video recordings taken during participant observation. Furthermore, I collected a significant amount of third-party material—ranging from legislative texts, informational brochures, and teaching manuals to television commercials, public service announcements (PSA), and music videos (see list of “Cited primary sources” at the end of the book). The presentation of my methodological approach in this chapter is divided into three main steps. In part one, I will define the geographical and institutional contexts in which I conducted fieldwork. In part two, I will outline the ethnographic research paradigm and practice of generating data that laid the methodological foundation for my research: In particular, I will discuss my perspective on situated knowledge production and my own positionality, and retrace how my iterative-inductive approach led me towards conducting a multi-sensory ethnography. In part three, I will focus on the specific methods I used to analyze the generated and collected research material—which were, firstly, a discourse analysis of textual and visual material; and, secondly, multisensory and autoethnographic techniques of analysis. Thirdly, I will show how I integrated those method sets by drawing on Foucault’s genealogical method.

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3.1

Identifying the Research Context

While many of the insights from the book are relevant to the Nepali migration regime at large, my empirical research focused on a particular form of migration, which is socalled “foreign employment” (baideshik rojgar) in overseas locations. Thus, it did not explicitly include migration to India. Although India has been the primary destination of Nepali migrant workers for centuries and is still estimated to be the country hosting the largest number of Nepalis today (Sharma & Thapa 2013, 5-6), there are a number of reasons that set it apart from foreign employment in other, overseas locations (see also part 1.1). For one, the open border between both countries, which renders migration to India largely unseen and unregulated by government authorities, means that the practice does not play a significant role in the state’s general strategy of governing migration. Furthermore, migration to India is often seasonal and mainly facilitated by a separate, often kinship-based brokerage network that sets it apart from Nepal’s formal migration industry (Bruslé 2008; Sharma 2009, 2018; Thieme 2006). Particularly when it comes to questions of governmentality, then, Nepali migration to India is quite different from the migration practices at the center of this study: These practices are defined and officially regulated by the Foreign Employment Act (DoFE 2007; 2019), while much of their practical implementation is facilitated by a state-licensed but privatelyrun recruitment industry.1 As stated in the introduction to this book, the most common destinations for this type of foreign employment are Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other GCC countries (MOLE 2018, 58–59). Based on the foundational research questions of the study (see part 1.2), my empirical work centered on the infrastructure of Nepali migration—the network of institutions and practices that facilitate and regulate migration practices, particularly during the pre-departure stage. This infrastructure comprises a wide range of industries and services, including medical centers, insurance providers, and travel bureaus. However, my project focused on those institutional contexts I identified as most impactful on the pre-departure experiences of migrant workers: the Nepali government and its public bodies, the licensed recruitment industry, the network of unregistered and local brokers, foreign employers (as far as encounters with them took place in Nepal), pre-departure orientation training centers, technical and vocational training providers, nongovernmental organizations, and, of course, migrant candidates, migrant returnees, and their personal communities. While the third-party material I collected was not limited to a particular geographical region in Nepal (see section 3.2.2), my own empirical material was generated and collected at three specific locations: Kathmandu Valley, the metropolitan city Pokhara and the rural municipality Gajuri. Located in the province Bagmati, Kathmandu Valley

1

Based on this definition, there are a few more migrant destinations that are not included in my research, particularly so South Korea and Japan. Since foreign employment in those countries is being organized bilaterally by public authorities without any or limited direct involvement of private recruiters (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 87–88), it represents an exception in the Nepali migration regime.

3 Methodological Approaches towards an Ethnography of Government

hosts not only Nepal’s national capital Kathmandu but also the metropolitan cities Lalitpur and Bhaktapur. Although each of them represents a separate district, they have increasingly turned into one urban agglomeration, particularly so the twin cities Kathmandu and Lalitpur. Home to a total population of at least 2.5 million people (CBS 2012, 40), Kathmandu Valley is not only Nepal’s political center but also the country’s economic and social hub. This is particularly true for the Nepali infrastructure of migration, which is highly centralized—in terms of not only transportation infrastructure and official administration but also the private recruitment industry and training facilities. For this reason, most of my research among those institutions was conducted in Kathmandu Valley as the place where the most powerful technologies of governing migration emerge from and are implemented. Additionally, I conducted research in Pokhara, specifically among the local infrastructure of migration—recruitment agencies, orientation training centers, and skill training facilities. Located about 200 kilometers west of Kathmandu, Pokhara is the second-largest city in Nepal. Home to a population of around 400,000 people, Pokhara Metropolitan City (mahanagarpalika) also serves as the capital of the province Gandaki and the headquarters of Kaski District (Pokhara Metropolitan City 2020). Compared to other cities across Nepal, it boasts a reasonably good transport infrastructure, including one of the few airports in the country, and is relatively well-linked to Kathmandu. For those and other reasons, it has become a major regional hub for aspiring migrants, particularly those from Nepal’s Western provinces. At the time of my research, it was home to a at least eight licensed recruitment agency branch offices and a small industry of professional skills and orientation training centers (DoFE 2020). My ethnographic research among (returned and sometimes recurring) migrants and their communities was primarily conducted in Gajuri, a rural municipality (gaunpalika) located in the south of Dhading District, which belongs to the province Bagmati. At the time of the 2011 census, what was then known as Gajuri Village Development Committee (VDC) was home to a population of about 10,000 people (Gajuri Rural Municipality 2020). Following Nepal’s 2017 federal restructuring, which led to the merging of Gajuri VDC with the neighboring VDCs Pida and Kiranchok, the newly formed rural municipality Gajuri (Gajuri gaunpalika) has been reported to have a population of 27,000 (ibid.). Gajuri is located only about 70 kilometers west of Kathmandu, which makes it a comparatively well-linked area despite its largely rural character. Despite its proximity to Kathmandu, Gajuri still boasts a thriving local migration industry, consisting mainly of unregistered brokers. While reliable numbers on Gajuri’s migrant population are not available, census data on Dhading as a whole reveal that 6.7 percent of the district’s population (about 22,500 out of 336,000 residents) are currently abroad (CBS 2018, 13/21). An important reason why I chose Gajuri as a location for ethnographic fieldwork was my personal embeddedness in the area, as well as the research network I had already established there. As I will discuss in more detail in section 3.2.1, this personal background enabled me to maintain my earlier contacts with (returnee) migrants and their families, with whom I had done interviews from 2012 onwards. Moreover, it gave me the invaluable opportunity to interview unregistered brokers, whom I found extremely difficult to access in contexts where I did not have this personal connection.

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As with any empirical research approach, the thematic and geographical focus outlined above comes with certain exclusions and blind spots. Among them, the following limitations appear particularly important to me: Since I conducted research among such a wide range of different institutional contexts, none of those contexts is being given the detailed attention they might deserve individually. For instance, my investigation does not provide an in-depth ethnographic study of unregistered broker networks, which, for example, would have required me to include far more rural and remote areas of Nepal. Due to the centralization of the official migration infrastructure, it stands to assume that unregistered intermediary networks in Nepal’s highly remote areas, such as far eastern and western provinces and the southern Terai, do not only play an essential role the recruitment process but possibly follow their own rules of government in ways that differ from relatively well-connected areas like Gajuri and Pokhara. Moreover, this assumption applies not only to intermediary networks but to migration practices at large: Since the emergence of social practices and forms of knowledge is always profoundly influenced by unique local circumstances, aspiring migrants’ experiences when passing through the infrastructure of migration can differ significantly depending on their locality. Naturally, then, the empirical data I generated and gathered in Kathmandu, Gajuri, and Pokhara cannot account for the full range of techniques by which migration has been governed across different localities in Nepal. Particularly concerning migrant communities and informal intermediary networks, my analysis should thus be primarily understood as an exemplary insight into the specific structures of Gajuri and Dhading. However, my research among the remaining infrastructure does cover a significant range of locations and institutions, since most of the formal recruitment industry, technical and vocational education programs, and orientation training providers are located in Kathmandu Valley and Pokhara. By additionally drawing on audio, video, and textual material that reflects state government actions and nationwide media broadcasts, my research thus provides a solid foundation for more comprehensive conclusions about the Nepali migration regime at large.

3.2

Ethnographic Research Approach and Practice

After defining my research context both in thematic and geographic terms, I will now outline my practice of generating and collecting research material and illustrate how this practice has been grounded in an ethnographic and feminist approach to research and positionality. In short, ethnographic research may be summarized as a style of social research that is conducted not primarily “under conditions created by the researcher—such as […] highly structured interview situations” (Hammersley & Atkinson 2007, 3) but in situations of everyday life. Furthermore, ethnographic research material is typically gathered and generated from a wide range of sources, including participant observation and informal interactions. Instead of relying on a “fixed and detailed research design specified at the start” (ibid.), ethnography tends to be relatively unstructured and follows an inductive approach. In favor of in-depth, qualitative research insights, the scope of

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ethnographic research is often small, although this does not necessarily exclude work on larger geographical scales or at multiple locations (e.g., Marcus 1995). Rather than focusing on quantification and statistical analysis, ethnography thus offers in-depth perspectives on “meanings, functions, and consequences of human actions and institutional practices” (Hammersley & Atkinson 2007, 3). Over the past two decades, ethnographic approaches have become increasingly popular across the social sciences, particularly so in geography (e.g., Crang & Cook 2007; Herbert 2000; Megoran 2006; Müller 2012; Schurr 2012; Verne 2012a; for an overview, see Watson & Till 2010, 122–125). As Müller (2012, 183) observes on both anglophone and German-language scholarship, geographic approaches to ethnography are often more structured and narrowly focused on specific questions or research contexts than those of neighboring disciplines. While the most basic premises of ethnography (as outlined above) have become increasingly accepted in geography, several aspects of the methodology have received less attention but are of profound relevance to my work. For this reason, the following section discusses my approach to situated knowledge production and my positionality as a researcher. On that basis, section two gives an overview of my iterative-inductive research practice, the different types of material I generated and collected during this process, and the main methods I employed to that end.

3.2.1

Situated knowledge production and positionality

In light of the rising popularity of ethnographic methodology, it is important to emphasize that ethnography is not another set of methods that can simply be “added” to an existing research plan. Instead, it needs to be recognized as a collection of comprehensive paradigms that shape the entire research practice and redefine the very meaning of scientific knowledge. While early ethnography was based on a modernist and realist imagination of “culture,” which saw ethnographers “immersing” themselves into a “stable external social reality that can be recorded by a stable, objective, scientific observer” (Denzin 1997, 31), the past decades have brought a profound shift in the discipline. In fact, much of the rejection of realist and objectivist assumptions, which has rippled through the social sciences since the early 1990s, emerged from ethnographic and feminist debates. Today, a post-positivist research approach—arguing that there is no such thing as a “neutral gaze” and that research always takes place through the researcher’s own biased lens, which is shaped by his or her previous experiences, personal views, and multiple blind spots—has become increasingly common in the social sciences. However, its actual implications regarding the situatedness of all knowledge and the researcher’s positionality are often not explicitly considered. Since these implications profoundly impacted how I conducted my research and analysis, I will discuss them in the following sections.

Ethnography as a subjective and relational research practice Compared to more conventional social science approaches, a contemporary ethnographic methodology entails several profound shifts in perspective on the subjectivity and relationality of research, three of which I will outline here.

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First, ethnography considers not only the interpretation of produced research material to be subjective—but also the very production of that material. Thus, there is no such thing as a neutral collection of raw ethnographic “data:” Since ethnographic work “is more a practice of discovery than an ‘objective’ form of reporting” (Watson & Till 2010, 126), every embodied, positioned researcher actively and subjectively generates that “data.” Unlike other methodologies, ethnography acknowledges that every research project is defined by the researcher’s interpretive and subjective lens from its very inception. There is also an important temporal dimension to this acknowledgment, which I will return to later when outlining my iterative-inductive research approach (see section 3.2.2). Secondly, the production of ethnographic knowledge needs to be understood as an interactive and relational process. In other words, my inability as a researcher to “immerse” myself fully in the research context is due to not only my own subjectivity but also the interaction and relationship with those who participated in the research (Pink 2001, 20). Defining ethnographic knowledge as co-generated by both researchers and research participants alike, Ouma suggests that “ethnographic research needs to be understood not only as research about social relations, but also as one mediated through social relations” (2015, 81; emphasis in original). This redefinition also explains how my positionality as a researcher is determined not exclusively by my own abilities and points of view—but to a significant degree by how others in the research context perceive me. Thirdly, the above positionality and relationality of ethnographic research are not considered weaknesses but embraced as valuable assets. As Mike Crang and Ian Cook argue, the aim of ethnography is not to “separate its ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ components, but to talk about it as a means of developing intersubjective understandings between researcher and researched” (2007, 37; emphasis in original). It is here where the concept of participant observation—the practice of participating in the research context and simultaneously assuming an analytical or detached view—comes in as the cornerstone of ethnographic research. Considering that “in many cases, interviewees cannot report upon what they ‘do’—for ‘doings’ are often unconscious or unarticulated practices” (Watson & Till 2010, 129), it is vital for ethnographers to not only witness those practices but to join research participants in experiencing, feeling, and making sense of their world. Furthermore, the term suggests that the researcher always participates in (re)making the localities and social interactions they study. For instance, Sara Pink argues “that the ethnographer is co-participating in practices through which place is constituted with those who simultaneously participate in her or his research, and […] becomes at the same time […] an agent in its production” (2009, 64).2 2

Thus, participant observation does not necessarily suggest that the researcher has to participate actively in all of their research partners’ behaviors. In the case of my study, I certainly did not begin working as a recruitment agent or applied as a candidate for foreign employment. Instead, the approach is based on the realization that even with the lowest possible degree of interference, the researcher always becomes part of the social dynamic and thereby affects the research setting. Thus, there is no such thing as mere “observation” in social research. At the same time, the actual degrees of “participation” and “observation” in specific ethnographies vary greatly depending on the respective topic, researched community, and the researcher’s positionality and intentions.

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Thus, I recognize that through my presence, I did not only interact and engage with my research participants but ultimately changed them and thus left my personal impact on the “field.” Seen through the lens of ethnographic methodology, my own positionality as a situated social being was not only unavoidable but proved to be instrumental to the depth and quality of my analysis. As I will discuss in section 3.2.2, my subjective and embodied experiences became an essential source of empirical insights. However, such an approach does not have to lead to a relativist standpoint, which discards any benchmarks of scientific knowledge. In my opinion, the opposite is the case: Acknowledging my inevitable personal bias rather than quietly maintaining the illusion of an impossible objectivity is precisely what enables me to discuss my research methods, analytical arguments, and conclusions transparently and to succeed in “the struggle to produce inter-subjective truths” (Crang & Cook 2007, 13–14).

Personal field access and positionality My approach to knowledge as situated and dependent on the researcher’s positionality draws not only on ethnographic but also on feminist methodology. Over the past decades, feminist scholars have been instrumental in dismantling the positivist imagination of scientific knowledge as “neutral.” In particular, they have criticized that the—often messy—circumstances under which research is conducted and the researcher’s role in this process are all too often swept under the rug (e.g., England 1994; Katz 1994; McDowell 1992). Taking those arguments seriously, I regard it as vital to reflect openly on my positionality and the specific circumstances under which this study has come about. Such reflexivity, defined as the continuing self-evaluation and active acknowledgment of one’s positionality and its potential effects on research, has grown increasingly common in qualitative social scholarship (Berger 2015, 220). In my opinion, it is thus integral to a sound methodological approach to actively disrupt any claim to universality by situating my research insights and discuss the context of their production as transparently and comprehensibly as possible. On the other hand, I recognize that reflexivity is no panacea and can only ever be an aspirational goal, since a full comprehension of one’s positionality and limitations is impossible to achieve (Rose 1997, 306). As for this study, my personal background has affected not only my general approach to the topic (see section 1.2) but also the choice of some of my research locations: As my husband is Nepali, we have family and an extensive network of relatives and acquaintances in southern Dhading (specifically Gajuri) and Kathmandu Valley. The topic of labor migration is personal to me, since many of our friends, neighbors, and relatives have gone into foreign employment or worked in the migration industry. It was this affiliation that originally led me to conduct research on Nepali labor migration for my Master thesis in 2012. Focusing on migrants’ identities and their transnational practices at that time, I interviewed altogether 46 migrants (all male) and members of their families, some of whom I have remained in contact with ever since. Although much of the time I spent in Gajuri over the past decade cannot officially be labeled “research,” this book would not have been possible without it. In particular, the personal relationships and networks established prior to (and during) my research were vital for its success.

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This is particularly true for my work among the recruitment industry, which has—as a result of increasing international scrutiny and criticism—grown highly skeptical of curious outsiders. Thus, I am deeply grateful to those individuals who accompanied me, advocated for me, and opened doors that would have otherwise remained shut. Similarly, the trust of my relatives, acquaintances, and all members of the local community of migrants, and their willingness to let our personal interactions become part of my research have been invaluable to this book. Their cooperation and support are all the more remarkable because my positionality as a white, Western European foreigner can—despite my personal and family involvements—at best be described as ambivalent: Especially as a researcher who employs postcolonial positions in her work, the irony of my own “overseas fieldwork” has not escaped me. This conundrum of reproducing existing power asymmetries, which has been critically discussed in feminist scholarship and beyond (e.g., Des Chenes 2007; Katz 1994), is something I have not been able to resolve conclusively but have tried to manage with as much respect and reciprocity as possible. In grappling with my positionality and purpose in working on this topic, I have also been guided by Crang and Cook’s reminder that despite our best intentions, the ethics of our everyday research encounters may often still end up less pure and straightforward than we hoped (2007, 31–32). In light of such ambivalences, I argue that my positionality as a researcher needs to be made sense of through the lens of intersectionality (e.g., Carstensen-Egwuom 2014; see also section 2.2.3). Acknowledging that my body, behavior, and relationships are simultaneously read through different categorizations of identity and difference, which may either reinforce or counteract each other, I will discuss some of those categories and how they might have affected my research. Beginning with the racialization of my body, I have no doubt that my “whiteness operate[d] as a position of structural advantage and privilege[,] […] signaled not only by discourses of normalcy, but also those of cleanliness, beauty, freedom, purity, and morality” (Peake 2009, 247; see also Bonnett & Nayak 2003; Faria & Mollett 2016). As such, it granted me access to specific settings and forms of knowledge. At the same time, it also stood in the way of my research by visibly marking me as different and “out of place.” Particularly in recruitment contexts with many participants and bystanders, I was frequently assumed to be a foreign journalist or human rights worker. Since international media and human rights organizations have had a high track record of getting Nepali brokers and agents “into trouble,” this mislabeling led to a considerable degree of (at least initial) doubt and suspicion against me.3 It also created a rift between me and the migrant candidates who attended such events and with whom I had had no previous acquaintance. While some of them signaled curiosity and surprise about my being there and my speaking Nepali, our sparse interactions in those settings give an indication of the distance and sense of distrust many must have felt. A particularly interesting and challenging dynamic occasionally occurred during job interviews or practical selections,

3

However, it sometimes also led agents at those events to take me “under their wings” and take it on themselves to educate me about aspects of labor migration they believed I needed to know.

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when some foreign company executive there to oversee the events evidently recognized me as a foreign “Westerner” and allied themselves with me against “those Nepalis.”4 In all of the above scenarios, my appearance as a roughly thirty-year-old cis woman certainly played an important role as well. Most recruitment and training settings turned out to be male-dominated spaces, which increased my sense of being “out of place” and occasionally meant that I had to counteract being patronized or not taken seriously. At the same time, my gender identity and appearance seemed to help me connect with migrants and their families at home, particularly so if those migrants or family members were women as well. Often, this was the case because I entered most of those scenes not entirely as a female “foreigner” but shifted into the positionality of a local “daughter-in-law” (buhari). Being framed in this way and being able to converse with people in Nepali helped me significantly to create more open and trusting interviews and, in many cases, relationships.5 Another factor that significantly affected my positionality and ability to conduct research was being accompanied by a male relative who introduced me: In more than half of all research interactions, I was not alone, but in the company of my husband Amir or my sister-in-law’s husband Sitaram, who has several personal ties to the recruitment industry. This was mostly the case when establishing initial contacts, whereas I tended to be by myself on subsequent visits. However, this meant that a large number of interviews was conducted with three people present—a constellation I found to carry many benefits: In interview situations with participants we had just met or did not know well, the participant’s shared gender with one of us was instrumental in establishing a sense of trust and greatly aided communication: Particularly when touching on difficult or personal topics, our interview partners tended to focus their attention on the interviewer of the same gender, thus apparently drawing on a perceived commonality. In this way, my conversations became significantly closer with those migrants, migrant family members, orientation trainers, and other research participants who happened to be female. However, since the recruitment industry is such a male-dominated field, having a male research partner proved instrumental in facilitating the kinds of in-depth interviews we were often fortunate enough to have. At the very least, it seemed to me that the dynamic of three people, compared to a back-and-forth between two counterparts, helped create a far more natural setting and flow of conversation. To be sure, the depth of interviews and observations varied significantly based on other factors as well. For instance, a particularly important factor was time: Whereas I attended many recruitment agencies, orientation training centers, skill training facilities, and other institutions only once for a few hours, there were other contexts I returned to many times over the course of three years. Certainly, it was the continuous exchange with those few institutions and individuals that provided me with the most comprehensive, profound, and valuable research insights.

4 5

During some of those situations, I also shifted into the role of the “translator,” which, I found, came with multiple ethical challenges. Occasionally, my role as the mother of a young child also played into such interactive dynamics (particularly when my contacts were young parents themselves), but since my son was not with me during most research interactions, its importance was limited.

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3.2.2

An iterative-inductive journey towards multi-sensory research

As argued in the previous section, I do not regard my empirical research as a neutral collection of “raw data” but rather emphasize that the very production of research material has been a subjective process. This acknowledgment is even more essential because I deliberately took an iterative-inductive approach during my research, “in which data collection, analysis and writing are not discrete phases but inextricably linked” (O’Reilly 2012, 30). Although it is not always made explicit, an iterative-inductive process is usually integral to ethnographic work. As Pink emphasizes, “the idea that there are real rigid distinctions between fieldwork and analysis, making them separate stages of an ethnographic research process, would be misguiding” (2009, 119). But how has this approach impacted my experiences and methods of research? In order to answer this question, I will first provide a rough outline of my iterative-inductive process and then detail the exact techniques I used to produce and gather my research material. On this basis, I will focus specifically on the two main components of my ethnographic toolset, which were interviews and a visual and multi-sensory approach.

Research as an iterative-inductive spiral As stated in the introduction to the book (see part 1.2), the early stages of my work were highly exploratory and inductive. While I began the project from a basic theoretical position of critical migration studies and governmentality, even this general outlook had resulted from the earlier research I had done for my Master thesis. Accordingly, most of the conceptual framework of this study was developed in reaction to insights and challenges that came up gradually as my research progressed: After a first exploratory phase of ethnographic fieldwork in early 2015, during which I led initial interviews and worked on establishing a research network, I returned to Germany to investigate further how the perspective of governmentality could help me make sense of those vast insights. I began to narrow down my empirical research focus and considered what additional conceptual tools would be required to that end. Building on this foundation, I conducted my second empirical phase in autumn of 2015, which turned out to be a challenging experience due to the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes that had hit Nepal earlier in the year. In subsequently analyzing the material gathered during those two phases, I gradually redefined and deepened my outlook profoundly, both in conceptual and methodological terms. Equipped with a much more specific toolkit and vision, I conducted my last and most in-depth phase of fieldwork in early 2018. Once back in Germany, the subsequent comprehensive analysis led me to expand and develop my conceptual framework even further. I then moved into a practice of written reflection and, ultimately, the final stage of writing and continually deepening my analysis. As is visualized in Figure 2, these phases of the iterative-inductive spiral corresponded roughly to my stays in Germany and the fieldwork locations in Nepal.

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Figure 2: Iterative-inductive process of ethnographic research, conceptual development, and analysis between Germany and Nepal.

(Source: I. Lindemann & H. Uprety 2020).

As the figure indicates, my generation and collection of research material, on the one hand, and its processing and analysis on the other, were not entirely distinct stages. For instance, my analysis never stopped during active research; and conversely, I continued my empirical work even when I was not in Nepal by collecting a significant amount of material from online sources and leading several follow-up interviews by phone—thus spending a considerable part of my time in the space “in-between.” Over the course of several years, the iterative-inductive process described and visualized above led to a complete transformation of my research perspective, with my eventual insights and conclusions being very different from what I had initially anticipated. This has also been reflected in the way that my general research questions, as posed in part 1.2, evolved into the specific objectives stated at the end of my conceptual framework (see part 2.4). Thus, I agree with Ouma’s admission that “research questions are always fictitious artifacts of scholarly practice” (2015, 23). Although it might sound paradoxical at first, it is impossible to ask the “right” questions without a considerable degree of prior knowledge and understanding of the research matter. Thus, I argue, developing the appropriate vocabulary to even pinpoint one’s specific interest is a process that does not take place before but very much during an ethnographic research project. Although I have argued that no part of my research practice should be regarded as “neutral” or distinctly separated from my (subjective) analysis, at least a heuristic distinction between different modes of work is still helpful. For this reason, I will spend the remainder of this section detailing my research practice and how I generated and

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collected textual, visual, and multi-sensory material, while the third and last part of the chapter will focus on three specific methods I used to analyze said material.

Core ethnographic methods—an outline Before giving an outline of my general research practice, I should clarify that by some standards, my research might not qualify as a “proper” ethnography in the narrow sense: Considering the vastness of my “field”—the multiple institutional contexts that are part of the Nepali infrastructure of migration—a deeply immersed and nuanced study of a small and tight-knit community (as suggested by a more traditional reading of “ethnography”) was not an option for me. An exception to this has been Gajuri, where I did become deeply involved with the local community of (returnee) migrants, their family members, and informal brokers. However, as I argued earlier, the true value of ethnography lies in its fundamental paradigms, which were reflected in the flexible, improvised, and evolving style of my research practice: Although I always created plans prior to every empirical phase, those only served as rough guidelines and were often discarded in light of changing circumstances, challenges and new research opportunities. This was particularly the case with my research at recruitment agencies and the selection events with foreign employers—events that were often scheduled on short notice, only to be postponed last-minute due to clients’ travel delays, insufficient candidates, or other logistic reasons. Another way in which ethnography has deeply impacted my research is the range of different empirical methods I used: Aside from qualitative interviews, I relied considerably on participant observation (see section 3.2.1), during which I did not only write extensive fieldnotes but took photographs, videos, and audio recordings whenever I was granted permission to do so.6 Although the content, depth, and value each of those different research experiences had for my analysis are not quantifiable, the following numbers may provide at least a general overview of the empirical material that was produced: Over the course of the project, I observed and participated in the daily operations of altogether 40 institutions, which mainly included recruitment agencies, orientation training centers, and technical and vocational training facilities but also some government authorities and nonprofit organizations. The degree to which I became immersed in those institutions varied significantly. While I visited many institutions only once for a few hours, there was a smaller number of other institutions and research participants with whom I established close relationships and whom I visited repeatedly throughout the project. As mentioned above, those experiences of participant observation did not only result in written field notes but also allowed me to take a total of about 1500 photographs, seven hours of video, and numerous audio recordings. Furthermore, I conducted a

6

In many instances, I was able to make audio recordings of events or casual conversations, e.g., when my research participants allowed me to record ongoing orientation or skill training sessions I attended. This made it a lot easier for me to simply take part in the events without “othering” myself by continuously taking notes. Furthermore, it enabled me to revisit those research experiences multiple times, to transcribe selected sections, and to subject them to the same analysis (see section 3.3.1) as I did with the transcribed interview recordings.

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total of 75 interviews with staff members of those institutions, with visiting foreign employers, and with professionals who were not formally affiliated with any organization—most notably eleven unregistered brokers. As described in section 3.2.1, I also stayed in contact and led follow-up interviews with several migrant men and their families in Gajuri, with whom I had first established a relationship when researching for my Master thesis in 2012.7 Although initially, I had not intended to focus on male migration exclusively, I found the institutions of the migration infrastructure I visited to be very male-dominated, with female migrants being far less visible and even more difficult to access. Realizing that the infrastructure of recruitment and training of migrant women was largely separate from the infrastructure for men (e.g., due to specialized training centers for domestic work), and acknowledging that I would not be able to adequately represent the role of female migrants in the regime at large, I nevertheless wanted to understand more about their experiences of subjectification and self-conduct. For this reason, I conducted five interviews with migrant women returnees based in the Gajuri area, who had worked as domestic servants in Kuwait, Cyprus, and Lebanon. Furthermore, I paid explicit attention to the government of migrant women in the analysis of written material. Nevertheless, this book inevitably maintains some degree of bias towards male migrant laborers, who constitute the majority of the Nepali migrant workforce. Aside from doing empirical ethnographic work, I collected additional material from several different sources: For instance, I consumed and collected a wide range of media content, including newspaper articles, popular music videos, and content shared on social media, which I found instrumental to understanding some of the “ordinary” ways of governing migrants and their communities in their everyday lives. Furthermore, I collected various other third-party material related to the institutions I had been working with empirically. This included newspaper advertisements, television commercials, and website content of recruitment agencies, as well as forms, sheets, and manuals that recruitment and training facilities used for training, application, and assessment. It also included publicly accessible informational brochures and PSAs (broadcast on television and radio) by government and non-government institutions, and, finally, important legislative texts (see “Cited primary sources” at the end of the book). Among this wide range of sources, those that proved most important and valuable to my analysis were interviews, on the one hand, and visual and multi-sensory material, on the other. These two forms of research material will be discussed below.

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While conducting said research, I led a total of 45 interviews with returned migrants and their families. Although these interviews are not at the center of this present analysis, they still profoundly informed my work: First, they established persistent ties with some research participants that lasted throughout my PhD research phase. In particular, five of these migrants and their families have remained in close contact with us over the past years, so their experiences have accompanied me throughout the project. Secondly, this initial work was my entry point into Nepali labor migration. As a result, the personal experiences and perspectives those migrants and their families shared with me continue to be an important lens through which I view my insights on the Nepali migration regime at large.

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Interviews Although all of my interviews were semi-structured by guidelines that grew increasingly specific as my work progressed (see Appendix), they usually unfolded in a conversational, flexible, and open-ended manner. Since this often meant that a significant number of topics came up that I had not anticipated, most interviews lasted longer than 90 minutes. However, they varied greatly in terms of their degree of formality and the depth of their content, usually depending on how well we knew each other. Perhaps unsurprisingly, interviews that were conducted during one-time visits (as mentioned earlier) tended to be the most formal ones. By contrast, those research contacts with whom I was establishing a closer relationship—specifically former migrants and a small group of recruiters—usually took part in multiple interviews, many of which were led as informal and even personal conversations. Throughout the research, our main language of interaction was Nepali, with the exception of a handful of recruitment agents who occasionally switched to English during our conversations. Another atypical case was foreign employers, with whom I always spoke English. The fact that most of the interviews were—as mentioned earlier—held with three or more people present turned out to be beneficial not only for the atmosphere but also in terms of communication: Since Nepali is not my first language, it was very helpful to be accompanied by a native speaker who could easily jump into the conversation to clear up potential misunderstandings. My methods of processing and analyzing the audio recordings differed during the research process. Whereas all recorded interviews from the initial two research phases were transcribed literally, those conducted during the third phase were transcribed only selectively.8 I chose this procedure because, at that final stage, I had grown aware of the sections and aspects that were most pertinent to my research objectives. Thus, while I listened to all recordings at least once, only the most relevant sections were transcribed literally, whereas the remainder of those last-stage interviews was paraphrased or summarized in English.

Visual and multi-sensory ethnography Because they are text-based, interview quotes play a central role in illustrating the arguments put forward in my written analysis. At the same time, those interviews cannot be reduced to their mere textual output. For instance, they were vital for establishing and deepening my research contacts and provided me with important opportunities for learning and exchange, thus ultimately serving as social, sensory, and emotive encounters (Pink 2009, 83). The same applies to most of my other research experiences, whose complexity and sensory richness could not be fully transported into the medium of text. In trying to integrate more of such complexity into the study, I followed Pink’s

8

In order to facilitate transfer between different formats and technical devices, the Nepali audio was transcribed by using the Roman alphabet instead of the Devanagari script (for easier readability, this transcription is simplified in that it does not distinguish between different vowel lengths and between retroflex and alveolar consonants). In order to ensure correctness, the majority of this literal transcription was done by my husband Amir Uprety and my sister-in-law’s husband Sitaram Bhandari, both of whom are native speakers.

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suggestion that ethnography “should account not only for the observable, recordable realities that may be translated into written notes and texts, but also for objects, visual images, the immaterial, and the sensory nature of human experience and knowledge” (2001, 18). Ultimately, my use of visual methods in this research, as briefly outlined at the beginning of part 3.2.2, can be divided into two groups: First, I took photographs and video recordings to accompany all phases of participant observation. This allowed me to capture my experiences and revisit them, even at later stages of analysis, with a level of complexity that would not have been possible based on my written fieldnotes alone. Secondly, I collected images and videos from print media and online sources, such as advertisements, website visuals, printed brochures, television commercials, PSAs, and pop/folk music videos. As this breadth of material indicates, I employed visual methods not only to help me “illustrate” my text-based insights but as a powerful research tool in their own right. Both ethnography and geography have long traditions of using visual material in empirical research. However, due to the realist and positivist approach of most traditional scholarship, the visual was usually considered to reflect an unquestioned external reality. As a result, ethnographic and geographic photographs and films often reinforced or exacerbated power hierarchies by objectifying, exoticizing, and “othering” their research subjects. In contrast, contemporary ethnographic and geographic scholarship has increasingly adopted a radically different approach to the visual, which recognizes images as highly political. According to Carolin Schurr (2012, 197), ethnographers should not refer to the visual in a merely illustrative sense but rather approach it from a deliberate, analytical, and critical stance. After all, images may not only be interpreted in very different ways, but their very production occurs under highly specific and subjective circumstances. Hence, images are never an innocent reflection of the social; instead, they are an inherent and performative part of constellations of power. As Rose argues, a critical approach to visual images “thinks about the agency of the image, considers the social practices and effects of its viewing, and reflects on the specificity of that viewing by various audiences, including the academic critic” (2016, 17). While postpositivist discussions of visual methods often tend to focus on photography, the same approach is necessary with regard to moving images such as video and film, whose embodied and situated production need to be considered carefully and critically (e.g., Mondada 2014; Thieme et al. 2019). Hence, photographs and video may not only be analyzed as “visual texts” (Pink 2001, 18)—although this is an approach I have used and will detail in section 3.3.1—but also convey much more than that: Images “don’t only show us things, they do things. They engage us optically, neurologically, intellectually, viscerally, physically” (Heiferman 2012, 16, emphasis in original). Thus, visual methodologies can be a promising way out of the “textual trap” (Schurr 2012, 197) and towards including the more-than-representational aspects of life. As my attention towards the material, performative, embodied, and affective dimensions of governmentality grew over the course of my research, it affected not only my conceptual framework (see section 2.2.3) but also my methodological approach. For instance, I realized that I did not want to analyze the visual separately or independently from other forms of experience. Heeding Pink’s advice to “acknowledg[e]

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the interconnectedness of the senses and the embodied, emplaced nature of viewing video or photographs” (2009, 98), I increasingly conceived of my research as a “multisensorial practice” (ibid., 64) rather than a strictly textual and visual one. At first glance, this shift in perspective did not lead to a profound change in my empirical methods: While experiments with “affective methodologies” (Knudsen & Stage 2015) are slowly growing more popular in geography and beyond (for an overview, see Dewsbury 2010), my own research practice remained centered on visual, text-based, and audio-based media. However, my self-perception and stance during that practice evolved over time. As argued concerning the subjectivity and situatedness of ethnographic knowledge (see section 3.2.1), a crucial foundation to my approach was recognizing my own positionality and engagement in the “field.” From a morethan-representational point of view, it was precisely by embracing my social, empathetic, and embodied capacities that I was able to consider such factors during my research, even if they were not necessarily recordable or “measurable” by conventional means. Furthermore, the multi-sensory outlook profoundly affected what came after the creation or collection of empirical material: the specific methods I used to analyze it. In retrospect, I thus recognize that my analysis was not impacted primarily by particular types of empirical material but rather by my perspective on it: Just as there is nothing inherently ethnographic about photographs and videos by themselves, “but [they are only] defined as such through interpretation and context” (Pink 2001, 19), my multi-sensory and more-than-representational insights very much relied on how I employed my existing material. To conclude, one of the main questions underlying this chapter so far has been how I translated my initial conceptual approach and research interest (see part 1.2) into a practical roadmap for research. It has become clear that since governmentality does not prescribe a fixed set of methods, I revisited this question multiple times during my work. In starting this exploration based on an ethnographic approach, I was supported by scholarship that has increasingly illustrated how ethnography can serve as an unconventional yet highly productive foundation for the study of governmentality (e.g., Ferguson & Gupta 2002; Kunz 2011; Li 2007b; Walters 2012, 146). This is particularly true if the concept is read through an embodied, performative, and affective dimension, which draws attention to “the intersection of governmental programs with the world they would transform” (Li 2007b, 27; see section 2.2.3).9 However, while my ethnographic approach was instrumental in (re)defining what kind of information and material I considered relevant for my study of governmentality, another question remains: What specific practical methods and tools did I use to analyze said material?

9

Based on this conceptualization of governmentality, which I developed in section 2.2.3, ethnography is an ideal technique for bridging the analysis of large-scale governmental interventions with that of their entanglement in small-scale everyday practices. It also helps overcome the dichotomy between supposedly “orderly discourse” and “disorderly practice,” because it can reveal how rationalities and other forms of knowledge are sometimes highly fragmented and contradictory, whereas everyday practices and seemingly unstructured techniques can take a highly normative and ordering role.

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3.3

Specific Tools of Analysis

As Pink observes, the analysis of ethnographic research—particularly so if it considers visual, imaginative, sensorial, and affective dimensions—tends to be seen as “an intuitive, messy and sometimes serendipitous task” (Pink 2009, 119). Hence, it often remains obscure and undiscussed. To some extent, I agree that associative and intuitive modes of thinking can play an important role in ethnographic analysis, which might sometimes appear messy to an outside observer. At the same time, my analysis followed several essential guidelines, procedures, and tools, which I intend to communicate accordingly. While it is impossible to retrace every single step of investigation, I consider it vital to discuss at least those practical approaches and tools that proved most helpful to me. As with all parts of my research, many of those tools (and my understanding of them) grew more specific as my work progressed. In the following sections, I will discuss the three main sets of analytical methods I used in my investigation. Importantly, I regard those methods as neither distinct nor mutually exclusive; instead, I recognize that they worked best in combination, with each of them providing certain insights the others could not. In the first section, I will discuss methods of discourse analysis, which I employed on both textual and visual material, and which proved particularly helpful in investigating rationalities and other forms of knowledge (see section 2.2.1). Section two describes the avenues I explored to analyze the practical, material, embodied, performative, and affective aspects of government and to incorporate them into the study. In the third and final section, I will illustrate how my adaptation of Foucault’s genealogical approach helped me integrate the above tools into a study of governmentality.

3.3.1

Discourse analysis

The majority of empirical insights in this book is illustrated in direct quotes from interviews and conversations from participant observation, in text excerpts from collected documents, and in photographs and video stills. Occasionally, I will refer to the content of those materials as a mere source of information, but in most cases, my investigation of forms of knowledge that constitute the Nepali migration regime requires a more considerate and analytical approach—one I found in discourse analysis. Discourse studies, which first emerged as an academic field in the 1960s, are rooted in modern theories of linguistics, such as Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1911/2014) semiology. De Saussure conceptualizes language as a dynamic system of interdependent signs, each of which has two inseparable components—a signifier (the sound pattern or form of the sign) and the signified (the idea it is linked to). Importantly, he argues that the signifier is not linked to a pre-existing, external thing, but rather to a concept internal to language. Thus, the value or meaning of a sign does not exist outside the linguistic system; instead, it is merely an effect of the sign’s relations and difference to other signs in the structure (ibid., 22). Concluding from de Saussure’s position “that language and other sign systems constitute realities and power structures by establishing relations between different signifiers” (Mattissek & Glasze 2016, 47), discourse theories vitally contributed to the lin-

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guistic turn in the social sciences. They have since grown into a heterogeneous field associated with a wide range of disciplines, theoretical traditions, and practical methods. The discourse-analytical method employed in this study is, again, mainly informed by Foucault (1968/2014), whose approach moves beyond the field of linguistics and instead “is concerned with the constitution of knowledge on the one hand and power relations, subjectivities, and identities on the other” (Mattissek 2018). Since Foucault’s theory of discourse and power-knowledge has many parallels to his later work on governmentality (see section 2.2.1), I will only discuss it briefly. In short, Foucault argues that the categories we use to make sense of our world and generally assume to be true “do not come about by themselves, but are always the result of a construction” (1972, 25). Hence, systems of language and representation do not merely describe an outside reality that is already there, but rather create that reality in the first place. Foucault uses the term “discourse” to describe “a group of statements [that] belong to the same discursive formation” (ibid., 117). Based on his concept of “statements,” discourse goes well beyond language and speech. Instead, it encompasses the totality of utterances—whether they manifest in texts, speech, and dialogues or in bodily practices, gestures, and images. Since power and knowledge are mutually constitutive, the aim of analyzing such utterances is to identify effects of normalization and exclusion by which discourse defines both what can and what cannot be said or done, what appears to be true, legitimate or meaningful and what is dismissed as false, deviant or nonsensical[, and how it] establish[es] some behaviours and identities as normal and natural and […] others as unusual, marginal or unnatural. (Wylie 2015, 304; emphasis in original) In recent years, a growing number of scholarship has pointed out and demonstrated that discourse analysis serves as a powerful tool in the study of governmentality (Angermüller & van Dyk 2010a; Dzudzek 2016; Füller & Marquardt 2009; Linnemann 2019; Mattissek 2008; McIlvenny et al. 2016; Sturm 2018). At the same time, discourse analysis is not to be misunderstood as merely a “method” that naturally compliments the “theory” of governmentality: Although both concepts have many similarities and are mutually enriching, discourse theory is a conceptual field in its own right (Angermüller & van Dyk 2010b, 15–16). Furthermore, as governmentality explicitly focuses on practical, material, and technological dimensions of governing, forms of knowledge are only one of several areas of interest. With these caveats in mind, discourse analysis has been an indispensable tool for my analysis, which has allowed me to investigate the central problematizations, rationalities, and subjectivities that inform (and are informed by) technologies of governing Nepali migration. Although Foucault did not prescribe a fixed methodological procedure, and while many studies of discourse do not explicitly discuss their methods, a variety of more specific approaches has emerged in recent years. These approaches range from critical discourse analysis (Lazar 2005; Weiss & Wodak 2003; Wodak & Meyer 2006) and in-depth, micro-level methods of enunciative analysis (Angermuller 2014; Mattissek 2009) to visual discourse analysis (Rose 2016; Schlottmann & Miggelbrink 2015), and

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even macro-level, quantitative methods of corpus linguistics (Linnemann 2014; Mattissek 2008; Wiertz 2018).10 In my own work, I employed discourse analysis to investigate not only the textual material I collected from third parties—but also images, videos, and recordings of interviews and informal conversations. Given that the exact analytical process differed depending on this variety of material types, I will now first outline my approach to text-based discourse analysis, before then moving on to visual discourse analysis.

Text-based analysis As outlined in section 3.2.2, the textual material I used for discourse analysis included documents from third parties, such as informational brochures, recruitment websites, and transcriptions from commercials and PSAs. Furthermore, it included texts I had generated myself by transcribing interviews or conversations that had been recorded during participant observation. While my own field notes, ongoing analytical work, and this book have been written in English, I analyzed all other research material in its original language, which was usually Nepali. I did so out of an awareness that processes of translation are never neutral, but powerful acts of construction in themselves (Crane et al. 2009; Filep 2009; Husseini 2009; Müller 2007). This is even more relevant because the emergence of particular concepts and rationalities out of specific historical, cultural, and social contexts was one of the core concerns of my analysis (see also section 3.3.3). Hence, the text excerpts quoted in the study were translated into English only at the last possible moment, and each original quote is included in a footnote to provide more transparency and context for Nepali-speaking readers. Since my aim was not to investigate words, sentences, and texts per se but to consider their role in constituting configurations of knowledge and power, my analytical process was a dual one as well. According to Jason Dittmer’s distinction, I conducted both “textual analysis” (2010, 280), which examines rhetoric elements like metaphors, tropes, persuasive techniques, and effects, and “discourse analysis” (ibid., 282), which moves beyond the linguistic level and focuses on the social practices and effects of power that give those texts meaning. To this end, I mainly worked with interpretive coding methods (Glasze et al. 2009). While these methods largely reiterate conventional qualitative tools of content analysis, my theoretical lens while employing them was quite a different one: Instead of using the texts as an (either neutral or subjective) source of information, I aimed to identify the core themes and statements around Nepali migration only to recognize the linkages and relations between them—linkages that may include regularities and patterns but also unverbalized statements, exclusions, variations, and contradictions. In addition to such methods of interpretive coding, I occasionally drew on tools of enunciative analysis, whose emphasis on “formal markers of enunciation […] such as the deictics (I, here, now…) [and] the logical-argumentative operators of polyphony (not, but, if …)” (Angermuller 2014, 59; emphasis in original) was particularly

10

According to Annika Mattissek & Georg Glasze (2016), such specific approaches to the methodical implementation of discourse analysis have been particularly emphasized and advanced by German-language scholarship and the so-called “French school of discourse analysis” (Maingueneau 2002, 268; see also Williams 1999).

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helpful for recognizing implicit assumptions, subjectivities, and geographical imaginaries.11 Ultimately, my analytical process consisted of five interlocking steps:12 a) First, the texts were analyzed and coded regarding their content: I acquired an understanding of relevant topics and different positions, which allowed me to identify core concepts and potential problematizations. Given my inductive approach, this step was instrumental in shaping the directions of my ongoing research; at the same time, it represented only a starting point for my analysis. b) Secondly, I reconsidered those observations through a discourse-theoretical lens, which implies a more comprehensive, abstract, and critical look: I analyzed recurring keywords and statements, rhetorical patterns, and formal markers of enunciation, but also the unverbalized “sub-text” of statements. This allowed me to question seemingly natural categories, to identify implicit beliefs, assumptions, and values, and to explore what alternative truths were constructed as unthinkable. In doing so, I aimed to uncover the discursive effects of truth—investigating, as Foucault suggests, “forms of knowledge […] in terms of their specific modes of veridiction” (1984/2008, 9). c) Given its focus on governmentality, my analysis, thirdly, employed the above insights specifically regarding their function as rationalities of government: I investigated how particular forms of knowledge take the shape of rules, regulations, and commands. I questioned their manifestation in criteria of evaluation, in moral judgments about “good” and “bad” conduct, and in explicit directions and advice, which inform migrants’ government of the self and their subjectification. While the practical, material, and technological dimensions of governmentality might not have been directly accessible via this method, I emphasize again that the distinction between rationalities and technologies of government is not clear-cut but largely a matter of perspective (see also section 2.2.1). Thus, I frequently analyzed the same governmental interventions using a combination of different methods: While I employed discourse analysis to identify and deconstruct rationalities of governing and other forms of knowledge, the technological dimension of the regime came into my focus via material, embodied, and autoethnographic methods (see section 3.3.2).13 11

12 13

Rather than focusing on the content of statements, enunciative analysis accesses discourse through the markers that put content into context. Johannes Angermüller argues that enunciative markers are immensely powerful since they “signal the ‘how’ of discourse, the mode of existence of these contents. Markers are not interpreted; they are spontaneously recognized. Through markers, language places high linguistic constraints on the interpretive process. This is because the individuals cannot recognize these forms without immediately and automatically applying the rules which they contain” (Angermuller 2014, 60). The resulting unconscious pre-constructs, which are taken-for-granted truths that are not even a topic of discussion, can often be traced in linguistic constructions such as nominalizations or the deictics and logical-argumentative operators mentioned above. In light of my ethnographic and interpretive research approach, these steps did not always occur in chronological order but often followed an iterative-inductive process. For instance, the standard assessment sheets used to evaluate migrant candidates in recruitment agencies function as technologies of governing—but are also textual documents that can be sub-

3 Methodological Approaches towards an Ethnography of Government d) In a fourth step, I paid specific attention to the nuances and differences between those forms of knowledge—recognizing that “the efficacy of discourse often resides [not only] in the assumptions it makes about what is true, real or natural, [but also] in the contradictions that allow it interpretive flexibility” (Rose 2016, 213). Again, interpretive coding methods and the analysis of enunciative markers (for instance, those signaling conditionality and argumentation) helped me uncover and discuss contradictions, fragmentations, and the “polyphony” (Angermuller 2014, 59) that is often glossed over in hegemonic discourse. As argued in section 2.2.1, this step is essential to the study of governmentality since it reveals some of the heterogeneity, ruptures, and forms of counter-conduct that are inherent to any configuration of power. e) The fifth and final step entailed an in-depth investigation of concepts and problematizations that I recognized as especially crucial in the government of Nepali migration. Building on the insights named above, I examined their broader geographical, socio-cultural, and historical context to trace their constructed, contradictory, and sometimes arbitrary emergence. This exploration, which I conducted not only on forms of knowledge but also on governmental techniques, was primarily informed by a genealogical approach (see section 3.3.3).

Given the complexity and interpretive nature of my investigation, visually replicating this complexity in the context of my written analysis was a challenge. In this book, all text excerpts subjected to discourse analysis are marked visually, i.e., the words and passages most relevant to the analysis are underlined. Additionally, more interpretive depth is often provided by combining the featured texts with impressions from my visual discourse analysis.

Visual analysis Although textual quotes are very present in substantiating and illustrating the empirical findings of the study, my discourse analysis also focused heavily on visual material. One of the reasons for this was that my interest in studying the government of low-skilled Nepali labor migration rested not primarily on a general academic or political discourse but on the forms of knowledge that informed the government, self-government, and the subjectivities of (aspiring) migrants. Ultimately, I found such rationalities about and towards migration to be accessible less via textual media than through visual, audible, and embodied experiences. This might also have to do with the impact of the migration regime on low-education communities, where textual modes of communication often do not hold much power compared to visual modes. This is also why the majority of text I did analyze came from spoken words I recorded rather than collected written material. Among the wide range of visual material I subjected to discourse analysis, visuals on recruitment websites, video stills from television commercials, PSAs, and pop/folk music videos proved most insightful to me.

jected to methods of discourse analysis. The same applies to information brochures and PSAs, which are tangible and practical techniques of governing, yet are also a vital source of discourseanalytical insights on the rationalities that underlie this practical government.

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As indicated in my introduction to discourse analysis, images and videos can, to some extent, be read similarly to texts (Pink 2001, 18). For instance, Gunther R. Kress and Theo van Leeuwen argue that the visual functions as a system of language and may thus be analyzed accordingly: Like linguistic structures, visual structures point to particular interpretations of experience and forms of social interaction. […] And the way meanings are mapped across different semiotic modes, the way some things can, for instance, be ‘said’ either visually or verbally, others only visually, again others only verbally, is […] culturally and historically specific. (2010, 2) Like texts and spoken words, images are thus an integral part of discourse and the production of meaning, which means they do not only represent but also reproduce dynamics and relations of power (Sturken & Cartwright 2014, 187–189). Yet despite these similarities, it is also evident that visual and textual media show significant discrepancies, and that attempting to analyze visual sources can come with several complications. For instance, the content of images is vastly more complex than that of textual structures. While discourse is always overdetermined, this becomes especially obvious in visual representations, whose meaning is frequently open to a multiplicity of different interpretations. Furthermore, engaging with visual images opens up new challenges in processing and presenting research material. For example, it raises ethical questions about the privacy and anonymization of research participants (Hughes-Freeland 2004, 209). In this book, the faces of research participants were blurred in order to protect their identities—except for a few individuals who explicitly agreed to remain visible. Although facial expressions are often central to conveying message of pictures (particularly regarding affect and emotion, see section 3.3.2) and anonymization somewhat reduces their explanatory and illustrative potential, I felt that participants’ individual privacy weighed heavier. Compared to static visual sources like photographs and images, the analysis and presentation of video and film—which are truly multi-sensory media—can be particularly challenging (Luff & Heath 2012, 273). While writing the book, I learned first hand that translating this format into a printed publication inevitably results in compromises. Eventually, the form of presentation I chose was to feature extracts of single video sequences by using a combination of video stills and written subtitles. Although the loss of the audio or soundscape, as well as the limited selection of images, means that the spectrum of meaning is drastically reduced, I consider this to be a feasible way to transport at least some elements of those videos into the format of this book. With regard to the specific methods I used, I found visual discourse analysis to offer fewer opportunities for a structured approach—for instance, by investigating grammarlike structures or formal markers—than the analysis of texts. Therefore, an interpretive, inductive-iterative, and sometimes intuitive process of coding and comparing was even more instrumental here than in other parts of my work. Despite its flexibility, this process was still led by the same interests that informed my textual analysis, which can be summarized in the following objectives and questions:

3 Methodological Approaches towards an Ethnography of Government a) My initial concern was to identify key themes across different images and to recognize the relations between them. The questions I asked myself during this process included: What core ideas are expressed and what visuals are used to express them? Are there any regularities and patterns according to which specific themes are visualized? Are there clusters of specific images, and how are they connected to surrounding discourse and social practices (whether expressed in text or otherwise)? b) On this basis, I investigated the ways in which those messages, imageries, and views constituted or supported specific regimes of truth. By “focusing on claims to truth, or to scientific certainty, or to the natural way of things” (Rose 2016, 215), I tried to recognize how particular images or views were normalized and taken for granted, while others were discredited or rendered invisible. Thus, I paid attention to not only what was visible in the images—but also what was excluded and remained hidden from view. As Rose argues, “[a]bsences can be as productive as explicit naming; invisibility can have just as powerful effects as visibility” (ibid., 219). While every perspective creates some exclusions, those exclusions are never neutral or accidental but usually reinforce hegemonic formations of knowledge and power. In paying particular attention to the individuals, objects, events, and places that were not visualized, I thus aimed to understand how dominant angles of view made “certain things visible in particular ways, and other things unseeable” (ibid.). c) Finally, I focused on differences between visuals to identify some of the variabilities, complexities, and incoherencies internal to every regime of government. Focusing on subtle contradictions and even expressions of dissent helped me recognize the shifting and transient nature of that regime; moreover, it reminded me of the explicit effort involved in constructing it. Hence, those insights were fundamental to my overall objective, which was to understand how those images were directed towards leading, persuading, and governing—how the forms of knowledge they produced functioned as rationalities of government. Ultimately, I investigated how those visual images produced particular subjectivities that were endowed with more or fewer capacities to self-govern, how they supported specific governmental interventions, and how they, in themselves, were employed as technologies of governing.

While discourse analysis was a critical component of my analytical approach, my deepening conceptualization of governmentality (see part 2.2) also led me to explore the practical, technological, and material dimension of the Nepali migration regime. In doing so, I moved beyond the fieldnotes that have traditionally accompanied participant observation, and experimented with methods to grasp the multi-sensory and morethan-representational aspects of government.

3.3.2

Materiality and affect

From the outset of my research, one of the main reasons for choosing an ethnographic methodology and explicitly working with visual material in my research was to emphasize the practical and technological aspects of governing Nepali migration. As my interest in the governmental effects of embodied everyday practices and performative

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acts grew (see section 2.2.3), I increasingly explored ways to grasp those material and affective dimensions empirically. However, as stated in section 3.2.2, I decided not to introduce an entirely new medium of “data” distinct from my previous experiences and material; instead, I chose to revisit said experiences and reinvestigate the collected material from new methodological and conceptual perspectives. Here, a particular challenge for me was finding ways to not only consider the role of materiality and affect myself but make it “visible” or perceptible to readers. Ultimately, I explored three different avenues in my analysis, which I will outline here. As a first step towards widening my analytical lens, I considered the role of emotions and affects in my discourse analysis. In doing so, I built on Wetherell’s understanding of affect as “an affective–discursive practice […] [, a] joint, coordinated, relational activity in which affect and discourse twine together” (2013, 363; see also Wetherell et al. 2015). When presenting some of my empirical insights later on in the book, I will do so by explicitly combining visual images with text, recognizing that it is often the combination of multiple sensory vehicles that make affect perceptible and powerful. On this basis, I will discuss instances in which affects play a significant role in rationalities of governing migration, and show how they can sometimes function as technologies of government in themselves. By naming specific emotions and contextualizing them from a genealogical perspective (see section 3.3.3), I will try to pull them a little closer into the analytical realm. Furthermore, I explored methods to articulate research impressions that I found essential to understanding the constitution of migrant subjects but could not grasp with analytical language. It is here that the photographs I took during participant observation came into play: They did not only inform my own analysis but function as an integral part of this book that—to some degree—speaks for itself. While the assumption that photographs could neutrally mirror an external reality is certainly dangerous (which is why I consider the commentaries to each photograph vital), the visual medium undoubtedly is able to convey a richer, deeper meaning and to affect the “audience” in ways that simply exceed words. My goal in visualizing material structures, spatial arrangements of bodies and objects, and interactions between different bodies in space is to not only speak to “readers” on an intellectual level. Instead, I also aim to “affect” them as embodied social beings capable of emotion and empathy—all while remaining aware that those multi-sensory inputs can have different effects on different audiences, which I may neither control nor anticipate. A third methodological avenue I explored was to engage in autoethnographic writing. This increasingly recognized method (e.g., Ellis et al. 2011; Holman Jones et al. 2013) allowed me to both reflect on some of my embodied and emplaced research experiences, and to make some of those experiences accessible to the reader. As argued in section 3.2.2, writing is far more than—as the common phrase “writing up” suggests—a simple presentation of finished results that occurs at the end of an analysis. This applies even more to creative and personal modes of writing, which can play an instrumental role in analysis and produce new insights even years after empirical fieldwork (in the narrow sense) has been completed. In my own work, this analytical and reflexive tool enabled me to revisit and process my personal memories and the photographs, video and audio recordings, and written fieldnotes I had taken during participant observation. Doing

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so profoundly deepened and enhanced my understanding of the role of material, embodied, and affective forces in the government of migration. As a practice of working with and through “the multiple, complex and often ambivalent emotional entanglements of fieldwork” (Laliberté & Schurr 2014, 73), autoethnographic writing does not only help the researcher to process affective experiences. Instead, it is an affect-laden process in itself, which can evoke affective responses in the audience (Gibbs 2015, 222–223). Recognizing this as an opportunity to give readers an additional glimpse into the more-than-representational dimension of my analysis, I chose to include three pieces of autoethnographic writing in the book. They are featured as vignettes (Ely et al. 1997, 70-74; see also Humphreys 2005; Militz 2019; Pitard 2016) that “set the scene” and introduce the three main parts of my empirical analysis (parts 4.1-3). The use of vignettes is a specific form of ethnographic writing, which can be described as compact sketches that can be used to introduce characters, foreshadow events and analyses to come, highlight particular findings, or summarize a particular theme or issue in analysis and interpretation. Vignettes are composites that encapsulate what the researcher finds through the fieldwork. […] They offer an invitation for the reader to step into the space of vicarious experience, to assume a position in the world of the research—to live the lived experience along with the researcher. (Ely et al. 1997, 71) As written snapshots of three different experiences, the vignettes featured in this book are rooted in real events that occurred during my ethnographic research. At the same time, they are pieces of creative writing in that they do not always reflect literally what happened during those events, but rather capture in a condensed way different research experiences and interview quotes I gathered over a longer period of time. Moreover, they rely on prosaic language to grasp some of the multi-sensory impressions and my personal thoughts and embodied affectedness that shaped those experiences. Thus, my descriptions of the noises, smells, and atmospheres I experienced do not reflect an intention to somehow romanticize those experiences—but rather to convey some of the complex meaning that is lost in the otherwise intellectual, analytical language of my analysis. Hence, those vignettes were a method of processing and analyzing my research experiences on a reflexive and personal level; yet they also let readers take part in those experiences—not on an analytical but an affective and empathetic level. While I am certain that this form of “presencing” (Müller 2015b, 415) rather than presenting my research experiences is significant, I also acknowledge that “readers might be affected differently [and] connect in different ways with [those] text[s]” (Militz 2019, 45). Just like visual images, this form of creative writing leaves much open to the audience’s interpretation, which remains outside of my control. However, as the majority of the book remains written in an analytical style, this is a risk I consider worthwhile.

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3.3.3

Genealogy

The third methodological approach that shaped my analysis profoundly was to view my research material from a perspective of Foucauldian genealogy. As a powerful analytical technique to “denaturaliz[e] objects and subjects, identities and practices that otherwise appear given to us” (Walters 2012, 118), genealogy helped me redefine and integrate the analytical methods outlined in the previous two sections, and to direct them towards the study of governmentality. As Foucault’s main method of analysis during his later years, genealogy lies at the heart of his project of deconstructing “the relationships between truth, power, and self” (1982/1988, 15). After introducing his genealogical approach in 1971, Foucault continues investigating phenomena he analyzed earlier via his archaeological method, such as discourses and extradiscursive practices—yet now setting them in a broader context (Faubion 1998, XXXV). Drawing on Nietzsche’s use of the term, he develops genealogy as a method of deconstructing practices, truths, and power relations by tracing their sociohistorical descent (Herkunft) and the conditions of their emergence (Entstehung). What distinguishes a genealogical approach from a conventional historical analysis is that genealogy does not search for the supposed origin of forms of knowledge and practices, which would imply that those things had some internal essence and developed in a linear way. Instead, examining their emergence means to identify the accidents, the minute deviations—or conversely, the complete reversals—the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those things which continue to exist and have value for us; it is to discover that truth or being lies not at the root of what we know and what we are but the exteriority of accidents. (Foucault 1971/1998, 374) Instead of constructing a teleological narrative of configurations that seem to culminate in the current moment, genealogy exposes that their emergence has been the mere result of shifts, “accidents” and power struggles over time (ibid., 376). Hence, formations of knowledge or practice are, at any given time, neither permanent nor concluded but rather multiple and contradictory. As Walters points out, they never possess an intrinsic or endogenous purpose or function; they have no point of “culmination” towards which they evolve. Instead it is always a question of how something is forced into being, what forces succeed in capturing it, and to what ends and purposes it is subsequently put. (2012, 133) By emphasizing the historical contingency and transience of structures of powerknowledge, the genealogical approach holds particular value for understanding large formations of government. Foucault’s own genealogical analyses primarily focus on practices and institutions at specific historical junctures in the past. Although he does so with the intent of “writing the history of the present” (Foucault 1976/1995, 31), this approach differs significantly from recent studies of governmentality, most of which—including this book—investigate contemporary regimes of government. Despite this disparity to its original use, genealogy has lived up to its new role as a “diagnostic of the present” (Dean 2010, 3). For instance, Rose asserts that “[t]he ana-

3 Methodological Approaches towards an Ethnography of Government

lytics of government are genealogical [in that] they […] seek to unravel the naturalness of problem spaces in the present by tracing the multiple, heterogeneous and contingent conditions which have given rise to them” (1999, 274–275; my emphasis). By defining emergence as a process that is inevitably shaped by conflicts, struggles, and errors, genealogy can keep researchers from falling prey to the temptation to construct a seemingly homogeneous regime of government. It serves as a reminder that governmentality analysis needs to explicitly include the “messiness” and “failures” of government and to “evaluate phenomena not only based on the intended consequences, but also on their unintended outcomes” (Kunz 2011, 17; see also section 2.2.3). In my own work, the genealogical approach enables me to question certain central rationalities, subjectivities, and technologies of government by investigating the specific socio-spatial and historical circumstances of their emergence. The configurations of forms of knowledge and practices I identified through discourse analysis and ethnographic research served as an essential foundation for this endeavor. To be sure, my approach does not represent a comprehensive genealogy, which can easily spend an entire study on decomposing a single set of practices, but is geared towards a broader overview of the Nepali migration regime at large. Nevertheless, the genealogical method had a profound impact on my work in that it informed the types of questions I asked, the angles of inquiry I took, and the conclusions I drew. Specifically, I based my approach on Walters’ (2012) distinction of three primary styles of genealogical analysis: a) The first style of investigation he proposes aims to decompose a seemingly integral configuration by tracing the historical emergence of its components. It follows the pathways by which that configuration has become significant and valued in order to identify the seams and stitches between its various parts, eventually exposing it as nothing more than a jumble of odd bits and pieces (ibid., 117-124). b) The second approach tries to recall past events, concepts and practices which are not part of dominant narratives and to retell those histories in a different order (ibid., 124-132). c) The third style of genealogy emphasizes the processual nature of regimes by recovering past struggles that have been forgotten as well as current conflicts and contradictions that challenge the dominant order (ibid., 132-139).

In my work, each of those investigative angles plays at least some role at different points of the analysis. For instance, I will trace the emergence of certain rationalities and practices by examining different fragments out of which they have been assembled. Importantly, my exploration of these fragments does not merely consider their historical background. Instead, it applies my multi-scalar conceptualization of governmentality (see section 2.2.2) in order to also trace the broader geographical context from which these configurations have emerged. Based on this multi-layered and conceptually grounded reading of genealogy, it helps me challenge dominant ways of viewing Nepali migration by offering an alternative history of its emergence. Ultimately, this method is instrumental in highlighting the contradictions and contestations between different rationalities and technologies that struggle to gain or retain influence over (aspiring) migrants, thereby rendering the Nepali migration regime so fascinating and complex.

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4 Analysis:  The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Since governmentality is at the same time “orderly [and] […] generative” (Legg 2011, 131), its analysis does not entail the government of fully formed subjects. Instead, it explores the processes that render a group of people governable by producing those subjects in the first place (see section 2.2.1). Accordingly, this chapter focuses on the forms of knowledge and the techniques by which the Nepali regime of labor migration constitutes and governs migrant subjects from the point of recruitment up to their departure (and beyond). In order to grasp those different modes of governmental intervention more fully, I will also draw explicit attention to their entanglement with processes that advance the marketization of Nepali migrant labor. In doing so, I do not aim to identify the “true” character of the Nepali migration regime or to reduce it to a single, cohesive strategy of government. Instead of only focusing on patterns and similarities, I will also acknowledge the contradictions and frictions between diverse and often competing techniques, rationalities, and subjectivities. In part, this is done by exploring ongoing practices of subversion and counter-conduct and by retracing the genealogical emergence of specific rationalities and technologies (see section 3.3.3). Thus, even though the analysis is naturally anchored in the specific timeframe during which I conducted my research, the observed practices, technologies, and structures are viewed as continuously negotiated and in a constant process of emergence. Furthermore, these contemporary formations frequently serve only as a starting point for a deeper genealogical exploration—one that is not limited to the temporal dimension alone, but explicitly includes broader geographical contexts and multi-scalar configurations of government. My empirical analysis unfolds over three main parts. Each of them describes a particular avenue of governing that serves as a foundational pillar to the Nepali migration regime. Those three pillars—(i) the recruitment of migrant candidates, (ii) the formatting of market encounters, and (iii) techniques of instruction—always interact and intersect, yet ultimately fulfill different functions in the continuous emergence of labor migration as an object of governmental intervention (see Figure 3). Notably, these pillars do not represent chronological steps or specific institutional or geographical affili-

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ations. Instead, they cut across all temporal stages of the pre-departure process, across the diverse institutional contexts involved in governing migration, and across different geographical scales. For this reason, the same institutions and scenarios will be investigated repeatedly throughout the analysis, each time discerning how they contribute to a specific pillar of the regime.

Figure 3: Overview of the three central pillars of the Nepali migration regime.

Each pillar lists the different topics that will be investigated over the following three parts of the empirical analysis. (Source: I. Lindemann & H. Uprety 2020).

The following analysis begins by examining the recruitment of migrant candidates. This first pillar, however, includes more than the industry of professional recruiters and the state’s regulation of their activity. On a deeper level, it is grounded in normalized practices and problematizations that have paved Nepal’s path towards labor migration, as well as socially and culturally embedded values and practices that recruit Nepali individuals into basic subjectivities of the migrant worker. Based on the fundamental constitution of migrant candidate subjects through recruitment, the second pillar of the regime consists of the techniques employed to tie Nepali recruits to the international labor market. Focusing on the formatting of those market encounters, I will investigate the numerous technologies by which migrant candidates are matched to, selected, and ultimately hired into different positions. More-

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

over, this part of the analysis unpacks the rationalities of evaluation and marketization that guide those processes. The third pillar of governing migration represents the diverse forms of counseling, training, and instruction migrant candidates receive prior to their departure. In particular, it explores how technical and vocational education, public information campaigns, state-mandated orientation classes, and instructions by recruiters guide workers’ conduct and shape their subjectification before they even leave the country. In the fourth and final part of the chapter, I will recapitulate the role of each of the regime’s three pillars. Ultimately, I will identify five subjectivities of the ideal migrant worker that I consider to be central to the government of aspiring migrants. My analysis then concludes by assessing the value of the main conceptual tools and pointing out important avenues for further research.

4.1

Governing through Recruitment

“How’s it going, where are you guys planning to go?“ The group of four young men falls silent. Aswin, who has asked the question, leans back into his chair. A few moments ago, he told us of his plans to apply for a factory job in Poland. “It’s exciting. Everybody wants to go there now,” he said. “My brother-in-law has gotten so many brothers into good jobs; he has promised me he’ll be getting new visas in a few weeks. This time, the “manpower” is trying out a new company, so they’re going to make sure everything is exactly as promised. And anyway, it sounds really good: Indoor work, food, and room included, guaranteed overtime.” The others appeared not quite convinced. “Sure, but you have to take out such a high loan for being able to go. I can barely scrape together the one and a half lakh I’ll need for Saudi or Malaysia. How could I even dream of getting the eight or ten lakh it takes to go to Poland?” Devraj sighed. The others nodded in agreement. “You’re right; it’s a big risk,” Aswin conceded. “But maybe something might actually happen this time, and it’s going to be great, that’s all I’m saying. My brother-in-law has made me a pretty good deal. He’s promised he won’t even take any extra profit from me so he can take me for six lakh.” With Aswin’s unanswered question lingering in the air, everybody has grown thoughtful. Devraj seems to be investigating the worn-out pattern on his flip-flops. The others are looking out onto the green paddy fields that can be seen from the living room where we have all gathered. Some months from now, my husband Amir and I will get to know the “brother-in-law” Aswin just mentioned. He will tell us he has worked as a broker for the past four years, and it’s been going well. The broker will also share with us that in case things won’t run as smoothly in the future, he has been considering going to Poland himself. His “guy,” an agent from a major recruitment company in Kathmandu, has promised him a good deal. “But then again, what do I know about what they usually charge? It’s not like they tell us brokers!” he will add. “Remember when we sat here five years ago?” I say to bring everybody back to the room. “Yeah, I guess,” Pradeep chuckles and starts shifting in his seat. “What a child I was. Man, I didn’t know anything!” The others laugh and nod. “Sure, we have all grown up.“ Each of them has been abroad at least once in the past years. They have all had different experiences. Do any of them doubt that migration remains the right way to go forward for them, I ask. “You know, remittances are like a movie,” Sudhir shrugs. “They last for as long as you stay there. Afterward, they are finished. Then you have to go abroad again.” Devraj agrees: “We have just finished building a house of our

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own—nothing fancy, three rooms for my parents, my wife, and our two daughters. But it’s ours. If we even want to consider painting the walls, let alone adding a second floor, I’ll have to go abroad again anyway. Honestly, all my earnings are gone already. My little ones’ school fees are due soon, and this time I had to borrow cash from my brother. He’s been working security in Malaysia.” From our previous conversations, I know that some of the men have had quite scarring experiences during their last stays abroad. Aren’t they scared that they will face similar problems again, I ask? “Sure, that might happen,” Sudhir concedes. “You never know. But I have also learned a lot from the previous stays. I know a bit more about what to take care of now.” Devraj interjects: “And you know, whatever is written on my forehead will happen anyway.” Two of the others chuckle, another one nods. Someone’s younger sister enters the room; she carries a bag of rice flakes and a new bowl of freshly fried goat meat. As she walks from person to person to heap a generous portion onto everyone’s plates, we move on to a different topic. We’ve been having one of the typical predinner “snacks” everybody likes to eat around the holidays. It is one of the last days of Dashain, the Hindu festival for which most Nepali families gather and celebrate. At this time of the year, we all are reminded of the value of being close to your loved ones. Yet in their minds, Aswin, Sudhir, Pradeep, and Devraj are already on their way out again. It’s the dream of better things to come, of a purpose, that keeps them going. (Ethnographic vignette 2019, based on observations October 2015) The above vignette is based on several encounters I had at different times during and before my research. The reason I chose to arrange those separate conversations into one story was to portray some of the main issues that initially fascinated me about Nepali labor migration. For instance, I wanted to express just how much the minds of young and middleaged men in Nepal are dominated by the perennial question of whether and when to go abroad to “do something.” This lingering calling turns into a constant air of boredom and restlessness that I often experienced even at relaxed holiday gatherings. Moreover, the vignette reflects the sense of responsibility to their families that drives many men to go abroad. It gives a glimpse of the ongoing “chase” after new potential labor destinations, each of which promises even more earnings than the previous one, and the massive financial “investment” many are willing to make for that prospect. Furthermore, there is a palpable ambivalence between that promise and the ways aspiring migrants like Sudhir and Devraj make sense of the risks they might face abroad. Aswin’s hopeful statement also hints at the personal and kinship-like relations between many migrant workers and their recruiters (which often leave workers with the impression of being done a “favor”). The fragments of our later conversation with a local broker reflect how those intermediaries usually depend on licensed recruitment agents in the capital, whose actual practices many brokers themselves know little about. Ultimately, the vignette addresses a range of different factors that lead many Nepali individuals—particularly young men—towards labor migration. It is those factors of recruitment—the practices, technologies, and underlying forms of knowledge that guide ordinary people towards becoming “candidates” for foreign employment—which I consider the first and foundational pillar of the Nepali migration regime. Technologies and rationalities of recruitment lay the groundwork for all other forms of governing labor

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

migration and are instrumental to the generation of migrant subjects: Without recruitment, there would be no labor migrants to govern. However, the forms of government that constitute this pillar go far beyond what is commonly defined under the term “recruitment,” which often focuses on state regulations of the legal recruitment process and the private recruitment industry. To be sure, professional recruiters and the Nepali state play a vital role in the migration regime and served as an essential source of information during my research. Still, it is important to recall that I do not understand them as sovereign actors who somehow “drive” the governmentality of migration: In a Foucauldian register, rationalities and technologies of governing do not originate from those institutions, but rather enable and circulate through them. For this reason, the scope of my analysis is much broader: It takes into account the normalized forms of knowledge and problematizations, the culturally engrained practices, and the subjectivities that have framed labor migration as a potential target of governmental intervention in the first place. It is only this foundation that has allowed more specific rationalities and technologies of governing migration to take hold. Hence, my investigation of the governmental pillar of recruitment begins by unearthing how labor migration has been framed in Nepali society as both a desirable solution to societal problems and a problem in need of governmental intervention itself. Section two applies those broad insights to the basic formatting of and recruitment into migrant subjectivities that are rooted in gendered cultural norms and material performances. On this basis, section three retraces how the Nepali state has governed foreign employment and recruitment over the past decades and identifies the different rationalities that have guided it. Section four explores how professional recruiters and aspiring migrants regularly subvert those state regulations, and it unpacks the power dynamics, conflicts, and “subterranean” practices within the recruitment industry. The final section focuses on this contentious relationship between official and subversive technologies by revealing the entanglements between public and private sectors and pointing out how aspiring migrants are caught between them. Thus, this part of the chapter discusses both the government of migration and migrant subjects through techniques of recruitment and—in terms of the state-regulated formal process towards foreign employment—the government of recruitment practices themselves.

4.1.1

Labor migration as a solution and problem

Before exploring the foundational mechanisms for recruitment through a conceptual lens, let us begin this investigation by allowing migrant workers to speak for themselves. In the words of some of my interlocutors, what were the reasons that initially led them towards labor migration? 35-year-old Dil1 explains why he chose to go abroad: “I couldn’t get a job here in Nepal. I live in a hilly region; […] we are not close to the market. I carried

1

With the exception of public figures and institutions, I use pseudonyms for all research participants to protect their anonymity.

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loads and worked for others, but that was not enough, so I left“2 (mi11, 26).3 Similarly, 23-year-old Sudhir recalls that “it was money problems. Whatever you want to do, you cannot do it without money. […] I did not want to study and I saw other friends earning money, so I also felt like I should go”4 (mi23, 2). Sarita, a 33-year-old mother of three, shares her perspective: “The main reason was that the economic situation compelled me. […] I have three children, I have to send them to school. I have to buy food and everything else. […] I went abroad in order to do something”5 (fmi04, 2). As the above quotes reflect, most of the returnees that took part in my research chose foreign employment to solve their families’ financial problems. To anybody familiar with Nepali labor migration, the rationales of Dil, Sudhir, and Sarita should come at no surprise. Not only are they echoed in nearly every media report on the topic, but they also feature in a growing body of academic research that has focused on migrants’ individual motivations (e.g., KC 2014; Malla & Rosenbaum 2017; Shrestha 2016). However, this study intends to reach beyond such obvious lines of reasoning. While I do not contest that many of my interlocutors have chosen foreign employment out of an existential threat to their livelihoods, it is neither my place nor my desire to interpret those individual motives. Even though I take their personal accounts as a legitimate starting point, I aim at digging deeper into the fabric of Nepali society to explore internalized forms of knowledge and normali zed practices that shape people’s perceptions of themselves, their place in the world, and their possible courses for action. In doing so, I draw on the assumption that all regimes of government are rooted in problematizations, processes by which specific conditions and practices are subsumed and defined as a general problem that then becomes the logical object of governmental intervention (see section 2.2.1). Accordingly, this section focuses on normalized assumptions and problematizations that have shaped Nepali society over the past century and beyond. By unpacking how labor migration has emerged as a seemingly natural solution to those problems, it unveils deeply internalized rationalities that inform many of today’s practices of recruitment. In a third step, I will go on to show how labor migration itself has been problematized and increasingly become the object of conflicting rationalities and technologies of government.

2 3

4 5

Original: Aba yaha Nepalma kam garne thau teti nabhayeko. Mero ghar pahad tirako thau ho. […] Ma bazaar najikko thiyena. Arkako bhaari bokera, arkako kam garera. Ma nasakera nai gako ho. The naming convention used in each empirical reference corresponds to the original source file located in my empirical database; the subsequent number refers to the paragraph in the respective file, which can be accessed via the digital project file (available upon request). Original: Paisako samasya. Je garna ni paisa nabhai sakidaina. […] Padhna mann nalagne. Arule paisa kamaako dekhda, jaun jasto lagyo ani aaye. Original: Pahilo kuro aarthik abasthale garda badhyeta ho. […] Tin-tin wota bachcha chhan. Padhauna paryo. Khana dekhi liyera sabai kinna paryo. […] Alikati kehi garu bhanne hisable ni gayeko ho ma.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Figure 4: Collection of typical visuals on recruitment agency websites.

(Sources [top to bottom]: Paradise International 2018; Sky Overseas 2019a; Growth Process International Employment 2018b; SRK Nepal 2019).

The visuality of recruitment Although the underlying problematizations and rationalities that enable recruitment into labor migration reach far deeper than the techniques deployed by professional recruiters, my investigation begins with them. In Nepal, the institutions that formally dominate this industry are companies commonly known as “manpower agencies.” As the only licensed providers of recruitment services (see section 4.1.3), those agencies

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take up significant space in the public sphere: Their vacancy announcements fill page after page of every newspaper; and in recent years, their advertisements have increasingly spread from printed brochures and television commercials to social media and online company websites. Most of those websites greet visitors with large-sized, polished images of potential foreign employment destinations. A collection of characteristic depictions can be seen in Figure 4. As these visual examples illustrate, the photographs on recruitment company websites commonly feature the skylines of Dubai, Doha, Kuala Lumpur, and Riyadh. From illuminated skyscrapers and fast-moving city traffic on ten-lane highways to swimming pools and shopping plazas in gleaming lights, all pictures have one thing in common: They represent landscapes of urban luxury and modern progress. Even construction sites are aestheticized to convey the beauty of technological progress and productivity. From an advertising standpoint, it is to be expected that agencies would choose the most appealing pictures for their websites. At the same time, the chasm between those images and most migrants’ lived experiences is striking: As many studies have shown (Bruslé 2010a; Kathiravelu 2016; Paschyn 2012), migrant workers in countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Malaysia, and many others are routinely excluded and kept as far as possible from most of the places featuring in the photographs (see section 4.2.2). Thus, the images do little to indicate the working and living conditions that await Nepali workers abroad. Evidently, featuring grazing cattle in the burning desert, menial labor performed on construction sites and gas stations, and crammed and remote accommodation facilities of worker’s camps are not considered effective techniques of recruitment. What is regarded as effective, instead, are signifiers of modernity, economic wealth, and progress. In other words, recruitment websites sell the dream of “development” (see section 2.2.2). What, then, are the circumstances under which this dream has become so powerful, and how has the perceived lack of “development” become problematized in Nepali society?

The Nepali regime of development—a genealogical perspective In order to answer those questions, it is necessary to retrace the emergence of development as a glocalized regime in Nepal. As argued in section 2.2.2, development is not limited to a single sector or a particular policy agenda, but rather represents a diverse regime of global magnitude. This regime emerged from the legacy of colonialism and has since taken different forms in whatever geographical context it has “touched down.” For this reason, the shape and role of development in Nepal can only be grasped via a genealogical method that takes into account both its multiple historical and geographical lines of descent (see section 3.3.3). While formal development institutions and policies have held a prominent role in Nepali society, politics, and economy for nearly seven decades, the emergence of “Nepali development” can be traced even further into its past and well into the colonial era. For anyone roughly familiar with Nepal’s history, this observation might sound startling at first. After all, the kingdom was never officially subjected to colonial rule and is widely

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

considered to have been very secluded and isolated from the “outside world” until the 1950s. However, recent scholarship has increasingly started to challenge this popular narrative. It has argued that what Nepal experienced over more than a century qualifies at “crypto-colonialism”—a form of colonial government whereby certain countries, buffer zones between the colonized lands and those as yet untamed, were compelled to acquire their political independence at the expense of massive economic dependence, this relationship being articulated in the iconic guise of aggressively national culture fashioned to suit foreign models. (Herzfeld 2002, 900–901) As Katherine N. Rankin points out, Nepali rulers between the mid-eighteenth and midtwentieth centuries were only able to maintain geographical isolation against British imperialism through “political, economic and cultural integration with the British empire—in the form of markets for European exports and provision of Gurkha soldiers to quell rebellion in India” (2004, 165). Hence, the Nepali ruling class traded in material symbols of Western modernity such as luxury goods and amenities, architecture, and clothes (Liechty 2010). It even implemented a “European-style penal code that […] launched mercantile industries for the ruling castes […] under the British guidance” (Shakya 2018, 128). Furthermore, as Mary Des Chene (2007) observes, colonial influences were not only of military and economic nature but also stemmed from the presence and work of academic scholars, particularly anthropologists, who played an essential role in producing “truths” about Nepal which continue to live on until this day. After the fall of the Rana government in 1951, European and US-American influence in Nepal expanded massively. In light of expanding development programs on a global scale, foreign aid arrived in Nepal and became a massive driver of economic and cultural transformation across the country. As Nepal’s perceived “backwardness” was increasingly problematized, development became the explicit object of state policy. The national five-year plans, which the government released from 1956 onwards in order “to mobilize the human and material resources of a nation for […] a practical programme for economic and social development” (National Planning Commission 1956, 1), reflected the teleological mindset that is so characteristic for the strive for modernizing development (Escobar 1995, 26; see also section 2.2.2). After King Mahendra ended Nepal’s first and brief attempt at democracy by declaring the party-less Panchayat regime in late 1960 (Whelpton 2005, 99), development became one of the principal instruments of government (Panday 2012, 83). State discourse and public policies continually fostered a culturally monolithic idea of progress (Gellner 2001, 184), including “developmental rhetoric on competitiveness [which] dismissed culture as backward, and politics as counter-productive” (Shakya 2018, 128). Over the following decades, rationalities and technologies of modernizing development began flowing through every vein of Nepali life, including health (Pigg 1992) and public education (Ahearn 2004, 309). The mid-1980s marked a shift in the development regime, when Nepal, like many other so-called “Third World” countries at the time, underwent a profound structural adjustment program (Whelpton 2005, 127). As a result, the country experienced an even deeper “integration with regional and global economies, character-

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ized by an ideological shift toward economic liberalization and market-led approaches to development” (Rankin 2004, 167–168).6 While development was initially introduced as an international concept by rivaling global powers such as the USA and USSR, and (from the 1970s onwards) by international agencies like the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the World Bank (Whelpton 2005, 128), it was soon domesticized into a form of knowledge unique to Nepal: For instance, Stacey Pigg illustrated in the early 1990s how bikas—the Nepali-language term for development—had become “the idiom through which the relationship between local communities and other places [was] expressed” (Pigg 1992, 499). Places like the “village” or the “city,” categories of everyday life and people’s identities came to be fundamentally redefined in the image of bikas. In a similar vein, anthropologist Mark Liechty observes that the “chaotic interplay of competing, often contradictory, narratives, and […] state-promoted ideologies of ‘progress’ and ‘development’” (2003, 25) have become an integral part of Nepali middleclass identity, where “global modernist metanarratives such as progress, achievement, and growth are very much alive” (ibid., 26). Among the rural community of Gajuri, where I conducted part of my research (see part 3.1), bikas has not only left its indelible mark on people’s minds but is also closely associated with migration.7 When talking about their decision to migrate, many of my interlocutors expressed their desire to “do something” (kehi garnu) and to “get ahead” (aghi badhnu). For instance, former migrant Bal Bahadur, a 37-year-old father of four, explains his decision to work abroad like this: Even though I am so uneducated, I have to send my children to school, and I have to8 help them get a bit ahead. […] I am sending those children to school; I will let them do their SLC [school leaving certificate]. I hope that they will do something afterward.9 (mi06, 351-455)

6 7

8

9

For a detailed overview of development interventions between 1951 and 2000, see Whelpton (2005, 123-153). However, it is important to note that different geographical regions of Nepal have had considerably different encounters and experiences with the global development apparatus. This has undoubtedly led to a plethora of varying glocalized regimes of bikas, some of which might diverge significantly from my personal research experiences in the south of Dhading and can, therefore, not be accounted for in this book. As explained in section 3.3.1, empirical quotes on which I conducted discourse analysis are partly underlined in order to emphasize the words and passages most relevant to the analytical argument. These include key words central to the statement, as well as phrases, nominalizations, and other terms that indicate underlying assumptions and unquestioned regimes of truth. They also comprise pronouns and spatial categorizations that reflect (collective) identities and geographical imaginaries; finally, they include enunciative markers such as logical-argumentative operators (e.g., but, because, even though) that reflect both dominant regimes of truth and their potential subversion. Original: Maile tyeti napadheko hunale bachchaharulai chai padhaunu parchha ra alikati agadi badhaunu parchha. […] Aba jasari pani ti bachchaharulai padhauchhu, SLC garauchhu. Tespachhi uniharule nai kehi garlan bhanne aafno aasha chha.

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Similarly, 28-year-old Gyanendra wonders: “How can we move forward? We have one child. How can we prepare a good future for her? We are uneducated. But how can we let our child get ahead? One thinks a lot about that”10 (mi12, 157). While Bal Bahadur and Gyanendra mainly express concern for the welfare of their children, the perennial question whether and when to go abroad in order to “do something” appears to dominate their minds just as much as those of the young men in the introductory vignette (see part 4.1). What they all have in common is that they imagine their “good future” and ability to “live well” as the result of a linear, unidirectional path that is based on a number of preset steps—the path of “progress” (pragati). In reproducing this uniform teleological mindset, the men also indicate that one of the default steps towards progress is foreign employment. Thus, development and labor migration have become inextricably linked. By imagining the latter as one of the natural steps toward “progress,” the bikas discourse provides one of the foundational pillars of recruitment into foreign employment. This intersection of both regimes is not only a discursive one but also manifests in the institutional and practical dimension, where many of the authorities and technologies that promote, regulate, and govern labor migration overlap with those of the development sector (see section 4.3.5). What are the deeper reasons and mechanisms that explain this close connection?

Migration as a solution to low development While the project of development has shaped societies across the world, not all of them have developed a widespread practice of labor migration. Thus, the imperative to strive for progress and development does not inevitably need to be answered by foreign employment. What, then, is unique about the case of Nepal? On the scale of individual migrants like Bal Bahadur and Durga, their lack of gainful employment opportunities has made it hard for them to see any other choice except looking for work abroad. From a broader perspective of governmentality, however, it is possible to identify deeper dynamics that have shaped the very foundations of migration, including what might be considered a “choice” in the first place. One of those dynamics is rooted in Nepali self-imagination. For decades and longer, Nepal has been caught up in the triangle of colonialism, modernizing development, and neoliberal global capitalism, which has pushed them to the sidelines of the global economy. As a result, many Nepalis have internalized a deep sense of national inferiority, as Liechty observes: By assuming the role of the recipient and dependent in the global development aid economy, the Nepali state […] languishes in this “out here,” self-peripheralizing mentality in which modernity is essentially a foreign commodity. [...] By almost all the criteria that their education—whether formal or through consumption of commercial

10

Original: Kasari ubho bhainchha? Auta bachcha cha. Tesko bhabishye ko lagi kasari sochne, tesko bhabishye kasari banaune. Hami ta anpadh ganwar bhayou. Tara bachchalai kasari agadi badhaune. Tesko lagi ali badhi sochna lagiyo.

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mass media—teaches them to value, Nepali conditions are deemed inferior in an evolutionary sense. The rhetoric of backwardness, development, foreign aid, and education collapses time and space such that Nepali youth learn to situate themselves on the margins of a meaningful universe as consumers of an externally generated material modernity […]. (2003, 237) Instead of interpreting Nepal’s economic predicament as the result of external structural inequalities, poverty and “underdevelopment” are commonly read as internal signs of weakness of the “Nepali nation.” By “experience[ing] modernity through a development ideology that insists that they are not modern, indeed that they have a very long way to go to get there” (Pigg 1996, 163; emphasis in original), Nepalis essentially engage in a practice of self-othering.11 The “long way” Pigg refers to can even be understood literally because it often translates into a journey through space: If anywhere, development and progress may only be found “outside” (bahira) of Nepal. Widespread unemployment, economic stagnation, and the past two decades of Nepal’s political instability have only provided further proof for this line of argument. It is in this context that 62-year-old Dil Bahadur, whose son Aswin has been abroad multiple times, grumbles: “Maybe there is something abroad, that’s all I’m saying. Here in Nepal, there is nothing at all. […] It’s completely broken, this Nepal. [...] It’s rotten. […] There is nothing at all here”12 (fam02, 372-378). The narrative of hopelessness is not only perpetuated by the older generation but resonates with young men as well. As indicated in the introductory vignette (see part 4.1), Aswin explains how the situation leaves him and his friends feeling chronically restless and underworked: “What’s up, will you go again or not, what business have you been up to?”–that’s what we ask, and we all have the same thoughts: “We have to go abroad.” […] Everybody thinks so. A friend who came back with me has been telling me: “Let’s go!”13 (mi09, 210) Against such a disillusioned view of Nepal, foreign countries that boast more prosperous economies are widely imagined as “promised lands” of modernity and wealth. Such “[g]eographical imaginaries involv[ing] […] hierarchical division[s] of the globe […] [that] often act as tacit valorizations” (Gregory 2009, 282) are precisely what technologies of recruitment (including the illustrations on agency websites featured in Figure 4) capitalize on. Similarly, visitors to Kathmandu’s “manpower” agencies are fre-

11

12 13

The importance of this type of practice in colonial and quasi-colonial relations of government is emphasized by postcolonial thinker Stuart Hall (1990). Referring to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ’s concept of “othering” (1985, 252), he argues that one of the most effective techniques of colonial rule has been to introduce regimes of representation that have “the power to make [the colonized] see and experience [them]selves as ‘Other’” (Hall 1990, 25; emphasis in original). Original: Bideshsa mai kehi huncha ki bhanne matra ho. Nepalma kehi pani hudaina. […] Bigreko Nepal yo. […] Khattam chha. […] Kehi chhaina ta yaha. Original: Ke chha, pheri bidesh jane ki najane. Ki business garera basne ho ki bhanera sodhda kheri sabaiko bichar eutai ho: jana parchha bidesh. […] Sabaiko bichar tehi ho. Sangai farkeko sathile ni bolairaheko chha; jau bhanera.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

quently greeted by handmade collages and maps that portray “the world” as a reservoir of potential destinations for foreign employment (see Figure 5 and Figure 6). Figure 5: Hand-crafted map titled “The World. ”

The map serves as wall decoration at a Kathmandu-based recruitment agency. Its center features a paper cutout of a conventional world map (likely based on Mercator projection), which is surrounded by flags of Nepali workers’ most common countries of destination, as well as the Nepali flag in the top left corner. (Source: H. Uprety 2015).

  Figure 6: Another hand-crafted map titled “The World.”

In this map, strings connect the flags of Nepali workers’ most common host countries with their respective locations on the world map cutout. Other maps sometimes include photographs of famous landmarks or landscapes. (Source: H. Uprety 2015).

 

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One striking aspect of the above maps is that they portray “the world” exclusively as a reservoir of potential destinations for foreign employment. However, their full significance can only be grasped when seen in the context of the deeply hierarchical spatial orderings that dominate Nepali geographical imaginaries—orderings that often rely on an imagery of magnitude: For instance, Nepal itself is commonly referred to as a “small country” (sano desh) that has to hold its ground against other “small” as well as “fairly big” (thulai) and “large countries” (thulo desh) (see also Uprety 2016, 43-44). The spatial hierarchies expressed in this imagery are informed by not only countries’ national wealth and median salaries for migrant workers but broader imaginaries of modernity and development. Although such orderings were not a particular focus of my research, their pervasiveness throughout my interviews was undeniable: Particularly when I spoke to migrants and their family members, they often contrasted Nepal against “large countries” such as the U.S.A., Australia, Japan, and “Europe.” In other instances, South Korea, Israel, Cyprus, Portugal, and Poland were referenced as “fairly big countries,” whereas the Gulf states and Malaysia appeared not quite deserving of that status.14 Whenever we spoke of India, several interview partners expressed the feeling that—despite the large and growing economy of their neighboring country—it, too, was “rather small” and barely even counted as a destination “abroad” (bahira). Ultimately, those visual displays and verbal hierarchies perpetuate the concept that development can only be found “outside” of Nepal. They demonstrate that Nepalis’ self-othering identity has a strong spatial dimension: It is an undisputed “truth” that “the world” promises a dream of modernity, wealth, and adventure—but for Nepalis, it seems, the only way to make this dream a reality is through labor migration.

Migration as the target of governmental intervention While the regimes of development and colonialism have played an influential role in normalizing rationalities of recruitment into labor migration, another reason for their deep embeddedness in Nepali society and culture is that Nepalis have practiced foreign employment for many generations. Even though there are important ways in which low-skilled foreign employment today differs from older practices of migration (see part 1.1), it is still essential to identify the genealogical lines of descent from which it has emerged. Over the past two centuries, emigration from Nepal has had many different faces: For instance, from the 1820s onwards, hundreds of thousands of Nepalis migrated into Northeast India, where they worked in the tea estates, oil refineries, coal mines, and sawmills of Darjeeling, Assam, and Meghalaya. Some of them returned home, but many of them settled there permanently (Sijapati & Limbu 2012, 6-7). In the early 19th century,

14

For example, migrant worker Bal Bahadur draws the following spatial distinctions: “Those who go to big, big countries are very different, indeed. Those who go towards Saudi, Qatar, Malaysia and those countries are people who are very uneducated, haven’t learned any skills, and who cannot invest anything by themselves here. […] But those who go to big, big countries, like Europe, like London, like America, or Japan, […] those people who have more than enough, landowners and educated people, people who have a qualification.” (mi06, 236-37)

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Nepali men were also employed as soldiers in the army of Lahore ruler Ranjit Singh, which is why a common colloquial term for labor migrants today continues to be lahure (Graner & Gurung 2003, 298). The male practice of serving in foreign armies became increasingly significant following the Anglo-Nepali war of 1814-16, which started a 200-year practice of Nepali recruitment into the British army (Gellner 2014, 6–7). The enlistment of Nepali soldiers into the so-called “Brigade of Gurkhas” continues up to this day (see section 4.2.4). Following Indian independence in 1947, several Gurkha regiments were also transferred into the Indian army, which expanded significantly over the next decades (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 5–6). Today, the Indian army employs around 50,000 Gurkha soldiers, whereas the British Brigade of Gurkhas has shrunk to approximately 3,500 soldiers (Malla & Rosenbaum 2017, 416). Furthermore, smaller units of Gurkhas remain employed in the Singapore police force and as a special elite guard force in Brunei. Despite the great public attention towards Gurkha recruitment, the form of mobility that has played a far more significant role in terms of duration and numbers is the labor migration of civilians. In what may be the oldest and yet still most common practice up to this day, residents of hilly Western Nepal have been migrating to the Indian lowlands to earn money, particularly during the agricultural off-season (e.g., Gill 2003; Poertner et al. 2011; Thieme 2006). Over the past centuries, these practices have persisted, indicating that labor migration has long been seen as a solution to the problems of poverty and low development. At the same time, it has also been framed as a problem itself. For instance, one of the oldest narratives on migration problematizes migrants’ hardship and suffering (dukha) due to various dangers abroad, their hard work, and the separation from their families. As I discussed elsewhere (Uprety 2016), the dukha narrative continues to be one of the most prominent themes in folk and popular culture, songs, and literature. Aside from causing suffering in migrant workers themselves, foreign employment is also widely regarded as corroding the social fabric of Nepal. In a society where “everyone is leaving” (Adhikari et al. 2015), many fear old village structures and traditional culture to break apart. For example, Nepali newspapers frequently recount cases of personal tragedy and families broken up due to foreign employment, particularly of unfaithful wives who supposedly took their husbands’ hard-earned money and “ran away” with a new lover. Such narratives depict labor migration as a threat to society (see also section 4.1.3), which introduces selfishness, greed, and all kinds of other social evils into people’s previously innocent lives. However, the problematization of Nepali labor migration has not only emerged from cultural and media narratives but has been profoundly shaped by academic scholarship. As Foucault argues repeatedly (e.g., Foucault 1980/2014, 11), academic research and scientific knowledge are often instrumental to “telling history” and legitimizing regimes of truth. Academic scholarship never operates outside of discourse but rather emerges from it, and its position of authority renders it performative, i.e., it is capable of producing the very reality it claims to describe (see also Callon 2008). What makes this even more relevant to the Nepali case is that academic research has always been connected to the far-reaching development sector in Nepal and has often informed policy decisions by the Nepali state. As such, it has always been part of the regime of government rather

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than an outside observer of it.15 It is for this reason that I have chosen to discuss recent scholarship on Nepali labor migration not as a neutral source of “knowledge” separate from my analysis but to embed it into this investigation. Taking into account not only the content but also the different contexts of academic research makes it possible to recognize that it has long played a key role in producing conflicting problematizations and rationalities about Nepali labor migration. As far back as the 1920s, “expert researchers” commissioned by the British recommended the state should take measures “to lessen or completely stop the contemporary drain of the country’s menhood to India” (Collier 1928, 252; cited in Graner 2010, 27). This perception did not change much until the late 1990s when researchers either overlooked the role of labor migration entirely or voiced mostly negative opinions about the practice. For instance, articles titled “Lowly Labour in the Lowlands” (Dixit 1997), “Passport to Misery” (Khadka), and “Migration. Boon or Bane” (Poudel 2003) emphasized the detrimental effects on the national economy, society, and people’s personal lives. Around the turn of the millennium, the debate eventually shifted when scholars argued that previous research had vastly underestimated the role of migration as not only an increasingly popular practice but also a vital source of income for many Nepali households. For instance, David Seddon, Jagannath Adhikari, and Ganesh Gurung assert: An overwhelming concentration on the role of agriculture has blinded researchers and policy-makers alike to the fact that the rural population of Nepal consists not of “farmers” but of individuals and households whose livelihoods are sustained by a wide variety of activities and income sources, many of them not only “off” their own plots but outside agriculture altogether. (2002, 19–20) In other words, the authors diagnose and reject the hegemonic imagination of Nepal as an agrarian nation, in which alternative forms of income, such as foreign employment, simply have no place. Their research also reiterates the powerful role development has had in shaping public perceptions of migration. This time, however, it becomes apparent that development has appeared on both sides of the aisle: Whereas the pervasive doctrine of modernizing development have indirectly fuelled rationalities of recruitment (as discussed in the previous subsection), the professional development sector had long pushed an agrarian ideal of Nepali development and thus initially played a leading role in problematizing migration. This only changed in the late 2000s, when development agencies increasingly shifted towards promoting and improving foreign employment practice (see sections 4.1.3, 4.3.5). Academic scholarship was instrumental in promoting that shift in state and development perceptions. For instance, a growing number of researchers began pointing to the significant role of financial remittances in people’s household budgets (e.g.,

15

Clearly, the same needs to be said of this study, which—by definition—can never be an “objective” outsider’s perspective on the regime of Nepali labor migration. Instead, it is itself embedded in the Nepali migration regime and takes part in the reproduction of particular forms of knowledge (see also critical discussion of my own subjectivity and positionality as a researcher, section 3.2.1).

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Graner & Gurung 2003; Seddon et al. 2001; Thieme & Wyss 2005). They also normalized migration by unearthing the scarce research that had previously been done on the topic—showing, for instance, that seasonal migration (to India) had already been a widespread practice and vital livelihood activity as early as the 1950s (Hitchcock 1961, 19). They redefined Nepali society as a “remittance economy” (Seddon et al. 1998) and criticized that migration had been “pathologiz[ed]” (Sharma 2009, 320) rather than accepted as a normal part of social life. Most contemporary researchers represent Nepal as a historically mobile society, in which labor migration has had its part for several centuries (e.g., Adhikari et al. 2015, 15; Gellner 2014, 136; see also previous subsection). In emphasizing such historical continuities, those scholars have done an important service towards de-alienating and normalizing a practice which had previously been demonized and scandalized. At the same time, their rewriting of the “history” of Nepali migration is not entirely unproblematic. For instance, it can lead us to underestimate the many ways in which current migration practices have been unique (see part 1.1). This includes not only the growing state apparatus and massive recruitment industry that have emerged around contemporary migration, but also the rationalities attached to it. For instance, Jeevan R. Sharma (2014, 127) points out that labor migration used to be a means to support subsistence agriculture, whereas now it is often considered a way to escape from it. Moreover, emphasizing the continuity between traditional practices (such as Gurkha recruitment) and today’s labor migration is not always an innocent act, but one that has been mobilized as a powerful rationality in the marketization of migrant labor (see section 4.2.4). In this section, I explored Nepal’s glocalized regime of modernizing development and the geographical and visual imaginaries attached to it. I illustrated how those internalized forms of knowledge have laid the foundation for contemporary rationalities of recruitment by problematizing Nepal’s “low development” and framing labor migration as a solution. In turn, I also sketched out conflicting narratives around foreign employment and retraced its shifting perception and reproduction in academic scholarship. Ultimately, what those changing perspectives represent is the increasing problematization of labor migration—whether it concerns the practice as a whole or particular aspects of it. It has only been through the articulation of those problems that labor migration has become the object of a growing number of governmental interventions. While many of the more sophisticated rationalities about governing migration and recruitment as well as the competing technologies intended to regulate them, control them, and to amplify or “optimize” their effects are deployed by the Nepali state (see section 4.1.3), forms of governing Nepali migration actually reach far deeper into the social fabric. In particular, they are rooted in normalized practices, internalized values, and basic subjectivities that serve to recruit individuals into foreign employment. It is those everyday forms of governmentality and, specifically, subjectification that I will explore in the next section.

4.1.2

Recruiting into migrant subjectivities

As stated in the introduction to this analysis, the perspective of governmentality allows us to study not only the conduct of migrant subjects but the very generation of those sub-

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jects—a process that typically begins with the recruitment of potential migrant workers. In this section, I will identify the central components that shape this basic and often implicit formatting of migrant subjectivities. This investigation builds on my broad understanding of governmentality, which does not only take into account the planned and formalized technologies of government but recognizes the governmental power of the seemingly mundane (see section 2.2.3). Whether it is agency websites (see section 4.1.1), television commercials, music videos, or everyday interactions and practices in local communities—such commonplace and normalized representations and embodied performances have a profound impact on migrant subjectivities and practices, especially so during the early stages of recruitment. I will begin illustrating this by examining the following commercials for two major Kathmandu-based recruitment agencies (see Figure 7 and Figure 8).

Figure 7: Video stills of recruitment agency commercial, broadcast on TV network ABC News.*

Broadcast on TV network ABC News. (Source: Blue Sky International 2014). *Original: Pariwarko bhabishyeko lagi paisa kamauna jaba ma bidesh jana lage, mero pirle sabaiko aankha rasaye. Ti rasayeka aankhaharulai thaha chha, maile kasari hasaye. “Ma kaha jun payo tehi manpower bat bidesh jana lageko ho ra! Ma ta Blue Sky International bat po bidesh jana lageko ta!” Ma bidesh gaye pachhi po thaha paye sachchikai biswashilo rahechha Blue Sky International. Tin barsha katti chado bityo, pattai bhayena. Thank you, Blue Sky!

The storyline of the two commercials is relatively straightforward: In both of them, the protagonists, two middle-aged men, decide to go to work abroad and—thanks to the excellent service of their respective recruitment agency—return to a prosperous and happy life. In light of the governmental power of modernizing development and progress (see section 4.1.1), it is evident that the commercials activate those very same rationalities. They portray foreign employment as the ideal solution that allows migrants and their families to move from their problems of poverty and financial uncertainty into prosperity and happiness.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Figure 8: Video stills and transcribed audio of recruitment agency commercial.*

Broadcast on TV network ABC News. (Source: Grand Shikhar Overseas 2014). *Original: “Hera yo beiman ko chal! Duniyako chhorale kamayera katro pragati garisake, yesko chahi bhane.”—“O ba, ma ta bidesh janchhu.”—“Ani janchhas chai kasari?”—“Grand Shikhar!” Voice-over: “Baideshik rojgarika lagi ek matra biswashilo company. Chhuttai pahichan, chhuttai karyesaili. Grand Shikhar Overseas.” […] “Thank you, Grand Shikhar Overseas!” Voice-over: “Grand Shikhar Overseas. Providing opportunities.”

What makes those commercials particularly effective, however, is that they prompt their desired target group of potential labor migrants to identify with the protagonists. Therefore, the subject roles featured on-screen reveal important clues about deeply internalized ideal subjectivities of the Nepali migrant. For the remainder of this section, I will explore three different mechanisms that determine such early processes of migrant subjectification: gendered blueprints of migrant subjectivity, the performativity of migration and return, and techniques of recruiting through happiness and pain.

Gendered blueprints of migrant subjectivity The first mechanism I want to discuss is the profound gendering of migrant subjectivities. The fact that both of the above commercials feature a male protagonist is no coincidence, but representative of recruitment technologies at large. During my research, I did not encounter even one recruitment commercial that specifically advertised towards women. This asymmetry matches official data on Nepali migrant numbers, which show that only five percent of foreign labor permits over the past decade were issued to women (MOLESS 2020, 12; see also section 3.2.2). While one might assume that re-

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cruitment commercials simply reflect this existing gender asymmetry, I will show that they serve as technologies that produce and govern towards those gendered subjectivities. In the commercials featured here, this becomes visible in the ways those male migrants are portrayed: For instance, the first protagonist, a husband and father of one, is seen as responsible for “earn[ing] money for [his] family’s future” (Figure 7). Similarly, the second protagonist faces his father’s scorn precisely because he has not fulfilled his responsibility of providing his family with “progress” (Figure 8). In both cases, migrants appear in the role of the “male provider.” This gendered script that draws a direct connection between male identity and providing for one’s family by working abroad is reproduced not only by the above commercials but also by nearly all of my male migrant interlocutors, which is why I included some of their statements in the introductory vignette (see beginning of part 4.1). What historical antecedents has this masculine imperative emerged from? As Liechty (2003) argues, much of today’s concept of male responsibility has its roots in the century-old cultural concept of ijjat. According to him, ijjat, which has been translated as “honor” or “prestige,” has been so defining for Nepali culture that even today, a majority of social interactions remain “built around an economy of ijjat” (ibid., 83-84). At the same time, the meaning of ijjat has also changed. For instance, Gaurab KC (2014, 9–10) observes that while the imperative to gain ijjat remains ascribed to men, it was traditionally equivalent to “earning a name” (nam kamaune), whereas it is now increasingly understood as “earning money” (dam kamaune). Here again, we can recognize how large-scale rationalities like modernizing development and economic progress (see section 4.1.1) have amalgamized with local forms of knowledge. Hence, those rationalities have not only played a role in framing labor migration as a path towards progress and development but have also helped commercialize concepts like ijjat and redefined male subjectivities in the process.16 Returning one last time to Figure 7 and Figure 8, one can derive even deeper insights from what the commercials do not show: While the ideal male migrant takes center stage in those stories, the invisible pillar that makes them work is the counter-subjectivity of the immobile woman. In order to grasp the depth of this subjectivity, it is vital to explore its role in everyday, culturally embedded practices of recruitment. To start with, the vast majority of interlocutors during my research frowned on female labor migration. Even most of the professional recruiters I interviewed spoke out against it. For example, broker Suresh states: “I think that as far as possible, women should not go abroad. If they go to study in big countries like America and Japan, that’s no matter. If you send women to the Gulf, then out of compulsion, but it’s not particularly good”17 (iag02, 46). According to Suresh, women should avoid migrating as far as possible. While he sounds more amenable to the idea of them studying abroad, he opposes any form of female foreign employment. Since this is a prevalent position in

16 17

For a comprehensive analysis of transformations in ijjat and other regimes of value in contemporary Nepal, see also Rankin (2004, 119-28). Original: Mahilalai sakesamma [Gulf country] pathaunu ramro hudaina bideshma. Padhnlai thulo thulo desh America, Japan yesto deshma chai kehi farak pardaina. Kam garna Gulfma pathauda kheri, badhyeta ho, tara khasai ramro chai hudaina.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Nepali society, many recruiters are reluctant to even admit to outsiders that they have ever facilitated women’s foreign employment. I have found this to be particularly true for freelance brokers like Deepak, who strongly asserts: I haven’t sent any women. The “manpower” offered me demand several times […], but I haven’t sent any. Because I spent two years in Qatar and saw that women’s situation there is very critical. […] Some go abroad out of obligation. So many others go out of fun, so many go without understanding the situation very well. According to what I have seen, I do not feel good about it.18 (iag06, 31-32) Since the above statements are not isolated opinions but reflect mainstream perceptions of female migration, one thing becomes evident: The absence of female migrants from recruitment commercials is no accident, but intentional. Those commercials and other techniques of recruitment mirror and perpetuate rationalities that idealize gender scripts of the “male migrant” and the “immobile woman.” Whereas Nepali men are exposed to the ideal subjectivity of the migrant worker on a daily basis, women are actively discouraged from migrating. What are the reasons behind those asymmetrical techniques of recruitment? One of the popular lines of reasoning I encountered during my interviews is that a woman should remain close to her children. For instance, 54-year-old Sumita, who approves of her son Deepak’s employment in Dubai, but rejects the idea of female migration, expresses that “[i]t’s better to raise your child yourself. If the mother has left her child and gone [abroad] […] no matter how big the father’s love, the child needs a mother“19 (fam03, 501). However, given that the subjectivity of the “immobile woman” does not refer to women with young children only, but women in general, there must be other reasons at play, too. Drawing on my own empirical material as well as other academic scholarship, I argue this subjectivity is backed by three overlapping rationalities: 1) Women should be protected from harm: According to one frequent line of argument, women should avoid labor migration because they are more vulnerable to mental, physical, and particularly sexual abuse. Therefore, foreign employment is potentially unsafe for them, especially so in host contexts that have gained a reputation for violating human rights. As a result, the respective job position and, even more so, the host country significantly affect how a woman’s decision to migrate is perceived. For instance, broker Govinda states: I would say it’s better for women not to go abroad. I am saying this because—only if they could go to a good country. Otherwise, it’s not good to go to Dubai, Qatar, Malaysia, Saudi, and so on. […] They could go to UK or Japan or the USA, perhaps 18

19

Original: Mahila pathako chhaina. Dherai choti offer gareko thiyo manpowerle. […] Ani maile mahilaharu pathaina. Kina bhane, nadhaati bhannu parda ma Qatar pani dui barsha basera aaye. Mahilako abastha tya ekdam najuk thiyo. […] Kunai kunai arthik esthitile badhye bhayera gayeko hunchhan. Kati shaukhin le ni garirako hunchhan. Kati nabujhera testo garirako hunchhan. Maile dekhe anusar ramro lagena. Original: Aaphno bachcha, aaphule syhareko po ramro hunchha. Aamale chodera gako bachcha (bidesh) […] Bau le jati maya gare pani, aama chahinchha.

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nothing happens there. But in the Gulf countries, something definitely happens. […] I have not seen it with my own eyes, but I have heard it. […] I do not consider it good to send women to a small country.20 (iag01, 43) According to Govinda, there is a hierarchy between potential labor destinations for Nepali women, which ranges from relatively desirable to unacceptable locations. In referencing this hierarchy, Govinda reiterates the geographical imaginaries of “small” and “big” countries outlined in the previous section. A similar spatial ordering is implied by migrant returnee Pradeep, who declares: It seems rather bad for ladies, no matter what country they go to. […] I don’t feel it’s proper to send them there. […] I wouldn’t send [my wife], because I have gone there once and come back, and because of that I have come to understand a lot, and I didn’t see that it’s that good for ladies in the Gulf. Maybe it’s good in somewhere in Europe, Japan, Korea, or China, but what I’ve seen in the Gulf is that the locals there can do to ladies whatever they want, and force them.21 (mi20, 228-30) Taken together, the above quotes show that women’s employment in the GCC states is seen as particularly dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. This indicates that counter-rationalities against female migration are at least partly informed by the many reports of workers’ maltreatment and abuse in those countries (e.g., Amnesty International 2019b, 8). While this confirms that the subjectivity of the “immobile woman” partly serves to protect women from physical and psychological harm, I argue that it also reflects a rationality of control. 2) Women should remain under the control of the household: The contemporary perception of female migration should not be seen as an isolated phenomenon, but instead stands in the tradition of a patriarchal system that has, for centuries, controlled Nepali women’s identities and profoundly constrained their physical mobility to the household (Tamang 2000). To be sure, the massive political and cultural transformations Nepal has experienced over the past decades have brought about significant changes in the roles and rights of Nepali women. This is particularly true for the 1990 People’s Movement and the Maoist insurgency of 1996-2006, during which gender equality was actively promoted.22 Yet despite “these major socio-cultural and political shifts, HCHH [highcaste hill Hinduism] norms are still powerfully present in public discourse and lingering gender-discriminatory laws” (Grossman-Thompson 2019, 344). This has been shown to be particularly true for the issue of female labor migration, which remains defined

20

21

22

Original: Najanu nai bhanchhu ma. Kasari najanu bhanchhu bhane—ki ramrai desh jana saknu paryo. Aba yo Dubai, Qatar, Malaysia, Saudi tira jan hudaina. […] UK, America, German, Japan jana saknu paryo, testoma chai nahola sayed. Khadi mulukharuma chai ekdamai testo hunchha re. […] Dekheko ta chhaina, bhaneko ta sunichha ni. […] Sano deshma chai mahila pathaunu ramro dekhdina maile. Original: Ladies harulai naramro dekhinchha, junai desh jada pani. […] tesaile uchit lagena. […] Ma chai pathaudina (aphnai srimati). Kinaki ma ekpatak gayera aayeko hunale dherai bujheko chhu. Ladies haruko lagi teti ramro maile yo Gulfma chai dekhina. Hola Japan, Korea, Europe or China tira ramro hola, tara Gulfma chai kasto dekhe bhane, tya ko localharule je pani garchhan, jabarjasti garchhan. Additionally, the role of women has also shifted as a result of targeted development interventions (see section 4.3.5, see also Rankin 2001).

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

by “a logic of gendered control [and] an ideological commitment to male dominion over women’s bodies and mobility“ (ibid., 340). An insightful lens through which to understand this rationality of control is, again, the concept of ijjat: According to traditional high-caste hill Hindu norms, a woman that leaves the “shelter” and “guidance” of her (male) elders is likely to compromise her family’s ijjat. The only way to effectively control this risk is to for her to remain devoted and physically confined to the household. Translated into contemporary perspectives on migration, this effectively translates into the following gender roles: While men have the responsibility to gain ijjat through migration, it is women’s responsibility to preserve ijjat by remaining immobile. 3) Women’s sexual “purity” needs to be preserved: One important dimension of the gendered principle of ijjat is the concept of sexual “purity.” It is the need to preserve this “purity” that serves as one more rationality behind opposing women’s foreign employment. Again, the ideals of female morality and chastity iterated here can be traced far back into Nepal’s past. However, they have grown particularly at odds with female mobility since the 1980s, when reports of Nepali women who worked in the sex industry in India grew increasingly frequent (Seddon et al. 2002, 22). Today, women who are suspected of possibly having been promiscuous or immoral while being abroad are often regarded as “broken” (bigreko), which indicates that their ijjat has been damaged beyond repair. Moreover, even a woman’s mere choice to migrate to a country framed as dangerous for women is often interpreted as a readiness to compromise that chastity and sexual “purity.” For instance, migrant returnee Bishal comments: “Apparently, they don’t behave well towards ladies. They abuse them, I heard. […] Usually, [female migration] is bad in Saudi. Why would you go to a place where there is this kind of behavior?”23 (mi22, 324-26). Similarly, migrant worker Gyanendra declares: A good Nepali woman would never go there. Whoever lives true to themselves doesn’t go there. […] Among 100, there’s maybe one percent who maintain their honor (ijjat). […]. If women go abroad, that means they sell their own truth, religion, and their body. They should rather do some low job in their own country. Why shouldn’t they rather just eat rice and salt?24 (mi12, 317-23) As Gyanendra’s statement shows, sexual “purity” is so important to the integrity of a “good Nepali woman” that she should rather accept living in absolute poverty (“eat[ing] rice and salt”) than to compromise that purity by working abroad. Due to this stigma around female labor migration, it turned out to be quite a challenge in my research to meet women who were willing to share their experience of foreign employment with strangers. As a result, I mostly ended up speaking to women who had worked in Cyprus, which is not one of the major destinations for Nepali migrants in terms of numbers, but one that is considered relatively “honorable.” Still, even

23 24

Original: Ladies harulai ramro bebahar gardainan re. Durbebahar garchha re suneko ho. […] Praye Saudima keti manchhe gayeko ramro hudaina. Testo bebahar bhayeko thauma kina janu ni? Original: Ramro nari Nepalbat jadai janna. Jo afno satyetama raahanchha, tyo nari jadai jadainan. […] Koi holan sayema ek percent, ijjat dhanne pani holan. […] Narile bidesh janu bhaneko aphno satyeta, aphno dharma, aphno jiu bechnu ho. Uniharule aphnai deshma auta sano kam garnu parcha. Baru nun bhat nai kina khanu naparos?

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those women were usually eager to stress that their choice to go abroad had been based on a sense of compulsion: Whether they had faced severe financial struggles at home or just wanted to “move ahead” in life, all women implied that it had initially been their husband’s turn to make an attempt at foreign employment. For instance, returnee Nira shares that she decided to migrate only after her husband—the ideal migrant subject—had repeatedly resisted going abroad himself: He didn’t have a job, was just staying at home; there was no income. […] How many times did I tell him, “go, go, you have to do something,” but he didn’t have the courage. Even though he is a man, he didn’t gather the courage to do anything. So then I tried and did it myself.25 (fmi01, 4) The negative reputation and the loss of ijjat associated with female labor migration ultimately affect the entire family. For this reason, many women planning to go abroad are stopped by their relatives. This happened to Rita, one of my interview partners, who was forbidden by her husband to resume her employment in Kuwait after coming home to take care of her sick daughter (fmi02, 3). Fearing a similar reaction from her husband, former migrant Nira purposely did not tell anybody about her arrangements until she had signed the final papers (fmi01, 4). Ultimately, the rationalities that Nepali women need to be protected and kept under control by restricting their physical mobility indicate that the female subject is perceived to be not only physically vulnerable but also morally weak and in constant danger of straying from the “proper” path. This not only serves as a counter-rationality against women’s recruitment but shapes the conduct of those who do migrate: During their entire time abroad and even after their return, their morality is continually questioned. As migrant returnee Rasmita explained to me, sending home financial remittances meant that she always had to walk a fine line: If the money she had sent was considered too little, she was assumed to have been wasteful and irresponsible. However, if her remittances were felt to be just slightly too much, this raised immediate doubt about whether she had increased her income by “improper” means (fmi05, 6).

The performativity of migration and return While the television commercials and interview quotes discussed so far can provide valuable insights into the formation of migrant (and non-migrant) subjectivities, another promising access point is the investigation of everyday practices and interactions. Considering, for example, the gendered subjectivities of the “male migrant provider” and the “immobile woman” from the perspective of performativity, we see that those gendered identity scripts are not fixed but instead continuously produced, reproduced, and subverted in embodied performances and other “citational practices” (Gregson & Rose 2000, 434). As argued in section 2.2.3, those seemingly unpolitical citational prac-

25

Original: Uhako job thiyena, gharmai basne, jagir thiyena. […] Maile uahalai katti choti janu janu bhane, kei garnu parchha bhane, tara uahako aant nai aayena. Chhora manchhe bhayera ni kei garna aant nai aayena. Tespachhi ma aphaile kosish garera afaile gareko ho.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

tices shape the ongoing subjectification of (aspiring) migrants and their communities; and thus essentially function as techniques of government and self-government. In particular, everyday performances of how labor migrants ought to conduct themselves are highly influential for the recruitment of new candidates. Due to the advance of social media and other new technologies of communication, even migrant workers who are currently abroad have become significantly more present and visible in their home communities (see also Uprety 2016, 47–49). Nevertheless, the most powerful tool by which migrants influence rationalities and subjectivities around migration remains the performative acts upon their return. In other words, the “script” of the migrant subject is continuously rewritten not primarily by those who are currently employed abroad, but especially by former migrants who have already returned home. While this script of the “migrant returnee” plays a role in a wide range of recruitment technologies, including the television commercials featured earlier (see Figure 7 and Figure 8), it also manifests in everyday practices and material structures among migrant communities. For example, during my ethnographic research in the rural community of Gajuri,26 I witnessed what some residents described as “lahure culture.”27 This term indicates that migrant returnees to Gajuri and other villages across Dhading often engage in a set of performative acts, which mainly draw on glocalized concepts of development and progress (see section 4.1.1) to convey the idea of “successful” migration. Those acts (done by many returnees as well as their family members) include presenting status symbols such as sunglasses, watches, Western business suits, motorcycles, the newest technological gadgets, embroidered saris, and gold jewelry. Moreover, the performative script affects not only returnees’ material possessions but also their physical appearance: For instance, migrants’ individual weight gain is widely interpreted as signs of their increased wealth and health—a symbol which persists today despite the gradual arrival of Western ideals of physical fitness and beauty. A migrant’s “successful” return often affects his or her embodied conduct, too: The family begins to consume white rice rather than the locally typical kodo or dhindo (porridge made of millet or corn), and Western soda drinks are preferred to the traditional mohi (a drink based on yogurt and water). The performative script of return manifests in material practices beyond migrants’ embodied conduct, too—for instance, in the building of returnee houses. To be sure, it is to be expected that many migrant returnees use their earned money to build a family home. Aside from the gesture itself, however, many do so by “citing” particular building practices that symbolize their “successful” return. This unique building style is captured in the following collection of photographs taken among the migrant community in Gajuri (see Figure 9).  

26 27

For details on the research location of Gajuri, Dhading, see part 3.1. As stated in section 4.1.1, lahure is a traditional colloquial term for Nepali labor migrants, which originated from the 19th century practice of Nepali enlistment in the army of Lahore ruler Ranjit Singh.

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Figure 9a & b: Collection of buildings representing “returnee architecture” in Gajuri.

 

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

  Characteristic features include bold colors, intricate decorations, and patterns of the outer walls, unusual window forms, embellished pillars, and ornamental stucco. (Source: H. Uprety 2018).

As reflected in these photographs, many of the houses built by returning migrants over the past fifteen years perpetuate a specific “returnee architecture.“ In Gajuri and many places across the country, this style departs from locally established, more traditional building practices and instead uses new materials and building methods. They include decorative patterns, bold and bright colors, and other elements that are widely considered “non-Nepali” and “modern” (especially so in rural settings). Often, they are inspired by architectural elements migrants might have observed during their stay abroad, such as embellished pillars, unusual window forms, and an abundance of ornamental plastering. Painted in pink, turquoise, and bright red, and boasting balconies and decorative front gardens, returnee houses thus stand in stark contrast to traditional homes with their tiled roofs, wood framings, and low ceilings. By giving those descriptions, I do not mean to analyze this specific building style from an architectural point of view, but rather want to illustrate the performative power of those material structures: In Gajuri and elsewhere, embellished balconies and bright colors not only symbolize the residents’ financial success but invoke a sense of modernity and worldliness. The critical thing to consider here is that returnees frequently pursue such building projects even though a more traditional house would be much

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more pragmatic and financially feasible for the family. In this way, returnee houses have become much more than functional places of residence, but play a vital role in the citational performance of the “successful” migrant. As such, they do not only inspire similar conduct among other migrant returnees but also work as technologies of recruitment to the remaining community. Although those scripts are powerful, the concept of performativity emphasizes that hegemonic orders are permanently challenged and subverted (see section 2.2.3). This is also the case with the performativity of migration and return. For example, 28-year-old Aswin chose to conduct himself against some of those dominant scripts: Even though his earnings would have allowed him to build something more “modern,” he decided to construct what was widely considered an old-fashioned house in the countryside. Other instances of such counter-conduct (see section 2.2.1) occur in popular media and art. An excellent example of this is the music videos of contemporary pop and folk songs, who—partly due to their wide availability via radio, television, and cell phones—have taken a leading role in narrating (and thus reproducing) everyday practices and internalized subjectivities around Nepali migration. While many of those music videos reinforce hegemonic identity scripts around migration (a point I will return to at the end of this section), they can also challenge and subvert them. One of the music videos that has done so quite successfully is the prominent Nepali folk song “Chinta chhaina kehi“ (“I have no care in the world”), which was released several years ago and quickly reached “viral” status online (see Figure 10). As captured in the above video stills and lyric excerpts, the music video of “Chinta chhaina kehi” subverts several of the rationalities and ideal subjectivities that typically recruit Nepali men into labor migration: For instance, it openly rejects popular signifiers of “successful” foreign employment such as urban skylines and a modern Western lifestyle, e.g., expressed in clothes and drinks. Instead, it highlights the value of local products and what is perceived as a traditional Nepali way of life. Although the performances in the video are often intentionally humorous, the song still remains assertive in instructing Nepali men to refuse the performative script of recruitment. Rather than “abandoning” Nepal to serve another nation, it suggests, they should apply their physical strength to their homeland. In this way, the song effectively mobilizes Nepali patriotism to subvert hegemonic techniques of recruitment.

Recruiting through happiness and pain A final aspect that needs to be understood about the generation of migrant subjectivities is the role of affect and emotion. By revisiting some of the research material and insights discussed throughout this and the previous section, I will now illustrate that most techniques of recruitment become effective precisely because they mobilize specific emotions or affects. For instance, recruitment commercials like those featured in Figure 7 and Figure 8 heavily draw on the emotional bond between migrants and their family members: The commercial in Figure 7 invites the audience to empathize with the migrant’s wife and child, who are initially distressed and with “tear-filled eyes” about his departure, but relieved when he finds a trustworthy agency. This effect is only reinforced when

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

the migrant’s young daughter sweetly chirps her “thank you” towards the camera. In a similar vein, the second commercial (Figure 8) tries to recruit potential migrants by conveying the pride and appreciation the migrant receives from his parents when he “successfully” returns from abroad.

Figure 10: Video stills and transcribed audio of folk music video “Chinta chhaina kehi.”*

Artists: Pashupati Sharma and Sita K.C. (Source: Music Nepal 2013). *Original: Bhaisi pali gaun tira jharera; chinta chhaina kehi. Malai Amerika yehi, malai Japan pani yehi, malai belayet ni yehi. Lainau bhaisi dunchhu, dui glas dudh khanchhu. Malai beer pani yehi, malai whiskey pani yehi. Malai posilo ni yehi. […] Bidesh gaye dherai din basina. Kina bechne ragat ra pasina? Chinta chhaina kehi, malai Qatar pani yehi, malai Dubai pani yehi, malai Malaysia yehi.

If we go back even further to the internalized ideals of modernizing development and “progress” (see section 4.1.1), the photographs featured on recruitment websites (Figure 4) function precisely because they are landscapes of hope and desire. The same mechanisms operate even through as mundane things as the names of recruitment companies: “Aasha International,” in English “Hope International,” “Destiny Placement Service,” “Bright Future Employment,” or “Heaven Overseas” (Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies [NAFEA] 2019b)—all those names indicate that what recruiters promise to aspiring migrants is actually an emotion, a chance at happiness. However, since this happiness is tied to broad societal concepts like development and the gendered subjectivities discussed earlier, it is not an entirely private feeling: For Nepali recruits into labor migration, the search for happiness is more than a personal imperative—it is a male responsibility to achieve “progress.” In turn, this means that this quest for “progress” has a significant emotional dimension, one which Sara Ahmed (2010) considers characteristic of new versions of colonialism. According to her, it is precisely the desire for happiness that keeps colonized subjects in an endless struggle that “rests […] on the hesitation of the almost: almost happy, but not quite; almost happy, but not white” (ibid., 129–130). In the case of the Nepali migration regime, the subjectivity of the “male provider” further implies that not only the migrant’s own happiness is at stake—but also that of his family. While migrants’ recruitment is clearly driven by the hope for a “better” and happier life, it is also accompanied by experiences of pain and suffering. For instance, most of the aspiring migrants I interviewed expressed a strong sense of guilt or even shame over having been unable to adequately provide for their families—which meant they

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had deviated from their ideal subjectivity of the “male provider.” Moreover, those “negative” emotions play an essential role in migrants’ performative script of return (see previous subsection), as they often determine what is allowed to become visible and what is kept hidden from view. During my research in the community of Gajuri, for example, migrant returnees rarely talked about the difficult, challenging, and sometimes exploitative working conditions they had faced abroad. Instead, most of them kept silent about those painful experiences, as former migrant Pradeep describes: I faced lots of hardship, but when they asked me how I was, I told them I was fine, even if I was in pain. […] I didn’t share them about these things. […] I kept telling them that I was fine, that my job was good. They assumed it was good. Only I myself knew about the hardship I was facing.28 (mi20, 174-80) Like Pradeep, most returned migrants that participated in my research had taken a metaphorical “vow of silence” regarding their painful experiences abroad; a practice that has been observed among migrant returnees in other geographical contexts as well (Brooks & Simpson 2013, 61; Dünnwald 2013). An important reason for such behavior appears to be migrants’ shame and fear of damaging their reputation. For instance, returnee Gyanendra explains what motivated him to stay silent about his exploitative experience of foreign employment: If I told others that I had done this and that, I would create a bad image of myself. For example, inside my village—if not anywhere else—there are about ten people who respect me. If they knew the reality and knew that, oh, I went to take care of goats and camels while I had boasted to them that I was a driver there! Why should I destroy my own image like that? Whatever falls on me, I have to bear myself. […] You shouldn’t talk about the incidents you have faced abroad. […] Some things should be kept secret.29 (mi12, 265-69) The fear of compromising his “image” and losing respect in his community at home was a major driver in keeping Gyanendra silent about his experience of having been cheated and forced to work a “low” job abroad. This means that even the concept of ijjat (as discussed earlier in this section) is profoundly affective: Whereas a rise in ijjat leads to emotions of pride and self-esteem, a loss of it is internalized as shame and a sense of worthlessness. Thus, it is largely the desire to avoid this emotional pain that causes many migrant returnees to keep their “vow of silence.” At the same time, I also encountered migrant returnees who subverted this dominant practice and spoke publicly about their unglamorous experiences abroad (see also Uprety 2016, 52). In doing so, they often referenced generations-old problematizations

28

29

Original: Kati dukha pani hunthyo. kasto chha bhanda kheri, dukhai bhaye pani thikai chha bhaninthyo. […] sabai kuraharu share garidaina thiyo […] thikai chha ramro chha, kam chalirako chhha bhanne. Uniharulai lagchha thik chha. Tara afulai thaha chha dukha kasto chha bhanera. Original: Maile yeso gare uso gare bhane afnai image kharab garne kura bhayo. Jasto kei nabhaye pani mero gaun bhitrama dash janale manchha bhane. Pachhi ta, hatterika, yo ta unt bakhra herna gako raichha, ma driver hu bhanchha. Afno image kharab kina garne. Afu mathi je jasto pare pani afule bhognu parchha […] Afule pardeshma bhogeko ghatnaharu afule bhannu hudaina. [...] Kehi chij gopye rakhnu parchha.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

of migration, particularly so the dukha narrative about the pain and suffering of migrants and their families (see section 4.1.1). This narrative has not only affected political government but has also been one of the most prominent themes in Nepali culture and art—from folk and pop songs to poems shared on social media. Across its many different iterations, affect usually plays a significant role, which can be seen—and felt—in the following two music videos that were released in recent years (see Figure 11 and Figure 12).

Figure 11: Video stills and transcribed audio of pop song “Saili.”*

Artists: Hemant Rana, Gaurav Pahari, and Menuka Pradhan. (Source: GH Entertainment Nepal 2017). *Original: Suna Sahili Sahili pardesh bat ma aaula, sun Sahili chalis katesi ramaula, […] Samjhi kahillai narunu. […] Nidharma naamlo bariyo, Bhabiko khelma pariyo. […] kuloma pani kalalaaa, Gau gharko tasbir jhalala. […] Pidhima jato gharara, jhardo ho aansu barara.

Figure 12: Video stills and transcribed audio of folk song “Bidesh Jane Rahar.”*

Artists: Pramod Kharel and Sushila Himal. (Source: Budha Subba Digital 2019). *Original: Bidesh jane rahar thiyena, badhyetama pari. Janma bhumi chhodi aaja, maya [...] sat samundra tari. […] Samjhanale jharchha aansu chad parva aauda, chassa mutu dukhchha, priye, timlai samjhi ruda. […] Aama baa lai samjhi gayo kati Dashain Tihar, sapanima sangai basne pardeshiko rahar.

While the limited excerpts of the music videos above are not able to convey all the affective responses that might be triggered by their melodies, vocal intonations, and facial expressions, they provide at least a glimpse of the sadness and sense of tragedy they are meant to communicate. Furthermore, they illustrate that the dukha narrative

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focuses not only on the harm migrants might face at their workplace, but also on the suffering they might have to endure just by living far away from their beloved family and home country. Given the emotional pain communicated in the examples above, one might think that the dukha narrative serves as a deterrent against migration and thus counteracts rationalities of recruitment. However, this is not necessarily the case; mainly so because of three different rationalities: 1) Pain as inevitable: Many potential recruits draw on their interpretations of Hindu or Buddhist doctrine in order to frame any suffering as an inevitable part of their fate (see Figure 11, frame 2). For instance, serial migrant Gyanendra explains: “I would even have the confidence to run this country. But the situation is not like that. Whatever has been written in my fate will happen. So I have to run my household by working abroad“30 (mi12, 328). Although sometimes disregarded by urban youth as old-fashioned, such beliefs were voiced frequently during interviews (see also vignette, part 4.1). 2) Pain as a necessary sacrifice: Furthermore, the painful experience of migration is frequently seen as a necessary price that needs to be paid in order to achieve the happiness so desired. According to this rationality, the emotions of happiness and pain around migration are two sides of the same coin: By deciding to work abroad, migrants trade today’s dukha for tomorrow’s sukha, which will finally allow them to “enjoy life” (Figure 11, frame 1).31 3) Pain as an affirmation of (male) subjectivity: A third reason why the dukha narrative does not necessarily serve as a rationality against recruitment is that it reinforces male identities. For many Nepali migrants currently abroad, listening to songs that resonate with their personal experiences provides an affective outlet, a way to process their emotions and a sense of being part of a community. It is this shared pain that reaffirms the embodied experience of being a male Nepali migrant. The collectivity of their sacrifice is what has allowed labor migration to turn into, as other scholars have observed, a male “rite of passage” (Bruslé 2010b, 163; Sharma 2009, 312). In this way, a recruit for migration can identify as the heroic protagonist of the dukha narrative, who—by sacrificing his personal happiness for the sake of his family’s prosperity—fulfills the “obligations of becoming a complete man” (Sharma 2014, 131). This reasoning becomes apparent in statements like the following one by returnee Bal Bahadur, who recalls: After sending money in a gap of two months, my children asked me, “Father, when are you coming?” And I told them, “I will come in two months, don’t worry. I will come after I have earned a little more money, and I am also making a future for you. […] It makes me happy. For you, I am working my guts out.”32 (mi06, 357) 30 31 32

Original: Ma ta deshnai chalauna sakchhu ki bhanne aant chha. Tara testo chhaina ni ta. Jati ya lekheko chha, teti nai hune ho. Tehi majduri garera ghar chalaune ho. The temporal dimension of this “trade-off” between temporary pain and lasting happiness will be investigated in more detail in section 4.3.5. Original: Dui mahina ko gap ma paisa pathai diye pachhi ani “Kahile aauney ta buwa?” bhanera chhora chhorile bhanthey, “Ma dui mahina pachhi aaunchhu, pir namana. Alikati paisa kamayera aaune ani timiharu ko pani bhabisya banchha, […] Malai pani anandai chha, timiharu kai lagi ho, ma mari meteko.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

For “male providers” like Bal Bahadur, the hardship faced abroad is not only a necessary price to pay, but might hold some reward in itself: a sense of purpose, worthiness, identity. In this way, affect essentially works as the glue which attaches male Nepali subjectivity to the practice of foreign employment. As a result, the dukha narrative ultimately serves as a technology of recruitment—a technology that relies on Nepali men’s affective response to this call for self-conduct. The empirical examples discussed in this section have shown that migrant subjectivities in the early stages of recruitment are fundamentally shaped along three intersecting dimensions. They are profoundly gendered, resulting in the normative roles of the “male migrant provider” and the “immobile woman.” Moreover, they are constantly reproduced and subverted via embodied and performative scripts, particularly that of the “successful” returnee. Finally, their effectiveness in guiding potential migrants’ conduct—like that of most other techniques of recruitment—depends on their ability to mobilize emotions and affects. By operating via those different dimensions, deeply normalized forms of knowledge and culturally anchored subjectivities lay the groundwork for Nepali recruitment into labor migration. In the following sections, I will discuss the professional institutions and practices that build on this groundwork, beginning with the Nepali state.

4.1.3

State government of migration and recruitment

Nepal’s state apparatus has been instrumental in the formation of the Nepali migration regime. In order to grasp its role in conducting aspiring migrants through recruitment, it is necessary to consider its government of recruitment and labor migration at large. One aspect of this broader conduct is the legal framework that regulates foreign employment today. For Nepali citizens, labor migration to any foreign country except India is currently governed under the Foreign Employment Act of 2007 (GoN 2007), which has been amended several times. Additional legislation that complements the act includes the Foreign Employment Rules (id. 2008), which were most recently amended in 2019 (id. 2019), the so-called Foreign Employment Policy, and various individual directives on specific topics. Compared to the previous legal framework, which was grounded in the Foreign Employment Act of 1985 (id. 1985) and the Foreign Employment Rules of 1999 (id. 1999), today’s legislation is far more comprehensive. It prescribes the entire recruitment process, for instance, by defining the required documentation and permits, the chronological steps needed to receive those permits, and the licensing, regulation, and lawful conduct of professional recruitment agencies. Furthermore, it contains provisions about migrants’ rights and claims to compensation in case of recruitment malpractice and their injury or death while abroad (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 42–44; see also Paoletti et al. 2014). In addition to this domestic legislation, Nepal has signed several bilateral agreements and memoranda of understanding, including with Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, and Malaysia (Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility [CESLAM] 2020). Those agreements complement host country immigration and labor laws, which are the leading

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authority that governs migrants’ work and life abroad (see section 4.2.2). By contrast, the responsibility and power of the Nepali state are limited mainly to the processes leading up to migrants’ departure and after their return. Most of those administrative and regulative functions are executed by the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE), which was founded in 2007 under the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MOLE) (DoFE 2019a), now the Ministry of Labor, Employment, and Social Security (MOLESS). It presides over the Foreign Employment Promotion Board (FEPB), a sub-organization responsible for informing the public about foreign employment (see section 4.3.2), designing and monitoring migrants’ orientation training (see section 4.3.3), and providing financial compensation to the families of injured and deceased workers. The DoFE is also in charge of processing complaints about unlawful conduct in the recruitment industry. Those cases that cannot be resolved by the DoFE are forwarded to the Foreign Employment Tribunal, a semi-judicial body affiliated with the DoFE (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 43–44). What are the circumstances under which those current government bodies and policies have emerged? In the following subsection, I will answer this question by identifying the different rationalities that have shaped the Nepali state’s approach towards labor migration. By tracing their respective emergence at different times over the past decades, I will place those rationalities in the context of changing socio-political circumstances and illustrate how they have manifested in different government policies. Finally, I will use this foundation to outline specifically the state regulations that govern the recruitment process.

Changing rationalities of governing labor migration Throughout the past decades, the Nepali state’s approach to governing labor migration has shifted multiple times and remains contested today. As such, it reflects different underlying rationalities that emerged on Nepal’s political landscape at different times and grew out of socioculturally embedded forms of knowledge (see sections 4.1.1-2), transnational regimes and doctrines, and changing political circumstances. Although each of them dominated the state’s approach at different times over the past decades, they all continue to be influential today. Overall, those multiple and sometimes contradictory plans, policies, and regulations can be traced back to six main rationalities: a) Migration as education: After the end of the Rana regime and the short-lived democracy of the 1950s, King Mahendra and, later, his son Birendra intended to increase Nepal’s relations with the outside world, but regarded out-migration mainly as a means for education (Whelpton 2005, 167). According to the government’s five-year-plans from the 1960s and 1970s, Nepali individuals were explicitly sent abroad—mainly to India—to receive specific industry-related training and bring back expertise in engineering (National Planning Commission 1965, 25, 1970, 196/251). Upon their return to Nepal, they were supposed to use this obtained knowledge to advance their nation’s “development.” Hence, with the exception of Gurkha enlistment (see sections 4.1.1, 4.2.4-5), the state saw no reason to take any legal provisions to facilitate or regulate labor migration to

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

foreign countries—something that only changed in the mid-1980s (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 2–3). b) Migration as detrimental to society: However, labor migration to overseas destinations probably already occurred long before those legal provisions were made. While I know of no data that confirms this assumption, it is likely that Nepali workers used existing migration routes (and the open border) to India in order to travel overseas via Indian recruiter networks, which existed at least since the 1970s (Rajan & Oommen 2020, 1). This would certainly explain the wording of Nepal’s first Foreign Employment Act of 1985, which expresses the state’s intention “to control and manage foreign employment to maintain financial interests and facilities of the general public” (GoN 1985, preamble). By emphasizing the need to “control” foreign employment, this introductory statement indicates that those practices had already been occurring. Furthermore, the restrictive choice of words and the desire to “maintain” the country’s interest reflects a rationality aimed at avoiding the loss of valuable labor force and “preventing an exodus of qualified individuals” (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 28). Accordingly, the act declared that “His Majesty’s Government shall not give approval to select workers […] if the person […] is required for the economic development of Nepal” (GoN 1985, 9[2]). Thus, the state’s initial position on foreign employment reflected the dominant development doctrine of the time (section 4.1.1), which considered it to have mainly detrimental effects on the country. While the government’s attempt at rendering those practices orderly was primarily based on a desire to control them, it did provide the first legal foundation for foreign employment and thereby played an essential role in facilitating it. Nevertheless, it took several more years for those practices to become widely popular. For instance, census data from 1991 reveal that the vast majority of Nepali migrants at the time were still living in India, followed by European countries and North America (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 9–10). c) Migration as a source of economic revenue: Several factors contributed to the gradual growth of migrant numbers. Following the First People’s Movement and Nepal’s subsequent transition to a constitutional monarchy in 1990, several administrational changes, including the decentralized issuing of passports, made foreign employment more accessible (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 9-10). Furthermore, the country experienced increasing economic liberalization and integration into global processes (Joshi 2010; Rankin 2004). It was during the same time that the Nepali state began to strike a slightly more positive note towards labor migration. For instance, it promised in its 1992 five-year-plan that “[o]pportunities for foreign employment will be identified and provisions will be made in an organized way to allow Nepali workers of different levels to take up jobs abroad” (National Planning Commission 1992, 417). Compared to the legislation of 1985, state strategies thus were no longer directed at rendering migration more orderly, but increasingly at facilitating it. Moreover, 1993 marked the year when the government began keeping yearly records of the foreign labor permits it had issued (something which had apparently not been considered relevant before). Since all regimes of government depend on the production of knowledge about their object, this administrative change indicates a shift in the state’s rationality towards foreign employment and indicates its emergence as an increasingly important object of governmental intervention.

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The nature of this new rationality becomes evident in the five-year-plan of 1997 when the state announced its intention to further advance labor migration: “In order to increase external capital especially the factor income as a supplement to the gross domestic savings, foreign employment will be expanded and promoted; and to increase remittance coming therefrom, various policies and programmes will be implemented” (id. 1997, 53). By emphasizing the impact of financial remittances on Nepal’s domestic economy, the government, for the first time, framed labor migration as a practice that benefitted the country. From today’s perspective, this economic impact could not be more apparent: As stated in the introduction to this book, financial remittances remittances have nearly tripled over the past decade (MOLESS 2020, 92) and currently amount to 28 percent of Nepal’s GDP (World Bank 2019, 2). Moreover, the Nepali government also derives significant revenue from various taxes and fees surrounding the recruitment infrastructure: In 2011, the state revenue derived from passports, VAT on Kathmandu airport’s passenger service charge, annual license renewal fees of recruitment agencies and orientation institutes alone was estimated at NPR 2.5 billion (approx. EUR 20 million) per year (Ghimire et al. 2011, 36). Even in 1997, when migrant numbers were significantly lower than today, the state clearly came to recognize this potential. This change in perspective did not occur in isolation, however, but reflected a broader political shift towards neoliberal and market-oriented rationalities. It was their expanding influence on Nepali politics at the time (Rankin 2004) which explains the plan’s stated goal of “develop[ing] […] competitive capability of the manpower for foreign employment” (National Planning Commission 1997, 186). In referencing the need for Nepali workers to compete on the global labor market, this statement signals not only a larger shift towards neoliberal thinking but the beginning of a deliberate marketization of Nepali labor (see part 4.2). Over the past two decades, the framing of foreign employment as a vital source for Nepal’s economic revenue has gained a solid footing in the Nepali migration regime. This needs to be seen as not only the result of a broader orientation towards liberal market processes but also a reflection of changing rationalities in the development sector, which has long been intertwined with Nepal’s political sphere: As a direct result of the spreading migration-development nexus and the GRT on a global scale (see section 2.3.3), Nepali labor migrants have increasingly been framed as “agents for development” (Ilcan & Lacey 2011, 74; see section 4.3.5). Ultimately, this means that the rationalities discussed here are concerned with not only the “right” government of migration but also strategies of governing through migration: By regulating foreign employment in a way that will have desired effects on other sectors of society, foreign employment becomes not only an object but also a technology of government. This twofold strategy becomes even more evident in the following rationality. d) Migration as a means to defuse political tension: The state’s increasingly favorable position towards foreign employment also needs to be understood in light of high unemployment rates and rising social tensions at the time. Although it is hard to find definite proof that those circumstances informed the monarchy’s decision to foster foreign employment, studies indicate that it certainly has been used as an effective governmental strategy to consolidate the political status quo in other countries in Asia (Rodriguez & Schwenken 2013; Yeates 2009). What is also known is that the onset of the Maoist

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insurgency in 1996 left the political establishment in Nepal anxious to defuse tension and frustration among its youth, and to keep them from “radicalizing” and joining the Guerrilla troops (Sharma 2006a, 553). In turn, many young men recognized labor migration as a chance to escape recruitment into the Maoist army, which was often forced (Thapa & Sijapati 2004, 155).33 When the civil war began to escalate at the turn of the millennium, the numbers of issued work permits suddenly skyrocketed, nearly doubling from 55,025 to 104,736 within only one year (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 15). Whether this rise in migrant numbers ultimately benefitted the royal government is debatable, however: As Marie Lecomte-Tilouine argues, “[m]assive emigration to the Gulf of young males, especially those who had no revolutionary inclination, left the field free of any serious opposition to the Maoists” (2013a, 11). Furthermore, as I learned during my interviews, the experience of being in a different country, economy, and political system caused many migrants to take a critical stance against the Nepali cultural and political establishment upon their return. e) Migration as a risk to the population: Although the Nepali state became more interested in the financial benefits derived from foreign employment, the increase of migrant numbers in the late 1990s also drew sharp criticism from leading political ranks, academic researchers, and across Nepali society (see section 4.1.1). As reports of workers’ exploitation, abuse, and death abroad grew more and more frequent, the state increasingly problematized the risks migrant laborers were exposed to abroad. For instance, the five-year-plan of 1997 laments that “workers have been going abroad for minimum pay and facility, […] they is [sic] engaged in difficult, risky and unhealthy works [sic] [and] have been bluffed, stranded and thrown into insecure position” (HMG 1997, 3). In its statement, the government emphasizes the threat that foreign employment poses to the health of Nepal’s migrant population. This line of thinking is indicative of a biopolitical rationality, which, as opposed to more repressive forms of power, tries to “exert […] a positive influence on life, [and] endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it” (Foucault 1978, 137; see also section 2.2.1). By directing its focus towards preserving its citizens’ lives and physical integrity, the state’s government of migration thus became a biopolitical operation. One of the main problems the state identified as a risk to migrants’ health and safety was fraud and cheating by professional recruiters. Consequently, a second amendment of the Foreign Employment Act in 199834 added provisions about worker’s rights and their protection from fraud, exploitation, and abuse (GoN 1998). It also “made an effort to make the selection process more transparent and dependable” (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 33–34), for instance, by requiring agencies to submit detailed information to state 33

34

For instance, the fear of being recruited led one of my interview partners, Pradeep, to migrate to Saudi Arabia at age 16, as he recalls: “There was one big reason why I went to Saudi. When I was in grade eight, my name was enlisted in the Maoists’ student wing by some Maoist friends. When I was in tenth grade […] they came to my home and tried to take me to their underground revolution. I got so scared and I told my mom that I wanted to flee to India. But one of my uncles suggested me to get a citizenship card by declaring a false age, and so I got my citizenship card and passport. I was taken to India and the brokers checked and processed everything.” (mi20, 3) One earlier amendment had been made in 1992; however, the 1998 amendment was the one that produced the most profound changes to the original legislation.

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authorities. In the following year, the state released the so-called Foreign Employment Rules (GoN 1999), which regulated recruitment agency licensing and advertising, and required all aspiring migrants to undergo a mandatory medical check-up prior to their departure. Since then, the migrant population has continued to be the object of a biopolitical rationality (see sections 4.3.2-3). However, even more specific governmental interventions have been directed at the subgroup of migrant women. f) Women as a particularly vulnerable population: Rooted in the culturally embedded gender role of the “immobile woman” (see section 4.1.2), the state’s approach towards female migration has always been restrictive. The Foreign Employment Act of 1985 already framed women as a particularly vulnerable population in need of additional protection, which is why it allowed women to migrate only with the approval of a “guardian” (GoN 1985, 12) such as her husband, father, mother, a brother, or parent-in-law. Following increasing reports of abuse and the death of a domestic worker in Kuwait in the late 1990s, the state issued a complete ban on women’s migration, which it only partially lifted in 2003 (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 39). Over the past two decades, the state’s governmental strategy towards female migrants, which has elsewhere been described as “protection by exception” (Rajan & Varghese 2013, 22), has only continued. Although the Foreign Employment Act of 2007 states that “[n]o gender discrimination shall be made while sending workers for foreign employment” (GoN 2007, 8), a complete ban on female migration to Malaysia and the Gulf states was put in place just months after its passing. Since then, “women have been subject to a confusing and constantly shifting assortment of policies and laws” (GrossmanThompson 2019, 344–345). Over only a few years, the state issued a complete ban on all female domestic workers, a partial ban that only applied to women below 30 years of age, and a ban on all domestic workers to the Gulf, unless they were above 24 years and had no children below the age of two (Pyakurel 2018, 651). The targeting of young women and mothers, in particular, reveals one more dimension of this biopolitical rationality, which aims at governing female bodies not only to preserve their health but to ensure what is perceived as their most essential role in Nepali society—reproduction. As of 2019, a total ban on female domestic work has been back in place, thus revealing a continuing “conservative gender politics that perceives young women as wards of the state [and is] aligned with culturally dominant HCHH gender norms on women’s domestic and procreative roles” (Grossman-Thompson 2019, 345). When looking back at the different rationalities that have informed the Nepali state’s government of migration, it is vital to remember that during this period, the state itself was replaced: The end of the ten-year-long civil war in 2006 led to the abolishment of the Hindu monarchy and Nepal’s declaration as a federal, democratic republic two years later. Hence, all governing of Nepali migration—even in the years before and after the armed conflict—needs to be understood against the backdrop of far-sweeping political and economic changes and disruptions (see Figure 13).

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Figure 13: Timeline of state policies on foreign employment.

Policies are presented in the context of rising migrant numbers (red). The section below the timeline shows the backdrop of broader political and economic processes and disruptive events in Nepal. (Draft: H. Uprety 2020; Design: I. Lindemann 2020; Data: MOLESS 2020, 4; Rankin 2004; Whelpton 2005).

At the same time, Nepal’s transition from a monarchy to a democratic republic did not turn out to be as radical a rupture as one might expect: In many respects, the Maoists integrated themselves into the preexisting multi-party system, and much of previous political life continued under a different name (Sedhai 2018). This continuity was also reflected in the governing of labor migration: After all, the Foreign Employment Act of 2007 and the Foreign Employment Act—two detailed pieces of legislation—were passed within less than two years after the peace agreement and thus during a period of extensive political restructuring. The swiftness of such political decision making is somewhat surprising, considering that during their rebel years, the Maoists had frequently voiced their negative opinion on labor migration: In a commitment paper for the constitutent assembly election of 2008, they called Gurkha recruitment a “shameful practice” and promised to end young men’s need to look for employment abroad (Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist 2008, 10). However, just a few months earlier, they had (as part of the interim government of 2007) agreed to pass the new legislation, which aimed to not only protect workers’ rights but also encourage further labor migration and “productive” remittance behavior (e.g., GoN 2008, 20[i]).

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The surprising speed at which the second Foreign Employment Act and the Foreign Employment Rules were passed during a phase of so much political reshuffling indicates two things: First, most of the legislation had likely been already drafted in the preceding years but had not been passed in light of the political upheaval. Secondly, political leaders of all parties must have felt an urgent need to “repair” an instrument of government that, depending on their perspectives, had neither protected migrants’ health and safety nor sufficiently harnessed the financial benefits derived from foreign employment. As this genealogical overview has shown, Nepal’s state government of foreign employment has been informed by multiple rationalities and manifested in various political measures. While those different rationalities on labor migration emerged at different times, they did not replace each other. As a result, the Nepali state’s approach towards foreign employment continues to be shaped by ambivalence and friction between different perspectives and often contradictory political decisions and policies. On the one hand, many of the state’s recent policies continue to be directed towards promoting foreign employment and maximizing its benefits (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 54). In its three-years-interim plan (2007-2010), for example, the government announced ambitious quantitative targets for the “[number] of youth to be sent for foreign employment” (National Planning Commission 2007, 247), defining it as one of Nepal’s main challenges “[t]o produce competitive human resources, capable of competing in the international labor market” (ibid., see also section 4.3.1). Those intentions, which were repeated in the subsequent plans, draw on not only the view of migration as a source of economic revenue but also its role as a means of education. Although the latter rationality is predominantly associated with studying abroad (IOM 2019, 65–66), foreign employment is increasingly being identified as an opportunity to improve workers’ technical and vocational skills as well (see section 4.3.5). In order to increase migrants’ educational benefit and their access to more attractive working conditions, the Ministry of Labor has led several attempts over the past years to “diversify labour destinations” (Mandal 2019a), which resulted in a new labor agreement with Mauritius and negotiations with several European countries, including Germany, Portugal, Poland, and Turkey. On the other hand, the problematizations of migration as detrimental to the country and a health and safety risk to the migrant population have gained significant influence as well. Particularly over the past decade, this has led to various policies aimed at protecting migrant workers, such as bilateral agreements and the “free visa, free ticket” scheme (Ministry of Foreign Affairs [MOFA] 2015; see also section 4.1.5). Increasingly, state authorities have been willing to introduce such protections even at the expense of overall migrant numbers: In recent years, the DoFE, led by then-labor minister Gokarna Bista, reacted to an ongoing systemic practice of overcharging migrants bound to Malaysia by effectively ceasing all Malaysian recruitment for a period of 15 months (Subedi 2019), even though this dramatically decreased migrant numbers in 2018 and 2019 (see Figure 13; see also section 4.1.5). Furthermore, voices in Nepali politics proposing to prevent foreign employment altogether have grown more prominent, too. In 2019, the government kicked off a nationwide employment programme intended to provide job to the entire Nepali workforce for at least 100 days every year (MOLESS

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2019), which Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli promised would “end the compulsion of going abroad for employment within five years” (República 2019).

Governing recruitment As stated at the beginning of part 4.1, this pillar of the Nepali migration regime includes not only the governing of migration and migrant subjects through specific technologies and rationalities of recruitment but also the government of recruitment practices themselves. Starting with the Foreign Employment Act of 1985, the Nepali state shaped those practices profoundly by defining that the main providers of recruitment services would be private businesses. This means that state authorities are responsible for issuing approvals and permits at several stages during the process, but are not directly involved in the implementation of recruitment itself.35 This approach sets the Nepali migration regime apart from many other countries in Asia that take a more active role in recruitment (e.g., Hoang 2016; Rodriguez 2010; Xiang 2012b). However, the Nepali state most likely followed the example of its South Asian neighbors, such as India and Bangladesh. Furthermore, given that recruitment into overseas employment had most likely occurred before there was any legislation to regulate it, the Foreign Employment Act aimed at regularizing and controlling those existing practices rather than designing a state-run recruitment process from scratch. In theory, it is legally possible for aspiring migrants to arrange their employment abroad by themselves and without the assistance of a recruiter (GoN 2007, 21). However, there are several reasons which render this an unusual practice, not the least of which is the complicated state regulation of the process. Although many of the official regulations and policies introduced over the past decades were intended to “make the process of seeking foreign employment more manageable and systematic” (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 119), they have also rendered the formal recruitment process increasingly complex and challenging. As professional recruiters have become increasingly indispensable at guiding aspiring migrants through the bureaucratic jungle of foreign employment, the state formalization has ultimately advanced the “commodification of mobility-related services” (Thieme & Ghimire 2014, 405). This trend has been mirrored in the mushrooming of recruitment agencies. While there were only 103 registered agencies in 1998, their numbers almost doubled within the next three years (Seddon et al. 2002, 32). Over the following decade, the sector continued to expand rapidly and reached 1400 in 2011, when the state government stopped issuing new licenses (Panday 2019). It was only after new policies in 2019 put severe restrictions on agencies and forced smaller agencies to merge (Nepali Times 2019) that their numbers have now decreased to 843 (DoFE 2019b; see also section 4.1.5). The specific steps of the formal recruitment process will be outlined only briefly here, but have been discussed at length elsewhere (Kern & Müller-Böker 2015; Paoletti et al. 2014; Sijapati & Limbu 2017). From a legal perspective, the process begins when a recruitment agency has been assigned by a foreign company to answer its “demand” 35

As stated in part 3.1, exceptions to this rule include employment in South Korea and Japan, which has been managed and monitored bilaterally by public authorities without any or low direct involvement of private recruiters (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 87–88).

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for a certain number of migrant workers. The agency assembles a file, which includes the client company’s demand letter, its agreement with the agency, a sample of the employment contract, and proof of the contingent of labor visas pre-approved by the destination country. This file is sent electronically to the DoFE, which checks whether it fulfills formal requirements and grants pre-approval (purva swikriti) (GoN 2007, 15; 2008, 12). Following pre-approval, the agency is obliged to place an announcement in a nationally circulated newspaper. Two examples of such vacancy notes are given in Figure 14. The design of these advertisements is highly structured and must contain specific information, including on the type and the exact number of vacant positions, the promised salary, weekly working hours and days, provided facilities, the minimum contract duration, official recruitment fees, and instructions on the application process (ibid., 14).

Figure 14: Two vacancy announcements published in national newspapers.

Providing the information required by DoFE regulations, the first advertised category in the left notice reads: “Occupation: Labour. Demand: 13 males, 0 females. Salary QR 900, NRs 27,000. […] Daily working time: 8 hours. Number of work days per week: 6 days.” On the top right, the information “LT. No. 223475,” or “LT# 220368,” respectively, indicates the lot number for the demand (see section 4.2.3). (Source: Kantipur Daily 2019b; Rajdhani Dainik 2019).

After the placement of the advertisement, a minimum of seven days need to pass before the agency may start selecting workers (GoN 2007, 16[1]). Applicants who have contacted the agency until then are registered, and their personal data is entered into a portfolio (either on paper or, increasingly, in a digital database). Based on this portfolio information, applicants are supposed to be shortlisted according to DoFE criteria (GoN 2008, 16), before the final selection process takes place (see section 4.2.5). This final selection can occur via oral interviews and even practical skill tests, which are conducted either by representatives of the foreign company or by agency staff (see section 4.2.1). Especially for so-called “unskilled” positions, however, the final selection often occurs entirely based on portfolio information. Selected candidates are then registered with the DoFE via an online platform. If they have passed the mandatory medical assessment, their files are forwarded to authorities in the country of destination, which issue their personal visas. At this point, the recruitment agents proceed by taking out a

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

life and accident insurance and booking plane tickets, tasks they usually perform for a group—a so-called “lot”—of workers at a time (see section 4.2.3). Moreover, all workers have to take part in a mandatory two-day orientation class (abhimukikaran talim) (see section 4.3.3). Their certificate of participation, along with all other documents and a copy of the candidate’s passport, is uploaded into the candidate’s file on the DoFE’s online platform. After the DoFE has examined the complete portfolio regarding its formal correctness, it grants final approval (sram swikriti). It provides the recruitment agency with a labor permit sticker, which the latter places into the candidate’s passport (GoN 2007, 19; 2008, 17). Shortly before their departure, the candidates receive a formal briefing (purbaprasthan jankari) at the agency, during which an agent explains their travel and work arrangements, and they sign their work contracts (GoN 2007, 25; see section 4.3.2). All migrants are legally required to depart from Kathmandu Tribhuvan International Airport, where they undergo a final check: At a so-called “labor desk,” DoFE staff examine workers’ documents and sometimes question them on the regularity of their recruitment process (ibid., 73; Paoletti et al. 2014, 154). In total, the process from an aspiring migrant’s initial recruitment to his or her departure takes at least three months, but often significantly longer (Kern & Müller-Böker 2015, 162). In this section, I have unpacked the different rationalities that have informed the Nepali state’s government of foreign employment over the past decades. For instance, labor migration has been perceived as detrimental to the nation and the lives and health of its migrant population, particularly so migrant women. At the same time, the state has increasingly emphasized its advantages in terms of education, national economic income, and development. As a result of those coexisting and often conflicting rationalities, state policies on labor migration have shifted repeatedly over the past years and decades. Despite those disparities, they are all united by the perspective that identifies labor migration as an increasingly important target of governmental intervention. This intervention has manifested in the ongoing regularization and formalization of foreign employment and the recruitment process in particular. The multi-step procedure I have described here is the result of this governmental approach. It reflects the most common way in which the Nepali recruitment and pre-departure stage are narrated by not only state authorities but also recruitment agencies and most academic scholarship. However, this narrative represents a state- and agency-centric perspective, which leaves most of the workers’ experiences untold: It remains silent on which pre-migration steps they undergo personally and which are typically arranged for them. The seemingly streamlined process also conceals that aspiring migrants often make multiple attempts at foreign employment, because their applications fail somewhere along the way (see also part 4.2). Finally, the official narrative does not grasp the countless ways in which state regulations on recruitment are bent and broken every day. It is this disparity between the Nepali state’s government and competing practices of recruitment that I will investigate in the following two sections.

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4.1.4

“Subterranean” practices in the recruitment industry

Although the increasing formalization of foreign employment has resulted in a recruitment process that appears orderly and well-managed at first glance, the daily experiences of most aspiring migrants differ significantly from this official script. For some, their path towards foreign employment circumvents the legal infrastructure altogether and is instead organized entirely via irregular networks. For example, Afghanistan and Iraq were never legal labor destinations but hosted a steady flow of Nepali workers for decades (Coburn 2018). Similarly, the state’s restrictions on female migration (see section 4.1.3) have been ineffective in reducing migrant numbers but rather led to a large number of women who migrate via unregulated and illegal channels (Amnesty International 2011, 45; Grossman-Thompson 2019).36 However, significant differences also occur in cases of recruitment that, from the outside, appear to follow the legal process: While licensed recruitment agencies generally operate within the framework given by the state, this does not keep them from simultaneously engaging in various subversive practices. Numerous research reports have lamented agents’ “routine violations of FEA provisions” (Verité 2013, 25–26), such as charging high recruitment fees, working with unlicensed intermediaries, and issuing fake receipts and other official documents. Thus, all necessary regulations might be fulfilled on paper, but aspiring migrants are still conducted according to a hidden set of rules that is determined mainly by the private recruitment industry. Understanding the unique and often covert technologies and rationalities behind those rules requires a broad definition of governmentality—one that is not limited to formalized, planned, and strategic modes of government but also explores the practical, often unspoken, and normalized ways in which aspiring migrants are governed (see section 2.2.3). In section 4.1.2, this broad definition was instrumental in capturing the governmental effects of everyday, embodied, and “citational” practices among migrant communities. Regarding the recruitment industry, it enables me to investigate what happens when planned governmental interventions are not properly implemented, “fail,” or are actively subverted in practice. Seen from this perspective, the analysis of governmentality requires us to “be attentive to the practices that form in, around, through or against the plan” (Li 2007a, 279). Accordingly, Pat O’Malley suggests not to simply reduce any divergence from official scripts “to a source of programme failure” (1996, 312) but rather acknowledge the importance of what he calls “subterranean practices of government” (ibid., 311). The analogy of “subterranean” technologies is a very apt one in this context: Similar to cables, tunnels, and pipes, those forms of government are usually hidden from the view of outside observers, yet play a fundamental role in keeping the system running. Therefore, I will employ this imagery at different points throughout my analysis to explore the “failure” of official strategies and the covert rules and practices that guide migrants’

36

Since the high rate of illegality among female migrants leaves many of them unable to claim any of the rights or protections granted to legal migrants, this provision—albeit intended to protect women from fraud, exploitation, and abuse—has ultimately contributed to putting them more at risk.

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conduct instead (see sections 4.1.5, 4.2.3, 4.3.3). In doing so, I challenge the (often implicit) assumption that planned and formalized technologies of government are orderly, whereas unverbalized, covert, and often termed “informal” practices are somehow less orderly or systematic, devoid of rationality, and ultimately less potent in shaping human conduct (see also section 2.2.3).37 This section investigates the most powerful “subterranean” technologies that shape the recruitment of migrant workers: It begins by discussing the role of freelance intermediaries, who represent the largest covert section of the industry, and identifies the central rationalities that guide aspiring migrants towards using their services. In a second step, I will sketch out the conflicts and interdependencies within the industry and how those affect workers’ recruitment. Finally, I will retrace the linkages between those competing technologies of governing and international labor market dynamics, additional recruitment costs, and a resulting hierarchy of exploitation.

Freelance recruiters The most significant way in which recruitment practices differ from official regulations is that candidates rarely access licensed recruitment agents directly but usually rely on freelance intermediaries. Although those intermediaries often constitute “the crucial link between (potential) migrants and manpower agencies” (Thieme & Ghimire 2014, 405), their work has mostly been illegal. Even after the Foreign Employment Act of 2007 had allowed freelance recruiters to operate as long as they registered with a specific recruitment agency (GoN 2007, 74), the majority of them did not obtain such an official license.38 In mid-2019, the state dismissed its previous provision, thus banning the profession of freelance intermediaries altogether (DoFE 2019c). This decision was the last in a series of anti-broker policies, including state-run information campaigns that warned aspiring migrants against employing unlicensed intermediaries (see section 4.3.2). In light of the state’s biopolitical project towards protecting its migrant population (see section 4.1.3), those policies have been rooted in the problematization of freelance recruiters, who demand extra fees and whose practices are often obscure, as the main source of recruitment fraud and malpractice. While the effects of the 2019 ban are not included in my research, the previous state policies on this issue proved to be largely ineffective. As of 2017, unlicensed intermediaries continued to hold a significant share of the recruitment sector, and their total numbers across Nepal were estimated at 80,000 (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 120). At the time of their recruitment, all migrant workers who participated in my research had been well aware

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This is also the reason why I do not consider the terms “formal”/”informal” a meaningful analytical category to distinguish between official or state-planned interventions on the one hand and illegal or subversive practices on the other, which tend to rely on their own intricate—albeit “subterranean”—systems of ordering as well. One of the reasons for this reluctance to get registered was that many intermediaries were not willing to create a fixed affiliation with one single recruitment agency, since it is often precisely their embeddedness in multiple networks that is critical to their business success (see later in this section).

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of the bad reputation of freelance recruiters—a reputation that is also reflected in the pejorative connotation the term “broker” (dalal) holds in Nepal today.39 However, despite this awareness, the vast majority most of them had still chosen to call on a broker’s services. What are the circumstances that lead aspiring migrants to act against state regulations and follow those “subterranean” practices instead? Based on my ethnographic research, I argue that their conduct is guided by the following rationalities: a) Brokers as keepers of expert knowledge: First of all, aspiring migrants seek recruiters due to a feeling that they themselves do not have the technical expertise to find and organize employment abroad. Even in light of public awareness campaigns (see section 4.3.2), the process of recruitment seems obscure and daunting to many—an impression that has deepened even more due to the growing complexity of the formal system (see section 4.1.3). Although the role of experts who facilitate foreign employment is supposed to be taken up by licensed agents, they usually do not provide the close, step-by-step support that many aspiring migrants seek. Particularly for those who have received little formal education, it is easy to feel intimidated by the many tasks that lie at the very beginning of one’s recruitment process—whether it is applying for a passport, searching for job vacancies, or knowing which recruitment agency to approach. Rather than tackling such challenges on their own, aspiring migrants look for someone who appears capable of navigating them through the entire process. b) Brokers as geographically accessible: Another critical factor that makes freelance recruiters attractive is that they are usually tied to a specific geographical place or region, which means residents of those areas can access them easily. By contrast, the formal infrastructure of migration, including recruitment agencies, is mainly located in Kathmandu Valley and only a handful of other major cities.40 Since the majority of aspiring migrants live in rural and remote areas, arranging the necessary documents and going through all other steps of recruitment by themselves is often a significant challenge for them in terms of time, travel, and costs. Instead of spending considerable resources on transportation to and from Kathmandu Valley as well as on food and accommodation in the expensive city, many consider it a better financial deal to pay a broker to arrange everything for them. Hence, geographical place has a significant impact on people’s recruitment and foreign employment experience (see also section 4.2.5). The more re-

39

40

Instead of being called dalal, most freelance recruiters today prefer the English term “agent.” In order to avoid confusing them with licensed recruitment agents, I refer to them as “freelance intermediaries,” “freelance recruiters,” “unlicensed recruiters,” or simply “brokers”—since the term does not hold the same negative connotation in English that its Nepali equivalent has. In order to maintain the colloquial character of direct quotes from interviews and observations, the NepaliEnglish term agent is translated to “broker” whenever it refers to unlicensed intermediaries. The reason for this is that recruitment agencies are required to be based in Kathmandu Valley, since their proximity is supposed to make it easier for state authorities to keep track of their activities and reduce malpractice. While agencies are theoretically permitted to open branch offices at additional locations, these need to be registered and may only be located in major cities, such as Itahari and Pokhara. However, only a small fraction of agencies make use of this right (DoFE 2020).

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

mote a candidate’s location, the more likely it is that his or her employment is being facilitated by not only one recruiter but a far-reaching network of intermediaries.41 c) Brokers as capable networkers: It is precisely this embeddedness into more extensive recruiting networks which is instrumental to the influence and reputation of intermediaries (see also Chau 2020; Lindquist 2010). While many freelance recruiters are affiliated with either one or several licensed recruitment agencies, others also maintain direct ties to foreign companies (for instance, resulting from their collaboration in previous hirings or because of personal contacts in the respective country). Intermediaries with those contacts are able to circumvent the licensed recruitment sector, which is often considered to give workers more direct access to jobs than they would get through a “manpower” agency. Either way, most of the migrant candidates and returnees I interviewed expressed the idea that their brokers’ connections to the “right people” had been instrumental in providing them with exclusive access to better-paying and more attractive jobs. In addition to this, the formal recruitment process, which is complicated and can drag on for many months (see section 4.1.3), leaves many aspiring migrants with the impression that they can only succeed if they find a “shortcut” through the recruitment jungle—in other words, a broker who is well-connected and knows how to “play the game” of Nepal’s bureaucratic system. The imagination of networking competence appears to be so vital to brokers’ business success that I found it to be an essential part in everyday embodied performances of brokerage: During my research, I observed such performances to rely not only on symbols of professionalism and financial success but often also on gender. Given that the majority of intermediaries are male (see also section 4.2.1), their performance of masculinity was often vital in signaling their competence and power in social interactions. A typical example of this visual performance of networking capability can be seen in the following snapshot of broker Ramesh (see Figure 15).

41

Particularly for candidates from remote locations in Nepal’s most western, most eastern, and southern regions, those intermediary chains usually have multiple links. Thus, a local broker handles all direct interaction with aspiring migrants, but he is typically linked to a regional intermediary based in major cities like Pokhara, Narayanghat or Itahari. This intermediary might in turn forward them to another regional recruiter, who is based in more central districts like Dhading or Sindhupalchok. That recruiter might either be associated with a Kathmandu-based broker who has contacts to a registered recruitment agency in Nepal, with transnational brokerage networks in India, directly with a Kathmandu-based agency, or sometimes even with suppliers or employers in particular host countries. During my research in Gajuri, I learned that due to its central location along the major highway to Kathmandu, it appears to be a significant nodal points of nationwide broker networks. Accordingly, all of the brokers we interviewed there were part of longer recruitment chains that reached from western Nepal or the Terai lowlands to them and onwards to Kathmandu-based recruitment agencies.

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Figure 15: Snapshot of freelance recruiter Ramesh.

Read male and with a dominant demeanor, Ramesh’s embodied performance is characteristic of the “capable networker:” His business suit and suitcase signify seriousness and success, his multiple phones modernity and an embeddedness into multiple networks. (Source: H. Uprety 2018).

d) Brokers as “patrons” and advocates: The embeddedness of local intermediaries in powerful networks points to yet another rationality that guides aspiring migrants towards approaching them. Among the migrants I interviewed, many expressed they felt too “small” and powerless to approach a recruitment agency without the support of a broker who acted as their advocate. For instance, Nadeem says: “It is difficult to go this type of place. I have no one up there, no link. If I go there just by myself, they will not accept me. You need someone there who knows you”42 (mi24 int02, 1). The rationality Nadeem echoes needs to be seen in the broader context of clientelist structures in Nepal: Patron-client relationships, in which influential individuals “take care” of others in exchange for their money, services, and loyalty, continue to inform social interactions across much of Nepali society (see also section 4.1.5). In this context, recruitment agencies function as spaces where long-standing power disparities—some of which manifest in hierarchies of caste, ethnicity, place, and gender—define the experience and trajectory of migrant candidates who pass through them (see section 4.2.5). Intermediaries are often considered to bridge some of those disparities and represent workers’ interests in a better way than they themselves could. e) Brokers as trustworthy and reliable: Ultimately, the local embeddedness of freelance intermediaries and their role as “patrons” suggest that many aspiring migrants perceive them as more reliable and even trustworthy than licensed recruitment agents. In 42

Original: Testo thauma jana garho hunchha. Tya samma kohi ni chhaina, link nai hudaina. Sidhai jada kheri tya accept nai gardaina. Ki ta tya kohi hunu paryo chineko.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

light of the state’s problematization of brokers and their widespread representation as fraudulent, this sounds paradox at first. One piece to solving this puzzle, however, is that many aspiring migrants have a general distrust towards recruiters—whether they are holding a license or not. Expecting that both agents and brokers might cheat them or that they might face problems abroad either way, many workers assume that local brokers are ultimately the safer option. Intermediary Suresh explains this line of thinking: If anything happens tomorrow, [a broker] will help you solve it. If you go straight to the “manpower” and there is any problem, the “manpower” will not solve it. They will not receive your phone, you understand. If people go through broker, he knows the office and can do something there. But their parents don’t know the office. […] If you go through the broker, he will go to the office […] and make an inquiry. That is why brokers are necessary.43 (iag02, 31) By portraying freelance intermediaries as the only recruiters that workers “can go directly to” and expect to “solve” their problems, Suresh perpetuates the widespread notion that reliability and trustworthiness can come only from a personal relationship and never from an impersonal “office.” Rather than putting their trust in a state-licensed but unknown agent in the faraway capital, where he or she could easily become unreachable, aspiring migrants feel more secure with a person who is a known figure in the region. In this way, a broker’s local embeddedness into a local community is viewed as a form of insurance against recruiting malpractice and other problems: Not only do workers assume it will be easier to get a hold of the recruiter, but they also trust in their community’s capacity to exert pressure and hold him or her accountable.44 Thus, shared locality is a critical factor in framing freelance intermediaries as trustworthy and reliable: As they are part of the communities they recruit from, they appear to candidates as “one of their own” (aphno manchhe). They speak the same language and accent, they frequently belong to the same social strata, and many of them have been abroad for foreign employment themselves. Like the two recruiters portrayed below in Figure 16 and Figure 17, they are part of the same community, raise their children along with those of their candidates, and often continue the same lifestyle they had before becoming professional brokers.

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Original: Bholi kehi paryo bhane pani samasya samadhan hunchha. Direct manpowerma gayo bhane, problem paryo bhane, manpowerle solve gardaina. Phone nai receive gardaina, Bujhnubhyo. Bholi agent through gayo bhane, usle office chineko hunchha. Usle officema gayera kehi garchha. Gharma buba aamale office chineko hudaina ni. […] Agent through gayo bhane ta, usle officema gayera […] usle ta inquiry linchha. Tei bhayera agent haru ni aabassek parchha. Often, this is accomplished through local community gatherings. Although the panchayat system officially ended in 1990, some of my research participants still referred to this term to describe informal gatherings during which their most respected community members would help resolve conflicts and altercations by exerting social pressure on misconducting individuals (for more details on contemporary rural practices of conflict resolution, see Rijal 2013, 31–32). By contrast, many of them expressed significantly less faith in formal, institutionalized forms of justice, particularly those located outside their community in Kathmandu Valley.

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Figure 16: Snapshot of broker Deepak. Figure 17: Snapshot of broker Dili Ram.

Deepak (red shirt), while carrying his one-year-old daughter on his arm, guides us through his (private and business) neighborhood in Kathmandu. Terai-based broker Dili Ram tells us that his broker business has essentially turned him into a millionaire, but he chooses to still dress like most people from the community he has lived in for decades. (Source: H. Uprety 2018).

From the perspective of brokers, their positionality and private lives are thus highly relevant for their professional success. Among the intermediaries who participated in my research, it was often personal connections that had led them to their profession in the first place. For instance, Hemnath initially got into the business after he had helped his son to find employment in Malaysia (iag05, 4). In the following months, word spread around the community that his son had a positive experience abroad. More and more young men started asking him for support, and Hemnath used the “manpower” contacts he had previously established to run an increasingly professional brokerage service. While he currently recruits about 100 candidates per year, his positionality as a caring father had been instrumental in building his reputation as a trustworthy agent. Similarly, broker Rajan has spent several years working for a local non-governmental organization, which allowed him to build an impressive personal network and helped him gain respect and trust among low-income communities in the region. He explains: “Through [my] NGO work [I] have got a lot of links [sic]. From those links you can make profit working as a ‘broker’”45 (iag11, 2). In addition, candidates often find a broker who is at least an indirect acquaintance or even a personal relative. Similarly to Aswin, whose story is featured in the ethnographic vignette at the beginning of part 4.1, migrant returnee Pradeep recalls: “When I was talking about going abroad at home, my father told his sister about it. She talked to her son. He [my cousin] was here [in Qatar]. He sent a visa, and that’s how I came here”46 (mi23, 4). Since kinship continues to be an essential language for navigating daily life in most Nepali communities, such connections are essential in building trust between brokers and candidates. As a result, local intermediaries are those members 45 46

Original: NGOma kam garne dherai link chha. Tyo link bhayesi agentko rupma kam garda faida hunchha. Original: Gharma kuro gareko thiye yettikai bidesh jana paryo bhanera. Ani Dadyle [uhako] bainilai bhannu bhayechha. Bainile yeha bhandai lai bhannu bhayo. Bhandai yaha [Qatar] hunuhunthyo ani bhandai le visa pathai diyera ma aayeko.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

of the migration infrastructure who usually maintain the closest and most personal contacts with migrant candidates (see also section 4.3.2).47 To conclude, aspiring migrants often conduct themselves according to rationalities that frame freelance intermediaries as knowledgeable, accessible, powerful, and reliable networkers, whose advocacy towards other parts of the migration infrastructure is essential to successful foreign employment. At the same time, most workers are well aware of the state’s regulations on recruitment and the widespread problematization of brokers as intransparent and fraudulent. Ultimately, aspiring migrants have to conduct themselves somewhere between those competing technologies of government. Similarly, recruiters need to negotiate their contentious role and choose different strategies for navigating the Nepali migration regime as well. Some do so by distancing themselves from their profession, like Deepak, who concedes: “I don’t lie, […] but there are many brokers who lie and cheat. This is one of the bad things about brokers”48 (iag06, 36). Similarly, Ajay asserts: ”I don’t work like these ‘middlemen’”49 (iag11, 29). By portraying themselves as exceptions from the norm, Deepak, Ajay, and others cultivate their personal reputation while leaving the larger problematization of brokerage unchallenged. On a personal level, their identities often oscillate between the role of a self-made and successful businessman and an altruist social worker serving the Nepali nation (see also Kern & Müller-Böker 2015, 165). Given brokers’ complex positionality, what are their relations and interactions with licensed recruiters?

Conflicts and interdependencies within the recruitment industry At first glance, it seems like freelance and licensed recruiters are at complete odds with each other. The Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA), which currently has 760 members (NAFEA 2019a) and acts as the chief spokesperson for licensed recruiters, has been openly opposed to brokers for years. Its lobbying also likely played a role in the state’s 2019 ban on freelance recruiters. Even before that ban was in place, some of the agencies I visited during my 2018 research made a point of declaring that they were not working with freelancers. Considering that those declarations, such as the one featured in Figure 18, were usually written in English, I could not help but wonder whether they were directed primarily at migrant candidates or rather at international visitors.

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48 49

This is also one of the reasons why their work often lies somewhere in-between a professional service and a personal favor done for a relative or kinship-like relation. This observation from my own research has also been suggested by Lindquist et al. 2012, who, based on their empirical insights on migrant intermediaries in several Asian countries, conclude that “profit, trust and empathy run hand-in-hand in the relationships between brokers and migrants, and distinctions between them are often impossible to sustain in practice” (2012, 9). Original: Maile po dhatdina, […] dherai khane ni hunchhan, dherai dhatne ni hunchhan. Tyo naramro pachha ho agentko. Original: Dalaliko aadharle kam gareko chhaina.

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Figure 18: “We accept only direct candidates.”

A written notice at a large recruitment agency based in Lalitpur informs (English-speaking) visitors that the company does not collaborate with freelance recruiters. (Source: H. Uprety 2018)

Although many recruitment agents claim—either verbally or in writing—that they do not work with intermediaries, I witnessed them entering and leaving agency buildings virtually every day during my research. This indicates that most recruitment companies, despite their openly negative attitude, actually rely heavily on brokers’ services. For instance, one “advantage” of receiving candidates via a broker is that the latter will most likely be held responsible if one of the workers encounters problems abroad. A 2014 study on the Nepali recruitment sector concludes: “Where manpower agencies are involved, their use of [brokers] can in effect shield the manpower agencies from liability, as the agencies simply blame the agent for any harms that occur and claim they were unaware of the agent’s activities” (Taylor-Nicholson et al. 2014b, 2). Moreover, brokers can spare agents significant hassle not only after but also before a worker’s departure: They take over much of the time-consuming groundwork of recruitment, including counseling their candidates on available jobs (see section 4.2.5), coaching them for interviews, and briefing them extensively before their departure (see sections 4.3.3-4). As I observed during one agency briefing with recruitment agent Ishwor, he did not care too much about the fact that his candidate, a native Hindi speaker, barely understood Nepali. Instead, he simply relied on the broker’s ability to “make him understand everything he did not understand”50 (mp11 obs01, 35). Furthermore, brokers’ far-reaching grassroots networks are often vital to successful recruiting: They enable them and their affiliated agencies to mobilize large numbers of candidates within a short time, whereas the agency’s methods of advertising often yield a far lower number of applicants. This is particularly relevant for job interviews

50

Original: Usle bujheko chhaina bhane tapaiale bujhaidinu hola.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

and practical skill tests, which often take place on short notice and for which mobilization of qualified candidates can be a challenge (see section 4.2.1). In addition, brokers are vital in providing a steady flow of unassuming laborers to fill “unattractive” job positions—such as typically low-pay and physically demanding ones—which recruitment agencies often struggle to fill by themselves. Because those services are so essential to their professional success, recruitment agencies often reward their freelancers not only with commissions for each recruited worker but also by privileging the broker’s candidates over others who might have approached the agency by themselves. According to recruitment agent Sudhir, agencies do this in order to maintain a stable business relationship and ensure a steady supply of workers: If there is an agency, and its number of brokers is maybe one hundred, they get a supply of people on a regular basis. Let’s say it’s like a food basket; they can just take something from it. But if that company starts to take people directly or to give them more priority, their middleman will start to boycott them. In that case, the number of people they find, in terms of volume [sic], may decrease. Or they might be unable to fill their requirement. That’s why […] the agency might take direct candidates, but they will give priority to the middleman.51 (ag20, 14) Sudhir’s account reflects that it is not enough that most recruitment agencies continue to work with intermediaries even though they officially denounce them: Due to their reliance on the broker’s future services, they even favor “brokered” candidates over those who contacted them through the formal application process. In this way, the rationality that aspiring migrants can only succeed at foreign employment if a well-connected “patron” advocates for them (see previous subsection) is being confirmed by recruitment agents themselves. Ultimately, those insights show that the relationship between licensed agencies and freelance recruiters is often less antagonistic than it appears at first glance. Closer investigation reveals how their dependence on each other and their practice of mutual favoritism actually perpetuate the “subterranean” structure of recruiting techniques. At the same time, their relationship is also shaped by conflict and complex power dynamics. In the rare interactions between recruitment agents and brokers that I was able to witness, the tone of the conversation easily became harsh and always reflected a steep hierarchy. Due to their illegal status, their many competitors, and often their lower education and social status, freelance intermediaries tend to be inferior to licensed recruiters. Although they might be known as powerful “networkers” by their candidates, the specific activities and transactions that go on inside recruitment agencies are often obscure to them, too. For instance, the information that agencies share with them about

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Original: Auta agency chha, usko number of agents jasto 100 wota holan, usle regular basisma manchheharu supply garirako hunchha. U chai auta food basket jasto bhanau, tyha bat usle lirako hunchha. Tara companyle direct manchhe lina thalyo bhane wa usle priority besi diyo bhane chai, jun middleman chha usle [agent] lai boycott garna thalchha. Tyo casema usle jati manchhe paila pairako thiyo, in terms of volume, tyo chai ghatna sakchha, wa usko requirement chai fulfil nahuna sakchha. […] directly ni lina sakchha tara mainly emphasis chai middleman lai ni dina sakchha.

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current job “demands” is typically very scarce: As shown in Figure 19, the only clues broker Deepak receives is a text message with the most basic details. The limited amount of information they are privy to leaves brokers like Deepak ultimately having to put their trust in their “manpower” contacts and hoping that the respective deal they are offering is a good one. Similar to Deepak, many brokers have no insights into how recruitment agencies actually operate or how much they charge for their services. For instance, broker Govinda admits: We see it says ‘free visa’ on the paper, it says all the information there. […] But the “manpower” doesn’t tell us it’s free, when we ask. […] They say it costs about 35,000 to 40,000. We don’t know all the information, you know.52 (iag01, 26)

Figure 19: Text message with new “demand” on broker Sandeep’s cell phone.

The message, which was sent to Sandeep by one of his associated recruitment agents, is reasonably brief: It consists only of the host country, name of the hiring company, salary, the scheduled date for selections, and the name of the recruitment agency. (Source: H. Uprety 2018).

While Govinda and other intermediaries I spoke to clearly felt they had the shorter end of the stick, agency staff, in turn, often have little idea about their brokers’ activities and fees either. This lack of transparency is not an accident, but lies at the core of the current regime: Since recruitment needs to remain something complicated, mysterious,

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Original: Free visa aako ho bhanera paperharuma hereko hunchhau. Sabai kuro tyaha bhaneko hunchha. […] Tara hamle sodhda kheri, uniharule direct free visa ho bhanera bhandainan. […] uniharule 35 dekhi 40 hajar lagchha bhanchhan. Hamlai tyo sabai jankari bhayeko kura hoina ni.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

and daunting for there to be a need for “manpower” agents and brokers in the first place, everyone holds on to their respective business secrets.

Labor market dynamics and incremental exploitation Despite their obscurity, “subterranean” practices of recruitment have a profound impact on migrants’ experiences and abilities to conduct themselves before, during, and after foreign employment. One of the most powerful aspects of those covert techniques of governing is the costs of recruitment, which usually far exceed legal limits. Although the Nepali state’s 2015 “free visa, free ticket” scheme officially restricted recruitment fees to a maximum of NPR 10,000 (approx. EUR 73) per person, studies have shown that candidates still routinely pay between NPR 150,000 and 250,000 (approx. EUR 1,2002,000) for their recruitment and placement abroad (Amnesty International 2017, 24/39; Sijapati et al. 2015, 53). To some degree, those costs reflect the fees and commissions demanded by local and regional intermediaries. The brokers who participated in my research declared they were earning between NPR 5,000 and 10,000 (approx. EUR 40 to 80) from each candidate. However, the accounts of the migrant workers and registered agents I interviewed indicate that brokers’ actual profits—including their commission from the agency—appear to be closer to NPR 20,000 to 30,000 (approx. EUR 160 to 240) per candidate. At the same time, the chains of multiple brokers that can be involved in a single recruitment case and their individual charging practices are so obscure that those numbers can only be rough estimates. However, hidden recruitment costs—like other “subterranean” practices that subvert the state’s government of migration—stem not only from Nepal’s internal rationalities and dependencies of recruitment. Although the empirical focus of my research has been limited to Nepal’s domestic infrastructure of migration, it is still vital to explore how dynamics and mechanisms of the international migrant labor market have affected it. For instance, the market for migrant labor in the Gulf countries, Malaysia, and other popular labor destinations operates based on intense competition paired with an implicit hierarchical order; an order that reflects factors such as salary, cost of accommodation and food, working location, benefits like basic health insurance, and granted home leave. In the Nepali context, some of the values underlying this order also draw on the concept of ijjat (see section 4.1.2), which informs high-caste hill Hindu rationalities of (dis-)honorable and caste-appropriate occupations. Furthermore, geographical imaginaries of host countries as more or less desirable locations (see section 4.1.1) and sector-specific terms and categorizations (e.g., “indoor/outdoor,” “OT”) affect the overall “score” as well. Due to high international demand for the most “attractive” positions Nepali recruitment agents53 need to assert themselves against recruiters from numerous other countries (see also section 4.2.3).

53

Given that my empirical fieldwork was entirely conducted inside Nepal, this makes it easy to become limited by a methodological nationalist lens. However, it is important to stress that not all recruiters based in Nepal are Nepali. For instance, I met one Indian national who worked at one of Nepal’s largest recruitment agencies, where he was highly valuable due to his international contacts and previous experience as a supplier in several Gulf countries.

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Furthermore, Nepal’s recruitment sector is so crowded that Nepali recruiters are in fierce competition with each other, too. Most agencies are in a constant struggle to secure enough “visas” to keep their business running, which causes them to spend significant time and resources on personal marketing and networking with potential client companies. For instance, agent Dipesh admits: “There has been quite some competition between the recruitment companies. It is not visible from outside, but it is happening”54 (ag08, 89). Veteran agent Som Bahadur explains how this internal competition also affects international labor market dynamics and recruitment fees: Because so many agencies have opened, going for foreign employment has become so expensive today. It’s only like that with this industry: The more [agency] licenses there are, the more migrants have to pay. Actually, if there are a lot of shops of one type, the competition should make it cheaper for the consumer. But in this case, it is the other way round.55 (ag10, 168) As the above quote indicates, foreign employers and transnational labor suppliers56 often take advantage of this imbalanced labor market and give out job “demands” only in exchange for high commissions or bribes. In agent Dipesh’s words, “because everyone of us has to find [employing] companies, a type of bidding situation happens”57 (ag08, 81). As a result, the majority of foreign demands—particularly those considered attractive—are routinely auctioned off for the equivalent of several hundred euros per job. In what is an open secret in the industry, these accrued costs are ultimately translated into Nepal’s domestic recruitment practice, where migrant candidates have to pay them—even though this vastly exceeds official fee limits and contradicts the “free visa, free ticket” scheme. These effects are further exacerbated by additional competition among workers, who—in search for attractive jobs—bid against each other as well. Contrary to the state’s regulations to lower recruitment fees, the majority of aspiring migrants are willing to invest more money into a job if it promises them higher wages and better conditions. Based on the categorization of “attractive” jobs, as mentioned above, candidates and recruiters alike are on the constant lookout for new labor destinations that promise 54 55

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Original: Manpower manpower haruko bichma aba ek kisimko euta pratispardha pani chaliraheko chha. Tyo teti bahira nadekhiye pani chalirako hunchha. Original: Badhi agency kholeko karan bata aaja baideshik rojgarma jana ko nimti chai badhi paisa bhayo. Yo matrai yesto industry ho: Jati liscence bhayo teti nai baideshik rojgarma jane manchhelai badhi parchha. Tara eutai khalko dokan dherai wota bhayo bhane competition hunuparne, sasto consumerlai sasto hunuparne. Yesma chai hudaina ulto hunchha. Often, companies do not hire workers directly, but rather outsource the application to intermediaries who provide them with labor. In the Gulf region, these so-called “suppliers” are often foreign citizens from neighboring Arab countries, Indians, and occasionally even Nepalis. In fact, one of the recruitment agents who participated in my research built his professional network and reputation by first having worked as a supplier in the Gulf region (ag01 inf04, 1-4). Despite their varying nationalities, suppliers are part of a highly racialized and nationalized system that allows or restricts access to positions depending on a worker’s nationality and (ascribed) race (see sections 4.2.2-5). Original: Hamile nai [company] haru patta lagaunu parne bhayekole garda aba hamile ta ek kisimko bidding typeko bidding nai garnu parne isthiti hunchha.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

even “better” employment: At the time of my research, for instance, there was a veritable gold rush towards jobs in Poland and Portugal. Like in Aswin’s case, whose recruitment experience is featured in the ethnographic vignette (see introduction to part 4.1), the prospect of employment in those countries currently requires candidates to pay between NPR 700,000 and 900,000 (approx. EUR 5,500–7,000). Since all of those charging practices occur “subterraneously,” none of the additional costs appear on any official receipt. Instead, for all workers who participated in my research, the documents they had received from their recruitment agencies had perfectly complied with official regulations—most of the fees they had paid were simply omitted. While everything looks regular from the outside, the above examples thus illustrate that hidden costs arise at almost every step of the recruitment process. The exact reasons and purposes of those fees remain a mystery to most migrant workers. Many learn about their official recruitment fee only after they have arrived abroad and compared their payments with those of their Nepali co-workers. For instance, Bishal recalls: “I paid 91,000 […] shortly before I left from the airport. […] But then I heard that others had paid up to 120,000. And yet others had paid only 70,000”58 (mi22, 48, 130). As said earlier, this lack of transparency is no accident, but vital to the functioning of the current regime. Anthropologist Noah Coburn (2019) describes this system as an effect of “incremental exploitation:” While each segment of the recruitment chain contains its own rights abuses and added costs, not a single member of the chain is fully aware of what goes on in other segments. Ultimately, migrant workers are the ones who experience the addition of these incremental effects and whose conduct is governed accordingly. As this section has shown, recruitment into foreign employment is shaped by a broad range of “subterranean” practices, which guide candidates’ conduct in very different ways than those prescribed by the Nepali state’s government of migration. Notably, several powerful rationalities cause aspiring migrants to rely on freelance intermediaries rather than approach licensed recruitment agencies directly. Furthermore, their experiences are profoundly affected by the ambivalent relationship between freelance and licensed recruiters, as well as the intricate dynamics of the transnational labor market and their effect on recruitment costs. As a result, aspiring migrants are left with the task of conducting themselves amidst a field of conflicting modes of governing, all of which come with their own disadvantages. This section might have left the impression that the difference of planned forms vs. “subterranean” technologies of governing recruitment reflects a line between the Nepali state and the private recruitment industry. However, closer investigation reveals that this line is often blurred.

4.1.5

Experiencing recruitment amidst competing technologies of government

As illustrated in the preceding two sections, the Nepali state’s official approach to governing foreign employment has been subverted by a large number of “subterranean”

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Original: 91 hajar tireko […] udne din matra bujaune paisa bhaneko. […] Kasailai chai 1 lakh 20 hajar samma liyeko raicha. Kohi satari hajarma ni gayeko raichha.

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technologies of recruitment, which have had a profound effect on migrants’ pre-departure conduct. Over the last decades, the state has increasingly problematized those subversive modes of government by identifying them as the main threat to migrants’ health and safety. Based on the rationality of protecting the migrant population from such risks (see section 4.1.3), it has directed much of its governmental efforts at regulating the recruitment industry to eliminate covert counter-technologies. As a result, the current Foreign Employment Act contains just as many provisions about the control and punishment of malpractice as it does about the actual procedure of recruitment (28 paragraphs each). In recent years, this foundational legal framework has been flanked by even more explicit interventions, including the “free visa, free ticket” scheme and the ban on freelance intermediaries (see section 4.1.4), the fifteen-month-long moratorium on work permits to Malaysia (see also section 4.1.3), and a sweeping crackdown on fraudulent recruitment agencies (Sapkota & Alhadjri 2018; The Kathmandu Post 2018a). Furthermore, the 2019 amendment of the Foreign Employment Rules expanded earlier provisions to hold recruitment agencies accountable: It dramatically raised agencies’ mandatory cash deposit and bank guarantee, which are meant to recompensate workers in case of fraud, to up to NPR 20 million (approx. EUR 145,500) and NPR 40 million (approx. EUR 291,000) per agency (Panday 2019). Resulting from those regulations as well as the forced mergers of “low-performing” agencies, the ministry of labor drastically reduced the number of recruitment companies from 1,323 to 848 within one year (Mandal 2019c). In 2017, the state also transferred the entire official recruitment process, including the issuing of final labor permits, to an online platform (see section 4.1.3). This socalled “online system,” which was expanded into the “Foreign Employment Information Management System” (FEIMS) in the following year (DoFE 2018), included the introduction of biometric technologies (The Kathmandu Post 2018b). Intended to cut down on fraud and enforce participation in mandatory events such as medical exams, orientation classes, and agency briefings, the system requires migrant candidates to register and log in with their fingerprints (see section 4.3.3). While those policies and regulations have undoubtedly caused some changes in recruitment practice, their overall effectiveness has been limited. At least until 2018, when I concluded my empirical research, most of the everyday subversive practices that shaped workers’ path towards foreign employment had been relatively unaffected by state interventions.59 In the same year, state authorities themselves officially acknowledged that covert practices like overcharging and the issuing of fake documents remained prevalent in the recruitment sector (Ministry of Labour and Employment 2018, 21). In this section, I set out to explore why the government of and through recruitment remains so contested and how this affects aspiring migrants on their path towards

59

As my empirical fieldwork in Nepal was concluded in April 2018, I could not personally assess the effects of the most recent policy changes, such as the introduction of FEIMS and the 2019 amendment of the Foreign Employment Rules. However, newspaper articles from the past two years suggest that despite these policies, everyday recruitment practice has in many ways remained unchanged.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

foreign employment. In order to do so, I will first unpack the interdependencies and entanglements between the Nepali state and the private recruitment industry. On this basis, I will return to the perspective of migrant subjects to investigate what effects those competing techniques of government have on their conduct, self-conduct, and subjectification.

Dynamics and interdependencies between the public and private sector From the outside, the Nepali state and the private recruitment industry appear to have a highly contentious relationship: In the past years, the recruiters’ association NAFEA has violently protested some of the state’s policies (Acharya 2016; Sijapati & Kharel 2016). In turn, politicians have found harsh words to describe the recruitment sector; for instance, when then-labor minister Gokarna Bista publicly warned recruitment agents that “[t]he government [would] end their reign of fraud” (cited in The Kathmandu Post 2018a). However, this open antagonism has masked the many ways in which the state and the recruitment industry depend on and are entangled with each other. For example, the numerous regulations and restrictions introduced by the government have certainly complicated the work of recruiters. As a result, however, the formal process has become so complicated and daunting that their services now seem even more indispensable (see section 4.1.4), which has ultimately strengthened the private sector. Another beneficial effect has occurred due to the state’s ban on new agency licenses (see section 4.1.3). Since the enactment of the ban in 2011, the market value of existing recruitment companies has skyrocketed, as recruitment agent Sudhir explains: If I am willing to buy a “manpower” agency [today], then the minimum cost will be around NPR 1 karod (approx. EUR 79,500, H.U). […] Even if there is no infrastructure, no building, no staff! Just for the transfer of the name and certificate, […] because it is regarded as one of the most profitable businesses.60 (ag20, 27-30) Although the state’s limitation of agency licenses was intended to reduce competition and bidding between them, the resulting spike in demand for licenses fired up the market and brought large financial profits to recruitment company owners. Conversely, the Nepali state has also benefitted from the recruitment industry, for instance, by using it as a convenient scapegoat. In problematizing and blaming the private sector for putting the migrant population at risk, government authorities have been able to denounce some of their own responsibility and to downplay the role of other factors, such as exploitative structures in foreign labor regimes (see section 4.3.3). All those effects ultimately mirror what Xiang observes concerning migrant labor regimes in East and Southeast Asia, when he states that “intermediary agents today result from governmental practices of the highly centralized state […]; they are […] an integral part of a complex structure of governance” (2012b, 47). Moreover, the complicated relationship between the Nepali state and the recruitment industry manifests not only on a large scale but also in everyday interactions. It is here, behind closed doors, where the overt antagonism that is visible to the public is all too often replaced by covert alliances. As Anita, an orientation trainer based in 60

Original in English.

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Patan, says, “[t]here is a saying in Nepal that sums up the relationship between the state and recruitment agents: ‘You pretend that you’re beating me, and I’ll pretend that I’m crying’”61 (ori05 int02, 03). Whereas Anita’s assessment is based on personal experiences she had during her work in the migration infrastructure, those are confirmed by my own research observations and numerous empirical studies (e.g., Graner 2010; Manandhar & Adhikari 2010; Paoletti et al. 2014; Sijapati et al. 2015; Sijapati & Limbu 2017; Verité 2013). Contrary to the official narrative, regular and “subterranean” technologies of governing recruitment are not neatly divided along sector lines—instead, subversive practices permeate Nepali state authorities as well. For instance, a 2013 study observes that [c]orruption in foreign employment can range from purely private-sector-driven criminal activities (human trafficking and fraud), to public-private collusion to speed up the migration/recruitment process (forged work permits and bribery), to purely publicsector driven activities (nepotism and favoritism in the regulation of foreign employment). (ibid.) As the findings by Verité indicate, the most common way in which state authorities subvert the legal framework is by neglecting their regulatory duties in exchange for favors or bribes. Numerous studies over the past years have documented that such “tacit agreements to look the other way” (Li 2007a, 280) go through all levels of government. For instance, DoFE officials have been caught systematically approving labor permits that wrongly marked candidates as “individual applicants,” so that their respective recruitment agencies did not appear in the official documents and could not be held accountable if the workers encountered problems abroad (Paoletti et al. 2014, 154). Another report from 2010 reveals that state officials had routinely received large amounts of bribes as well as “speed money” in order to fast-track applications on their way through Nepal’s sluggish bureaucracy (Manandhar & Adhikari 2010). Similarly, immigration officials and DoFE staff at the labor desk at Kathmandu airport reportedly earn up to NPR 2 million (approx. EUR 14,500) in bribes per day by letting migrants pass without proper documentation, a practice that has disproportionally affected female workers (Sedhai 2014). Overall, state officials have profited immensely from “pre-agreed allocations of quotas to collect and […] rents [shared] in an organised way through all levels of the administration” (Jones & Basnett 2013). In my own research, I have experienced such practices to be hidden in plain sight: Whether in recruitment agency meetings or during formal conversations at the DoFE, subversive acts are often completely normalized and simply “slipped in” between regular practices (see also sections 4.2.3, 4.3.3). As for migrant candidates who are at the receiving end of such behavior, no change of tone or any other attempt at hiding those actions indicates to them that something unlawful is happening.62 What complicates matters even further is that the line between “the Nepali state” and “the private recruitment sector” cannot be upheld in practice, as both sectors signif61 62

Original: Nepal sarkarlai nai thaha chha. Ta kute jasto gar, ma roye jasto garchhu bhane jasto chha. For a poignant ethnographic description of how corrupt and subversive acts are hidden amidst everyday recruitment and bureaucractic practice, see Coburn (2018, 153).

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

icantly overlap. A critical role in this context is played by the patron-client relationships that have long dominated social interactions in Nepal (see also section 4.1.4). To be sure, the Maoist insurgency fought fervently against the country’s feudal system and was relatively successful in reducing land ownership in rural areas (Joshi & Mason 2007, 411). While the role of wealthy landowners has reduced, however, clientelist patterns continue to dominate social interactions in other parts of Nepali society. Manifesting in a relatively small number of individuals who hold multiple positions of power in both “public” and “private” capacities, principles of clientelism, favoritism, and nepotism continue to affect all relationships in contemporary Nepal—including the migration regime. For instance, when the state announced its 2019 decision to force hundreds of agencies to merge or close, it reported that many of them had been in the hands of the same powerful families—up to the point of one family owning as much as 17 different recruitment agencies at once (Subedi 2019). Furthermore, several previous and present DoFE officials either own or hold assets in recruitment agencies themselves. The most influential recruitment agents I got to know during my ethnographic research all maintained close ties to state officials and were regularly involved in political decision-making. On a larger scale, the recruiters’ association NAFEA has been deeply embedded in national party politics and influenced various state decisions on migration. Overall, Lan Anh Hoang’s conclusion on migrant labor from Indonesia and the Philippines thus certainly applies to Nepal, too: “[I]t is not easy to discern boundaries between state and market at times when individuals act in the capacity of government officials in certain contexts and as informal brokers in others” (Hoang 2016, 3). To be sure, clientelist structures and patterns of favoritism and nepotism are not specific to Nepal alone but affect the migration regime well beyond national borders. For instance, networks of patronage and collusion have profoundly shaped processes of recruitment and hiring into host countries like Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (see also section 4.2.2). The most recent example for this might be the 2018 recruitment “scandal,” when the Ministry of Labor headed by Gokarna Bista exposed that Nepali workers bound for Malaysia had been secretly overcharged for years: Since 2013, all recruitment into Malaysia had been handled by a handful of Nepal-based, but outsourced companies with direct ties to political leaders in Malaysia. By charging migrants hefty additional fees, those agencies had amassed over NPR 5 billion (approx. EUR 40 million) from Nepali workers (Mandal 2019c). On the one hand, the ensuing 15-month-long moratorium on all recruitment to Malaysia has been a rare display of the Nepali state’s effective crackdown on “subterranean” practices. On the other, the case also exemplifies the persistence of clientelist structures in the migration regime: In November 2019, less than two months after recruitment to Malaysia resumed under a new bilateral agreement, Gokarna Bista was suddenly and unceremoniously removed from office. Immediately afterward, NAFEA issued a public statement on the appointing of a new labor minister, “warning the Nepal government[…] to take decisions only after consultation with them” (Nepali Times 2019). Although clientelism, nepotism, and favoritism arguably affect societies across the world, studies of governmentality often do not pay attention to such “subterranean”

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technologies.63 By contrast, I argue that those unspoken scripts and subversive practices are crucial to understanding the governmentality of Nepali labor migration. By taking them into account, what initially appeared like a dispute between different sectors—the brokerage system, the formal recruitment industry, and the Nepali state—is revealed to be far more intricate. Instead, this investigation has made visible how the two competing sets of technologies that govern recruitment actually pervade all institutions involved in the Nepali migration regime—both public and private, formalized and unformalized, inside and outside Nepal.

Experiencing recruitment between restrictive government and self-conduct The analytical focus on subversive and covert techniques of recruitment is instrumental to understanding the Nepali migration regime: It brings into view how both sets of technologies—and the dynamics between them—affect the conduct, self-conduct, and subjectification of migrant candidates. For example, many “subterranean” practices operate through coercive and restrictive forms of power. For most aspiring migrants, their role is reduced to following predetermined scripts that tell them to be at a certain place at a certain time, with little transparency or say in the matter. Several of the participants in my research learned essential details about their employment, such as the exact salary and specifics of their position, only during their final agency briefing shortly before leaving. Due to the gross power disparity that shapes candidates’ interactions with the recruitment industry (see section 4.1.4), they have little opportunity to resist or subvert those techniques. While the agents I interviewed stressed that hierarchies had significantly flattened compared to the early 2000s, I still found them to be striking at the time of my research. Although originating in practices of recruitment, those coercive and restrictive forms of power also affect migrants’ ability to conduct themselves during and after their stay abroad. Studies have shown that migrants whose rights were violated have few chances of receiving compensation or even being heard, whether during their time abroad (Amnesty International 2013; 2019, see section 4.3.3) or upon their return to Nepal (Paoletti et al. 2014). One reason for this is that migrants often have little leverage: Precisely because of “subterranean” practices such as the routine issuing of fake receipts and contracts, most lack the proper documentation that could prove their agents’ or employers’ misconduct. Moreover, many returnees I spoke to were afraid of accusing or even approaching their “manpower” agency or intermediary. For example, former migrant Sunil explains his decision not to confront his recruiters even though they had sent him abroad under false pretenses: Later, I did not want to approach the sir. How could I meet him? […] The security would have never let me up to his office. […] And if I gave them trouble, who knows what they would do to me?64 (mi24 int02, 3) 63 64

As discussed in section 2.2.3 and 4.1.4, exceptions to this include Li (2007); O’Malley (1996); Rudnyckyj (2004). Original: Pachhi sir lai bhetna jana mann lagena. Aba maile kasari bhetna paune? […] Security guard le bhitra usko officema jana diyena. […] Uniharulai dukha diye bhane, ke thaha k garne hun malai?

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Similar to Sunil’s experience, many cheated or mistreated returnees are intimidated by the security personnel that guard all major agencies and shield their top-level agents from uncomfortable confrontations. Other participants in my research had been intimidated and even received explicit threats of violence by their local broker, warning them against taking legal action. Due to all of those reasons, only a small fraction of affected returnees even report their experiences of exploitation or abuse to state authorities (Taylor-Nicholson et al. 2014a, 3–4). Furthermore, even those who do so face unfavorable odds: The process of filing an official complaint is lengthy (Paoletti et al. 2014, 118) and often obstructed by bribes and favoritism (ibid., 153-154). Resulting from a system in which complaints are not addressed in Nepal’s general court, but instead kept under the sole authority of the department’s own Foreign Employment Tribunal (see section 4.1.3), many cases have been insufficiently prosecuted or “resolved” under obscure circumstances (TaylorNicholson et al. 2014a, 4–5). Against this backdrop, the state’s official interventions to fight subversive practices are often viewed as setting migrants free from coercive and restrictive forms of power. At the same time, the problematization of those practices is precisely what has helped turn foreign employment into a target of ever-expanding governmental interventions (see section 4.1.3). As such, it has been instrumental in the emergence of the Nepali migration regime: It has legitimized and empowered institutions that conduct aspiring migrants and opened the door to additional and new forms of governing. Although many of those are “subtle” technologies, such as instructions and advice, their effect on migrants’ conduct and subjectivities can be profound (see sections 4.3.2-5). Moreover, the government measures to regularize, formalize, and digitalize the recruitment process have involved a high degree of control, too. As the newly introduced online platform FEIMS and its use of biometric technology show, the state has directed its techniques of coercive and restrictive power not only at recruiters but also at migrants. Today, a candidate’s formal pre-departure process is entirely digitalized. At the beginning of this process, every worker is registered with his or her name, passport number, and biometric data. At multiple steps during the pre-departure stage, candidates are now required to scan their thumbprint to log into the system (see Figure 20 and Figure 21).65 Although those measures have been advertised as protecting migrants from fraud and other “subterranean” practices, this “protection” comes with a price: In order to go abroad, candidates have no choice but to surrender even more of their personal data to an increasingly rigid process that steers them from one mandatory procedure to the next (see Figure 22 and Figure 23). Aside from restricting migrants’ ability to conduct themselves, those technologies also work performatively: By effectively reducing individual workers to their passport numbers and biometric data, they contribute to their objectification, commodification, and marketization (see also section 4.2.3). In

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For migrants bound to Malaysia, biometric technologies in medical screening and document processing became the norm even in 2015, two years before Nepal first introduced its online platform and biometric system (Sapkota & Alhadjri 2018).

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this way, the state’s recent approach towards “freeing” migrants from subversive recruitment practices ultimately sneaks in new techniques of coercive and restrictive power through the back door.

Figure 20: A migrant candidate scans his fingerprint before participating in the first day of orientation. Figure 21: Migrant candidates waiting in front of fingerprint scanner after their first training session.

(Source: H. Uprety 2018).

 

Figure 22: Migrant candidate stamps his fingerprint on his work contract during a pre-departure briefing while his recruitment agent holds the document. Figure 23: View of online database during log-in process at orientation training center.

The online database identifies migrant candidates by name, passport number, gender, and training “batch” number. (Source: H. Uprety 2018).

At the same time, migrant candidates have responded to those new governmental interventions with different forms of counter-conduct (see section 2.2.1). In many cases, workers perceive the state’s increasingly strict and punitive approach as a threat to their

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

own efforts towards going abroad: As mentioned in the previous section, many aspiring migrants rely deeply on subversive practices like local brokerage. In the face of a slow bureaucratic apparatus and immense competition around attractive jobs, they feel that playing by the rules will not be enough to “get them ahead.“ Instead, paying a freelance intermediary with powerful networks and the ability to bribe officials seems like their only shot at “successful” foreign employment. As they enter more deeply into the process, candidates often do not dare to object to their recruiters’ violations of state rules because they are afraid the latter might replace them with a less “complicated” applicant. At the point when state authorities usually step in to check for signs of “malpractice,” workers have already invested so much money, time, and personal status into it that they cannot afford to turn back. Since many aspiring migrants take considerable loans66 in order to pay for foreign employment, they feel immense pressure to pay them back. The state’s response only exacerbates this pressure, because it typically reacts to evidence of overcharging and other subversive practices by canceling the entire permit application, which leaves candidates without any compensation for their losses. Candidate Bishal recalls how he handled such an experience shortly before his departure for Oman: I went [to the labor department], and he asked me how much I paid. I said, “sixtyfive,” and the sir asked me “thousand?” and I said, “yeah, thousand.” He nearly tore the papers! [...] And so I used my imagination and started telling him, “My sister did all of this, I didn’t do it myself. That’s the total expenses we had, for the bus fare, my living expenses, counting everything together it took sixty-five thousand, and I saved this after talking with my family.” Otherwise, my sixty-five would have been gone! The room rent for staying here for two weeks, it would have all been gone. […] What can I say? They just charge you. Now I can go [abroad]. Wherever you are asked in the airport, you have to show the receipt of ten thousand.67 (mp12, 15-21) As Bishal explains, he did his best to convince the government official that his recruitment fees had remained within the legal limit of NPR 10,000 (approx. EUR 73), when they had actually been around six times as high. From his perspective, covering up the actions of his recruiters was the only way to protect the financial investments he had 66

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Although they are not discussed further in this book, moneylending systems constitute an essential part of the Nepali migration regime. Compared to official financing schemes offered by regional or national banks, the majority of migrants appear to rely on local, traditional, and community-based forms of financing by taking loans from village merchants or friends and relatives (Sijapati et al. 2015, 54). Such types of loans typically come with “exorbitant interest rates […] [of] approximately 30 per cent and 23 per cent respectively” (ibid.). The resulting financial pressures from having to pay back those loans have a profound impact on workers’ conduct abroad and on their readiness to accept harsh or unfair working conditions. Original: Tyaha [shram bibhag] gaiyo. Kati tireko bhanera sodhe. Ani maile, “65,” bhane, ani sirle “hajar” bhanera sodhnu bhayo. Ani maile, “aa hajar” bhane. Jhandai chyatdena! […] Ani maile afnai dimag chalayera, “didile gareko ho, maile gareko hoina, totally kharcha jati lagyathiyo, gadi bhada, ma baseko, sabai garera chai 65 hajar lagya ho,” bhane ani “family sanga bat garera matrai bacheko ho.” Natra mero 65 janthyo ta! Yaha aayera baseko dui haptako room bhada aru sabai janthyo. […] khai ke bhannu aba? Magne le magihalchha. Aba jane ho [bidesh]. Airportma jaha-jaha bhanchha, tyaha 10-10 hajarko rasid dekhaune ho.

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already made, including the considerable costs of transportation to and accommodation in Kathmandu Valley. Similar to Bishal, many aspiring migrants do not only accept subversive practices as a necessary fact of labor migration but also normalize that they need to hide this fact from government authorities. As a result, they are ready to do whatever is necessary to get them through the process and to pass government controls: During my ethnographic research, I witnessed several workers sign receipts that were far below their actual recruitment costs. At one group briefing, all candidates were filmed by their recruitment agent, stating that their fees had not exceeded the legal limit (see Figure 24). While the agency resorted to this technique to safeguard itself against later accusations of misconduct, the group had, just moments before, shared informally that some of them had paid up to ten times as much. Still, none of the workers resisted the agent’s request to lie on camera. Knowing that any sign of resistance could compromise their arranged employment, which they were scheduled to leave for the very next day, they agreed to follow a pre-written script—even if this meant giving up all of their future legal leverage.

Figure 24: A migrant candidate (left) is being filmed by an agent during predeparture briefing.

On camera, he reads his agreed salary and working hours from the paper in his hands and recites that his recruitment fees did not exceed the legal maximum. (Source: H. Uprety 2018).

Performances like the one captured in the above photograph illustrate that aspiring migrants are often caught up in the crossfire between official and “subterranean” technologies of recruitment. Since workers often feel that they, too, need to subvert state regulations in order to succeed at foreign employment, many of the government controls intended to protect them have become nothing but an additional bureaucratic hurdle to cross.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Ultimately, as subversive practices are pushed further into illegality and obscurity, migrants often become even more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. This shows that technologies of the self are always a matter of perspective: Contrary to the sometimes implicit assumption that individual counter-conduct—the effort “not to be governed like that” (Foucault 1978/1997b, 28)—is an act of setting oneself “free,” the case is often more complicated. For many aspiring migrants, it is a choice between more or less coercive technologies; as such, counter-conduct does not necessarily bring more “freedom,” nor does not always turn out to benefit the subject in the long term. At the same time, the very definition of what is to someone’s “benefit” is highly subjective (see also section 4.3.5). This section has illustrated that the relationship between the Nepali state and the private recruitment industry is intricate and one of mutual dependency. As a result, the “subterranean” practices that continue to shape migrants’ recruitment are not at all limited to the private recruitment industry but rather pervade state structures in Nepal and beyond, for instance, in the form of clientelist and oligarchic power structures. The effects of those fragmentations and competing technologies are profound: In many ways, the state’s strategic interventions to fight subversive practices do not release migrants from coercive conduct. Instead, they introduce additional techniques of coercive and restrictive power, some of which serve to frame workers as marketable objects. While those governmental interventions restrict migrants’ conduct during recruitment, they have, likewise, led to the emergence of new forms of subversion and counterconduct. These conflicting and competing forms of governing and migrants’ response of navigating such rifts do not only define technologies of recruitment but also play a critical role in other pillars of the Nepali migration regime.

4.2

Governing Market Encounters

As I step into the open work shed, I feel the wind brushing past my ears. It is an open space, except for the occasional steel pillars that support its rusty tin roof. The buzzing sound of an electric wood grinder fills the air. About twelve men are sitting on the ground, some of them barefoot, others simply wearing socks. Only one of them looks up as I sit down on one of the chairs close to them. The others remain focused on their work, each of them hammering and filing away at two pieces of trimmed timber. They are crafting a wooden joint—their showpiece. We are at a practical skill test: An interior design company is hiring assistant carpenters for their factory in Dubai. In the middle of the crowd, a sturdy, middle-aged white man with reddish-blonde hair—the agents refer to him as “the client”—is towering over one of the candidates, pointing at the piece he has been working on. “Start again. Here: equal, equal, equal, you hear? All sides need to be equal.” As the company’s head of production and an experienced carpenter himself, the client has traveled here personally to oversee the selection. Earlier, when he was talking to me, he seemed like a jovial character, a born entertainer—his booming baritone voice cutting easily across the noisy bustle around us. Now, there is an air of frustrated boredom about him. Whenever he addresses a candidate, his face is stern, his comments curt: “Go. Stop it. He’ll cut his fingers off in a minute!” He ushers one of the candidates to get up and turns to a nearby broker: “He yours? Is he one of yours?” Turning to the crowd, he claps his hands. “Next, next, next!”

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The wood grinder has turned silent by now. What is left is the steady beat of hammering, sawing, rasping. The broker ushers the next candidate to step closer. Behind him, about seventy young men are waiting in a line that runs out of the work shed and well into the yard outside. They have been here for two hours already, and they will stay here for another two, clutching their filled out application forms and peering over to the work area. The broker leans in to the candidate whose turn it is now, asking in Nepali: “Which one feels easier to you, the joint or the lock? Which one can you pass? Look at the other models first.” Aside from the candidates, there are so many men in this space that it is hard for me to keep track. Some of them are walking around, watching the workers, talking to each other, listening in on others’ conversations. One of them is the skills instructor who owns this work shed, which is actually a technical training center. Many of the other men are brokers, here to deliver their candidates. Others just seem to stroll around with no particular purpose, I notice with confusion. Two brokers standing in the midst of it all have been muttering something under their breath. Suddenly one of them claps his hands; their roaring laughter echoes under the tin roof. They have clearly just shared a joke on someone’s expense. The only woman here besides me, a broker wearing bright pink lipstick, is pushing one of her candidates forward: “The boss has given you a second chance. You get to make one more showpiece. Come on! Don’t mess up this time.” Her candidate, a middle-aged unemployed carpenter from Siraha, ultimately fails the second test, too. His broker starts pleading again with the recruitment agent hosting this event. Now, however, the client almost loses his temper. “Seriously, enough is enough! Get this woman out of here, or I’m leaving!” he roars. After the broker has eventually retreated, the client turns to me and shakes his head, his lips curling into a conspiratorial grin: Amidst all those “foreigners,” he seems to indicate, the two of us “Westerners” understand each other. Over the past hour, I have moved around a bit, walking among the other candidates who are watching the scene. One of them has been called forward just now. The client rewards him with a firm pat on the shoulders; his showpiece appears to be satisfying. He’s got the job if he wants to. Walking back to our group with a smile, the candidate starts filling out some paperwork. The brokers, the young men around him, they all know he just handed in a showpiece from one of the previous candidates. In an unobserved moment, he had been able to replace it with his own piece. There is some hushed giggling, some whispering in the crowd, but nobody says anything. I exchange a look with the skills instructor. He is shaking his head disapprovingly, then chuckles silently. It is none of his business. (Ethnographic vignette 2019, based on observations April 2018) Events like the one described in this vignette were among the most fascinating and multilayered experiences I had during my research. With so much going on simultaneously, they allowed me to witness a staggering number of different trajectories intersecting in one place, one moment. I was amazed by the noise level and the size of the crowd at those venues, which often made it difficult to keep track of everybody’s role and purpose. As I tried to capture in the vignette, the events usually had an ambivalent atmosphere, ranging from the employer’s displayed boredom, disapproval, and dominance to the nervous tension and quiet frustration among many candidates. It manifested particularly strongly in brokers, who simultaneously appeared confident and even jovial, yet also exuded tension when ushering their candidates around and pressuring them

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

to perform well. Most of all, I was stunned by how much those selections resembled a marketplace—in their hustle and bustle, with the workers’ public performances, their on-the-spot evaluation, and the occasional bargaining over a candidate’s salary. Perhaps more than any other research experience, those events helped me recognize the efforts required to attach and transfer Nepali workers to the international labor market. While the term “recruitment” is often used indiscriminately to describe migrants’ entire pre-departure process, my analysis has been based on a more precise definition: I have investigated recruitment as the forms of government that turn “regular” men and women into candidates for foreign employment, thereby incorporating them into Nepal’s infrastructure of migration. However, those interventions represent only one of several components to facilitating and governing labor migration. A second component entails the emergence of a market around Nepali migrant labor and the integration of candidates into that market.68 In taking the perspective of aspiring migrants, this distinction recognizes that recruitment alone does not automatically guarantee them successful placement abroad. On the contrary, the path towards foreign employment requires candidates to pass multiple rounds of selection and other barriers, a process that often takes several attempts and causes many to fail on the way. For recruiters, this means even more than selecting and matching candidates; it requires them to lay the very foundations to the market encounter between workers and potential employers. Ultimately, all those different steps that enable the successive integration of migrant labor into the international market are critical to the Nepali migration regime—yet they are often overlooked. This part of the analysis takes them as its focus. In the first section, I will investigate interviews and skill tests like the one described in the introductory vignette. Although such in-person events account for only a part of selection procedures, they serve as an invaluable entry point to understanding not only the framing of physical market encounters but the marketization of Nepali migrant labor at large. Based on my empirical observation of those events, the subsequent sections take a closer look at the underlying technologies that inform them: Section two outlines the regimes that govern migrant workers in host countries such as Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Section three uncovers the technologies of hiring that have emerged from those regimes and the regional market dynamics they have resulted in. Section four explores how the “Nepali worker” has been singularized on the international labor market, and takes a genealogical perspective to understand its most vital components. Having gathered such a differentiated sense of workers’ marketization, I will eventually revisit the topic of selections—but this time from a different perspective: Section five reveals the vast scope of selection processes and their profound impact on aspiring migrants, no matter whether they occur overtly or covertly. It identifies rationalities of evaluation that inform those processes and illustrates how they are being negotiated and challenged by forms of knowledge and practices from different genealogical backgrounds.

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As stated in the introduction to this chapter, this is not primarily a temporal distinction, but one that focuses on different achievements that contribute to the governmentality of labor migration and migrant subjectivities.

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By starting and ending with the ethnographic observation of selection practices, this part of the analysis remains grounded in my empirical research in Nepal. At the same time, it deliberately looks beyond the national scale by identifying particular forms of governing and exploring both the historical and geographical contexts of their emergence.

4.2.1

Interviews and practical skill tests as market encounters

In order to be hired into a position abroad, some Nepali candidates have to pass a personal interview with representatives of the hiring company. Often, those encounters consist of more than an oral job interview: Because skill certificates from Nepal have little validity and credibility on the global labor market (see section 4.3.1), positions that require a certain level of skill tend to be accompanied by practical tests where candidates have to demonstrate their abilities. However, since a majority of Nepali migrant workers are hired for jobs classified as “unskilled,” many candidates actually do not experience such in-person selection events. Although they have gradually become more common, they still only account for a comparably small number of job positions—those which are considered important enough to justify the additional time and effort these events require. This does not mean, however, that candidates for other jobs undergo no processes of matching and selection. Instead, those services are simply performed by recruitment agencies in place of their clients. While they sometimes involve personal interviews with agents, many selections and hirings also occur purely based on the candidate’s personal data, without any direct interaction between them and the agency (see section 4.2.5). Although they do not represent the experience of most migrant candidates, interviews and skill tests with potential employers have been highly instructive for my understanding of Nepali migration. Direct contact between workers and company representatives tends to be so rare that those oral interviews and practical skill tests—if they even take place—are the only physical encounter between them prior to their departure.69 As such, they offer a rare glimpse into technologies and power dynamics that shape the entire pre-departure phase, but largely occur remotely or behind closed doors. By contrast, interviews and skill tests provide an opportunity to empirically observe how forms of government manifest in material structures and spatial arrangements, in physical interactions and bodily conduct. Those observations are instrumental to understanding the mechanisms, instruments, and techniques which ultimately serve to govern “candidates” into becoming “migrant workers.” As expressed in the introductory vignette, those events are particularly revealing of the emergence of a market around Nepali migrant labor and the integration of candidates into that market. Explaining such processes is at the heart of studies of mar-

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Even those candidates who are hired usually have no second meeting with the H.R. executives. All of their remaining paperwork, including the signing of the final contract, is conducted by the recruitment agency (see section 4.3.2). Sometimes, workers even learn about their successful selection remotely (through their agent or local broker), for instance, when the final hiring decisions are made after the selection event has ended.

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ketization (see part 2.3), which offer a conceptual lens to grasp the different steps and achievements required to “frame” markets. From this perspective, encounters during which “commodity,” “seller,” and “buyer” interact with each other at the same time and place are unique “empirical prisms through which we can approach the performation and performance of concrete markets” (Ouma 2015, 43). I argue that in-person interviews and skill tests function as such market encounters and thus play a critical role in the marketization of Nepali labor. What that role is will be explored in this section. It begins by outlining the organization and implementation of in-person selection events. On this basis, I will investigate the technologies of government deployed in those spaces and the effects they have on migrant candidates, particularly so by generating detached and pacified workers. I will then shift the focus to recruiters and explore how they navigate their ambivalent role in this space. The section concludes by pointing out instances of counter-conduct, specifically by migrant candidates able to subvert some of the technologies deployed towards them.

Organization and implementation of interviews and skill tests When a foreign company has charged a Nepali recruitment agency with filling its socalled “demand” for a certain contingent of vacant jobs, that agency officially facilitates all aspects of hiring and processing until the workers’ departures. Hence, even interviews and skill tests for which the employer is present are prepared, organized, and advertised by the agency. As stated earlier, those events are usually held only for positions that require a specific skill set. The selections I personally observed were in technical trades like carpentry, welding, and electrical assistance, as well as service positions like truck or taxi driver, cook, and waiter. Depending on professional requirements and the expected number of candidates, most of the encounters did not take place on agency premises. Instead, they were set up at other locations, which the agency had rented for the duration of the event, such as professional skill training centers, rentable meeting venues, and even socalled “party palaces.” The ways in which the selections proceed can vary depending on the advertised positions, employers’ requirements, and the recruitment agency tasked with organizing them. For instance, some jobs only ask candidates to take part in oral interviews, whereas others are based mainly on practical skill tests or a combination of both. About two weeks before the event, the agency runs advertisements in national newspapers and sometimes online social media. The announcements, as exemplified in Figure 25 and Figure 26, provide basic information such as the hiring company, the advertised job categories, the number of vacant positions, respective salaries, other conditions of the contract, and some legally mandated information such as the agency’s license number. Furthermore, they state the respective locations and dates of the selection events. In both of the advertisements, the interviews and skill tests are described as “final interview” and distinguished from so-called “pre-interviews.” As clarified in the announcement in Figure 26, admission to interviews and skill tests with employers is

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thus only given to those candidates who have already passed earlier rounds of selection (see section 4.2.5).

Figure 25 & 26: Vacancy announcements published in the national newspaper Kantipur Daily.

In Figure 25, the mid-section (black background) reads: “Pre-interviews have been running regularly. Final interview will be at this company’s office in Kupondole on Saun 27 and 28, 2076 (12 & 13 August 2019).” (Source: Kantipur Daily 2019a). In Figure 26, the text in the mid-section reads: “Pre-interviews have been running regularly. Final interview for company No. 1 will be at 2 and 4 Bhadau, 2076, for company No. 2 at Shravan 32 and Bhadau 1, 2076. Only those selected at pre-interviews will be included in final interview.” (Source: Kantipur Daily 2019c).

While agencies are legally required to run such newspaper advertisements at least seven days before the scheduled event (GoN 2007, 16[1]), most of them rely heavily on freelance intermediaries to provide them with eligible candidates. For instance, recruitment agent Manohar explains that formal advertisements are not sufficient to mobilize enough workers in time: After doing the mandatory advertisement, we go looking for people. […] There are different media for this search: one is through the newspaper. The other one is, we have some local agents across different villages. That is our network. And what we do is, we give the information to them, by text message, by mail, by phone call. We tell them, “We’ve got a requirement for these and those categories, we need these and those qualifications, we need these and those experiences,” and after that, our guys bring them here.70 (agent 1, em05, 24) As mentioned in section 4.1.4, geographical distance is one of the main reasons why recruitment agents are so dependent on regional brokers, whose ability to mobilize

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Original: Mandatory advertisement garepachhi, hamile people search garchhau. […] Search garne different medium chha: auta chahi newspaper bat, arko chahi we have some local agencies gau gauma chha. Tyo network chha. Ani hami sabailai information dinchhau, by sms, by mail, by phone calls. Sabai diye pachhi, “yo yo padko requirement aachha. Yo yo qualification chaiyo, yo yo experience chaiyo.” Tespachhi hamro manchhele yaha lyauchha.

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grassroots networks allows them to supply agencies with attractive candidates. This is particularly the case for selection events that, as most do, take place in Kathmandu Valley. For jobs in technical trades, a smaller number of interviews and skill tests are also conducted in major cities in the Terai region, such as Jhanakpur, a sub-metropolitan city in the southern district Dhanusa. There is one more factor connected to geographical distance: Although events are usually planned at least one week in advance, their schedule is sometimes changed on very short notice, for instance, when employers’ flights are delayed, or interviews take longer than anticipated. As a result, candidates often have to be mobilized very quickly or are required to stay in the area for much longer than expected, which can be a significant challenge, especially for those traveling from remote regions. Despite some differences, most procedures at selection events tend to follow a similar script: When candidates arrive—either accompanied by their brokers or individually—at the premises, they first have to register at a desk run by the organizing recruitment agency. After the agents have verified that a worker has passed all pre-selections, they tell him or her to wait in a (usually designated) waiting area. Sometime later, the employers—who can range from a single company executive to a team of up to three people—arrive on the premises, too. During the event, they usually have at least one of the leading recruitment agents constantly by their side. Depending on the advertised positions, the employers either conduct interviews or alternate between interviews and practical skill tests. Sometimes, the event starts with them giving a short introductory presentation about the company and the advertised positions. Aside from the employers, candidates, recruitment agents, and freelance intermediaries, staff members of the facility that hosts the events are usually present as well. During my research, I experienced selection events as highly asymmetrical spaces. The hierarchy that marks them often manifests in material and embodied technologies of dominating, coercive, and restrictive power. Those technologies govern workers not only during the selection stage but, I argue, shape the entirety of their foreign employment experience. Ultimately, they result in a two-fold effect—framing candidates both as disposable and passive. Through the conceptual lens of marketization, those effects can be deciphered as techniques geared towards the detachment and pacification of Nepali migrant labor.

Governing towards detachment and pacification The number of participants who show up to interviews and skill tests can easily amount to 150 people per event, particularly so for vacancies in technical trades. Considering such sizeable crowds (see Figure 27 and Figure 28), it seems almost unavoidable that individual candidates at those venues often appear indistinguishable and nameless.

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Figure 27: Some of approximately 150 candidates wait at selection event for various technical positions (Qatar). Figure 28: Some of about 40 candidates for the position of taxi driver (Qatar) wait at selection event.

The selection event in Figure 27 is hosted by a skill center in Lalitpur, while the event in Figure 28 takes place at a party venue in Kathmandu (Source: H. Uprety 2018).

At the same time, this effect is further encouraged by numerous additional technologies of intimidation and discipline (see section 2.2.1). For instance, interactions between employers, recruiters, and candidates tend to follow rigid scripts that performatively reproduce hierarchies of power. Agents and brokers routinely address candidates by the Nepali pronoun timi, which is reserved for children and those of lower status.71 Their names rarely become relevant and are only visible in their portfolios, in case the agent or employer chooses to take a look at them. By contrast, it would be unthinkable for a candidate to use anything but the respectful pronoun tapai72 when speaking to a broker or agent. Moreover, their interactions with employers are kept to an absolute minimum. While this can be partly accredited to language barriers, it also results from performative technologies of domination and discipline, which include both spoken interactions and body language: Direct eye contact between employers and candidates is rare, and those who fail their interview or skill test are often sent out without a second glance or any other courtesy except for a brisk “go,” “you’re done,” or “next!”. While each of the company representatives I observed had their own unique personality, they all signaled their personal importance and elevated status via embodied performances: Unfriendly, curt, and authoritative behavior was the norm, as were derogatory verbal statements or displayed states of boredom and frustration. Whatever the means, many employers made it clearly known that they were thoroughly disenchanted with the selection process and considered the present candidates—and sometimes Nepali workers in general—to be of “low quality.” To be sure, such conduct might 71

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To be more precise, the pronoun timi, which is one of five different second-person pronouns in the Nepali language, is commonly used either in close and intimate relationships or to express a hierarchy of power—particularly if other individuals are simultaneously addressed with the more respectful pronouns tapai or hajur (see also Nepal Pragya Pratisthan 2018, 550; 564). Occasionally, I even heard workers address agents by using the pronoun hajur, thus reflecting an even steeper hierarchy between them.

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simply be a strategic move to give the company an advantage in price negotiations. At the same time, it has a profound disciplining effect on candidate subjects because it identifies company representatives as “big shots” (thulo manchhe), powerful individuals that demand respect and even reverence. To aspiring migrants—and, for that matter, many intermediaries—who have grown up at the lower end of a society shaped by centuries of classism, casteism (Aahuti 2014), feudalism, and clientelism (Pandey 2012), such signals reactivate a deeply internalized attitude of submissiveness. Ultimately, they shape the subjectivities of candidates by successfully intimidating, disciplining, and objectifying them (see also sections 4.2.2, 4.3.4). Each of them receives an unmistakable message: “You are disposable.” From a marketization perspective, the techniques described here are instrumental to the commodification of Nepali migrant labor. As explained in section 2.3.3, commodification can only occur if an entity is detached from the circumstances that make it unique. Similarly, selection events detach migrant candidates from their individual contextual information, such as their names, background, and humanity, which helps objectify and reframe them as marketable commodities. In place of unique and intricate personal details, which have no place in those encounters, generic assessment sheets and other seemingly “neutral” technologies are used to standardize and measure what appears as workers’ “objective value” on the labor market. However, the modes of governing deployed at interviews and skill tests result in far more than migrants’ detachment. Most selection events are dominated by technologies of coercive power, which format and normalize an encounter in which employers undisputedly are the ones in charge. Whatever occurs at the venue is based on their instructions: If they wish to delay selections for one day, it is arranged. If they want to extend them, consider it done. Most importantly, they have the final say in the evaluation of each candidate and calculate the “quality” and “appropriate” wage of every selected worker. Thus, the vast majority of calculative agency is allocated to them, with licensed recruiters having some say in the matter, too.73 By contrast, candidates tend to follow a scripted choreography they themselves have little control over. Their physical and social distance from company representatives means that workers never initiate contact with them, and only engage with them when directly spoken to. Their role is entirely reactive, limited to consenting participation without any right to influence the process in any way. At most events, candidates face exactly two choices: to either accept the whole deal or leave it. There is usually no room for negotiation, as recruitment agents—such as Manohar, whom I observed at one event—like to make unmistakably clear: “If you don’t accept the salary, go [derogatory verb form]! Don’t sit inside here! Those of you who don’t like the salary, stay outside”74 (agent 1, em05, 30).

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Given that marketization scholarship is rooted in assemblage theory and ANT, the concept of “agencies” is not strictly equivalent with recruiter or employer subjects. Instead, agencies need to be understood as the human-non-human combination of bodies and enhancements, tools, and “prostheses” (Berndt & Boeckler 2009, 543). Original: Salary jaslai accept chhaina, jau yaha bat! Yo bhitra nabasne! Salary jaslai mannpardaina, yo bhanda bahira gayera basne.

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Seen in isolation, such corrections and directions of conduct might seem minor and insignificant. However, they are part of a more extensive system of technologies geared towards controlling workers’ bodies and placing them into a position of passivity. For instance, the precious few minutes of a candidate’s practical demonstration or oral interview are usually preceded by hours and sometimes days of waiting. As most aspiring migrants undergo far more than one selection event, they experience the choreography of applying, waiting, performing in multiple cycles. While delays happen frequently, and company representatives and recruitment agents might decide on a whim to postpone events for several days, all migrant candidates can do is to endure and wait even longer (see Figure 29 and Figure 30). The significant logistical and financial challenges that come with this, particularly so for applicants from remote regions, are something they simply have to accept.

Figure 29: Waiting line at the registration desk during a selection event. Figure 30: Migrant candidates sit waiting to be called for their interviews and skill tests.

In Figure 29, the migrant candidates are waiting at a selection event for carpenters (UAE) at a Kathmandu-based skill center. One of the organizing recruitment agents is seen leaning against the office doorway. In Figure 30, the candidates are attending a selection event for welders (Qatar) at a Lalitpur-based skill center. On the left side of the picture, the employer and several agents are seen talking to each other. (Source: H. Uprety 2018).

However, it is not only the practice of waiting itself that renders workers passive, but also its spatial dimension. While employers and agents walk around freely and unbound by any restrictions, candidates are maneuvered along pre-defined routes between designated waiting areas, registration desks, and their practical demonstration spots. They partly surrender autonomy over their bodies to follow a rigid choreography, thereby performing and reinforcing the existing asymmetry of power. This asymmetry also inscribes itself into the physical architecture and material devices at selection events. Since it is hard to represent micro-spatial arrangements through verbal descriptions alone, the following Figure 31 and Figure 32 illustrate typical spatial layouts as I witnessed them at two selection events.

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Figure 31: Spatial layout at a practical skill test.

(Source: I. Lindemann & H. Uprety 2020).

Figure 32: Spatial layout at an interview event.

(Draft: H. Uprety; Design: I. Lindemann 2020).

As shown in Figure 31, which depicts an interview and practical skill test held at a technical training facility, the encounters between candidates and employers are highly restricted and formalized. Direct interaction with the latter is only possible after the

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worker has passed several barriers, both metaphorical (such as registration) and physical. Seen from an imagined birds-eye view, the asymmetry between the massive crowd of candidates, who stand for hours in designated waiting areas outside, and the small number of employers and licensed agents, who occupy and manage various indoor spaces, becomes apparent. A similar effect can be observed in Figure 32, which depicts the company representative from Qatar conducting his interviews at a single desk in a spacious air-conditioned conference hall, while the crowd of forty candidates spends hours crammed outside under a half-shaded party tent. While the “spatial fabric of […] institutions” (Murdoch 2005, 53) is often seen as unpolitical and accepted as a given, the figures illustrate that it can actually play an important role in enforcing unequal structures of power and technologies of government. Due to the material and embodied nature of those technologies, their effect on migrant candidates is palpable and unmediated. In many ways, selection events epitomize the governmental effort to reduce migrant candidates to the passive role of waiting and observing. At the same time, such technologies are far from unique to selections. Instead, they shape the majority of workers’ pre-migration experience. This is mirrored in the size of several specialized commercial neighborhoods in Kathmandu Valley, which are targeted exclusively at aspiring migrants, who often spend days and weeks “in transit” or waiting for new opportunities to interview.75 Whether it is the endless lines at government offices and recruitment agencies or the days spent listlessly waiting for their placement and departure in a cheap Kathmandu guesthouse, Nepali workers often find themselves on the sidelines of their own migration experience. Based on recent research on everyday bureaucratic encounters in India, Grace Carswell, Thomas Chambers, and Geert de Neve (2019) argue that such regimes of waiting function as a technology that produces subordinate subjects. Their “analysis of various forms of waiting—‘on the day’, ‘to and fro’, and ‘chronic’ waiting—reveals how temporal processes operate as mechanisms of power and control” (ibid., 597) that undermine subjects’ claims for personal rights and agency. In the case of Nepali migration, workers’ assigned practice of waiting is deeply performative: By being led through a recruitment apparatus like figures on a chessboard, they are governed into passivity and compliance. From a marketization perspective, this passivity is one more essential component to processes of commodification. As discussed in section 2.3.2, tradable goods need to be not only detached from their unique features but turned into “entities with pacified agency that can be transferred as property” (Çalışkan & Callon 2010, 5). The concept of pacification implies that commodities are not left without any agency at all, but that their agency is reduced so as to remain within the expected qualities under which they are framed (Henry & Roche 2016, 98). In the Nepali migration regime, the material and embodied technologies deployed during interviews and skill tests fulfill precisely that function: By enforcing a rigid choreography of applying, waiting, and performing, they regulate workers’ conduct so

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Examples for such neighborhoods include the hotel area surrounding Kathmandu’s Gongabu Bus Station/Naya Bus Park and Sinamangal.

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that it remains predictable and within the boundaries of what is expected from them. In this way, selection events are geared towards the pacification of migrant labor. Interpreted through a conceptual lens, what I observed and experienced as a participating researcher reflects something fundamental to the emergence of markets: “a stark distinction between the ‘things’ to be valued and the ‘agencies’ capable of valuing them […], [an] asymmetrical ontological divide, in which only the latter are considered to have agency in the valuation process” (Çalışkan & Callon 2010, 5). Given this dichotomy between commodified candidates and foreign employers, who represent most of the calculative agency, the question arises: What happens to the space in-between those market encounters? In other words, what is the role of professional recruiters?

Navigating the “in-between” of market encounters: the role of recruiters While my analysis centers on the government of migrant candidates, selection events also reveal much about the complex positionalities of recruitment agents and brokers. In particular, they illustrate how recruiters navigate market encounters by employing technologies of both domination and self-subordination. As the main facilitators of selection events, licensed agents take a respectable role and are able to exert considerable power over migrant candidates. On the other hand, they are highly dependent on foreign employers, whose satisfaction is vital to their long-term business success. This dependence informs much of recruiters’ conduct, as numerous devotional proclamations on agency websites illustrate: The motto of this Company is to give the best and prompt service to the employer. […] The company always conducts interview to select the qualified and the best candidates and pays its full attention to satisfy the demanding [sic]. No complaints from the employing countries regarding the services given by this agency has so far been received. In order to promote a good relationship especially with the employing countries, our main attention is always to provide the best service to the employer. Given an opportunity to us we will sure prove our capability to meet your expectations. (Pyramid International Employment Service 2019) At Araniko Overseas, the client’s satisfaction comes first simply because we firmly believe in strong long term business bounds that short term gains. Our highly efficient and dedicated teams of staff are constancy [sic] prepared to fulfill all your manpower requirements. (Araniko Overseas 2018b) The supreme vision of our company is the fulfill the need of our clients seeking for “Right People for Right Job at Right Time”. Keeping this time continuously endeavor to get candidate with high potential to our esteemed clients. (Wise International Nepal 2019) Clearly, the sections quoted above function as advertisements intended to portray each agency as attractive to potential clients visiting the website. At the same time, they accurately reflect my ethnographic insights on professional recruitment practice, in which loyalty to the client company is usually the top priority. In any way possible, Nepali agencies are eager to assure employers that all procedures are done with the “main attention” on “satisfy[ing]” the demand and “fulfill[ing] the need of […] [their] esteemed clients.”

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The hierarchy of power that results from this one-sided dependency affects the interactions between employers and recruitment agents during all stages of foreign employment—similar to the relationship between agents and unlicensed brokers (see section 4.1.4). However, it becomes particularly evident during physical market encounters. Here, I was able to observe how agencies tasked with organizing a selection event were willing to do anything to keep their client happy: When a company wished to hold interviews on a Saturday—the only non-working day in the week—the agents complied without hesitation. Whatever a client demanded during the event, be it drinks, something to eat, privacy, or a truck for candidates’ test drives, some lower-rank agent instantly hurried off to arrange it.76 As this last example suggests, recruitment agencies are structured along internal company hierarchies as well, which determine the different roles agents have to play during selection events. Whereas the junior agents I observed tended to show respectful, nervous, and even deferential behavior, senior agents acted quite cordially and were often trying to build a personal connection with the clients. For instance, Pratul, one of the leading agents at a large agency in Patan, greeted a client company executive by taking his hand and proclaiming to the surrounding staff: “He’s my best friend, not a client!”77 (agent 2, em04 obs01, 7). In mobilizing an emotional relationship to their business partners, agents thus utilize the clientelist practices that pervade the recruitment sector both in Nepal and abroad (see section 4.1.5). In this light, in-person selection events offer an ideal opportunity for them to deepen personal relationships with their clients and thereby grow a more reliable professional network. One more aspect that became obvious to me as a female researcher was how much these events and the recruitment business, in general, appear to be male-dominated spaces: Not only were all the company representatives I encountered men, but the same was the case for all (but one) high-ranking recruitment agents. During many selection events, recruiters and employers appeared to be bonding over this shared identity—for example, by performing masculine cultural codes that set them apart from their female colleagues, all of whom were lower-rank agents.78 Despite the superficial cordiality that clients and agents display at many selection events, the underlying difference in power remains unchanged. Thus, no matter their rank, recruiters usually follow the client’s lead. Their desire to create a long-lasting profitable relationship with him79 makes them willing amplifiers to whatever behavior

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This pattern also points to significant hierarchies within recruitment companies, as well as between agents and brokers (see also section 4.1.4). In these and many instances, my research indicated that recruitment agencies are far from homogeneous actors. Instead, they are frequently shaped by their own internal hierarchies, diverging agendas, and different agents’ conflicted subjectivities. Original in English. While this topic cannot be explored further in the book, the recruitment profession appears to be—like most other industries in and beyond Nepal—deeply structured along lines of gender. During my research, I saw only a handful of female recruitment agents in executive or senior roles, whereas a significant portion of lower-level agents (e.g., clerks and assistants) were women. Since all company representatives I encountered during my research were men, I deliberately use the male pronoun when referring to their conduct and roles in my ethnographic observations.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

he is showing towards migrant candidates—be it dominating, derogatory, or ridiculing. This can put them into strange predicaments, like when agent Manohar laughed along to his client’s snide remarks about “dirty Nepalis,” despite being Nepali himself. Freelance brokers, who can be far more numerous at such events than licensed recruitment agents, sometimes join in with this dominating conduct. Otherwise, they usually take a back seat, mainly observing the process and supporting their candidates. During my research, I rarely saw them communicate with company representatives directly, although it was always evident to everybody who they were and what their role was. Thus, recruiters often deploy technologies of domination and objectification towards migrant candidates in order to ally themselves performatively with employers. At the same time, their behavior and positionalities are quite contradictory. For instance, senior recruitment agent Jamal laughingly told me in Nepali, while his nonNepali speaking client was standing nearby: “We are sharing among each other how we can help a person pass, he is thinking about how he can make him or her fail!”80 (em02 vidrec05, 1). Despite being overtly loyal to the client, many agents and brokers thus covertly take considerable care of candidates and support them in passing their interviews and tests. As described in the ethnographic vignette (see introduction to part 4.2), they sometimes try to maneuver their candidates towards a type of skill test they feel most comfortable with or ask employers to let them perform a second time if they have failed.81 Even prior to selection events, it has become increasingly common for recruiters to mentally prepare workers for the procedure and coach them on what to answer during oral interviews (see section 4.3.4). Again, a reason for this lies in the nature of the recruitment business. Since successful placement is the main way in which intermediaries earn money, this covert alliance is considerably motivated by financial concerns: The higher the quota of hired candidates, the higher the recruiter’s profit margin (see also section 4.3.1).82

Selection events as opportunities for counter-conduct In the previous subsections, I have depicted oral interviews and practical skill tests as highly asymmetrical market encounters—encounters that further the divide between migrant candidates as disposable, detached, passive, and pacified commodities on the one side, and the evaluative agencies among powerful employers and recruiters on the

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Original: Hami manchhe kasari pass garaune bhanera kura share gardaichhau, uhale chai kasari fail garaune bhanera sochirahanu bhaechha! I found this to be particularly the case for unlicensed recruiters, who I saw openly advocating for their candidates, for instance by repeatedly asking the recruitment agent to “put in a good word” with the company executive. This is understandable, since local brokers tend to depend more on the successful placing of their candidates, for whom they have taken direct responsiblity. In addition to recruiters, skill trainers often play highly contradictory roles as well. One reason for this is that they are not as financially invested in the selection process: While they earn from the booking of their training premises, they have nothing to lose or to gain from a lower or higher number of selected candidates. Accordingly, the skill trainers I observed during my research did not actively interfere to help particular candidates succeed during their tests; at the same time, they did not take the employer’s side either, for instance, by not telling the company representative about a candidate who had clearly been cheating (see introductory vignette).

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other side. Although those insights are empirically grounded, they mask the many ways in which those events can differ from each other. In fact, every one of the skill tests I attended was somehow unique, depending on the advertised job categories, educational levels, the hiring philosophy of the employer company, and the personal character of its attending representative. Due to this variability, there are numerous ways in which participants of selection events can subvert dominant technologies of government. For example, I witnessed a number of candidates who defied the odds and successfully took charge of their own assessment—not only by delivering a convincing practical performance but also by speaking up and claiming their voice during interviews. One instance of this occurred at a practical skill test for several technical trades: When a candidate passed the highly advanced “6G” welding test in flying colors, he was instantly reframed as a precious and desired commodity. By identifying himself as one of a small group of professionals who currently are in high demand on the market, the welder was enabled to speak directly to the employer and negotiate a higher salary. Suman, one of the observing skill trainers, commented on this exchange: One person has just passed. [The employer] had said 1600, but [the candidate’s] work was good, so he said 1800, and he is going for 1800 now. There is some bargaining in this. […] The company person is bargaining a bit; he is trying to take [workers] at low cost. […] [The candidate] was able to sell his skill, he got [a wage] that corresponds to his work now.83 (Skill trainer 1, em05 vidrec05, 1) As Suman explained, it was the candidate’s ability “to sell his skill” (aphno ship bechne) that had given him a considerable advantage for his future employment. This case illustrates how a particular skill profile can give candidates the chance to counteract some of the dominant technologies of detachment and pacification that shape market encounters. Due to their assessment as “valuable” and in high market demand, they are empowered to conduct themselves against those hegemonic forms of government. In a similar vein, even a worker’s acceptance of governmental techniques of disposability and passivity does not necessarily mean that he or she feels coerced into participating in those events. On the contrary, some make the conscious decision to comply with the technologies directed at them. Incentivized with attractive job offers, they are willing to overtly conduct themselves in any way expected of them (see also section 4.3.5). At the same time, this behavior is often subversive, too, in that it is more of a temporary performance than a permanent change of conduct. Covertly, many candidates utilize various tricks to bend or even break the rules of the “game.” Cases like that of the cheating carpenter described in the ethnographic vignette (see introduction to part 4.2) are quite common, as professional skills trainer Binod admits: There is plenty of cheating during the interviews. There are people who are good at it, they pass the test and leave the sample product lying around. After a while, some others take that sample product and show it as their own work. That is cheating. But 83

Original: U [kamdar] chai pass bhayo. Usle [companyko manchhe] chai 1600 bhandai thiyo. Tara yesko [kamdar] ko kam ramro thiyo. Usle 1800 bhanyo ani 1800 nai gardiyo. Bargaining hunchha yesma. […] Companyko manchhe alikati bargaining ta gari halchha. Low costma laijana khojihalchha. […] Usle aaphno ship bechna sakyo, usle kam anusarko payo.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

tomorrow they won’t be able to do the job! Today, they have passed the test, but tomorrow, they will face trouble. I have seen this kind of behavior, but what can I say?84 (sk09, 52) Other practices, similar to the one described in the above quote, are sometimes even advanced by freelance recruiters. For instance, several of the brokers who participated in my research referenced different tricks by which workers could pass selections without being appropriately qualified, or even medical tests without being physically healthy. Considering those different insights, I conclude that personal interviews and skill tests with potential employers enable candidates to take more control over their migration process than they would have otherwise. At the same time, whatever forms of selfconduct they can access still occur within a rigid framework: More than at any other point during my research, those direct market encounters allowed me to witness how asymmetries of power between employers, intermediaries, and candidates manifested in spatial arrangements and embodied choreographies. I experienced those events as highly staged and codified, with all participants conducting their bodies along predefined scripts of conduct. As this section has shown, those coercive and restrictive forms of government, which render migrant candidates disposable and passive, serve as techniques of detachment and pacification, and thereby advance the commodification and marketization of Nepali labor. Those processes are not unique to Nepali foreign employment, as similar effects have been described with regard to other regimes of migrant labor (see also sections 2.1.2-3). For instance, feminist scholar Melissa Wright argues that the disposability and commodification of migrant workers are far from unintended side effects of global capitalism but instead instrumental to its functioning. At the same time, those processes are not solely determined by large-scale economic imperatives but rely on “very particular cultural identities that people recognize in themselves and in each other [and that] are the media through which such capitalist entities take shape” (Wright 2006, 49–50). Seen from this perspective, the coercive and restrictive technologies that govern Nepali selection events are so effective precisely because they tie into pre-existing subjectivities and scripts of domination and submissiveness, which are deeply culturally embedded and have been internalized by all participants long before their physical encounter. Those pre-existing formations are not exclusively based in Nepal but also rooted in the migrant labor regimes of different host countries. For instance, they are affected by regionally specific assessments and calculations of labor value. Furthermore, they partly result from the rationalities that inform employers’ decisions to hire Nepali workers in the first place, and the dominant technologies of employing and hosting migrant workers in those countries. It is those different genealogical backgrounds—both in a geographical and historical sense—of Nepali labor market encounters that I will explore over the following sections.

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Original: Cheating garne dherai hunchhan. [...] Kattile ramro banayera dekhayera okay bhayesi tehi phyaki rakheko hunchha. Yeso mahol herchha ani usle tyakka tei tipera, ekchhin pachhi tei lagera dekhaidinchha. That's cheating, right? Bholi usle ta kam garna sakdaina. […] Bholi ta dukha hunchha ni. Aaja ta dukha pako chhaina. Testo typeko manchheharu, dekhya chhu maile. Aba ke bhanne?

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4.2.2

Governing migrant workers abroad

In order to understand how the market encounter between Nepali migrant candidates, potential employers, and intermediaries has been affected by foreign labor regimes, it is essential to get a sense of those different host contexts and their specific approaches to governing migrant labor. This section provides an overview of the most common foreign employment destinations for Nepali workers and conveys a sense of the scale of migration to those countries. On this basis, it focuses on Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, specifically. In drawing on previous scholarship,85 I will identify three sets of technologies that shape the migrant labor regimes in those countries: The marginalization and commodification of workers, their positioning between restrictive state regulations and subversive forms of governing, and the segmentation of the labor market based on workers’ nationalities.

Destinations for foreign employment—an overview Before 1990, the only destination that officially hosted considerable numbers of Nepali workers was India. Nevertheless, an estimated 44,000 Nepalis were also employed—albeit often illegally—in countries across East and South East Asia, including Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, and the Maldives (Seddon et al. 2002, 25). As suggested in section 4.1.3, it is also likely that at least a small number of migrants worked in the GCC countries even before it became legally regulated. Around the turn of the millennium, when foreign employment became massively popular in Nepal, the majority of labor permits were issued for Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 18–19). Besides, a significant number of workers went to other countries in the Gulf region, which, as a whole, has remained by far the most common destination for formalized foreign employment (ibid.).86 Between the fiscal years 2008/09 and 2016/17, 30 percent of all issued labor permits were granted to workers bound to Malaysia, 22 percent to workers for Qatar, and 20 percent to workers for Saudi Arabia (MOLE 2018, 11). However, it is crucial to consider that those overall numbers do not adequately represent female workers, who account for only a small portion of total labor permits. Among all documented female workers in that time frame, 24 percent went to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), 16 percent to Malaysia, and 11 percent to Kuwait. Thus, the data suggest that work permits for female migrants, compared to

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As I did not work empirically in any of those host contexts (see also part 3.1), this part of my analysis predominantly draws on academic studies and other secondary sources on the topic. However, it needs to be noted that if distinguished by countries, the most popular destination for labor migration most likely remains India. While there are no exact numbers due to the open border and informal recruitment channels (one of the reasons why migration to India is not considered in the study, see also parts 1.2, 3.1), the number of Nepalis in India is estimated to range between 1.3 and 3 million people (Kunwar 2018, 82; Sharma & Thapa 2013, 5–6).

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

males, have been more evenly distributed onto a greater variety of countries, including the UAE, Kuwait, Lebanon, Israel, and Bahrain (Sijapati & Limbu 2017, 18–19).87 Despite Nepal’s relatively small population of 26.5 million (CBS 2012, 1), Nepalis have established a significant presence in many of those countries. Malaysia currently hosts around 330,000 documented Nepali workers, which means they account for 16 percent of all documented migrants, thus representing the third-largest group of migrant workers in the country (Aryal et al. 2019, 789). Including undocumented migrants, those numbers are even estimated to amount to more than half a million (ibid.). Similarly, Saudi Arabia hosts approximately 500,000 Nepali workers, who, as of 2013, accounted for about five percent of the documented migrant population (Bel-Air 2014, 7). In Qatar, estimates from 2015 place the number of Nepali laborers at 350,000. As such, they account for about 17 percent of the foreign population and represent the second-largest migrant group in the kingdom (ead. 2017, 10).88 The above data does not only reflect the considerable numbers of Nepali workers abroad—it also indicates that all of those countries host high numbers of migrants in general: Like most of the Arab Gulf states, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have relied on foreign labor for more than half a century. Particularly in the past decades, their massive urbanization and modernization would have been unthinkable without migrant workers, who continue to play a crucial role in their national economies: As of 2013, the roughly six million documented foreign workers in Saudi Arabia accounted for 89 percent of private-sector employees (ead. 2014, 6). According to data from 2017, the two million documented workers in Qatar accounted for 95 percent of the total workforce (ead. 2017, 8). In both countries, the majority of migrants come from India and—besides Nepal—from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and other Arab countries (ibid., 10; Bel-Air 2014, 7). While the imbalance between foreign workers and national citizens is not quite as pronounced in Malaysia, it does host the highest number of non-citizens in Southeast Asia: Among the country’s total population of 33 million, about two million people are documented migrants (Ministry of Home Affairs 2017). Including undocumented migrants, however, those numbers are estimated to amount to four to six million, which represent up to 18 percent of the population (IOM 2019). Aside from Nepal, those workers predominantly originate from Indonesia, Bangladesh, Burma, and India (Nah 2012, 491). As all those numbers indicate, countries like Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have hosted significant numbers of migrant workers for many decades, and their economies have vitally relied on their labor. Concerning those three countries specifically, what regimes have they put in place to govern their migrant populations, and how do those

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However, it is important to keep in mind the high numbers of undocumented female migrants (see section 4.1.3). Since these migrants are not included in the above data, a definite assessment about female migration patterns cannot be made. Since public authorities of most GCC states are not eager to publish complete demographic data (e.g., on the exact numbers of foreign migrants or their national citizens), much of the above information is based on academic calculations. Furthermore, more recent comprehensive data (later than 2015) is currently unavailable.

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relate to the technologies at physical market encounters in Nepal that were discussed in the previous section?

Migrant labor regimes in Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia For decades, the national economies of Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have fundamentally depended on foreign workers (Bel-Air 2018, 7–8; Jordaan 2018, 150). For the past decades, their state governments have increasingly problematized this “over-reliance on migrant labor” (Randeree 2012, 2) and framed foreign workers as a “strategic and national security threat” (Naufal & Genc 2012, 64; see also Nah 2012, 491). As a result, they—like other states in the region—have launched various governmental interventions to stifle the influence of migrants on host society and politics. Taken together, those different technologies amount to highly restrictive migrant labor regimes. Multiple reports and studies confirm that labor and even human rights of migrant workers in Malaysia and the Gulf region are severely limited (Amnesty International 2016, 2019a; Gardner et al. 2013; Kaur 2004; Murugasu 2017; Nah 2012; Pattisson 2013; Wong 2006). Unlike domestic citizens, foreigners are granted “no minimum wage laws, no labor unions, and no [provisions for] strikes” (Naufal & Genc 2012, 58). Furthermore, there is a massive wage gap: In Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the salaries of even those nationals who are not employed in the heavily subsidized public sector are at least twice as high as those of foreign employees, even when correcting for educational backgrounds and job categories (Hertog 2014b). In many ways, those inequalities are characteristic of the globalized economy today and how it manifests in migrant labor regimes across the world. As argued in section 2.1.1, the remarkable growth of global cities and entire national economies has only been possible due to the efforts of a mostly disenfranchised and invisible global class of bottom-end workers (McDowell 2008; Sassen 2008; Taylor 2009). At the same time, there are several aspects that make the migrant labor regimes in Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia stand out from the global norm. Specifically considering their influence on market encounters in Nepal (see section 4.2.1), I identify three sets of technologies that play a pivotal role in their government of migrant workers: a) Marginalization and commodification of laborers: Even in light of the inequalities of migrant labor regimes across the world, Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have proven particularly effective in restricting and segregating low-income migrants from their mainstream society. Besides wage hierarchies, such as those described above, numerous other technologies are geared towards leaving foreign workers with a minimum of visibility and chance at participating in public life. For instance, most low-income workers are housed in labor camps, which are often in highly remote areas and lack basic infrastructures (Bruslé 2010b, 2012). Tristan Bruslé’s (2012) research insights on the dull and blunt life in Qatari labor camps indicate that a state of compliance and passivity is considered ideal not only for workers’ professional performance but during their entire stay abroad. Other, similar technologies include restrictions on the presence of migrants in parks and shopping malls (Human Rights Watch, 25–27) and numerous in-

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

stitutional obstacles that hamper their access to and interaction with local authorities (Amnesty International 2013, 114–115). Those regulations need to be seen in the context of the increasing formalization of labor migration that has shaped host regimes across Asia (see section 2.1.3). Parallel to this development on a larger geographical scale, the nations of Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have continually expanded their formalization of labor migration and, in doing so, have not shied away from techniques of disciplinary and sovereign power (see section 2.2.1). They have become highly efficient at commodifying migrant workers, extracting from them precisely the labor that is needed while detaching them from much of their humanity and the legal and moral rights that come with it (e.g. (Kanchana 2018). By conducting migration as a form of “labor transplant[s]” (Xiang 2012a), the state governments and employing companies maximize their own short-term gain while absolving themselves of most responsibility towards their foreign workforce. For instance, when Nepali laborers face injuries at their workplace, employers in Qatar and Saudi Arabia are not required to pay them any compensation, a practice that changed in Malaysia only in 2018 (Rai 2018).89 Thus, they are ready to profit from migrant workers but are unwilling to shoulder the social costs that might arise from their presence. The most recent example of this has been the 2020 Coronavirus outbreak: Amidst the pandemic, neither employers nor public authorities in all three countries improved workers’ living conditions to come even close to meeting the necessary standards of hygiene. During the months-long lockdown, when migrants were unable to work, most received no salary and no form of social welfare. At the same time, travel restrictions kept many of them unable to return to their home countries. As a result, millions of foreign workers in Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have spent a considerable part of 2020 stuck in overcrowded and unhygienic conditions without any income and inadequate access to healthcare (Chulov 2020a; Sherlock 2020; Sukumaran 2020). Ultimately, all of those different policies represent a system that not only commodifies low-income migrant workers but—being unwilling to protect them even from a deadly pandemic—treats them as disposable. On a personal level, those technologies of objectification, commodification, and disposability have profound effects on migrant workers. During my empirical research, returnees often described to me how the strict regulations and treatment they had experienced abroad had affected them physically and psychologically. For instance, 30-yearold Bishal recalls from his time in Saudi Arabia that he felt “[it] is not a place where you can live. It is never sure when you might end up dead. If you commit even a small mistake, it will be horrible” (mi22, int01 212).90 For 23-year-old Pradeep, his experience of working as an undocumented migrant in Saudi Arabia left an even more negative mark on his sense of personal value and dignity: “If I died, they would throw me into

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The same used to be the case for Malaysia until 2018, when Nepal and Malaysia signed their new labor agreement, which requires employers to take some responsibility for workplace injuries (Rai 2018). However, the agreement only came into effect in September 2019 (Nepali Times 2019). Original: Saudima gayera basnai sakidaina. Katikhera mardinchha bhanne thegan nahune raichha. Ali kati galti bhayo bhane khattam hunchha.

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some ditch, I would be gone and that would be it. If a dog died there, they would say ‘a dog died.’ But if we died there, nobody would care” (mi20, 178).91 b) Migrants in the crossfire between official and “subterranean” techniques of government: Another striking aspect of the labor regimes of Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar is how little existing laws, including those supposed to protect migrant workers, are being adhered to or enforced in practice. Similarly to Nepal’s domestic recruitment sector (see sections 4.1.4), practices of employing foreign workers usually divert significantly from official regulations. For instance, both in Malaysia and the Gulf, it remains common among companies to retain their workers’ passports during their entire stay in the country. Rooted in sponsorship laws like the Kafala system in Qatar and the Nitaqat program in Saudi Arabia (Hussain 2020; Kanchana 2018; Zahra 2019), this practice has become highly controversial. Essentially, it keeps migrants in a clientelist relationship with their employers, which makes them unable to change the workplace, highly vulnerable towards authorities, and susceptible to various forms of exploitation, particularly so in the case of women (Bajracharya & Sijapati 2012). Although both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have reacted to international criticism by recently reforming their sponsorship laws (Zahra 2019, 6–9), little appears to have changed in practice (Amnesty International 2019a; Mandal 2019b). Similarly, the retaining of passports remains the norm in Malaysia today, although it has been illegal for decades (Nah 2012, 494). A similar pattern has been observed with other exploitative practices. For instance, a qualitative meta-study on the GCC countries concludes that violations of workers’ rights are “systematically endured by migrants throughout the region […], [including] passport confiscation, lack of documentation, job switching, salary withholding, and problems related to labor camps and living conditions” (Gardner et al. 2013, 8–9). Although such irregular conditions and practices are usually not caused—or at least not intentionally so—by migrants themselves, they have to bear most of the negative consequences. In financial terms, they stand to lose everything they have invested in their chance to work abroad—investments that have often left them deeply in debt (see section 4.1.5). Concerning the legal repercussions, it is not employers but predominantly migrants who are criminalized and receive harsh punishment. Both in Malaysia and the Gulf states, the state’s response to irregular employment practices is exceptionally punitive towards migrant workers. This is particularly the case for undocumented migrants, who have been working in those countries in staggering numbers (Fargues et al. 2015; Murugasu 2017, 41–45). Over the past years, Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have run multiple amnesty campaigns, which, more than anything, have illustrated the scope of undocumented migrant employment: During a 2013 intervention in Saudi Arabia, which has been the most extensive amnesty campaign to date, more than five million migrants were regularized and one million were deported within just one year (Bel-Air 2014, 5). Between these brief periods of leniency, however, all countries have run harsh crackdown operations against undocumented migrants, for instance, by incarceration and 91

Original: […] ma mare bhane siddhiyo. Ma junai pani euta kachada huncha ni tyaha bhitra falidiyo bhane sakiyo. Kukur maryo bhane, kukur maryo ta bhanchhan, tara hami tyaha maryo bhane, value nai bhayena.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

various demonstrations of sovereign power.92 Several of the migrant returnees in my research had been arrested after not being able to produce valid documentation during a police check—even if it had been their employers who had failed to extend their permits. They had been held in prison for several months, some under intolerable conditions, before their host states had finally sent them back to Nepal (see also Uprety 2016, 37–38). Reflecting a severely punitive approach towards undocumented migrants, the Malaysian legal code prescribes not only detention, imprisonment, and deportation but even whipping (Nah 2012, 500–501; Wong 2006, 223). Ultimately, those techniques of government do not protect migrant workers but put themselves even more at the mercy of employers. The states’ approach of tolerating employers’ subversive practices while criminalizing workers who are—often involuntarily—involved in them is indicative of the same clientelist structures that shape recruitment practices in Nepal (see section 4.1.5). The routine overcharging of Nepali recruits by proxy companies tied to high-ranking Malaysian politicians, which I mentioned in that context, is only one recent example of what has clearly been a far greater phenomenon. As long as political and economic elites in Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia continue to profit from both exploitative practices of employment and workers’ criminalization, those “subterranean” and punitive techniques of government are most likely going to persist. c) Labor market segmentation based on workers’ nationality: A final facet that is vital to understand about the host regimes in Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia is the differential treatment of foreign workers purely based on their nationalities. In other words, the degree to which migrants are exposed to specific technologies of government depends significantly on their respective country of origin. The technologies of domination and control I have outlined above, for example, apply predominantly to migrants from South and Southeast Asia. While those workers face strict visa and residence laws, immigrants from Arab or “Western” countries “have the right to work, reside, marry and have their families with them, as well as to leave and re-enter [the host country] freely on their immigration passes” (Nah 2012, 493). This differentiality is also reflected in the widespread practice to provide segregated accommodation for migrants of the same origin, which often results in dramatically different housing and living conditions (Bel-Air 2017, 12). Moreover, it affects migrants’ experiences at the workplace, where different wage levels largely reflect nationalitybased hierarchies (Malecki & Ewers 2007, 475–476). Both in Malaysia and the Gulf states, Nepali workers are part of the lowest-paid national contingent (Gardner et al. 2013, 14; Sijapati and Limbu 2017, 39–40). When confronted with those observations, the foreign employers I interviewed usually assured me that those wage disparities merely reflected workers’ different qualification levels and job positions. This explanation seems to be confirmed by statistics:

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In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, some Gulf states introduced additional amnesty provisions for undocumented workers. By contrast, Malaysia has taken an opposite approach, using Coronavirus containment measures as an opportunity to launch another crackdown on migrant workers—although this has clearly disincentivized undocumented migrants to come forward to be tested or treated if sick (BBC News 2020; Al Jazeera 2020).

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Recent data on Nepali employment in the GCC countries suggest that the majority of male workers hold so-called “low-skilled”93 positions in construction, manufacturing, sales, and retail, as well as hospitality and security services (MOLE 2018, 58–59). In Malaysia, they are mainly employed as general workers in agriculture, palm oil, rubber, and electronic industries, as well as the security sector (ibid.).94 To some degree, this explains why Nepali migrants tend to receive the lowest salaries—even more so in the case of Nepali women, who predominantly work in care positions (MOLE 2018, 60), which belong to the lowest-paid sector. However, several recruiters and former migrants who participated in my research suggested that at least in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, wage levels tend to be different even among workers who have had the same training and perform the same tasks. For example, broker Rajan recalls his own experience of foreign employment in Saudi Arabia: In our group, the Filipinos got a higher salary. We were given 200 Riyal less. The reason was that they think Nepalis will do the work for a lower wage as well. The issue comes that we got less salary, but we had already signed the agreement on those salaries.95 (iag07, 34) As Rajan describes, he and his Nepali colleagues only realized their different treatment once they had already started working, which they felt left them with no chance to challenge it. While the insights from my own research are only anecdotal, recent studies on the security sector have confirmed that nationality-based wage hierarchies are standard in the Gulf region (Chisholm 2014, 352; Coburn 2018, 33–36).96 Although the differential wage levels, housing conditions, and residence laws are particularly striking in Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, the general hierarchization of migrants based on their gender, nationality, and ethnicity is common in economies worldwide (Chau 2020; Findlay et al. 2013). As I pointed out in section 2.1.2, even the term “migrant” itself is a political category that functions as a marker of difference,

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Although the term “low-skilled labor” is commonly used in the migration sector and academic scholarship, I want to emphasize that the idea of “low skills” is highly subjective and usually defined through the lens of foreign employers. Furthermore, while many migrants are employed in low-skilled positions, some of them actually have a more advanced level of skills, which is not considered valid (see section 4.3.1), or possess an education or skillset that is entirely different from the position into which they have been hired abroad. Despite these general employment patterns, there are also exceptions, for instance, of Nepalis who are employed in (or promoted to) positions in higher management (e.g., mi18). Moreover, given the considerable numbers of undocumented migrants, as well as subversive hiring practices (see section 4.2.3), actual employment patterns probably differ from those official data. For instance, the reportedly high numbers of undocumented Nepali migrants in security and military contracting (Coburn 2018) indicate that the role of these sectors is not sufficiently accounted for by state calculations. Original: Hamro lotma Filippiniharulai badhi diyeko thiyo. Hamilai ali kam nai diyo, 200 Riyal kam diyo. Nepali lai thorai talab bhayeni kam garchha bhanne uniharuko manyeta ho. Thorai talab bhayo bhanne kura aauchha, tara uniharule agreement nai tyo garera lyayeko hunchha. However, such differential practices have not been observed for Malaysia, where official regulations demand that all workers of a certain job category receive a standard wage. At the same time, I have found no sources clearly attesting to the enforcement of these regulations.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

since it is typically ascribed only to individuals of specific nationalities or ethnicities, financial means, and educational levels. Ultimately, those different insights show that the migrant labor regimes in Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia largely operate through technologies that commodify migrants—and particularly low-skilled workers from South and Southeast Asia—by keeping them passive, detaching them from their humanity, and essentially treating them as disposable. In this sense, those employment regimes have a direct impact on the techniques that shape in-person selection events among migrant workers in Nepal (see section 4.2.1). Moreover, this section has illustrated that there are not only vast differences between migrant workers and domestic citizens but also among different groups of migrants, who range from high-income “Western professionals” at the very top of the spectrum to low-income South Asian workers at the bottom. Thus, workers’ nationality significantly affects their individual rights, salaries, working conditions, and accommodation. As a result, the labor markets in all three countries are highly segmented, with Nepali migrants filling some of the lowest ranks in the hierarchy. The frequent claims of employers that those wage disparities merely reflect workers’ different skill levels and job positions are misleading: Even if this were the case, it would only go to prove that nationality not only affects workers’ conditions of employment but determines what positions candidates are hired into in the first place. These dynamics and the technologies that cause employers to approach particular national markets to fill different positions will be explored in the next section.

4.2.3

International techniques and dynamics of hiring Nepali labor

As stated in the previous section, official data suggest that Nepali migrant workers are hired predominantly into low-skilled and, therefore, badly-paid positions. To some degree, this is a reflection of the level of professional skills among Nepali candidates, which continue to be lacking (see section 4.3.1). At the same time, those hiring patterns reflect that low-skilled positions are simply what is most commonly offered to the Nepali market. Thus, the segmented labor markets in Malaysia and the Gulf create a self-reinforcing cycle: Because companies target specific national markets based on the type of position they want to fill, every time a Nepali migrant is hired into a low-level position, it performatively reaffirms that pattern for future employment. This indicates that targeted hiring practices reflect not only workers’ professional skills but also other factors that determine employers’ calculations of labor value. Based on this insight, what are the exact reasons that lead companies in Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia to hire workers from Nepal? I will begin to answer that question by focusing on the example of Gulf country employers and unpacking the guiding regulations and “subterranean” practices that are pivotal in their hiring of migrant

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workers.97 After exploring those technologies both in general and specifically regarding Nepali labor, I will delve deeper into the market effects that result from them, particularly so the dynamics around “cheap” labor.

Technologies of hiring among Gulf country employers Contemporary patterns of hiring Nepali migrant workers are shaped profoundly by host-country regulations and their implementation or subversion by employers. Because those technologies differ in all host countries, I will illustrate this point by focusing on the GCC countries,98 which account for about half of all documented employment of Nepali migrants (MOLE 2018, 11). There are three principal sets of technologies that affect contemporary practices of hiring: a) Quantification of migrant labor: One crucial foundation for nationality-specific hiring lies in host-country regulations that arrange workers collectively into larger contingents. A company located in one of the Gulf countries can only begin hiring new workers once local state authorities have pre-approved the corresponding set of visas. Only based on this pre-approved set or so-called “lot,” the company can contact recruitment agents in different “source” countries. Because each lot is tied to a specific nationality, this step already determines which national markets the employer will approach for specific positions. As explained to me by recruiters and agents, companies need to pay for those preapproved visas in advance, which places them under significant pressure to actually fill every spot in the pre-paid contingent. For instance, recruitment agent Sudhir explains: They have different numbers of visas for different agencies; for us, it’s like fifteen. And he has to take at least fifteen number [sic] of candidates from this lot. So if we don’t [find] fifteen, then that visa […] will expire. And that will cost huge money.99 (agent 1, em03, 30) Since the pre-approval fees will not be refunded if a spot ends up unused, the companies are eager not to waste their financial investments. This explains the tension and impatience among employers and agents at many selection events, as described in the introductory vignette (see beginning of part 4.2). Furthermore, it also leads company executives to choose in advance those national markets that—so they think—will most likely enable them to fill a particular contingent: In trying to avoid any financial risks, they always return to the “easiest” market for certain job categories.

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Although labor market segmentation according to gender is an important topic, this section only addresses differential hiring based on nationality. Since my ethnographic research among recruitment agencies, skills training centers, and selection events only included male migrant candidates (see part 3.1), the selection and hiring of female migrants will not be discussed here. Specifically, I will draw on empirical insights on hiring practices from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. However, similar patterns also apply to neighboring countries, such as Bahrain and Kuweit. For more details on regulations and practices of hiring foreign workers in Malaysia, see Malaysian Employers Federation (2014), Wong (2016). Original in English.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

The issuing of pre-approved visa lots affects not only hiring practices but also the work of Nepali recruiters. The candidates that have been selected for one lot—usually somewhere between five and fifty individuals—are handled as a single unit: Their files are processed together, their final visas and permits approved together, their tickets booked together. As far as possible, the unit stays intact throughout pre-departure classes and briefings, during the journey abroad, and until “it” arrives in the host country. As recruiters suggested to me, this practice provides workers with mutual support and companionship before and during their journey. On the other hand, it is yet another technique that furthers the objectification and commodification of migrants: “Handling” candidates in lots allows recruiters and employers to streamline their logistics. By detaching workers from their individual humanity and instead quantifying them according to a standardized and measurable unit, they successively pacify Nepali labor (see also section 4.2.1). This effect is reinforced by the ways in which migrant lots are displayed once they get transferred abroad. Most Nepali recruitment agents instruct their workers to wear caps with their agency’s logo during their journey (see Figure 33). Again, recruiters argue that this will make them easily recognizable for pick-up at the destination airport. Nevertheless, the familiar sight of “units” of men in matching caps at airports across Asia (see Figure 34) is eerily reminiscent of the shipping of labeled commodities.

Figure 33: A device of objectification next to a symbol of national identity: Recruitment agency cap next to a Dhaka topi, Nepal’s national headgear, at a recruitment agency in Lalitpur. Figure 34: A group of candidates, processed as one “lot,” while waiting for their flight from Tribhuvan airport to Malaysia.

(Source: H. Uprety 2018) (Source: República Daily 2018).

The objectification of workers that comes with assigning them to lots and visually marking those lots has become almost entirely normalized in the Nepali migration regime. Pushing this practice even further, the recruiter’s organization NAFEA announced in late 2019 that all outbound workers were henceforth required to wear caps and t-shirts bearing the logo “Visit Nepal 2020” in order to boost Nepal’s tourism industry (Giri 2019b). While this decision to instrumentalize migrant workers as moving billboards sparked controversy among Nepali media, the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting cancellation of the tourism year have, for now, rendered it obsolete. At the same

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time, it is only one visible symptom of more extensive techniques of commodification that shape Nepali labor migration. b) Differentiality based on workers’ nationality: As the above insights have shown, the arrangement of vacancies into nationality-based visa lots plays a critical role in the targeted hiring practices of Gulf employers. Due to the lot-based approach, the national “source” markets for different job categories are already determined before the actual recruitment and selection process begins. However, companies who plan to employ new workers are not free to simply choose their preferred nationalities. Instead, they are bound by state restrictions, which are the result of host-country policies of “workforce diversification” (Al-Jenaibi 2012). These policies have emerged in the Gulf countries as one more technology to reduce the perceived risks posed by their massive migrant populations (see section 4.2.2). Fearing that particularly the largest national groups of foreign workers might gain too much influence domestically, state leadership has been eager to reduce their sizes or at least maintain them at an easily governable level. In order to “[r]educe the demographic imbalances” (Permanent Population Committee 2017, 13), it has put in place severe restrictions on visas for Indians and other “dominant” nationalities. At the same time, a quota system requires companies to employ workers of different nationalities instead. Those regulations have had a profound effect on hiring practices. Whenever I spoke to Gulf-based employers about their motivations for recruiting from Nepal, they referenced the quota system. For instance, Mr. Kumar, an executive at an Indian company based in Qatar, says: I mean, we’d be getting results easily to Nepal. When ministry is giving visas to a company, that means they cut up [our demand]. Like if you apply for hundred people, they may be giving forty Nepalis, and twenty Indians, and ten Filipinos.100 (em01 int01, 31) Similarly, Mr. Abu-Serhale, an H.R. executive from a Qatari company, asserts that he chooses to hire Nepali workers mainly “[b]ecause they have the quota of nationalities in Qatar. We have to fill the quota. So they give you like, twenty percent Nepalis, twenty percent Pakistanis. You cannot go to get all from India“ (em05 int01, 8).101 Aside from explaining the quota system, Mr. Abu-Serhale also indicates that he feels forced to hire from Nepal and Pakistan, whereas his first choice would be Indian workers. He continues, elaborating on why he prefers hiring from India: “India is a rich market. If you go there, you can get anything you want. Here [in Nepal], it’s difficult because even with three, four agents, we might not get people” (em05 obs02, 8).102 As Mr. Abu-Serhale’s statement shows, many employers consider Nepali workers to belong to a low-quality category of laborers. While this inferior “quality” is mainly understood in terms of low professional and English-language skills, the level of generalization and objectification that speaks from classifying an entire country as a “rich market” is remarkable. It illustrates clearly how the nationality-based differentiality reflected in the segmented host labor markets (see section 4.2.2) already plays a role 100 Original in English. 101 Original in English. 102 Original in English.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

in decisions of hiring. Similar to other employers I spoke to, Mr. Abu-Serhale readily recounts the following hierarchy of South Asian “source” countries: “India is first, Pakistani is second, third is Nepal, fourth is Bangladesh. This is how they are ranked” (em05 int01, 12). Importantly, he does not state this information as his personal opinion, but—by using the passive verb form—indicates that this hierarchy represents the priorities of Gulf companies at large. While Nepali laborers only rank second or third place in that hierarchy, Indian workers appear as their major competitors. In light of current restrictions on Indian migrants, however, their popularity has also been advantageous for Nepalis. This can be learned from Mr. Evans, an executive at a carpentry company in Dubai: The main reason for Nepalese in Dubai at the moment is, it is where you can get the visa. They've stopped all Indian visas. They're actually impossible now. […] nowadays, Indian visas are very hard to get. That's why when we go to Janakpur, which is on the borders of India, they have a Nepalese and an Indian passport. And, uh, there’s some very good guys up there. We got most of our men in Janakpur last year.103 (em02 vidrec09, 2) As expressed in the above quote, Mr. Evan’s decision to hire Nepali workers is based precisely on their proximity to India. In this scenario, people’s everyday transnational practices and their dual citizenship have turned into a marketable asset. Due to the state-enforced scarcity of Indian visas, Nepali workers have thus emerged as the “next best thing” to coveted Indian laborers. Yet it is not only their geographical closeness that makes them attractive, as Mr. Evans continues: See, the main… I found, when the Nepalese come over to the factories, they're like this [holding index fingers parallel], straight away—because they all speak Hindi. So they merge in better and... in our factory, fifty, sixty percent of our staff are Indian.104 (em02 vidrec09, 2) The above statement shows how Gulf employers base their decision to hire Nepali workers not only on their professional skills but also on assumptions about their language skills and similarity to Indians—a first indication that cultural imaginations turn into a competitive advantage for Nepali workers (see section 4.2.4). Despite such minor positive factors, however, the majority of employers clearly indicated to me that the Nepali market was not their first choice for hiring.105 Given a certain quota they had to reach, some explained they were just trying to get as many qualified Nepali candidates as they could and then fill up the rest of the contingent with unskilled helpers and general laborers. This image certainly reflects official data, according to which Nepali migrants mainly occupy low-skilled positions in the Gulf

103 Original in English. 104 Original in English. 105 At the same time, their answers need to be considered in the context of the selection events during which all of them were given. Since such events constitute sensitive, hierarchical market encounters (see section 4.2.1) and potential business transactions, talking down the value of the “commodity” is a behavior that is to some extent to be expected from potential “buyers.”

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region (see section 4.2.2). At the same time, a closer investigation reveals that hiring practices are even more complex than that. c) Policies of workforce nationalization and “subterranean” practices: Although said data (e.g., MOLE 2018) suggest that Gulf companies approach Nepal exclusively in search of low-skilled workers, their hiring patterns are actually more intricate. This is the indirect result of host-country policies of “workforce nationalization” (Rajan & Joseph 2020, 242), which are geared towards reducing the number of migrant workers and counteracting “high rates of citizen unemployment; […] and poor levels of private sector employment of citizens” (Randeree 2012, 2). Over the past fifteen years, all GCC states have introduced a governmental structure of regulations and incentives to guide companies towards employing domestic citizens rather than foreigners (e.g., Permanent Population Committee 2017, 10). As recruitment agent Damosh explains, this includes requirements that “among high-paying jobs, a certain quota always has to be reserved for local nationals” (ag04 inf05, 3).106 However, many Gulf employers struggle to find domestic citizens who are both skilled enough and willing to fill their vacant positions (Randeree 2012, 2). All too often, they address this conundrum by employing nationals only on paper, while secretly hiring foreign workers who will actually perform the tasks. This so-called “‘phantom employment’ of nationals [is] widespread across the region, and [has] increased the informal employment of foreigners who do not officially appear on companies’ payroll” (Hertog 2014a, 7). Even if employers can circumvent said quotas, nationalization policies also mean that the fees for labor visas are significantly more expensive for higherskilled positions than for unskilled ones. Hence, there are multiple incentives “for employers and recruiters in [host countries] to report to their respective governments that they seek to bring in low-skilled workers when in fact they are planning to bring in skilled workers” (Sijapati et al. 2015, 46). As a result, foreign companies and Nepali recruiters routinely issue fake employment documents (see also section 4.1.5). In this practice, known as “contract substitution” (Ministry of Labour and Employment 2018, 21), migrants are given two sets of work contracts: one to submit with state authorities as part of the formal recruitment process, the other being the actual agreement with their valid position and salary. Damosh shares how this is accomplished: “They will hold interviews for an engineer’s position and do the selection. But in the labor permit or the government approval, [the person] will be officially classed as unskilled” (ag04 inf05, 3).107 As stated in section 4.1.5, my ethnographic research allowed me to witness how employers and recruiters hide those “subterranean” practices in plain sight: In the official demand letter approved by the host-country department of immigration, the company states that it requires both skilled and low-skilled positions. After suitable candidates for the skilled positions have been selected, the recruitment agency processes their applications by marking them as “unskilled,” thereby making it appear as if no adequate

106 Original: High salary ko lagi tehiko sthaniyelai priority dinuparchha bhanne uniharuko antarik niyem hunchha. 107 Original: Engineerma interview diyeko hunchha. Selection hunchha. Tara yaha bat shram swikriti wa government approval laborma rakheko hunchha.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

candidates for the category of skilled positions were found. Under the disguise of seemingly “proper” documentation, companies thus manage to bypass state regulations and still meet their demand for skilled workers. For migrants, however, their possession of invalid documents means they end up in a legal twilight zone, which significantly lowers their chance of receiving help from authorities if needed.108 As the above examples have shown, Gulf state technologies and employers’ subversive practices of hiring objectify, quantify, and thereby pacify migrant labor. As a result of those processes of commodification, nationality has become a determining factor in the calculation of labor “value.” Since employers subvert some of their states’ regulations, official data on the positions of Nepali migrant workers, which are based on labor permits (see section 4.2.2), do not accurately reflect actual employment patterns. However, the fact that those practices occur only “subterraneously” means that dominant nationality-based imaginations and the self-reinforcing cycle of differential employment remain largely unchanged. Ultimately, Nepali workers continue to be perceived as “lowquality” labor, which has a profound effect on wage and labor market dynamics.

Nepali workers as “cheap” labor Due to the commodification of migrant labor, companies’ negative evaluation of Nepali workers directly translates into their comparatively low wages. But what factors contribute to this dynamic from the Nepali side? One key factor is rooted in contemporary technologies of hiring: Since hirings occur separately for each “source” market, there is a total lack of transparency, and candidates have no opportunity to compare their prospective wages with those offered to workers from other countries. As the migration experience of broker Rajan illustrates (see section 4.2.2), workers typically only learn about the discrepancy once they have begun working abroad, long after they have agreed to their contract. Another factor is that those disparities are completely normalized by recruiters already during and before the recruitment process, which is why candidates readily accept and even anticipate them. Compared to the average standard of living and income level in Nepal, even the lowest salaries appear much higher to most aspiring migrants than whatever earning they could expect if they stayed in Nepal.109 On a larger scale, the Nepali state’s economic dependency on labor migration leaves it with little bargaining power when negotiating employment conditions with potential host countries. Many other labor-sending countries have made bilateral agreements 108 This practice of using two alternative sets of document adds to the empty performance of ruleabiding conduct that pervades a considerable portion of recruitment practices. As discussed in section 4.1.5, mechanisms that were designed for workers’ protection are stripped from their original purpose and instead become formal boxes that simply need to be “checked.” In this particular case, the official (but irrelevant) work contract is translated into Nepali because it is legally required, whereas the unofficial (and valid) agreement—which is the one the migrant should actually read and understand—remains untranslated. 109 However, such intuitive assessments do not consider the significant recruitment costs workers have to pay, which is a financial burden they would not have to shoulder if they stayed in Nepal (see sections 4.1.4-5).

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that ensure their workers a respectable minimum wage. By contrast, the minimum wages of Nepalis in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are among the lowest compared to other workers (Sijapati and Limbu 2017, 39–40). While the new memorandum with Malaysia has come with a higher minimum wage (Ghimire 2019; New Spotlight 2018), the trend in the Gulf region might even go in the opposite direction: In recent years, GCC employers have increasingly begun recruiting workers from East African countries, who accept even lower wages than Nepali or Bangladeshi workers (Rajan & Joseph 2020, 242; Sijapati et al. 2015, 33). As those host regimes treat low-skilled workers as largely disposable (see section 4.2.2) and Nepalis are dependent on job opportunities, this intensifying “competition between migrant-sending countries [ultimately] enables a ‘race to the bottom’ for workers’ wages and rights” (Jones & Basnett 2013, 17).110 In addition, the rising recruitment costs that result from the competition and “bidding system” among Nepali recruiters in the GCC job markets (see section 4.1.4) exacerbates this situation even further. Those market dynamics show that the acceptance of low wages represents a comparative advantage in the international labor market. This is also reflected in the advertising strategies of Nepali recruitment agencies: Their most common argument to potential clients visiting their websites is that Nepali workers “are comparatively more costeffective and their hiring cost is lower as compared to other countries” (Growth Process International Employment 2018c).111 Thus, it is precisely the readiness of Nepali workers to accept low wages that makes them attractive to foreign employers. Compared to Mr. Abu-Serhale’s earlier statement that Nepal is a “difficult” market when hiring into high-skilled positions, it appears to be an “easy” one when it comes to low-paid positions—positions that most workers from countries like India and the Philippines would not accept. As the above quote also shows, recruitment agencies do not only expend considerable effort in competing against other Nepali recruiters (as discussed in section 4.1.4)—they also have a vested interest in establishing Nepali migrant labor at large as a competitive commodity on the international market. From a marketization perspective, this reframing of an entity according to properties that give it a unique profile on the market is termed singularization (see section 2.3.2). Particularly in contexts with “a 110

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In fact, the Nepali government’s efforts in recent years to diversify foreign employment destinations (see section 4.1.3) need to be seen as part of a governmental strategy to counteract this race to the bottom. As in the case of the agreement with Mauritius, the negotations led by then-labor minister Bista were geared towards ensuring Nepal’s aspiring migrants zero-cost recruitment and guaranteed minimum wages. The expansion of foreign employment opportunities to countries that offer more attractive working and living conditions was intended to improve workers’ bargaining power among employers in the Gulf states and Malaysia, and to shift asymmetries in the market encounters beween Nepali labor, recruiters, and these more established labor destinations. Given that I already analyzed (visual) excerpts from recruitment agency websites in section 4.1.1, it should be noted that different sections in these websites tend to cater to different groups of visitors. Whereas some parts, including the website visuals, are mainly targeted at potential candidates, other sections feature English text that clearly addresses foreign employers. Thus, websites fulfill a dual role of simultaneously advertising to migrant candidates and to potential clients, just as professional recruiters do in their daily work.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

huge number of potentially substitutable goods” (Ouma 2015, 36–37), singularization plays an essential role in the commodification of an entity (Callon & Muniesa 2005, 1234). In light of the widespread evaluation of Nepali workers as “low quality” and the high competition on the international migrant labor market, their singularization as “cheap” labor is thus instrumental to their successful marketization. However, their acceptance of low wages is not the only factor that is used to singularize Nepali workers on the market. While the dynamics of supply and demand and the resulting “race to the bottom” in workers’ wages have a profound effect on targeted hiring, they only partly inform employers’ decisions to approach the Nepali market. To be sure, Nepali recruiters advertise the “cost-effective[ness]” of their candidates (see above quote). However, they put even more effort into “branding” and advertising a specific imagination of the “Nepali worker.” This is reflected in employers’ assumptions about laborers’ culture or behavior, such as Mr. Evans’ earlier perception that Nepalis “merge in” easily with Indian staff. Similarly, previous research on segmented labor markets in the Gulf has shown that hiring is profoundly shaped by the different ways in which “men and women from particular sending states are perceived by […] sponsors, manpower agencies, and employers as ‘appropriate’ for particular types of work” (Gardner et al. 2013, 12; see also Chisholm 2014). Those nationality-based imaginations that guide the targeted hiring of Nepali labor will be unpacked in the following section.

4.2.4

Singularizing the “Nepali worker” on the international market

When asked what had led them towards hiring Nepali labor, the company representatives who participated in my research mostly referred to circumstantial reasons (as discussed in the previous section). By contrast, the recruiters, professional skills instructors, and orientation trainers I spoke to emphasized that it was a specific type of conduct and character that singularized Nepali workers on the international migrant labor market. At their core, this conduct and character boil down to the idea of “honesty” (imandarita). Without fault, every single one of my interlocutors in the Nepali migration industry mentioned, at some point or another, that “honesty” was the main trait for which Nepali workers were known. For instance, technical skills trainer Binod asserts: “Foreign companies want Nepalis because Nepalis are honest. The Nepali nation is honest“112 (sk09, 47). As expressed in this quote, Binod—like many of his colleagues, trainers, and recruiters—ascribes “honesty” not only to some individuals but defines as an inherent part of their nationality. While this essentialism means that the signifier “honest” (imandar) has become inextricably linked to Nepal’s national identity at large, it plays a particularly crucial role in the imagination of migrant workers. But what is meant by this idea? As I learned quickly during my interviews, being “honest” is widely interpreted as much more than being truthful. For instance, freelance broker Rajan says:

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Original: Bideshi companyle Nepali kamdar magchhan, kinaki Nepali kamdar imandar chhan. Nenpali janata imandar chhan.

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The Nepali is an honest person. […] Within honesty, there is everything. For instance, if you tell him to do a certain task, he keeps doing that. Whatever task you give him to do, he will do. He doesn't know how to lie and cheat, it doesn't matter to him whether there is a person [supervising him] or not. The company has entrusted him with a task, so he keeps doing it.113 (iag07, 32-33) As Rajan’s quote shows, the idea of “honesty” encompasses many other qualities besides truthfulness, including a sheer inability to lie and a readiness to do whatever task one has been given. These and other meanings that inform the imagination of the “Nepali worker,” and their role in advancing the marketization of Nepali labor will be unpacked throughout this section. I will begin by identifying four different components that contribute to the singularizing imagination of the “Nepali worker.” On this basis, I will investigate what these reveal about the underlying rationalities of value that determine the migrant labor market encounters, and their connection to technologies of hiring and governing migrant workers in Asian host regimes (see sections 4.2.2-3). The remainder of the section explores the deeper implications of the “Nepali worker” by retracing the genealogical descent of two specific components: Focusing on the facets of the “simple-minded laborer” and the “brave warrior,” respectively, I will shed light on the historical and spatial contexts of their emergence. Before doing so, I want to emphasize that all the nationalitybased narratives discussed here intersect with gender-based imaginations. While some of the imaginations of migrant women and men overlap, this section focuses particularly on the singularization of male Nepali laborers.114

Imagining the “Nepali worker” In light of the intense competition among seemingly disposable low-skilled workers in Asian host regimes, singularizing Nepali migrants is of vital interest to the recruitment industry. The national essentialism of “honesty” has become an important vehicle for contrasting Nepali candidates against workers from other “source” countries and thereby maintaining their market profile. For example, hospitality instructor Dipendra asserts: “Regarding people from other countries, in my own experience, I have not seen them be as honest as the Nepalis. People trust in them; that’s my impression”115 (sk05, 39). Recruitment agent Sudhir elaborates on this notion:

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Original:Nepali auta imandar manchhe ho. […] Imandari bhitra sabai parchha ni. usle yo kam garnu bhanesi, tyo kam garirakhchha usle. Je kam garaye ni, usle gari rakhchha. Dhatna,chhalna jandaina. Companyma manchhe hos nahos, uslai matlab chhaina. Biswasma arhaidiyera gayo bhane, usle garirakhchha. As discussed in part 3.1, the recruiters and employers I interviewed dealt, almost exclusively, with male workers. Therefore, and for the sake of easier readability, the direct quotes in this section feature male pronouns whenever referring to Nepali workers. However, it should be noted that in the original quotes, the Nepali pronoun u is gender-neutral. For some initial insights into transnational imaginations about female Nepali workers specifically, see Ahmad (2017) and Regmi et al. (2020). Original: Aru deshko kamdar herda, Nepali jasto honesty mero aphno anubhabhma maile dekhina. Uniharule biswash gareko; tei ho jasto lagchha.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Compared to other places in Asia or South Asia, Nepalese are bit more honest, comparatively. Those who migrate from India or Bangladesh, they might show cheating behavior or something might happen, right. So that's why they might give those who come from Nepal a bit higher priority.116 (ag20, 16) Aside from reinforcing that the “honesty” of Nepali workers makes them trustworthy for foreign companies, Sudhir’s quote reflects that he sees migrants from other Asian “source” markets as the biggest competitors to Nepali workers. It appears to be especially crucial to portray Nepalis as distinct from their South Asian neighbors, such as India and Bangladesh. What are the different components of this multifaceted concept of workers’ “honesty?” Based on extensive interview material, I emphasize four main qualities that are widely considered to make Nepali laborers unique: a) Nepali workers as strong and hard-working: One of the images brought up most frequently was that Nepali workers are capable of working hard even under scant conditions. For instance, orientation trainer Anita explains: “They are very laborious when doing their work because they have been brought up through hardships and hardships. That’s why they have learned to be laborious from an early age”117 (ori05, 15). Hence, she sees the collective experience of many Nepalis of growing up in poverty as one of the main reasons why they have become hard-working—thus suggesting that this has been a learned behavior. Moreover, their ability to work hard is understood as a sign of their innate strength, endurance, and grit. Freelance broker Deepak proudly asserts: There are people who look like they are small, but do large work; they do heavy work because it is in their mind. They are strong. One thing about the Nepalis is […]—there are types of work which people with a big body like this (spreading arms out, H.U.) cannot do, but our Nepalis with their small bodies do them. So they like the Nepalis.118 (iag06, 20) By contrasting the lower average body height of Nepali men against their surprising strength, Deepak argues that their abilities are due to not only physical but also mental endurance. Both of those aspects of their strength and hard labor are directly connected to the idea of “honesty,” as the following statement by orientation trainer Hari indicates: “Our Nepalis have honesty, diligence, the ability to work hard—and that’s what people

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Original in English. Original: Nepali kam garna mehanati chhan. Kinabhane dukhai dukhama hurkeka chhan. Tesaile mehanat garna pahile dekhi nai sikeko chhan Nepaliharule. Original: Nepali bhanesi, manchhe dekhna lai sana hunchhan, kam thula garchhan; heavy kam garchhan bhanne uniharuko dimagma chha. Baliya hunchhan. Nepaliko auta ke hunchha bhane […]—tya yetra yetra thula jiu bhako le garna nasakne kam, hamra Nepali sana jiu bhakole ni garirako hunchhan. Nepali lai mann parauchhan.

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like, and that’s one reason why Nepalis are attractive”119 (ori04, 14). Since working hard is one of the premises of starting employment as a migrant worker, the ability of Nepalis to live up to that promise is a crucial factor to their honesty and truthfulness. b) Nepali workers as truthful and rule-abiding: This truthfulness is, as one would assume from the English meaning of the word, an essential part of Nepali “honesty” as well. As expressed in the earlier quote by agent Sudhir, Nepalis are said to differ from other South Asian workers precisely in that they do not lie, cheat, or break any laws. Similarly, orientation trainer Surendra declares: We Nepalis do not engage in bribing. To get angry at someone, to talk to someone about their own business, to follow others around, or to cheat others in order to climb to their higher position, those are things you will not find in Nepalis. Nepalis go for foreign employment and straightly do the work. When they have done the work and fulfilled their contracts, they come back home. Everything about Nepalis is honest. Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are cheaters and cunning […].120 (ori01, 16) According to Surendra, the assumed honesty of Nepalis translates into an earnest work ethic and sincere, straightforward, and rule-abiding conduct. Furthermore, their truthfulness means that they will readily admit if there is a task they do not know how to perform properly. For example, technical skills instructor Prakash asserts: Thinking ‘I have to get to that position’ and persuading others to get them ahead, that is something Nepalis don’t have at all. If they are told ‘come here and do that work,’ they will do it if they know how to. But if they don’t know, they will stop.121 (sk01, 76) Prakash, who used to work abroad himself and clearly identifies with Nepali migrant laborers, thus emphasizes how their truthfulness directly impacts their performance at the workplace. c) Nepali workers as obedient and loyal: As indicated in some of the above quotes, the “honesty” of Nepalis also renders them loyal employees: Entrusted with a task, they are expected to follow it blindly. Broker Deepak explains that this is one of the most important and popular qualities of Nepali workers:

Original: Hamra Nepaliharuma auta imandarita hunchha, laganshilta hunchha, labor garne kschamata hunchha—yeslai uniharule mann paraudo raichha. Nepaliharu attractive hunuko pramukh karan yei raichha. 120 Original: Hami Nepaliharu kasaiko chamchagiri gardainau. Kasailai ris garne, kasaiko bishayema kura garne, kasaiko pachhi lagne, wa kasailai fasayera mathillo post samaune bhanne kura yo nepalima chhaina. Nepaliharu baideshik rojgarma jane, sidha kam garne. Ani sidha kam garera aphno contract abadhi pura bhayesi ghar pharkera aaune. Sabai kurako imandari Nepalima chha. Bangaliharu ani pakistaniharu yo kisimko kurama phatai chha, chaturai chha […]. 121 Original: Jasto ma tyo post ma janai parchha, bhanne jasto bhanchau ni hami, chamcha giri jasto, tyo pattakai chhain Nepali haruko. “La, tyaha gayera, yo kam garera aija,” bhanyo bhane, jane gardinchha. Najane chhoddinchha usle. 119

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

They are very honest and they agree with the work they are told to do. [...] If the manager has told a Nepali to do it, the Nepali will only stop after he has finished the task. That is an ability of the Nepalis which they like abroad.122 (iag06, 20-21) Again, this readiness to fulfill every task they are charged with is one of the features that set them apart from migrants of other nationalities, as broker Ramesh believes: Compared to others, Nepalis have very much cohesion in their work. Regarding their devotion, regarding the role they have to play during duty time, Nepalis do much more than workers from other countries. [...] Nepalis don't scold back. [...] In my duty [sic], I have to fulfill my duty, no matter how hard or difficult it might be.123 (iag11, 44) According to Ramesh, the obedience of Nepali workers and the “devotion” with which they fulfill their given role at the workplace are particularly unique to Nepali workers. d) Nepali workers as naïve and compliant: An important quality implied in many of the earlier quotes is that Nepali “honesty” is not so much the result of a personal choice but rather people’s default “programming.” Nepalis might have learned to be laborious through their challenging upbringing—but their obedience, truthfulness, and adherence to the rules seem to be inherent to them. For instance, skills instructor Anand says, “lying, stealing, cheating, Nepalis don’t know how to do that. These three things are something they do not know how to do”124 (sk05, 39). Thus, their “honest” behavior does not occur based on a personal decision but results from their sheer inability to behave differently. This, however, means that Nepalis are more than merely obedient. Instead, the idea implies that they have a child-like naivety and “simplicity,” which gives them an innate tendency to be compliant with anything put before them. Those four main qualities, all of which I encountered under the blanket signifier “honesty,” usually blend into each other in recruiters’ advertising. For instance, a statement on one recruitment website reads as follows: “[B]ecause of their simplicity, hardworking nature, unflinching loyalty, high sense of responsibility, descipling [sic] and devotion to work, Nepalese workers are increasingly gaining their popularity all over the industrialized world.” (Imperial Global Resources 2018). A section on the website of another agency states: The reason [for their popularity] could definitely be the honesty, hard work, loyalty, discipline, and, above all, commitment of Nepalese people towards their duties and responsibilities. Nepali workers have experience in working in the extreme climatic conditions. Nepali workers are laborious and sustain their working capability even in the most arduous conditions. (Grand Shikhar Overseas 2018)

Original: Ekdam imandari, ani bhaneko kam manchha. [...] Nepalilai managerle yo garna bhanesi, Nepali le garerai chhodchha. Nepaliko tyo khubile garda nai bideshile manparauchha. 123 Original: Aruko comparema herda Nepaliko kamma dherai lagab hunchha. Khatnu parne kurama, duty timema, uniharule khelnu parne bhumika chai aru deshka kamdarharu bhanda Nepalile kehi badhi gareko chha. [...] Nepaliharule ulto jawaf laudaina. […] Mero dutyma maile duty nibhaunu parchha, chahe garhho hos wa chahe aftero hos. 124 Original: Dhatna, chorna, chhalna jandaina wa janeko pani chhaina usle. 122

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Just like many of the earlier interview quotes, the website statements instantly tie the supposed qualities of Nepali laborers to their popularity among employing companies. From a marketization perspective, this is to be expected. After all, singularization requires an entity to become not only “detached from its original context of production […] but also reattached to its buyer; that is, it has to enter the world of the buyer and be accepted as a legitimate, useful, and/or signifying good” (Ouma 2015, 36; see section 2.3.2). In order to keep Nepali workers attractive and competitive on the international market, recruitment agencies thus echo what they perceive to be the demand among foreign companies. In other words, they reproduce the underlying rationalities of value that guide their targeted hiring practices. What are those evaluative rationalities, and how do they perpetuate dominant technologies of governing and hiring migrant labor in Asian host regimes?

Attaching Nepali labor to transnational rationalities of market value It is easy to recognize how the advertised strength of Nepalis and their ability to work hard are considered attractive in the international market. After all, this is the primary purpose of their –predominantly low-skilled—employment. Like with all occupations that center on menial labor, the employee’s physical effort is the main factor for his or her productivity. In the case of the male “Nepali worker,” this productivity is based on inborn physical endurance and sturdiness, which enables him to “sustain [his] working capability even in the most arduous conditions” (see earlier quote). On the other hand, it is ascribed to his hard-working attitude and mental discipline, which is connected to his profound sense of obedience and loyalty. This commitment of Nepalis to their professional duty is presented as so unconditional that it precedes any of their own, personal needs. For instance, recruitment agent Bal Bahadur declares: Foreign companies take Nepali workers because they […] will work for a long time, they will not talk much, they will not get angry. They die for their work. Honesty, honesty, honesty! […] So very different than other countries. They will die for their work! […] Even if the money is little, they will die for their work. That’s the Nepalis.125 (ag11, 13) By choosing this sort of patriotic language and hyperbole, Bal Bahadur and others paint the image of a machine-like worker—someone neither particularly smart nor worthy of respect, but committed to his work with “unflinching loyalty” (see earlier quote). This stoic determination and focus on executing their “duty”—no matter what the cost—is another critical factor that keeps workers productive and, even more importantly, reliable. Hence, reliability is one more key component of “valuable” low-skilled labor. Aside from the topic of loyalty, this also explains recruiters’ emphasis on truthfulness and rule-abiding behavior as something that Nepali workers are naturally prone to. Given the challenging employment conditions for low-skilled workers in Malaysia and many 125

Original: Bidesh companyle Nepali linuma, Nepali [...] dherai samaye kam garne, dherai nabolne, narisaune, marera kam garne. Imandarita, Imandarita, Imandarita! […] Aru deshko bhanda farak, marera kam garchha. [...] Paisa even thorai hos, marera kam garchha. Nepalima tyo khubi chha.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Gulf countries (see section 4.2.2), however, reliability means even more: Workers who enter a host regime that essentially treats migrant labor as a disposable commodity are only “reliable” to their employers if they completely accept those conditions—accept that they belong to the invisible and disenfranchised global workforce (see section 2.1.1). For instance, recruitment agent Padma points out that a core quality that singularizes Nepali workers in the market is their readiness to accept tasks and working conditions which are so low and demanding that nobody else wants to take them on: The companies want to hire Nepalis, because no matter what happens, even though they might be very stupid, they will be just as honest, the Nepalis, regarding their work. There are so many kinds of jobs; if there is no Nepali to do them, that work will not get done.126 (ag17, 21) As Padma and many other recruiters indicate, the real selling point of Nepali workers is not necessarily their ability to work hard—it is their predictability to “discharge their duties relentlessly, without hitch and without any kind of discontent” (Grand Shikhar Overseas 2018). “Valuable” labor in this sense is only represented by employees who will perform any task given, without objecting or complaining, whether they are supervised or not, whether they are being maltreated or not, even whether they are being paid or not. This is where the naivety and compliance of Nepali workers come into play: The most productive, reliable, and predictable labor source can be found in workers for whom rule-abiding, obedient, loyal, and hard-working conduct is not even a choice—because they are not capable of behaving differently. It is from this rationality that experienced recruitment agent Modhir successfully convinced foreign clients to hire Nepali workers in the early 2000s, a time when they were still relatively unknown in the Gulf. He recalls the core argument he used to make: I told them: […] “Filipino is very smart, but they need a high salary! But our people is very—they are less talking, and very honest! They will work 10 hours, 12 hours, 14 hours, no problem! Bring the fresh! Train them, two months, three months. […] they can be just as you want. […] I don't need smart people! I need fresh people, nice people, good people!” […] Then, they used to give the pool of the requirement to me.127 (ag01 inf04, 4) By using the code “fresh,” Modhir used to imply that Nepali workers are, by their very nature, so uncorrupted, simple-minded, and innocent that they would never think of questioning their superiors. Due to their child-like naivety, they would not even know how to resist maltreatment from their employers, let alone “cheat” them in any way. Moreover, the signifier “fresh” presents them as a blank canvas, which employers can transform into whatever they might desire. Altogether, this narrative reflects a rational-

126

127

Original: Companyle Nepali lina chhahanchhan, kina bhane jati nai je bhaye pani, murkhama ekdam murkha bhaye pani, imandarima pani tetikai imandari hunchhan Nepaliharu kamko lagi. Katipaye kamharu chahi; Nepali nabhayesamma nahune nai hunchha. Original in English.

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ity that demands more than obedience or rule-abiding conduct, but instead complete submissiveness. During my research, the market value of submissiveness was referenced not only by recruiters but also by foreign employers. For instance, company executive Mr. AbuSerhale admits that it is one of the reasons why he chooses to hire workers from Nepal: There is a difference [to other nationalities, H.U.], yeah. In Bangladesh, you cannot… You can find skilled people with experience, but, eh, but they're troublemakers. Nepali people, they don't speak. They eat, they sleep—[interruption].128 (em05, 12) As indicated in Mr. Abu-Serhale’s statement, Nepali workers are attractive on the international market precisely because they—contrary to migrants from other nationalities, who might speak up and object to their working conditions—are not likely to cause such “trouble.” By encapsulating a variety of different qualities in the signifier “honesty,” the contemporary imagination of the “Nepali worker” thus responds to market values of productivity, reliability, predictability, and submissiveness (see Figure 35).

Figure 35: Connections between the singularizing imagination of the “Nepali worker” and rationalities of value on the international migrant labor market.

(Draft: H. Uprety 2020; Design: I. Lindemann 2020).

128

Original in English.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

As the figure shows, from a marketization perspective, all those values mirror different effects of pacification—which, as discussed in section 4.2.1, does not mean that a commodity possesses no agency at all, but that it acts only and precisely in the ways predicted and ascribed to it. Ultimately, the insights of the investigation summarized here show many parallels to my earlier observation on the employment and hiring of low-skilled migrant workers in Gulf and Malaysian host regimes (see sections 4.2.1-3). Considering that those laborers routinely undergo techniques of objectification, detachment, and pacification, it appears that Nepali recruiters have been quite successful at capturing those underlying rationalities in their singularization strategy. At the same time, contemporary efforts to attach Nepali labor to the demand of potential foreign employers, and specifically the imagination of the “Nepali worker,” do not exist in a historical vacuum. For instance, the descriptions of the honesty, physical strength, and mental endurance of Nepalis—including the suggestion that they, by their very nature, are “brave, laborious, [and] capable of hard work”129 (sk04, 36)—reflect a deep essentialism, whose genealogical roots reach far back into the past. Specifically, it ties into racist colonial narratives of a robust and “simple-minded laborer” on the one hand and a “brave warrior” on the other. In the following subsections, I will focus on those two particular building blocks of the “Nepali worker” and trace the circumstances of their emergence.

The “simple-minded laborer”—a genealogical exploration As argued earlier, the construction of Nepali workers as “laborious”130 (ori06, 22) and “simple”131  (ag20, 34) makes them appear precisely suited to positions of mindless labor. On the one hand, their sturdy exterior supposedly renders them resistant to the most adverse circumstances—be it rough climate or challenging working conditions. On the other, it is paired with an inner core of child-like innocence and purity: Their honesty and straightforwardness, it seems, is something that Nepalis do not choose, but that is innate to them. However, while those imagined qualities are meant to set Nepali workers apart from potential competitors, they are far from unique. Instead, similar versions of this narrative have been used repeatedly to stereotype national and ethnic groups across Asia, Africa, and South America, and have since been dismantled as constructions defined by the colonizer’s gaze (e.g., Hall 1990; Said 1978; Spivak 1985). As such, they are part of a colonial legacy of racist structures that continue to inform social, political, and economic relations worldwide. In the case of migrant labor in the Gulf and Malaysia, however, the colonial influence is not only of a vague, global scale. On the contrary, these countries have a very specific history of colonial migrant labor: Between the 19th  and mid-20th centuries, both Malaysia (then Malaya) and the monarchies in the Gulf were under the—direct or indirect—rule of the British Empire (Jain 1988; Onley 2007). As stated in section 2.2.2, the 129 Original: Bahaduri, mehanati ra hard work garne kshamata bhayeko Nepaliharu ho. 130 Original: Nepaliharu mehanati bhayera. 131 Original: […] simple ani sojho […].

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often forced “transfer” of workers across colonies and continents was vital to British imperial capitalism and, in many ways, laid the foundations for today’s globalized economy. Following the decline of the slave trade, the Empire’s focus shifted to its crown colony British India as the primary source of human labor. In Malaya, South Asian laborers were used to work in labor-intensive sugarcane, coffee, and rubber plantations (Kaur 2004, 66). Between 1860 and 1957, an estimated four million Indians—most of them from South India—arrived in Malaya (Jain 1993, 2367), primarily through indenture and a brokerage system called “kangany” (ibid, 2365).132 In the British protectorates in the Arabian Gulf, South Asians worked in a variety of industries and trades, including as common artisans, masons, technicians, clerks, and, from the 1930s onwards, laborers in the expanding oil industry (Rajan & Oommen 2020, 1). Their recruitment was so extensive that by the late 1950s—already long before the oil boom of the 1970s—Indian and Pakistani migrants represented the largest workforce in many Gulf protectorates (ibid.). Compared to those colonial practices, today’s patterns of migrant employment appear different in several respects. For one, the main economic sectors and industries that employ South Asian workers have shifted. The protagonists have changed, too: Recruitment has expanded to workers from Nepal and Bangladesh, and the colonial agents previously in charge have been replaced by new global economic elites. In the first years after their formal independence, not all of the countries even continued to hire foreign workers—for instance, migrant recruitment into Malaysia formally restarted only in the 1970s ( Wong 2006, 216). Despite those discontinuities, there are important ways in which the contemporary employment of South Asian workers perpetuates the colonial system. While indenture has ceased to exist, the brokerage systems of the colonial era show striking similarities to today’s practices of recruiting and hiring (e.g., see Bates 2017; Kaur 2004, 66–68). Regarding the state management of migration, several regulations and enforcement measures used to govern migrant labor today have been shown to be “an enduring legacy of colonial rule” (Kaur 2009, 288). Specifically, the recognition of this legacy casts a different light on the objectification, detachment, and pacification of migrant labor in contemporary host regimes (see section 4.2.2): They now appear not as accidental sideeffects but as the continuation of a multi-century project that was geared towards the dehumanization and commodification of particular groups from its very inception. Furthermore, the employment of migrant labor today perpetuates a system in which a worker’s precise value is calculated via racist colonial scripts. Whereas colonial recruitment of low-skilled labor did not reach into Nepal, specifically, the British representation of South Asian laborers at large was strikingly similar to the contemporary image of the “Nepali worker.” Studies on migrant labor in colonial Malay, for instance, report that labor from British India, and particularly so the “South Indian worker,” was considered the most satisfactory type of labourer, especially for light, simple, repetitive tasks. He was malleable, worked well under supervision, and was easily manageable. [… He]

132

Notably, these systems were used to recruit both male and female workers (see Lee 1989).

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

was well-behaved and docile. All in all then, these features of the South Indian worker made him almost the ideal labouring material for the capitalist endeavours in Malay. (Sandhu 2006, 152) As this and other examples show, there is a clear continuity between colonial tropes on South Asian workers and the narratives intended to singularize Nepali labor today. Remarkably, however, many of the company executives who perpetuate those tropes now belong to ethnicities that were, themselves, for a long time at the receiving end of racist colonial stereotypes (e.g., see Said 1978). In light of the current dynamics of labor migration, they have shifted roles from the “colonized” to the “colonial master.” As argued in section 2.2.2, colonial scripts serve not only as a canvas against which to imagine the Western self as rational, worthy, and civilized but also as a rationality of government. My investigation into the historical precursors to the imagination of the “Nepali worker” has shown that there are continuities between colonial techniques of governing and contemporary regimes of migrant employment: In the same way that the colonial project at large has framed certain subjects “as incapable of governing themselves [which makes it] to their own advantage that they be governed by others” (Hindess 2001, 105), Nepali and other South Asian workers have been framed as inherently suited to the role of the submissive menial laborer, who mindlessly follows orders from above.

Gurkha recruitment and the emergence of the “brave warrior” A second image conjured up in many descriptions of Nepali workers is that of the “brave warrior.” Contrary to the “simple-minded laborer,” this trope is not rooted in a portrayal of South Asians at large. Instead, its historical background is specific to Nepal, as the following section on an agency website reveals: People living in these different regions are strong and resistant to type of nature [sic]. This is one of the facts that British Government still recruits Nepalese boys for its regiment. Due to the fact that Nepalese are brave, strong, loyal and capable of resisting all climatic conditions and hazards, there has been a great demand of Nepalese workers in the international manpower market. (Araniko Overseas 2018a) As the above quote shows, the narrative of physical strength, bravery, and loyalty used to portray Nepali workers is closely tied to their recruitment into the British Gurkha regiment (see section 4.1.1). Similarly, Krishna, a hospitality skills instructor, argues that the positive reputation of Gurkhas is one of the main reasons why Nepali labor is in global demand: “When I say Nepali, many say instantly ‘Gorkhali.’ […] Nepalis, whatever field they have gone into, they can do it. They have the capability“133 (sk13, 28). In order to understand the importance of the “Gurkha” imagination and why it affects the singularization of Nepali workers at large, it is necessary to explore its genealogical roots. The historical period that has contributed most strongly to the current global recognition of the Gurkhas is the First and Second World War, when “hundreds of thousands of Nepali youth fought […] on the side of the British” (Sijapati & Limbu

133

Original: Nepali bhane pachhi sidhai Gorkhali bhanera bhanichha. […] Nepali haru jasto sukai fieldma gaye pani, tyo garna sakchha. Uniharuma tyo capability hunchha.

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2017, 6). Members of the Nepali migration industry continue to reference this service today in order to underscore the honor and bravery of these soldiers and the Nepali nation as a whole. For instance, security guard trainer Anand proudly asserts: “[S]ince World War II and World War I, we have made a reputation for being honest, for our bravery. There is boldness [sic], too, there is courage in Nepalis; there is grit”134 (sk05, 40). Veteran security instructor Shiva shares this opinion: There is a world war record. Nepal made a good contribution in the World Wars. Nepalis are good, honest [sic], honest, their physical fitness is good. And they are vigorous; there is a reason why they are called brave. History is our witness.135 (sk04, 35) While most of my interlocutors, like Anand and Shiva, referred to Nepali participation in the wars of the 20th century, the international reputation of the Gurkha actually emerged much further in the past. As mentioned in section 4.1.1, Nepali enlistment into this special brigade of the British army began more than 200 years ago (Gellner 2014, 6–7). Although the 1815 Treaty of Sagauli, which ended the two-year-long AngloNepali war, made no explicit mention of it and a formal agreement was made only in 1886 (Gurung 1996, 64), numerous historical sources indicate that it was during the war that “the British ‘discovered’ the Gurkhas” (Caplan 1995, 15). As the popular narrative goes, the British officers were so impressed with the unflinching bravery and fierceness they encountered in their Nepali opponents that they decided to award them the honor of serving for the British crown. In all likelihood, however, there were far less romantic reasons at play: From the British perspective, the agreement was probably intended “to weaken the military power of Nepal by enlisting her brave fighting men into their own ranks” (Rathaur 2001, 19). Furthermore, Gurkha regiments were conveniently used in the oppression of their fellow South Asians, for instance, by fighting in the Anglo-Sikh wars of 1846 and 1848 and squashing the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (Kansakar 1973, 3; Des Chene 1991). The Nepali state, on the other hand, strategically provided these soldiers as a technique of diplomacy, which allowed “Shah and Rana rulers […] to ward off British colonial and imperialist designs […] and to acquire political legitimacy on the home front” (Rankin 2004, 165; see also Des Chene 1991). Most of today’s “Gurkha” imagination emerged during this colonial imperialist era: Nepali Gurkhas became the prime example of brave men, honorable and unflinching in the face of mortal danger. This imagination was founded on the Empire’s colonial discourse on “martial races” (Streets-Salter 2004), which caused countless British reports and military journals to reproduce a highly gendered “image of the savage, relentless Gurkha” (Singh 2014). At the same time, the “Gurkha” imagination also tied in with the romanticized narrative of the Nepali kingdom as a faraway, mountainous “Shangri-La,”

134 135

Original: Hamro itihas herda kheri, first world war ra second world warma pani auta imandarita baneko chha, bahaduri, ani boldness pani chha ‘Nepalima, ani sahas pani chha; himmat chha. Original: Yo World war record chha. Bishwo yuddhama Nepali ko yogdan chha ramro. Ek ta honesty, imandari chha, physical fitness thik chha. Ani himmatwala chha, wa Nepali bahadur bhanne nam kina rahayo. Yesko itihas nai sakshi chha.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

home to untouched nature and “noble savages.”136 Taken together, these two different narratives led Gurkhas to be popularly imagined as “martial masculine men with the naivety of children” (Chisholm 2014, 356). The common trope of the “happy warrior” (Chappell 1994, 3) is perfectly summarized in the following statement by a British officer, who praised that “the poor little Gurkhas […] are always jolly and cheerful as ever, and […] anxious to go to the front when there is an attack” (Farwell 1984; cited in Coburn 2018, 285).137 While the qualities invoked in these and other descriptions are overwhelmingly positive, the “Gurkha” imagination remains the product of a colonial project geared towards dominating, objectifying, and commodifying its non-Western subjects. This is reflected well in the following note by a British officer from World War I, who concludes that “[…] each little Gurkha might be worth his full weight in gold” (Hamilton 1930; cited in Gurung 1996, 62). Remarkably, even while praising his fellow Gurkha soldiers, the officer manages to simultaneously diminish and commodify them. Statements like this, which were entirely ordinary for the time, are quite revealing of the British perspective on even their most prized colonial subjects. Since the formal end of the colonial era, Gurkhas have continued to serve in wars, revolts, and other violent conflicts all over the world and particularly in Asia (Smith 1998, 121–158). Likewise, their glorifying, yet inferiorizing cultural representation has persisted into current times, as the following quote from a 1994 monograph illustrates: In the years since the first Gurkha regiments were formed these Nepalese hillmen, small of stature but possessing most of the qualities that make ideal infantrymen, have gained a fearsome reputation in war. […] Gurkhas are cheerful men, proud and content

136

137

Such imaginations remain powerful today and are activated not only in Nepal’s migration sector but also by the tourism industry. In fact, a closer investigation of recruitment websites reveals surprisingly many parallels and even overlaps between their advertisement of Nepali labor and Nepal’s international tourism discourse. For instance, some agencies try to convince foreign companies to hire Nepali workers by advertising the touristic highlights that will await them if they visit the country. One website provides the following information about Nepal: “Visa fee US $30 for single entry valid for 60 days […] Nepal boasts of having the highest peak of the world, Mount Everest and visitors from all over the world […] So the people who visits Nepal, definitely gets optimal gratification from its natural gorgeous scenery” (Growth Process International Employment 2018a). While a closer investigation of these discursive patterns goes beyond the scope of the study, it appears that Nepal experiences an intersection and mutual reinforcement of two trends of commodification—the commodification of Nepali migrant labor on the one hand, and the commodification of ethnicity and culture (see Comaroff & Comaroff 2009) by Nepal’s tourism sector on the other. The romanticization and racist inferiorization that speaks from those imaginations becomes even more evident when contrasted against Gurkha soldiers’ own reports. For instance, the following account of a veteran from World War II paints quite a different picture: “What do the young men know? Nothing! We saw lots of rupees in these recruiters’ pockets and their nice warm ‘sweaters’. They told us we would eat rice every day, see new places. What did we know about war? Nothing! […] The recruiters didn’t talk to us about war, only about pensions and food and clothing. They were very clever. When you are young and have always been with your mother and father what do you know of the sufferings of going to a foreign country? Nothing!” (cited in Des Chene 1991, 278-288).

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to be soldiers, and capable of finding humour in the direst of circumstances. (Chappell 1994, 4-5) While Gurkha recruitment remains confined to a separate, highly formalized industry and targets only specific ethnic groups in Nepal (see section 4.2.5), the formerly specific imagination of the “brave warrior” has increasingly come to stand for Nepali workers in general. As such, it has rendered them highly attractive candidates for security and military operations: Aside from the British and Indian armies and the contingents in Singapore and Brunei, Nepalis are now being employed as private military and security contractors in Afghanistan, Iraq, and throughout the Middle East and Asia at large (Chisholm 2014; Coburn 2018).138 One particular example of this popularity is the case of Malaysia. Malaysian interest in Nepali security forces has been directly linked to the British Gurkhas, who were stationed in the colony of Malaya following Indian independence (Rathaur 2001, 23). When the Federation of Malaya had become independent, and the brigade was being moved, some Gurkha soldiers chose to stay—either enlisting in the Malaysian armed forces or taking up work locally as security guards. Although the number of Nepalis in Malaysia remained relatively low for the following decades, their continuing presence left a lasting legacy on contemporary employment patterns. Recruitment agent Dipesh explains that the role of the Gurkhas has been vital in producing employment opportunities for all Nepali workers today: Nepalis have really good opportunities in security in Malaysia now. […] Because they used to have British Gurkhas there, the Nepalis earned a good image and now there are only security guards from Nepal allowed in Malaysia. They don’t take anybody from any other country. For example, in 2015, Malaysia gave approval for seventy thousand Nepalis, that was for Nepalis only. We weren’t able to get enough people!139 (ag08, 20) As Dipesh indicates, Malaysia’s recruitment of foreign security guards was exclusively granted for Nepali citizens. The underlying Malaysian regulations were in place for many years and were overturned only most recently (Mandal 2020).140 While the singularization of Nepali workers is particularly strong in the security sector in Malaysia, the “Gurkha” narrative has had an undeniable effect on labor markets throughout Asia. Today, the signifier is used inflationary to include anyone ranging from Nepal Army soldiers to Nepali police and even to nearly untrained civilians, as can be seen in the following entry from a recruitment website:

138

However, since a considerable portion of them is employed without documentation (Coburn 2018), their numbers are likely significantly higher than official data suggest. 139 Original: Nepallai securityma aba Malasiyama nikai ramro opportunity chha. […] British Gorkhako jun thiyo, tesle garda Nepaliko ramro euta image bhayekole, Malasiyama bideshi security guard chai Nepali matra allowed chha. Aru kunai deshko lidaina. For example, aba 2015 A.D ko lagi Malasiyama 70 thousand Nepali haruko lagi approval niskeko chha, jun Nepaliharuko lagi matra ho. Manchhe pura garnai sakinna. 140 In early 2020, Malaysia started negotiations to hire at least 150,000 security guards from Pakistan (Mandal 2020), thereby breaking its earlier exclusivity agreement with Nepal. Unsurprisingly, the Nepali recruitment industry has reacted negatively to this step, perceiving it as a significant threat against the singular status of Nepali security forces on the international market.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Gurkhas! (Security Personnel) Ex’ British Army, Ex-Singapore Army Ex’ Nepalese Army, Ex-Indian Army Ex’ Nepalese Police/Armed Police Force Armed Security Security Supervisor/ SecurityGuard/ BodyGuard (Landmark Manpower Solution 2019) As the quoted section indicates, the “Gurkha” imagination has become so powerful that Nepali nationality now often functions as a stronger singularizing qualifier than a candidate’s actual qualification. Accordingly, Coburn asserts in his ethnographic work on international military contractors that “‘Gurkha’ has […] become a gloss for any Nepali contractor, regardless of their experience” (2018, 361).141 This long exploration has shown that the narrative of the “brave warrior” constitutes the most successful feat of Nepali singularization. Its success has been possible only because the colonial narrative has remained powerful and, at the same time, become dislodged from the original historical context of its emergence. Due to the efforts of “market actors—namely, the men who manage Gurkhas and Gurkhas themselves—[who] are complicit in constituting these racial and gendered scripts” (Chisholm 2014, 350), it now informs the targeted hiring of Nepali workers into a growing number of jobs, many of which go well beyond the military and security sector (see section 4.2.5).

Remaining risks in hiring This section has followed a long arc. It has shown that recruiters and other members of the migration industry try to singularize Nepali men in the international migrant labor market by framing them as hard-working, truthful, obedient, and compliant. I have argued that those qualities reflect international market values of productivity, reliability, predictability, and submissiveness, which inform employers’ demand for lowskilled labor and are in line with dominant techniques of governing migrant labor in the Malaysian and GCC host regimes. Eventually, I have retraced the emergence of the “simple-minded laborer” and the “brave warrior” as two racist colonial scripts that represent central components to the imagination of the “Nepali worker” today. 141

This development can be partly attributed to private market rationalities, which have grown dominant in the international employment of Nepali security contractors. Instead of recruiting “real” ex-Gurkhas from the British Army (who demand comparatively high salaries), international security firms increasingly hire ex-Gurkhas from the Indian Army, soldiers from the Nepali Army, or even civilians from the Nepali Police, who can be paid a fragment of what ex-British Army Gurkhas would receive. As Coburn (2018) shows, security firms still successfully pass these men off as “Gurkhas” towards United States officials, given that Americans have inherited the imperialistic orientalist narrative from the British but do not clearly know—or care—about its historical context. In Nepal, the inflationary use of the category “Gurkha” has affected professional skills trainings as well: As I will discuss in section 4.3.1, many civilian security professionals undergo rigorous training prior to their employment, whereas other agencies capitalize on the powerful “Gurkha” imagination and provide candidates with only a few hours of basic training before sending them abroad as security guards.

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To a certain degree, this imagination has clearly affected targeted hiring practices and has been, in turn, reinforced by the resulting employment patterns. This is the only way to explain the considerable international demand for Nepali security and military contractors, and it also aligns with the widespread employment of Nepali workers in low-skilled manual jobs in construction, manufacturing, and other industries (see also section 4.2.2). At the very least, the long persistence of racist colonial tropes and their continuous reiteration and repurposing today indicate that they have served an essential function in the successful marketization of Nepali labor. At the same time, the role of more circumstantial factors—including wages, quotas, and other market dynamics (see section 4.2.3)—should not be underestimated, either. Most likely, the hiring decisions of Malaysian and Gulf employers are influenced by unreflected nationality-based imaginations just as much as they are by more technical aspects of migrant employment. Recruitment agent Sudhir puts it aptly when he describes the healthy dose of pragmatism that probably is at play in those processes: When [the clients] take people, in whatever country they find a good product, that’s the place they will continue to go. The same thing happens in recruitment as when we go vegetable shopping: Wherever we find good ones, we will go there again next time, if it is cheap. So it’s the same case in recruitment as well.142 (ag20, 17) By likening the hiring of migrant workers to vegetable shopping, Sudhir does not only casually express the rationalities of commodification that underlie this practice. He also indicates that the quest of foreign employers to find productive, reliable, predictable, and submissive labor is not satisfied by the imagination of the “Nepali worker” alone. After all, if that was the case, why would there be elaborate selection events like the one discussed in the introductory vignette (see also section 4.2.1)? Based on this observation, I will now return once more to the question of selections, which I initially posed at the beginning of my exploration of labor market encounters (see section 4.2.1). This time, however, my investigation is grounded in the fundamental insights that have been gathered over the preceding sections—insights on the technologies and dynamics that affect the singularization, hiring, and employment of Nepali laborers. From this nuanced perspective, the following section uncovers the various techniques of assessing, evaluating, and selecting Nepali candidates aside from in-person selection events, and the underlying rationalities that guide these processes.

4.2.5

Selections and differential hiring among Nepali candidates

Whereas the previous sections primarily focused on how foreign employers hire workers by targeting “source” markets at the international level, targeted hiring also occurs within the national “pool” of candidates. From the perspective of workers, the overt and covert selections conducted to this end are the central technologies that decide whether a “candidate” eventually turns into a “migrant.” As such, they play a profound role in the generation and government of migrant subjects. Some of those governmental effects

142 Original statement in English.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

have already been discussed regarding in-person selection events (section 4.2.1), but these are actually only one step in what is typically a multi-stage process. In the eyes of Nepali recruiters, the selection of suitable candidates is absolutely vital to their business success and plays a significant role in their daily recruitment practice. By ascribing such high priority to this part of their work, however, they directly contradict the outwardly advertised imagination of Nepali labor (see section 4.2.4): Just as readily as my interlocutors in the migration industry had recounted the positive qualities of the typical “Nepali worker,” they voiced their discontent about the majority of candidates they encountered in their everyday practice. For instance, orientation trainer Pramila says: “We Nepalis have the habit of showing a bit too much self-confidence. For example, we are overconfident even in things we don’t know how to do”143 (ori06, 17). Similarly, security guard instructor Anand asserts: “Foreigners think well of [Nepalis] because they consider them honest. But actually, they are not anymore today”144 (sk04, 35). Similar to trainers like Pramila and Anand, recruitment agents and freelance brokers frequently complained to me that they found many of their candidates to be incompetent and to lack essential language skills. What is more, they also felt there was a problem with “dishonest,” “overconfident,” “lazy,” and even “aggressive” candidates. Paradoxically, it is thus precisely the traits and behaviors that are marketed as natural and inherent to Nepali workers which the industry regards as sorely lacking in migrant candidates. Why is that the case, and what measures are being implemented to address this perceived obstacle to the marketization of migrant labor? In order to answer that question, this section first provides an overview of the different technologies of selection and their importance for the Nepali migration regime. On that basis, I will identify and discuss three core rationalities of value that guide those selections. Focusing on two of these selection criteria specifically, I will then retrace the complex circumstances of their emergence and implementation—particularly exploring how transnational forms of knowledge and locally established regimes of practices both reinforce and subvert each other.

The role and technologies of selection As stated above, many recruiters reportedly struggle to find “high quality” candidates who do not fall short of foreign employers’ expectations. This puts the industry under significant pressure, since failure to provide a client company with satisfactory workers can cause multiple problems and can have long-term repercussions on the recruiter’s business relationships. Recruitment agent Padma explains this predicament: That is a huge hassle to us, […] when a person doesn’t see their own weaknesses. And then from abroad, we hear things like ‘For a skilled worker, you sent us such an unskilled one.’ It is hard to fix all of that.145 (ag17, 5) Original: Hami Nepaliharuko bani ekdamai badhi matrama self-confidence dekhaune. Jastai najaneko kuralai ni over-confidence garne. 144 Original: Bideshile yaha manchha, pheri honesty. Ahileka chhainan pheri. 145 Original: Hamilai ni torture, […] afno galti dekhdaina jane manchhele. Uta bat pheri skill worker bhanekoma, pheri yesto unskilled pathais bhanchha. Garho chha sabai milauda. 143

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As Padma indicates, migrant workers who turn out to be not as qualified as they initially appeared cause problems that ultimately fall back on the agency. For this reason, it is one of the primary interests of agents and brokers to minimize the risk of “low quality” workers. As a result, most recruiters put considerable effort into conducting selections that will effectively identify and eliminate candidates who might cause them “hassle.” As mentioned in section 4.2.1, in-person selection events, in which employers come to Nepal to conduct interviews and practical skill tests themselves, are organized only for a small number of advertised jobs. By contrast, the majority of final selections are performed by recruiters, which means that most workers are hired without ever having had a personal encounter with their respective employers (see also Sijapati et al. 2015, 52). In some of those cases, candidates are picked based on personal interviews with recruitment agents. In others, the final decision to hire a worker is made entirely based on the data in his or her personal portfolio. However, those formal selections by the agency are far from the only hurdles that migrant candidates have to pass in order to work abroad: Every worker also undergoes a mandatory medical examination to rule out any pre-existing health conditions (GoN 2007, 71), an examination which is often performed again once he or she has arrived in the country of destination. But even long before candidates participate in any formal interview or selection, they already undergo multiple rounds of so-called pre-selections. As recruitment agent Bishuram explains: “In the pre-interviews, we make a selection. We don’t send all of them to the final interview. We select certain people, the good ones, and only those persons take part in the final interview”146 (ag19, 25). The formal pre-selections Bishuram describes here are conducted openly and usually mentioned on vacancy announcements (see Figure 25 and Figure 26 in section 4.2.1). However, there are many less visible forms of pre-selections which occur throughout the pre-departure stage, from the very beginning of a worker’s recruitment. The moment a prospective migrant contacts a recruiter—be it at a recruitment agency or by approaching a local broker, he or she starts being assessed and evaluated. This is because recruiters aim not only at selecting “good” candidates but at categorizing them according to their marketable assets and suitability to currently vacant job positions. For example, broker Hari says: “You have to match the person to the job, that is the main rule according to which I work”147 (iag12, 3). Similarly, broker Ramesh explains that his personal ability to perform accurate pre-selections is critical to his professional success: Before you send them, […] you have to consider beforehand that you might not get good feedback from [the employer]. The person who is going to work as a laborer does not know how hard the work is. But you have to know the work very well and make sure that if you send this person to this type of work, you will not get any problems. […] So

146 Original: Pre-interviewma hami selection garchhau. Sabailai hami final pathaudainau. Hami certain jo ramro manchhe chha, teslai hami select garchhau ani ti byektile matra final face garchha. 147 Original: Jo jun kamma janeko chha, tesaima jada suitable hunchha. Tehi anusarle kam garne ho.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

you have to distinguish between different types of labor: inside work or outside work, weight lifting, and so on.148 (iag08, 25-26) Ramesh’s statement shows how recruiters need to anticipate possible factors that might render a candidate unattractive, and in turn, match them to positions where they will perform well. To this end, they evaluate each candidate and each job vacancy according to industry-specific categorizations (see also section 4.1.4). Matching candidates according to their professional “suitability” and thereby avoiding unsatisfied employers is particularly essential to the success of local freelance brokers. But also licensed recruiters consider it to be one of their most important services, as veteran agent Modhir expresses: If we don't have the right candidates, we won’t get a right employer. If we don’t have the right employers, we will not get the right candidates. That means, […] the agency, the trusted agencies, […] we are the bridge of the employer and job seekers! Employer needs the right people!149 (ag01 inf04, 8) In Modhir’s opinion, the capability to bring compatible employers and job seekers together lies at the heart of a successful recruitment company. This is also why many agencies use their ability to perform accurate and effective selections as the main selling point towards potential new clients. For instance, one agency states on its website: The discipline level of each and every worker is tested so as to avoid possible risks from the workers abroad. We examine the workers' morality, attitude, behavior and personal history. Team of our experts including a psychiatrist carries out these tests. Candidates have to go through medical tests after final selection. Only medically fit candidates are eligible to sign an agreement or contract paper. (Sky Overseas 2019b) In the above example, the agency does not only advertise its ability to “test” candidates but lists specific technologies and involved authorities of knowledge, such as “experts” and “psychiatrists,” to corroborate its claim.150 Other material devices that are typically made use of include assessment sheets and worker portfolios, which some of the larger agencies now store in their own digital databases. However, particularly early pre-selections rely less on formal technologies but rather on personal, intuitive assessments, which are typically made by recruiters and sometimes by skill trainers. For instance, security instructor Krishna explains his process after being contacted by a candidate:

148 Original: Yeslai pathauda, […] bholi maile apajas paauchhu hai bhanera afule pahile sochnu paryo. Aba u laborma bidesh janchhu bhanera, jana parya ho, uslai thaha hudaina. Tyo gyan afuma badhi huna paryo ra uslai pathaunu bhanda pani, afuma paila thaha huna paryo ki yetiko manchhe pathauda malai problem aaudaina […] Kun laborma haldida garna sakchha ta: bahirako kam, bhitra ko kam, weight kam, ityadi. 149 Original in English. 150 As these advertisements indicate, the capacity to conduct effective selections is increasingly used as a factor to give certain agencies competitive advantage over other Nepali recruiters in the international market. Given the intense inter-agency competition over foreign client “demands” (see section 4.1.4), such advantages can be instrumental to the company’s business success.

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When looking at a person, I know what kind of person that is. […] What is their way of talking, what have they been thinking, what kind of knowledge is easy for them to understand? […] So by talking to them and counseling them, we get knowledge about them, and proceed accordingly.151 (sk13, 21) As Krishna’s statement reflects, he considers assessments of each candidate essential long before he or she receives any instructions, because this initial categorization determines how the subsequent training will be conducted. The same perspective applies to the work of recruiters, as agent Ram Dev describes: I call the person and look at him. Why should we even do the interview today? If that person isn’t suitable for this job, he will fail anyway. This one does not fit to this job, he is oversmart. Some also talk too much. There are also some whose face always seems angry or very serious, right? Into what kind of job could we send someone like that? […] It is our job to distinguish them. You really have to use your brains in the manpower business.152 (ag06, 278-94) In explaining his typical thought process, Ram Dev illustrates how quick, intuitive decisions based on a person’s exterior and behavior profoundly impact whether he or she is even permitted to enter the formal selection process. In outward representations or business interactions, recruiters tend to leave those early steps of selection unmentioned or downplay their importance. However, my ethnographic insights into everyday recruitment practices indicate that those covert techniques often end up defining candidates’ recruitment and employment paths in crucial ways. Precisely because those early judgments are rarely verbalized and always remain undocumented and behind closed doors—and because they can make or break a worker’s entry into labor migration—they function as the most powerful technologies of selection. From a marketization perspective, the struggles Nepali recruiters face with selecting the “right” candidates and the importance this has for their business success are to be expected. As Ouma observes, “collective modes of qualification […] are always ambiguous, marked by uncertainties because there are many potential ways to qualify a good” (2015, 32). In this context of uncertainty and struggle, rules and standardized mechanisms that ensure stable “quality” are vital to the successful marketization of a commodity. In the marketization of Nepali migrant labor, the multiple rounds of selection serve precisely that purpose: The variety of technologies deployed in their context are geared towards transforming every new candidate “into an entity described in both

151

152

Original: Manchhe heri heri thaha hunchha ki ko manchhe kasto kisimko chha bhanera. […] Uhale bolne tarika ke chha, uahale ke sochirahanu bhayeko chha, uhaharulai ke knowledge dida kheri sajilo hunchha. […] Kura garera ani counseling bat nai knowledge rakhisakya hunchhau ani tei anusar nai hami agadi badhne ho. Original: Manchhelai ma bolauchhu, ma herchhu. Aaja interview kina garya ta? Yo manchhe chai yesma yogya chhaina bhanne, manchhe nai fail hune ho. Yo manchhe yesma yogya chhaina, yo oversmart pani hunchha. Badhi bolne pani hunchhan. Jahile pani risayako anuhar yesto khalko ani ghoriyako anuhar pani hunchha, haina? Aba tiniharu manchhelai kasto khalko kam ma pathaunu thik hunch-ha? […] Yo hamro kam ho chhutauchhau tiniharulai. Harek kuroma dimag lagauna parchha yo manpower linema.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

abstract and precise terms, certified and guaranteed by a series of textual and material devices” (Çalışkan & Callon 2010, 7–8). Both relying on and perpetuating rationalities of evaluation and qualification, recruiters take on the role of calculative agencies, whereas candidates are reframed as seemingly stable, tradable entities with “objective” traits. From this perspective, the detachment and pacification of candidates during in-person interviews and practical skill tests (see section 4.2.1) and the procedures of targeted hiring practices in the international labor market (see section 4.2.3) can be identified as technologies of standardization as well.

Rationalities of evaluation and selection While the previous subsection focused on the different techniques of selection, some of the quoted sections above already hint at the qualities that recruiters consider more or less attractive in candidates. However, what underlying rationalities inform those assessments of value? Based on public documents and my own research, I distinguish between three different sets of criteria: a) Professional skills and education: Although the Nepali state does not regulate selection processes directly, it does prescribe the relevant factors that are supposed to inform them. According to the Foreign Employment Rules, official grounds for the selection of workers are “(a) Qualification, training and experience set forth in the demand letter, (b) Age and physical fitness of the applicant, (c) Skill-oriented training in case of skilled and semi-skilled worker” ( GoN 2008, 16). In line with these legal provisions, agents and brokers stressed to me that candidates’ selections for specific job categories were primarily based on their professional qualification and language skills in English, Arabic, Malay, or Hindi. Moreover, they mentioned that a person’s previous work experience abroad could play a major part as well (see also section 4.2.1). Aside from workers’ specific professional qualifications, their general educational level is considered a relevant factor, too, which is why many companies conduct basic reading and mathematical tests. Even long before accessing such formal tests, however, a candidate’s general education level can affect his or her trajectory profoundly. This is reflected in the following quote by broker Jamal, who recalls how his own son, when applying for foreign employment, was selected and matched to a particular position abroad: [My son’s] friend had gone to a furniture company. […] At that time, he was earning thirty thousand a month in Malaysia. […] In Terai, thirty thousand a month for an uneducated person is an engineer's salary. So my son got himself in the mood to go exactly to that company. So I came here and talked to [the recruitment agent]. […] And he said: “Oh, you cannot send a person that has been educated until grade 12 into furniture.

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Furniture work is dusty; it is tedious work. Better to go to an electronics company.”153 (iag05, 10). As the experience of Jamal’s son shows, even candidates’ most general level of education can have a direct impact on their classification and open the door for them to more pleasant and “refined” positions—regardless of their specific professional qualifications. b) Suitable bodies: As prescribed by Nepal’s legislature, another set of criteria is the physical fitness and health of candidates. Accordingly, recruiters confirmed to me that a worker’s bodily state was of utmost importance to his or her evaluation, with substandard results leading to outright rejection. Furthermore, physical features play an important role in determining the jobs for which a candidate is considered suitable. As broker Ramesh shrugs and says, “If a person’s body is very weak and thin and they cannot lift weights, it makes no sense to put them into labor”154 (iag08, 25-26). Often, the assessment of a candidate’s suitability is strictly based on numerical values like body height and age. This is what makes technologies like portfolios and assessment sheets, which quantify the unique qualities of individual candidates, so powerful. Junior agent Prabin explains the initial matching process at his company: We do a pre-screening [sic] to see what [the candidate] is like, does he have tattoos, his height—for security, you need 5.5 minimum. If he is 5.3, he doesn't fit. That's why we look at these things in the beginning. There are specifications [sic] for the job, the height, tattoos... We check everything beforehand, and if he has passed, we forward the CV.155 (ag14, 23) As Prabin mentions, the physical features that play a role in workers’ evaluation include not only natural qualities, such as body height or fitness, but also artificial alterations like tattoos. This is because body modifications of any kind are considered indicative of their personal attitude and conduct, which represents a third set of criteria. c) Personal attitude and conduct: According to the recruiters and skill trainers I interviewed, candidates’ physical attributes play such an important role in selections because they instantly reveal something about their character and personal attitude. For instance, recruitment agent Min Bahadur describes his assessment process as follows: Some boys have long hair, wear an earring, have tattoos, and walk around like a hobo, don’t they? There have been cases when we told someone, “This is not for you, we will

153

154 155

Original: Usko sathi furnituremai gayeko thiyo. […] 30 hajar rupiya mahinama tyo belama kamairaheko thiyo. […] Terai tira napadheko manchhe 30 hajar mahinama ta yahako Engineer sarah bhayo. Tesaile mero chhoro mood banayo tehi companyma janalai. Ani ma yaha aayera kura garda kheri. […] “Ye, testo 12 class padheko manchhelai furniturema pathauna hudaina. Furniturema ta dhulo; ani mehanatko garho. Electronics company ramro chha.” Original: Manchhe herda patalo jyan ko chha. Weight kam garna nasakne chha. Weight kamma paryo bhane? Labor matrai bhanera bhayena. Original: Pre-screening garchhau suruma, kasto chha manchhe, tattooharu chha ki chhaina, heightharu, securityko lagi minimum 5.5 chainchha. 5.3 bhayera ta bhayena. Tei bhayera suruma hami tyo kura haru herchhau. Tyha specification haru hunchhan, height, tattos… Agadi sabai check garchhau. Sabai bhayo bhane hami CV forward gardinchhau.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

not send you” and rejected them only after looking at their face and thinking, “That one is probably like this.” Because judging from his looks, he looked like a hobo who has never gotten anything done besides his earrings. His parents want to send him abroad in order to improve him because he is spoiled. But if he doesn’t show up to do his job the next day, we as manpower get into trouble.156 (ag09, 65) As the above quote shows, external modifications on candidates’ bodies, such as tattoos, earrings, and a well-groomed appearance, are taken so seriously that they become a deciding factor in selections. In the same vein, security guard instructor Anand explains how he assesses every candidate’s “psychology” by judging his body language and checking for visible tattoos: When I see a candidate, in the beginning, I have eye contact with him […] [I see] if he has a no-do-gooder body language, if he can walk well or not. […] From the beginning, I understand his psychology. It is not about education only. […] Also, if you want to go abroad and have visible tattoos. Even if all other things are good, I tell him, “Son, it's not for you.”157 (sk05, 24-25) As Anand indicates, the judgment of a candidate’s attitude, demeanor, and conduct is one of the first things that need to happen right “in the beginning” of the recruitment process. He goes on to explain that these factors ultimately determine the selection result even more than the candidate’s professional qualification: If a person is skilled and fit, but he does not have the right attitude, he will fail. Compared to this, his skills are not important. Let's say he is educated but has no discretion. Then his education has no meaning, hasn’t it? You need attitude. If he has skills, but no attitude, how can he be obedient? Where is his obedience? It cannot be easy to make him work or work with him, can it? He is not suitable.158 (sk05, 26) Anand’s opinion is not only shared by other skills trainers but recruiters as well. For instance, agent Sudhir describes his approach in conducting pre-selections at one of Kathmandu’s largest “manpower” agencies:

156

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Original: Aba kohi ketaharu kapal paleko, mundra lagayeko, tattoo haru banayera hideka ra u alikati aawara parale hideko ho ki? Kasto chha aba usko face herera pani hamile uslai, “timi hudainau, hami timilai pathaudainau,” bhanera pani hamile pathayeko abastha chha. Kina bhane usko hau bhau herdakheri tyo pura mundra lagayera, kaam nagareko. Bau aamale yeha bigreko abastha chha, yeslai sudharna paye hunthyo bhanera bidesh pathayeko chha. Bholi gayera tyaha kaam gardena bhane, samasya manpowerlai bholi parchha. Original: Suruma maile uslai kura garda, eye contact bat suru hunchha. [...] Usko body language dekhi liyera, maile hidauna samma ni lageko chhu, […] Maile bhane ni paila pani, usko psychological ma bujhchhu. Education ko matra pani hoina. […] Bideshko lagi aako chhan ra sarirma tattooharu chhan bhane, visible tattooharu chhan bhane, sabai kura thik chha bahne pani, “babu, timi hudaina,” bhanera bhanchhu maile. Original: Skill pani chha ani fit pani chha, tara attitude chhaina bhane fail hunchha. Skill mahatwopurna bhayena. Maniliun, u educated chha. But discrete chhaina bhane tesko artha bayo ra sikshako? Bhayo ta sir? Bhayena ni. Attitude huna paryo. Skill chha bhanera, attitude nai chhaina bahne ta usle bholi kasari obedient garchha? garchha ra obidient? tespachhi kam garauna sajilo sahaj tarika bat sakinchha ra? sakidaina ni. U fit hudaina.

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[I]f someone has a Bachelor’s degree, but his attitude isn’t good—he is overconfident, or he is a little bit aggressive when he speaks, or if he has a feeling like he has a “knowit-all” kind of attitude—then that person cannot work in a company. […] If he thinks of himself as superior, then he cannot work in customer service. In this case, if there is a person who has a [lower education], but is polite, humble, and speaking politely, and his/her attitude is pretty good, I give more priority to those kinds of candidates.159 (ag20, 6) As Sudhir’s statement shows, candidates’ conduct or personal attitude that is considered “unsuitable” will lead to their outright rejection, even if their formal education levels are higher than those of their competitors. Although such personal qualities are mentioned nowhere in the state regulations, they frequently take precedent over official criteria like education, skills, and work experience. As to the definition of such “unsuitable” attitudes and behaviors, the above quotes already provide some first insights: According to Anand, the candidate has to have discretion, obedience, and it needs to be “easy to make him work.”160 Similarly, agent Sudhir emphasizes that candidates should conduct themselves with humility and speak politely. By contrast, what is perceived as an aggressive way of speaking, a feeling of superiority, and overconfidence are considered unacceptable in Nepali workers. These insights into the core criteria that guide recruiters’ selections are an important foundation for understanding those procedures. However, how are they related to the larger rationalities of value and the formatting of market encounters that I discussed in the previous sections? Staying on the topic of personal conduct, I will now take a closer look at these connections.

Personal attitude and the fear of the “troublemaker” The criteria that guide selections among the pool of Nepali workers cannot be understood in isolation. Instead, they reflect the rationalities of labor value that implicitly shape all stages of the market encounter between foreign employers and Nepali migrant labor (see sections 4.2.1-4). As discussed in the previous section, these values include not only productivity, reliability, and predictability, but also submissiveness, which is mirrored in the imagination of the “Nepali worker” as obedient and compliant. Seen from a marketization perspective, the imagination of the “Nepali worker” thus serves as the central commodity standard that guides technologies of selection. It is

Original: Kasai sanga bachelor ko degree chha, tara usko attitude ramro chhaina—overconfidence chha, wa bolda kheri usko attitude alikati aggressive chha, wa “I know everything”-typed ko feeling usanga chha bhane—usle companyma gayera kam garna sakdaina. […] If he thinks himself superior, then he cannot work for customer service. Yesto casema yedi plus two gareko manchhe chha, tara polite, humble chha, wa speaking politely, ani usko attitude alikati ramro chha bhane, I give more priority to those kinds of candidates. 160 Although in this particular instance, trainer Anand specifically speaks of candidates who aspire to be security guards, similar attributes apply to candidates for other job professions as well. The different ideal attitudes and conducts, as they are specific to different professions, is addressed in more detail in section 4.3.4. 159

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

this standard that informs the above criteria of a “polite,” “humble,” and “obedient” attitude and conduct, which render candidates “suitable” for labor migration. In turn, any candidate who is suspected of potentially causing “trouble” during his employment (see section 4.2.4) is considered a risk and will not be selected. During our interviews, many recruiters scoffingly described such workers as aggressive and potentially criminal. Through more casual conversations and my participant observation, however, I realized that the sort of “troublemaker” employers and recruiters seemed to fear the most were workers who might organize amongst themselves and decide to go on strike. From their perspective, this fear is understandable: Compared to a single employee who might simply be disobedient or unproductive, those individuals have the capacity to ultimately “turn” a whole camp of workers and wreak much larger havoc in the company. For instance, recruitment agent Rishi complains: You know, among twenty people, if one person is bad, he/she makes the rest of others also bad. You don’t recognize them before, you don’t know, here they say they will do everything, but once they are there, [...] they start problems. And from that, they also instigate other people. [At the time of recruitment], we don’t know about these things. Not all people are that type; just some are like that.161 (ag13, 8) As Rishi suggests, one single “bad” candidate who “instigate[s] other people” can spoil an entire lot of workers—similarly to a single rotten apple that spoils a basket full of fresh ones. Because recruiters’ future business success depends on satisfying their clients, spotting potential “troublemakers” before they are being hired is one of their most important challenges. For companies in Malaysia and the GCC countries, “troublemakers” are no vague or theoretical risk—but one that they have increasingly struggled with in the past years. After decades of governing their migrant workforce through restrictive and punitive techniques (see section 4.2.2), these host regimes have begun to face growing political unrest. To name just a few examples, the construction industry in Dubai has been shaken by reoccurring strikes since 2010. In 2014, Malaysia experienced major riots among factory workers (Bal 2016, 208). And most recently, in August of 2019, thousands of construction workers from Nepal, India, and Bangladesh protested “delayed and unpaid salaries and poor facilities” (Mandal 2019b) in Qatar. Their strike, which lasted several weeks and was broadcast on social media sites, drew considerable international attention and bolstered criticism of the Qatari host regime (Ilias 2020).162 From the perspective of foreign employers, these growing outbreaks of worker unrest and the negative press coverage that follows them explain why they care so much about avoiding potential “troublemakers.” However, why do Nepali recruiters consider

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Original: Tapaiko, 20 janama euta manchhe kharab chha bhane, usle sabailai kharab banauchha. Tyo chinidaina ani thaha hudaina. Usle I can do, I will work bhanchha, tyaha gaisake pachhi, [...] they start problem. Tesle garda aru manchhelai pani spoil garidinchha. Ani yaha chai thaha hudaina tyo kura. Sabaima hoina, kunai kunaima testo hunchha. In this section, I only elaborate on the perspective of foreign employers and recruiters. However, it needs to be noted that strikes and protests pose an even larger risk for migrant workers themselves, since they stand to lose their job and visa without any prospect of compensation.

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this to be such a high risk among their pool of workers? After all, is it not precisely one of the main pillars of the imagination of the “Nepali worker” that they are obedient, compliant, “fresh,” and simple-minded (see section 4.2.4)? And are those rationalities not being confirmed by foreign employers like Mr. Abu-Serhale, who admits that one of his reasons to hire workers from Nepal is precisely because they are no “troublemakers?” Hence, it is here where the contrast between recruiters’ external advertisement of Nepali labor and their internal view on their candidates—as mentioned at the beginning of this section—is most pronounced: Contrary to the powerful imagination of the obedient, naïve, and compliant Nepali worker, many agents painted a very different picture of their fellow countrymen during our more casual conversations. For instance, recruitment agent Damosh asserts: We Nepalis have an attitude problem. A few people from Kathmandu Valley go abroad. If they go, it is 100 percent sure they will get into trouble. […] The only thing they know is how to strike and be aggressive. […] We have also the situation that all workers get into trouble because of one person. (ag04 int01, 11)163 As Damosh expresses, he thinks that it is mainly residents of Kathmandu Valley who tend to be aggressive and to lead others “into trouble.” Taking this argument even further, agents Rishi and Narendra suggest—while talking to me and each other during a selection event—that striking has become a “habit” of Nepalis in general: R: The Nepalis have this habit: If there is a tiny little problem, they rally all people and do a strike. That’s what they do. N: Yes, that’s the habit of the Nepalis. R: It’s also like that abroad. Then the company tells us, “Your person has gone on strike.” N: It’s an old habit. In Nepal, there has been a change, right, transition period. And that’s how many people got that habit.164 (Conversation with two recruitment agents, ag13, 2-5) In their conversation, Rishi and Narendra imply that the recent history of strikes and political movements has altered Nepali consciousness and people’s attitudes so much that “rallying” and “striking” have become a common national “habit.” While this collective self-imagination clearly serves its own, internal purpose, the recruitment agents do have a point: The number of strikes and protests Nepal has experienced over the past years and decades has indeed been remarkable. Even today, more than a decade after the end of the civil war, smaller rallies and demonstrations are still held on a regular basis. On an international scale, however, the racist colonial tropes of the simple-minded South Asian have remained so powerful that the imagination of the obedient and com-

Original: Hamro Nepaliharuko attitude problem ho. Kathmandu valley ko thorai manchhe janchhan. Jane bittikai tesle 100 percent dukha pauchhan. […] Usle bahira ke janyo bhane, hadtal garne, aggressive hune. […] ek janako karanle garda dheraile dukha payeko stithi pani chha. 164 Original: R: Nepaliko bani chha. Sano tino problem bhayo bhane, sabai manchhe milne strike gari halne. N: Ho, Nepali ko bani testai ho. R: Hamilai companyharule, “timro manchhe le strike garyo,” bhaneka chhan. N: Pahilako bani. Nepalma change bhayo ni. Transition period. Tyo bani lageko thiyo dherai manchhe lai. 163

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

pliant “Nepali worker” continues to function well. It is only when those rationalities “touch down” locally in recruiters’ selections that they are subverted by the narrative of this new Nepali identity. Considering that particularly the violent civil war (see section 4.1.3) and the many strikes and blockages in subsequent years regularly made global headlines, it truly is astounding that those contrary rationalities still exist side by side. Seen from this perspective, the fact that employers who have no tolerance towards striking and any form of disobedience choose to hire, out of all places, from a country that recently went through several political movements and a civil war is somewhat ironic.

“Suitable” bodies and racist hierarchies As in the previous example, a closer look at the rationalities of selection among Nepali candidates reveals that some parts of the international imagination of the “Nepali worker” are challenged and subverted at the national and local scale. At the same time, other structures of power and knowledge at Nepal’s national level actually reinforce international scripts of selection (and vice versa). This is the case with selection criteria on Nepali workers’ “suitable” bodies: While some of those criteria, as discussed earlier, are based on individual height, body weight, and physical fitness, another critical factor is a candidate’s facial appearance. Recruitment agent Rishi gives an example: People abroad like the Mongolian face, they tell us that from the Gulf. If a company wants people for a supermarket, they give priority to them. In their criteria, it says “Mongolian face.” […] When they write emails, or when they give the notice to the manpower, it says “Mongolian face required.” Many of them even list or write it.165 (ag13, 17) As Rishi reports, he and his colleagues often—particularly so when it comes to jobs in service positions—receive explicit or encoded demands from their clients to select only those candidates who are perceived to have a so-called “Mongolian face.” While surprising to outsiders, this term is quite common in Nepal. It alludes to the fact that the Nepali population is shaped by multiple ethnicities and regional identities, many of whom are, due to century-long bans on inter-group marriage, associated with distinct physical features. For instance, members of so-called adivasi janajati, in English “indigenous nationalities” (Gellner 2019, 269), who predominantly live in Nepal’s midhills and mountainous ranges, tend to possess facial structures that resemble inhabitants of Central Asia (Hangen 2010, 25-27; see also Toffin 2013). For this reason, they are often colloquially referred to as “Mongolian”—particularly compared to the mainstream high-caste hill Hindu population, whose typical appearance is described as “Indo-Aryan” (Vaidya 2012, 20). Furthermore, another self-identified section of the population, socalled Madhesi166 people, most of whom live in Nepal’s southern Terai lowlands, tend to Original: Uhaharuko ni interest mangolian face lai mann paraudo raichha, bahira pani, Gulf bat nai bhanchha. Kunai companyma supermarketma magyo bhane, pahile nai teslai priority gardinchha. Criteria nai bhanchha, “Mangolian face.” […] Email garda, Manpowerma notice nikalda, tyaha “Mangolian face required” bhanera bhanchha. Kattima ta utai bat tokdinchha. 166 Notably, all of these categories are under constant negotiation and highly political. As David Gellner points out, “many activist hours of work, many meetings, demonstrations, and petitions to government and international bodies, were required in order to conjure them into existence” (2019, 270). Especially the label Madhesi has been the subject of extended controversy: Having shot to

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have a darker facial complexion and share many cultural practices, language, and external features with inhabitants of the neighboring Indian states Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (Gellner 2019, 269–270). As Rishi’s earlier statement indicates, the selection criterion of “Mongolian” features is a direct reflection of the demand voiced by hiring companies. However, what rationalities of value underlie those targeted requests? Recruitment agent Sudhir elaborates: When you look at the Mongolian, they have a rather fair skin tone. If he dresses well, […] he looks good in every regard. Plus, they can kind of have an Asian look.167 Maybe that’s why the company gives them more priority.168 (ag20, 15) According to Sudhir, one of the reasons that render candidates with “Mongolian” features attractive is their “fair” skin tone. The same idea is expressed in the following quote by Rishi, who states: “In the hotel line, they prefer, like, Rais, you know, people with a light face, Rais, Gurungs, Magars. These types of people. […] More innocent [sic] and well, more, hm, more understanding of things than others...”169 (ag13, 18-19). Clearly, these judgments reproduced by Sudhir and Rishi mirror the all-encompassing global system in which “whiteness operates as a position of structural advantage and privilege” (Peake 2009, 247) and is associated with “cleanliness, beauty, freedom, purity, and morality” (ibid.). However, they are rooted not only in global forms of racism (e.g., Nayak 2009) but also in the specifically South Asian “colorism” (Mishra 2015) that has grown on their foundation. What is more, their genealogical descent and significance for the selection of Nepali candidates can be traced back to two concrete sets of practices that have emerged on different scales and now mutually reinforce each other: a) Racist colonial scripts of South Asian migrant labor: A closer investigation of the ideal of “Mongolian” features shows that it is inextricably tied to racist colonial structures of hiring migrant labor in South Asia. This becomes evident in the following quote by Sudhir, who ponders possible historical reasons why some candidates are preferred by employers today: [I]t might be something inherited, those who are “Mongolian” or from the Himalayan belt, those people are kind of aggressive, but at the same time, they are also trustworthy. [...] Because whenever there was any war—I am not being biased in this case, I’m speaking out the truth, or what happened, what actually happened. Whenever there was a war, when they ordered people from the Mongolian race or the mountain belt to stay in the front line, it was very unlikely they would desert. Because he is aggressive, and he does not think differently. It might also be because he does

prominence with the first Madhesi movement in 2007, its denotation remains fluid, for instance, on whether Muslims or the ethnic group Tharu are considered full members of the category (ibid.). 167 The implied meaning here is “Central Asian.” 168 Original: Mangolian herda kheri, alikati fair skin tone hunchha. Uslai proper dressing garaidiyo bhane, […] lookswise sabai kuraharu ramro dekhinchha. Plus, Asian looks haru aauna sakchha. Sayed uhako (company's) prioritymai tei parera ni huna sakchha. 169 Original: Hotel linema, Rai jastai, light goro manchheharu, Rai, Gurungs, Magar. Basically, testo testo manchhelai […]. Badhi innocent ani hm ra usle aru bhanda ni badhi kura bujhne hunchha.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

not think smartly either. He appears or generally is trustworthy. That is a practically proven matter.170 (ag20, 15) By framing people from the “Mongolian race” as aggressive, trustworthy, and loyal, Sudhir clearly echoes the colonial script of the “brave warrior,” which emerged as part of Nepali recruitment into the British Gurka regiment. As argued in section 4.2.4, this script—along with that of the “simple-minded laborer,” which emerged in the region during the employment of South Asian laborers in Malay and the Gulf protectorates—has played an important role in singularizing Nepali workers in the international labor market. However, those scripts do not only serve to distinguish Nepali labor from other national “source” markets, but inform targeted hiring even within the pool of Nepali candidates. The reasons for this, again, lies in the historical background of colonial rule: During the 19th  century, the romanticized narrative of the “martial race” of the Himalayas was crafted precisely in contrast to the “rebellious” Indians of the lowlands. This was of great interest to the British, who even deployed the Gurkhas to squash several anti-colonial rebellions in India (Des Chene 1991; Kansakar 1973). As a result, the Nepali Gurkhas were described as loyal, honorable, and daring, all the more so because they were “unburdened by intelligence or education” (Caplan 1995, 126). By contrast, Indians were represented as untrustworthy and possessing “neither moral aptitude nor physical courage” (MacMunn 1933, 2; cited in Singh 2014). From recognizing this geographical and cultural determinism, it is possible to further differentiate the colonial tropes identified in section 4.2.4: Although on an international scale, both scripts feed into the broad imagination of the “Nepali worker,” a look at the dynamics within Nepali society reveals that the “brave mountain warrior” and the “simple-minded lowland laborer” have actually served as counterparts to each other. Since those scripts were not only rhetorical but laid the practical foundations for Gurkha recruitment, they set the course early on for a differential migration practice that relied on separate infrastructures and brokerage networks. From its beginning, recruitment into the Gurkha brigade was heavily regulated by ethnicity criteria and also partly according to one’s education, thus privileging a few ethnic groups in the mid-Western and Eastern regions, such as the Gurung, Magar, Rai and some Limbu. At the same time, many other Nepalese groups were left with much less attractive labour markets, such as manual labour in India. (Graner 2010, 27) These early dynamics of migration evolved into persistent differential structures that continue to affect rationalities and practices of selection among Nepali candidates to170 Original: Inherit kai kura garda kheri, jasto Mangolian wa from the Himalayan belt, manchhe chai aggressive ni hunchhan, tara at the same time, trustworthy ni hunchha. […] Kinabhane kunai pani warma Madhesi wa Terai beltko—I am not being biased in this case, I’m speaking out the truth, wa bhako kura, wa practical kura bhanau. Kunai pani war bhayo bhane, Mangolian raceko wa mountain beltko manchhe lai tya front linema khatayo bhane, bhagne chance ekdam kam hunchha. Kina ki u aggressive ni hunchha, ani he does not think differently. Usle smart ni think nagarne bhayera ni hola. U chai trustworthy dekhinchha wa hunchha. Practically ni yo kura proven hunchha.

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day. Even though formal Gurkha recruits now represent but a small portion of overall labor migrants and the labor destinations of Nepali workers have grown far beyond neighboring India, the established technologies of selective hiring have undergone only minor transformations. As a result, members of Nepal’s indigenous nationalities, many of whom the British had defined as “martial races,” are still considered nobler, more trustworthy, and more civilized than their “Indian-looking” competitors. This means that, even outside of Gurkha enlistment, it is mostly them who are selected for positions in the military or security sector. Moreover, they are widely regarded as more suitable for any kind of service-oriented profession, be it in the hospitality sector, in supermarkets, or even in domestic work. Importantly, such positions often come with favorable conditions, such as air-conditioned indoor work and higher social status. By contrast, members of Madhesi groups are frequently identified as more suitable to labor-intensive jobs in technical trades, which means those workers typically experience at least one of the infamous “three Ds” of employment—dirty, dangerous, and difficult. Hence, racist colonial stereotypes are not only mobilized to singularize the national category of the “Nepali worker” in the international market; they also affect selections within the pool of Nepali candidates. In turn, this means that the selective hiring among Nepali candidates today is a direct continuation of racist colonial patterns of employment on an international scale. At the same time, it is affected by unequal political and economic structures within Nepali society. b) Political and economic structures in Nepal: Despite the past decades of societal transformation, Nepal continues to be marked by considerable inequality and internal division today. Much of this has resulted from a century-long practice of economic paternalism—meaning that across changing political eras, each new leadership picked different groups to foster as their elites while disadvantaging others (Shakya 2013). Partly for this reason, Nepali rules of belonging—including those of ethnic, religious, cultural, and linguistic affiliation—are highly complex (see, e.g., Toffin & Pfaff-Czarnecka 2014). Therefore, it is essential to approach all questions of power and difference in Nepali society through an intersectional lens, which simultaneously considers categories of caste, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and geographical place.171 For multiple centuries, Kathmandu Valley has functioned as the political and economic center of the nation, which led Nepali culture and identity to be primarily defined through the lens of the high-caste hill Hindu population (Lawoti 2007, 23). As a result, low-caste hill Hindus, Madhesi people, and members of Janajati groups have been marginalized and disenfranchised for generations (Jha 2017, 25).172 Although those inequalities have fuelled most of the political conflicts over the past decades, including

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For instance, the local concept jat, which merges caste, ethnic affiliation, and geographical origin into one category, already indicates that emic perspectives on identity and difference consider these factors to naturally intersect (Nightingale 2011, 155). Examples include the policies of homogenous nation-building during the Panchayat era (1960-90), when the government enforced harsh restrictions on linguistic, cultural, and political diversity and expression (Lawoti & Hangen 2013; Tamang 2000).

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

the civil war,173 high-caste hill Hindus remain politically and culturally dominant today (Shneiderman 2013). In particular, the great rift between high-caste hill Hindu and Madhesi people has not been resolved, with Madhesi activists even accusing the Nepali government of “internal colonization” (Sijapati 2013, 167). Over the past years, Nepali society has repeatedly ruptured along this specific fault line, the most prominent example being the massive protests and four-months-long blockage of the Nepali-Indian border that brought Nepal’s economy to a standstill in 2015-16 (Rai 2016). Since these persistent inequalities shape all aspects of social, political, and economic life in Nepal, they have also affected the migration regime and reinforced existing patterns of selective hiring. Moreover, they have manifested in spatial asymmetries, as both the state institutions that govern foreign employment and the private migration industry are located primarily in Kathmandu Valley (see section 4.1.4). During my research, I realized that they also affect the distribution of roles in the recruitment sector: Each of the licensed agents I interviewed belonged to either a high-caste hill Hindu or a Janajati group. By contrast, I met Madhesi people only in the role of freelance brokers, which meant they exclusively occupied inferior positions in the industry. Since licensed agencies are vital gatekeepers in an infrastructure that is continually defined by clientelist and kinship-based networks (see section 4.1.5), this division of labor in the recruitment sector limits marginalized workers’ access to attractive foreign jobs even further.174 As this investigation has shown, today’s selective hiring among the pool of Nepali candidates is the result of both racist colonial scripts (including their manifestation in separate infrastructures of recruitment) and ethnic hierarchies within Nepali society. In other words, the categorizations of Madhesi people as primitive laborers and of Janajati groups as refined and honorable fighters and service personnel build on racist colonial imaginations but are also reinforced by structures of inequality that are internal to Nepal. As those hierarchies of regional and national scales intersect in everyday processes of selection, candidates of different ethnicities and bodily appearances are being affected in different ways: While members of Janajati groups have long been marginalized within Nepali society, they tend to receive better foreign employment opportunities due

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Arguably, one of the main reasons why the Maoist movement became so successful was that it reframed the domination of adivasi janajati as a “class” struggle. As Krishna B. Bhattachan (2013) suggests, it was only by shifting focus from the idea of “class” to ethnicity, gender, linguistic, religious, and regional issues that the Maoist leaders (all high-caste hill Hindu men) successfully mobilized Janajati, Madhesi, Dalits, and women groups. Ultimately, the lack of personal and clientelist contacts in the central and formal recruitment industry puts members of Madhesi groups at a severe disadvantage when it comes to access to attractive positions abroad. Not only are they unable to benefit from the practices of favoritism and nepotism that are widespread in the industry (and beyond)—they also miss out on an essential source of inside knowledge about vacancies and the general workings of the migration infrastructure. Although information about foreign employment and recruitment has become increasingly accessible with recent advancements in online platforms and cell phone apps (see section 4.3.2), linguistic, economic, and geographical barriers (e.g. based on the uneven distribution of technological infrastructures) for Madhesi candidates remain high.

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to the remaining Gurkha legacy. At the same time, the category of the “brave mountain warrior” was never clearly defined, and its association with particular ethnic groups has significantly shifted over time (Singh 2014).175 Due to this ambiguity, my research indicates that nowadays, many high-caste hill Hindus, too, pass as “noble” or “fair” enough for positions in security, hospitality, and other services. Thus, they are structurally privileged within Nepali society and also tend to benefit from the current rationalities of selective hiring. By contrast, members of Madhesi groups are both marginalized in Nepali society and often only get the chance to work in labor-intensive, dirty, dangerous, and difficult positions abroad. Throughout this section, I have illustrated that in-person interviews and skill tests represent only a fraction of selections that aspiring migrants have to pass on their way towards foreign employment. Instead, techniques of selecting and matching are crucial to the work of recruiters and shape workers’ entire pre-departure experience, starting from the initial moment of recruitment. Whether these technologies of standardization are conducted formally and with the help of different technical devices, or they result from intuitive and undocumented assessments—the criteria that inform them include not only a candidate’s professional skills and education level but also bodily features and personal conduct. By investigating the selection criteria on workers’ attitudes and their perceived “race,” I have illustrated that they are affected by multiple rationalities and structures of power on both regional and national scales, which sometimes reinforce and sometimes subvert one another. Ultimately, this shows that the path of Nepali candidates towards labor migration is shaped by powerful mechanisms of exclusion. Contrary to the seemingly homogenous imagination of the “Nepali worker,” the hiring of migrants is a highly differential practice that is informed by an intersection of both internal and international asymmetries of power.

4.3

Governing through Instruction

“Good morning, sir.” The young man’s voice sounds terse as he stomps his feet on the ground. Left, right, left. He salutes, then leans forward to take a thick book from the uniformed guard standing opposite him. Another salute, one more round of stomping, and he marches off in long strides, one arm clutching the book, the other arm swinging at his side. He then steps back into the row of four other men, taking a wide-legged stance, hands behind his back. It is now the next candidate’s turn. We are on the rooftop of one of Nepal’s largest recruitment agencies. The five candidates gathered here—all men between the ages of 23 and 36—are undergoing practical job training. They have already been hired based on their portfolios and will soon begin their jobs as security guards in different Malaysian companies. The uniformed guard is their instructor, a retired staff sergeant from the Nepali army, who has spent several years as a military contractor in Iraq. Normally, he works as a private security guard at this office building. But recently, the agency has started to run 175

For instance, “[d]escriptions of the racial origins and features of Gurkhas varied from ‘Mongoloid’ [to] ‘Caucasian’ and ‘Indo-Tibetan’” (Singh 2014), and at times, even Indian Garhwalis and Nepal’s Rajput Thakurs (a high-caste hill Hindu group) were regarded as part of this category.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

skills classes for some of its candidates, and he has been asked to step in as a practical trainer. It is his responsibility to teach these young men some of the basic conduct of a security guard. Two hours a day for a week is all the time he has to complete that task. It is only 9 o’clock in the morning, but the sun is already burning on the exposed concrete rooftop. At least, a soft breeze is blowing past us and through the random pieces of clothing drying on the line behind us. Part of me wishes I had one of those caps with the recruitment agency’s logo that the candidates have been wearing. By now, the group has moved on to the next exercise. Like the previous one, it is a fixed choreography of steps, hand gestures, and one or two English phrases. Every set of movements is being repeated over and over again, until it has become ingrained into each candidate’s awareness, memory, body. One of them is having trouble getting the current exercise right. The trainer ushers him forward and asks him to do the choreography again… and again. The more he tries, the more unnerved he is becoming. Two of the other men are chuckling. “Don’t laugh!” the trainer admonishes them. The candidate tucks nervously on his clothes, a bright yellow t-shirt with the print “I Nepal” on its front. He is not off the hook yet. “Come on, get moving! As a security guard, you cannot be lazy.” So he repeats the exercise, over and over. When the trainer is finally satisfied, he sends the candidate back to the group: “Don’t forget, all right?” In a few moments, today’s class will be finished, and the men will head downstairs. There, they will take part in an hour-long theory class with one of the junior agents, who used to work as a security guard in Malaysia himself. I spent yesterday’s session with them, when they were rehearsing the function of security: “A security guard is someone who maintains a secure environment.” I sat next to them while they were practicing how to write their hourly reports in English: “My post is clear. My duty is finished.” After the class, we got into a conversation. The candidate with the yellow shirt told me that he had used to work as a laborer, but a back injury had left him unable to do any heavy lifting. “I cannot work in labor anymore, so I hope that security will be easier for me.” One of the older men in the group said he had spent the past 13 years as a construction worker in Saudi Arabia. Now he is looking for something new. None of the men have had any previous experience in security. We have reached the end of the session. The trainer finishes it off with some advice: “Once you are abroad, you have to talk very politely. You have to use a soft voice. You can never be rude. You rather say ‘Hello sir, can you please come here?’” The others nod insecurely. “You have to respect the local people. It is their country, you know, it’s different from our Nepal. The people are different, the religion is different, the situation is different, everything is different, all right? So you have to conform when you go to a country that belongs to other people. You have to conform.” (Ethnographic vignette 2019, based on observations April 2018) The event described above took place during the last days of my ethnographic research. Participating in it and processing the experience through autoethnographic writing helped me bring core issues of my research into clearer focus. For instance, it demonstrated to me how recruitment agencies increasingly recognize the potential benefits of professional skills training and are expanding into this sector. The experience also taught me about the vast discrepancies between skill classes of different providers, and that even though some candidates undergo only a fraction of the training that others receive, they might all end up working in the same positions abroad. Despite these differences, there were many respects in which my impressions of the event matched those of other training sessions. For example, the vignette captures how

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skills instruction—not only in security but also in other professions—often operates via the direction and conduct of bodies, and specifically through techniques of bodily discipline. Moreover, it shows that most classes are not limited to strictly professional skills alone, but often cover participants’ personal behavior and mindset. Thus, they can be deeply transformative, not only concerning the bodily conduct of aspiring migrants but also by governing their subjectivities. Specifically, the instructor’s advice in the vignette mirror ideal values of the international low-skilled labor market, such as productivity and submissiveness, by teaching workers that they cannot be “lazy,” should always talk with a “soft voice,” and have to conform to their host context. As the title indicates, this part of my empirical analysis focuses on the various forms of instruction migrant workers receive before their departure. Representing the third pillar of the Nepali migration regime, these instructions include not only skills training programs, like the one described above, but also other forms of teaching, guiding, and educating, such as information published by the state, mandatory orientation classes, and briefings by recruiters. Just like these different types of techniques, the rationalities that inform them are manifold—from the problematizations of labor migration by the Nepali state and the nonprofit sector to interests of foreign employers and the recruitment industry. Due to their different backgrounds and intentions, many of those attempts to influence migrants’ minds and conduct contradict and subvert each other. For instance, some technologies of instruction are, based on the biopolitical strategy to shield the migrant population from health risks and other harm abroad (see 4.1.3), intended to inform aspiring migrants and ultimately protect them from fraud and exploitation. Others are directed at increasing economic benefits—for migrants individually, the recruitment industry, or the national economy. Many forms of instruction are also aimed at making workers’ transition into foreign employment smoother and avoiding altercations with employers, which serves not only migrants but also recruiters and the Nepali state at large. In this regard, they complement techniques of selection (see section 4.2.5), since they aim at closing the gap between a candidate’s present “qualities” and the skill levels, conduct, and mindset valued in the international labor market. This also means that instructions function as one more technology of standardization, which enables and advances the marketization of migrant labor. Despite their differences, all those forms of education, training, and advice do not only impart seemingly neutral “knowledge” and professional skills on migrants but are ultimately directed at a deeply personal transformation of their bodies, conduct, and subjectivities. In this broad yet profound orientation, they mirror the global trend of interventions towards the “ideal” or “good migrant worker” (Findlay et al. 2013; see also sections 2.1.2-3). It is precisely this government of individuals towards different facets of the “good migrant worker” that will be explored in this part of the analysis. I will do so primarily by identifying the different technologies deployed to instruct migrant candidates and unpacking the—often contradictory—rationalities that inform them. Although techniques of training and education are predominantly associated with socalled “subtle” modes of power, the role of coercive forms of government will be explored as well. In the first section, I will investigate professional skills training and discuss how the instruction of migrant candidates is embedded in the broader context of technical

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

and vocational education in Nepal. Section two unpacks the different types of information and advice that aspiring migrants receive on the recruitment process and their pre-departure conduct. By investigating not only state-run “awareness” campaigns and information by nonprofit organizations but also briefings and covert instructions by recruitment agents and brokers, I will show how these techniques often subvert each other and leave aspiring migrants in the crossfire. Section three examines the directives migrants receive on their health, safety, and rules abroad. It introduces mandatory orientation classes as a technology that is instrumental in those instructions, before then unpacking their content and—sometimes unintended—effects on migrants. Focusing on workers’ personal mindsets and behaviors, section four retraces how candidates are instructed towards matching the international market values of submissiveness and productivity. Ultimately, section five examines instructions aimed at harnessing the highest development benefits of foreign employment by teaching migrants to adopt rational remitting and investment practices and to become “entrepreneurs of the self.”

4.3.1

Towards the “qualified worker:” Technical and vocational training

When considering the types of instruction migrant candidates receive before their departure, professional skills training might seem like the most obvious and straightforward strategy of governing migration. While this is true for some well-known labor-sending countries like the Philippines, it is not (yet) the case in Nepal. As mentioned in section 4.2.2, Nepali labor migrants predominantly work in so-called “unskilled” or “semi-skilled” occupations: Among Nepali foreign labor permits issued in the fiscal year 2013/14, approximately 74 percent were classified as “unskilled,” 12 percent as “semi-skilled,” around 14 percent as “skilled,” and less than 1 percent as “highly skilled” (MOLE 2018, 54–55). This pattern is mirrored in host country data, such as those from Malaysia, where Nepalis currently represent 16 percent of the total documented migrant workforce, but account for only 0.4 percent of high-skilled migrants (Government of Malaysia 2019). Although those official numbers are never entirely accurate (see section 4.2.3), it is thus safe to say that the majority of Nepali migrant workers are currently employed in low-skilled positions. According to my interlocutors in the recruitment industry and skills training centers, those employment patterns are a direct consequence of workers’ low skill level. Indeed, the majority of Nepali migrant workers do not take any professional skills training before going abroad. What are the reasons for this, and how has this issue been addressed in the government of Nepali migration? In order to answer this question, I will first provide a brief outline of the types of skills classes typically available for migrant workers. On this basis, I will put these into the larger context of the technical and vocational training sector in Nepal and point out core issues that have increasingly been problematized in recent years. Finally, I will discuss the techniques of skills promotion that have emerged in response and identify the central rationalities that guide them.

Professional skills training for migrant workers—an overview During my ethnographic research, I focused on training programs that exclusively targeted prospective migrants. Typically, aspiring migrants take part in those courses only

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after having established contact with a recruitment agency or at least a local broker, who will establish the link to a training facility. This facility may be an independent vocational training provider, a center partnering with the recruitment agency, or even one of the agency’s own departments. In either of those cases, the training usually starts with an agent’s personal assessment of a candidate’s weaknesses and teaching potential. Recruitment agent Sudhir explains this process: Our main goal for preparing people is, whatever potential a person has, whatever capacity he/she has, [...] we see his/her weaknesses and we check if we can correct these things. So [...] I watch out with every individual, “What is the drawback in a particular candidate?.“ Like, [...] they have experience, but for talking, the medium is English, right? And if their English is weak, we cannot send them. So what we do in that case, […] according to their availability and their free time, we give them an interview preparation class for a couple of days.176 (ag20, 4-5) As Sudhir’s quote reflects, those assessments are an inherent part of the process of selecting and matching aspiring migrants to potentially “suitable” job categories (see section 4.2.5). Contrary to selections, however, the strategy to deal with candidates’ perceived weaknesses here is not to exclude them entirely, but to “correct” those weaknesses by providing targeted skills training. Hence, recruiters often employ skills classes strategically in order to increase a candidate’s chance of passing future rounds of selection. At the same time, some workers also receive training after they have already been hired, often as part of an agreement between the employer and the recruitment agency to prepare them for their specific job. The skills classes I observed during my ethnographic research mainly included basic courses in technical trades (such as scaffolding, welding, carpentry, masonry, electronics, and plumbing; see Figure 36) and low-level hospitality services (such as kitchen steward, room service, cleaner, waiter, and barista; see Figure 37), as well as English language classes (see Figure 38) and security guard training (see Figure 39).    

176

Original: Hamro main uddessye ke ho bhane, kunai pani candidate sanga potential chha, u sanga capacity chha, […] usko kamjori herera, kun kuraharuma uslai sikayo bhane usle tyo kuraharulai correction garna sakchha bhanera hami check garchhau. Tesaile, […] ma every individual lai watch out gariraheko hunchhu, “What is the drawback in particular candidate?” Jastai, […] U sanga experience chha ra usle batauna ko lagi medium English ho, haina? Tara English nai kamjor chha bhane usle batauna sakdaina. In that case hami ke garchhau bhane, uslai […] wa usko availability kati samma usle dina sakchha, wa kati din u trainingma aauna sakchha, tehi anusar hami uahalai interview preparation classharu dinchhau.

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Figure 36: Participants in a seven-day scaffolding course practice with their teacher (cap) at an agency-affiliated technical training center in Kathmandu. Figure 37: Theoretical session of a general hospitality training course at a vocational training center in Kathmandu.

(Source: H. Uprety 2018).

Figure 38: Whiteboard during an English language course for security guards at a recruitment agency in Lalitpur. Figure 39: Security guard training on the rooftop of a recruitment agency in Lalitpur.

(Source: H. Uprety 2018).

Since I was unable to visit a training facility for domestic workers, I hardly observed any female trainees. Although state regulations demand that women migrants bound for domestic work have to undergo a 21-day-long skills class (Sijapati et al. 2015, 55), none of the five female domestic workers I interviewed had participated in such a class.177 Therefore, my empirical insights on pre-migration skills classes are limited to the experience of male candidates (see also section 3.2.3). Among the range of training

177

During my remaining research, I only met three other female candidates: one cleaner at a recruitment agency and two supermarket cashiers at a pre-departure briefing and at an orientation training. Due to the little overlap between male and female professions, women’s skills classes usually take place at different training institutes. Since I did not manage to get access to any of those institutes, I was did not participate in any training specifically directed at women (see also section 3.2.2).

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programs I participated in, four of which are portrayed above, I observed vast discrepancies between different training facilities and the courses they offered, both regarding their contents and their duration. For instance, courses in scaffolding and welding lasted from as little as seven days to more than three months. Similarly, security guard training programs at specialized facilities typically followed a schedule of six consecutive 30-hour weeks, whereas a course offered at a recruitment agency I visited did not last longer than a total of 25 hours over seven days. This high discrepancy between skills training programs often leads to scorn and conflicts between vocational educators, the recruitment industry, and external donor organizations who finance some of the courses. As skills trainer Rajendra recalls, he has repeatedly been in dispute with some of his donors over the certified skill level of his training graduates: After that one-month-long course run by [donor organization], the output was “helpers.” No “skilled” level. We had a debate about this with [the organization]. They said “skill”—we said “No! That is not a skill. It is not a skill. That [training] was for a helper; he knows only general things.”178 (sk15 inf01, 23) As Rajendra’s experience shows, the quality and value of workers’ instructions are often contested in the industry. In order to understand this and other issues that affect the pre-departure skill training of aspiring migrants, it is necessary to investigate Nepal’s technical education and vocational training sector at large.

Problematizing technical education and vocational training in Nepal The low skill levels among Nepali migrant workers are not an issue specific to migration, but a reflection of Nepal’s vocational training sector in general. Between 2008 and 2012, the combined output of all training providers across Nepal was calculated at an average of only 60,780 graduates per year (Sijapati et al. 2015, 40). Considering that those graduates were not specifically directed at the foreign labor market but also absorbed by the domestic economy, and that within the same time frame, around 300,000 new workers annually were leaving for foreign employment alone (MOLESS 2020, 12), this number is staggeringly low. This current state of Nepal’s skills training sector is the result of decades of little attention, regulation, and investment from the national government. Although the early Panchayat regime had fostered ambitious plans to establish and expand a thriving vocational sector in Nepal,179 multiple state initiatives over the following decades turned out 178

179

Original: Tyo ek mahina […] chalayeko talimko manchhe output hune bhaneko chai “helper.” No “skilled.” […] [Sanstha] sanga hamro debate bhako chai yei ho. Uniharu “skill” bhanthyo, hamile chai “No! Yo skilled hoina. Yo helper ko lagi; samanye kura thaha hunchha.” According to five-year-plans of the 1960s and 1970s, technical and vocational training was a reasonably high priority in the early decades of the Panchayat regime (e.g., National Planning Commission 1970, 22-24). The government’s strategies of fostering professional skill development were initially to send people abroad for training (see section 4.1.3) and to launch multipurpose schools that provided vocational education. Over the following decades, several other initiatives followed, including the foundation and expansion of skill training centers throughout the country, and the introduction of a compulsory vocational secondary education system (Gaihre 2020). However, due

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

to be unsuccessful. This eventually changed in the 1980s with the formation of the “technical and vocational education and training” (TVET) sector, which has retained its basic structure until today. The sector’s central coordinating unit is the Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT), which was established in 1988 and continues to monitor and accredit courses executed by both public and private training institutions. However, despite its ambitious beginnings, the CTEVT today—which is more than three decades later—still oversees only 529 training institutions with a total enrollment capacity of 40,735 trainees (CTEVT 2016, 4). These low numbers in themselves demonstrate that Nepal has lacked a comprehensive and effective vocational education strategy for decades. Compared to more prestigious sectors such as university-level higher education, the TEVT sector continually received little attention and investments from the state government and has long been dependent on foreign assistance.180 As of 2015, 47 percent of all skills training programs were conducted by the public sector, 36 percent by donor-supported projects and 18 percent by private institutions (Sijapati et al. 2015, 40–41). This means that Nepal’s vocational training sector is currently populated by a variety of different institutions, which act under little state regulation and rarely communicate or coordinate with each other (Thami & Bhattarai 2015, 6). This has been increasingly problematized by international development organizations and skills training providers themselves. They argue that many private training centers operate entirely according to their own business rationales: While some of them run CTEVT-certified courses, they may also offer unlimited courses that do not comply with the council’s standards and are not subject to any controls or regulations regarding their content or participation fees. For instance, a CTEVT-certified program in “welding” of degree level 1, which is categorized as only “semi-skilled,” encompasses 720 hours of training. By contrast, participants in non-certified programs regularly take classes that take only a few weeks. On a larger scale, the lack of regulation also means that the majority of programs are offered in professions that attract the most training participants, rather than being targeted to meet the demands of the international or Nepal’s domestic labor market. For instance, when the massive earthquakes of 2015 led to severe destruction, and vast areas needed to be rebuilt, only 17 percent of course participants were trained in professions related to construction (Sijapati et al. 2015, 40–41). This response to popularity rather than labor market needs does not only include privately-run training businesses but also publicly funded programs. For instance, technical skills trainer Rajendra complains about a recent donor-funded project at his facility, which sponsored several hundred women who chose to be trained as beauticians and tailors: to lack of political will and multiple other challenges, the success of these initiatives remained very limited. Rather than expanding technical and vocational training, the state even reduced or closed existing institutions and initiatives, such as a model apprenticeship program in Dharan that had been intended as a test-run for the whole country but was never expanded. 180 Already in the early years of the Panchayat regime, international development agencies participated in the establishment of vocational training providers, such as the Butwal Technical Institute (BTI), which was founded in 1963 by United Mission to Nepal (UMN) and the Government of Nepal (BTI 2020). Since then, the role of foreign donors in Nepal’s vocational and technical sector has only expanded.

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Beautician and tailoring don’t have that much productivity. We need welders; we need masons. We need construction workers. At this time, you could not find a mason in the earthquake districts, right? But at the same time, this project is producing beauticians and tailors! There is no matching of demand and supply.181 (sk15 inf01, 4) As Rajendra explains, he is angered by the apparent mismatch between the country’s demand for certain professions and the funding of other professions without “that much productivity.” From his perspective, such programs ultimately serve neither Nepal’s economy nor the training graduates, many of whom will remain unemployed.182 Aside from the unregulated output of training programs, another issue problematized by nonprofit organizations and educators is that most CTEVT certifications have little credibility or relevance on the international labor market. For foreign employers, professional certificates of Nepali candidates reveal little about their actual skill level, which is why they consider practical skill tests to be so important (see section 4.2.1). Overall, one donor-funded study laments that “there is a dearth of skills training programmes that cater to the needs of migrant workers while the few courses that do exist do not meet the technological standards of the destination countries” (Thami & Bhattarai 2015, 6). The historically low interest of the Nepali state and the various shortcomings of training programs in Nepal have long been mirrored in a continuous disregard of technical education among the general Nepali public. Whereas academic education has been held in high favors in Nepali society, technical and manual professions have long been regarded as unworthy and damaging to one’s ijjat (see section 4.1.2). Although this view has somewhat changed over the past decades, and technical professions—particularly those that pay well—are slowly becoming more popular,183 this has had little effect on the public perception of pre-migration skills training. 181

182

183

Original: Beautician and tailoring tyeti dherai producitivity hoina. We need a welder, we need a mason. We need a construction worker. In this time, we could not find a mason in the earthquake districts, haina? Tara yaha yo project le beautician and tailoring production gariraheko chha. This is not matching demand and supply. While the high numbers of Nepali migrants are often rationalized by pointing to the country’s weak economy and high unemployment, several skills trainers reported to me that particular professions are actually in high demand in Nepal’s internal labor market. For instance, domestic positions as plumbers and high-skilled welders promise attractive wages, but they struggle to attract sufficient Nepali applicants. According to my interlocutors, the most common reason for such labor shortages is that the comparably few Nepalis with matching skillsets tend to prefer foreign employment—with its job security and welfare options—over employment in the unstable Nepali economy, which offers limited welfare and worker’s rights (e.g., sk15 inf01, 35-42; em05 obs02, 65-71). Thus, while millions of Nepali citizens work abroad, domestic jobs in high-skilled welding, plumbing, and other positions in infrastructure and construction are often filled by foreign workers from China and India. For example, the perception of technical and manual professions, which were traditionally regarded as damaging to a person’s ijjat (see section 4.1.2), has gradually been changing—particularly since increased demand for skilled technical workers has led to higher wages and the promise of full-time employment. Plumbing trainer Nabin describes this shift in public perceptions: “Before, when I started learning [myself], people regarded my work badly. They scolded me for learning that occupation. But now it has changed. From an income perspective, you can earn quite some-

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For most aspiring migrants, the low international recognition of Nepali certificates leads many to the conclusion that their participation in skills classes would be a waste of their time and money. Conversely, Shishir, a participant in a plumbing course, explains why he does not intend to use his training to apply for a job abroad: If I have a skill, even if I go abroad with that skill, they will not consider it valid. […] When we go there, we will become general workers, […] even if I am a senior plumber here. But I will have already had expenses of two or three lakhs, so I cannot just come back empty-handed.184 (participant 1, skce03 inf01, 30) Like Shishir, many young men, in particular, see technical and vocational training as something separate from employment abroad, where a Nepali-certified qualification will likely not be acknowledged. As a result, those who have already made up their minds to go abroad usually see no reason to invest months, weeks, or even just days in a skills class that—so they think—will not improve their employment conditions anyhow. Compared to such an insecure investment, the promise of quick earnings seems far more attractive. Whereas this rationality might be partly based on the shared experiences of migrant returnees (see section 4.1.2), local recruiters often reinforce it. As social worker Niraj explains, brokering skilled candidates is not of particular interest to them: If I learn a skill before going abroad, the broker is out of a job. Because I have already become knowledgeable, I am starting to understand things. [...] That’s why the broker scares people away from this path: “It will take one month to learn a skill. If you go abroad instead, you earn one month’s worth of money. Because you will not get a job in the skill you learned here anyway, you will work as a laborer there. So, believe me.” [...] That’s how the broker convinces people.185 (ngo01, 13) In Niraj’s words, brokers do not want to educate their candidates, as this might cause them to question the broker’s job and even make it redundant. Even if this does not apply to all freelance recruiters, another reason for their frequent skepticism is that they do not directly benefit from sending their candidates to a skills class: After all, organizing professional training requires a more elaborate brokerage process, while their profit margin remains roughly the same with each migrant. As long as the market demand for unskilled laborers remains high, there are thus few incentives for freelance recruiters to increase their candidates’ skill levels. The popular argument that a skills class will only cost workers valuable time and will not improve their employment conditions anyway

thing from plumbing. [...] People are now beginning to stop hating this work, because if you get an income from it, people stop hating.” (sk08, 5) 184 Original: Ahile bidesh laijane prabidhi yestai chha. Jo kasaiko hatma sip chha ni, tyo siplai pani tyaha gayera manyeta diraheko chhaina. […] tyha jane bittikai hami general worker hou, [….] jaba ki yaha u senior plumber ho. […] Dui, tin lakh rupiya kharcha bhaisakeko hunchha, tetikai farkana ta bhayena. 185 Original: Maile sip sikera gaye bhane, agent le ta kam nai paudaina. Kinaki ma janne hunchhu, bujhchhu. […] Tesaile agentle batai bat bhadkaune kam garchha. “Ek mahina lagchha sip sikna. Baru bidesh gayo bhane tyo ek mahina paisa ta kamauchhau. Kina ki yeta sikeko sip tya ta paudaina, tya gayera ta labor nai kam garne ho. tesaile mero biswas gar.” […] Yesari agentle manchhelai convert gariraheko chha.

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also explains why aspiring migrants show, if at all, interest in short training programs only. However, the low number of migrants in pre-departure skills classes is not only the result of those rationalities. It is also indicative of various barriers that hinder candidates from receiving training even if they might be interested in it. This is particularly the case for aspiring migrants from remote areas: As part of the geographical centralism that characterizes the Nepali migration infrastructure at large (see sections 4.1.4, 4.2.5), the vast majority of vocational and technical training programs are conducted in Kathmandu Valley. Not only are the geographical distance and transportation to the valley challenges in themselves, but paying for accommodation and food in the expensive urban area while spending several days, weeks, or even months without income is an investment many candidates are incapable of making. Some of those specific issues have recently led to changes in the skills training sector. As providers of longer training programs often struggle with low applicant numbers and high drop-out rates, a growing number of CTEVT-affiliated training providers and social donors have also begun to offer and fund shorter courses, which are targeted explicitly at the pragmatic demands of aspiring migrants. Furthermore, the past years have seen a more concerted effort to promote skills training among aspiring migrants and Nepali society at large.

Skills promotion as a strategy of governing migration Since the Nepali government, international development donors, and skills instructors have increasingly problematized the current state of vocational and technical training, a growing number of public and private interventions have been aimed at governing the sector into a new direction. In 2012 and 2014, for example, two projects were launched—the so-called “Skills Development Project” and the initiative “Enhanced Skills for Sustainable and Rewarding Employment” (ENSSURE), both of which relied on funding from foreign donors like the Asian Development Bank and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (Asian Development Bank 2020; ENNSURE 2019). Furthermore, some new organizations have been established exclusively for the purpose of advancing vocational and technical education, such as the so-called Employment Fund, an institution funded by Swiss and British development donors and the World Bank since 2011 (Employment Fund 2019a).186 While those initiatives have addressed Nepal’s technical and vocational sector as a whole, the state has also begun to specifically target migrant workers: As stated in section 4.1.3, the interim three-year-plan of 2007 declared, for the first time, the government’s intention “[t]o produce competitive human resources, capable of competing in the international labor market” (National Planning Committee 2007, 246). In 2018,

186 However, it needs to be noted that these foreign-donor initiatives are always limited to a certain time frame. Instead of implementing permanent change in state institutions and government budgets, those initiatives run for a specific number of years and end when the project periods are over and their budget has been spent. The resulting serial implementation of ever-changing projects is problematic in that it does not necessarily foster the formation of an independent and stable TEVT sector.

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political leaders announced their plan to vastly expand skills training for migrant candidates, “preparing to exclusively export skilled human resources [within] five years” (Sapkota 2018). Although the Nepali government has been notorious for making grand plans but rarely living up to them, the various interventions of recent years appear to have had some impact: According to newest data, 59 percent of new workers who received labor permits in 2018/19 were considered unskilled, whereas one year earlier, this share had still been at 64 percent (MOLESS 2020, 33). The above examples show that today, skills promotion has become an important technology in the government of Nepali migration. This is also reflected in various public awareness campaigns, where state and non-state institutions encourage potential candidates to participate in programs and apply for skilled rather than unskilled positions abroad. Furthermore, courses are increasingly being subsidized or funded entirely in order to facilitate access for candidates from different economic backgrounds. What are the reasons behind this increased prioritization of skills promotion, and how do they relate to the state’s general approach towards governing labor migration (see section 4.1.3)? Based on my research insights, I identify five main sets of rationalities: a) Lowering migrants’ individual risks: As many nonprofit organizations and state institutions have pointed out, a higher level of skills would allow migrant workers to secure more qualified positions abroad (e.g., National Planning Commission 2019, 328-333; Sijapati et al. 2015, 76; Thami & Bhattarai, 10). In most of the labor regimes that host Nepali migrants, more qualified employment would ensure less dangerous or physically demanding work, more contractual privileges, and better living conditions for migrant workers. This is particularly the case with female migrants, whose working conditions often differ drastically depending on their skills: Whereas women with a higher level of education can work abroad as supermarket cashiers or in the hospitality sector, others only have access to being employed as domestic workers. Positions in domestic work are not only more demanding and less well-paid but also take place inside the household, which, as has been shown by multiple studies (e.g., Amnesty International 2019b, 8; Kanchana 2018; Simkhada et al. 2018), significantly increases the risk of exploitation and sexual abuse. In its orientation towards lowering migrants’ individual health risks, this rationality is thus embedded in the state’s larger biopolitical project of preserving and fostering the lives and physical integrity of its migrant population (see section 4.1.3). b) Improving migrants’ economic and personal development: Another rationality that informs the promotion of skills training is that more highly skilled positions will provide higher wages and thereby offer workers more financial benefits. For instance, skills trainer Rajendra disputes the skepticism many migrants have about technical education by arguing that even a minor advance in one’s skill level will lead to better earning: People say that “labor” and “helper” are the same thing—no. “Labor” means you have to do casual work. You do not identify with your work. Today you carry cement, tomorrow you carry stone, the day after tomorrow you carry sand. But a helper is a trade helper! “Welder helper”—carrying the welding cable, carrying oven from welding, clean the

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machine, and so on. That’s a helper. And compared to labor, a helper also gets a bit more money.187 (sk15, inf01 24) As Rajendra argues, receiving basic training to become a “helper” instead of a general “laborer” will already increase a worker’s income. Moreover, he indicates that migrants benefit not only financially but also in terms of their working conditions and from having an occupation they can identify with. This argument is supported by technical instructor Binod, who shares how he usually convinces aspiring migrants to take part in a skills class: We tell them, “Do you want to see others do the work, or do you want to do the work yourself? [...] Do you want to work as an owner or as a helper? [...] It changes your mindset and many other things if you work under other people, or you want other people to work under you” So especially in the case of difficult people, we call them separately and talk to them in detail to change their mindset.188 (sk09, 38) As the above quote shows, Binod argues that the benefits of skilled migration are not only financial but can empower workers and help them become a “leader.” Like other instructors, he emphasizes workers’ own ability to shape their migration experience, which is why it is such an essential part of many skills classes to “change their mindset” (see also section 4.3.4). c) Skills training as an alternative to foreign employment: Contrary to the above rationalities, the promotion of skills training is also considered a means to reduce Nepal’s dependency on foreign employment. As such, it reflects the rationality that labor migration is, at its core, detrimental to Nepali society, and that the government should “end the compulsion of going abroad for employment” (Prime Minister KP Oli; quoted in República 2019) as soon as possible (see section 4.1.3). This perspective also explains why many nonprofit organizations remain skeptical about funding training programs that are primarily targeted towards foreign employment, thereby mirroring the ongoing ambivalence in Nepal’s development discourse on labor migration (see sections 4.1.1, 4.3.5). A position between those poles, which is increasingly taken by state and non-state institutions today, is that skills training, when paired with work experience abroad, could help workers even more to start a productive and fulfilling career upon their return to Nepal. d) Stabilizing and improving economic benefits for the state: Another rationality behind the Nepali state’s interest in training its migrant workforce is the expectation that this will

Original: “Labor” ra “helper” ma farak chha. Manchhe “labor” ra “helper” autai bhanchhan—no. “Labor” bhaneko chai usle casual work garnu parchha. Usko kamko kunai identify chhaina. Aaja cement boka, bholi dhunga boka, parsi baluwa boka. Tara helper is a trade helper! “Welder ko helper”—welding ko cable bokne, welding ko oven bokne, machine tanne, ampier badhaidine. U chai helper ho. Ra labor bhanda helper ko thorai paisa badhi pani chha. 188 Original: “Afno sathma arulai kam garaunuhunchha ya aruko sathma timi kam garna chahanu hunchha? […] Aafu sahu bhayera kam garna hunchha wa afu nokar basera kam garna chahanu hunchha? […] Afno underma arulai kam garaunu ra aruko underma kam garda kheri dherai kuraharu, manasikataharu paribartan hunchha. Yesta kuraharu hamile alaggai typeko manchhe lai bolayera, chhuttai rakhera hamile briefing garayera manasikta banaune kam garchhau. 187

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

maintain and even increase the nation’s economic profits. In this regard, the promotion of skills training is closely tied to the Nepali government’s rationality that foreign employment is an economic opportunity that should be maximized (see section 4.1.3). As the Nepali state and economy have come to rely deeply on the financial benefits derived from labor migration—both directly, through remittances, and indirectly, via various fees and the economic boost to the private migration industry, ensuring that this source of income remains as stable and reliable is an obvious concern. In this light, the international competition Nepali workers face from cheap low-skilled workers of other nationalities (see section 4.2.3) thus constitutes a considerable risk for the Nepali state and recruitment industry. As quoted earlier from the government’s three-year-plan, workers’ higher qualifications are supposed to make them more “capable of competing in the international labor market” (National Planning Commission 2007, 246). From a marketization perspective, the promotion of skills training thus serves as a technology of singularizing migrant labor, which is Nepal’s most profitable export commodity, and rendering it less “disposable” (see section 4.2.3). This rationality can increasingly be detected in Nepal’s development sector, where multiple donor agencies and advisors to the government have been suggesting that the vocational training sector should be matched to the expected labor demand in countries like Malaysia and the Gulf. For instance, a study financed by GIZ and ILO suggests that there is likely to be continued demand for migrant workers in the Gulf states and Malaysia due to large-scale infrastructural development projects [...] [which] will see an increase in the demand for civil engineers, masons, welders, foremen, supervisors, skilled carpenters, waiters, caregivers, nurses, paramedics, and electricians, to name a few. With proper investment in skills training for migrant workers, Nepal could meet this demand for high-skilled workers. (Thami & Bhattarai 2015, 3–4) In order to understand the potential policies this rationality might fuel further down the line, it is insightful to look at the Philippines and other countries across Asia that have internalized this rationality for decades and adapted their education system “to produce migrant workers who will have an advantage over other nationalities” (Ortiga 2017, 495). In order to make the practice of labor migration more profitable, those countries have not only been advancing workers’ qualifications in general but fostering skills that predominantly cater to the short-term needs of certain overseas labor markets, rather than the long-term needs of their national economies (Rodriguez 2010; Yeates 2009). e) Benefits to individual recruitment businesses: A final rationality that is leading to the expansion of skills training is not tied to the state promotion of technical education but rather to the rising interest among recruitment agencies. Although low-skilled workers continue to make up the bulk of brokered migrants, a growing number of agencies have become more invested in sending their candidates to classes or even begun offering their own skills training. As stated at the beginning of this section, recruitment agencies offer instructions both to hired workers prior to their departure and to candidates who are still in the application process. Contrary to freelance recruiters, who do not

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particularly profit from skilled candidates,189 licensed agencies increasingly consider this to be in their own business interest. For instance, agent Sudhir explains: Our main goal of doing this [...] is that as many candidates as possible will be selected. […] So we have a direct benefit from that, from these candidates. Like, right now, we don’t take any charge [for the training], but [...] our intention is that by training them, we make the selection ratio high, and from that, we have a direct profit for the organization. Because if the selection has gone well, we get to work in a better way with the companies. So that’s how we benefit.190 (ag20, 4-5) As Sudhir’s statement shows, there are multiple ways in which recruiters expect to benefit from training their candidates. Whether skills classes improve their performance at selection events or prepare them for their expected work tasks abroad—either way, these measures are likely to increase the client’s satisfaction and thus boost both shortand long-term profits for the agency. As a result, the industry’s rising interest in skills training is based on the intent to not only singularize Nepali migrant labor at large but to increase the calculated “value” of the agency’s specific candidates and thus profit individually. Ultimately, my investigation here and in this section has brought about several insights: First, it has become largely uncontested that technical education and vocational training now plays an increasingly important role in the government of Nepali labor migration. At the same time, the rationalities that inform techniques of skills promotion are multiple and sometimes contradictory. These contradictions are often not articulated but intertwined in particular policies. As in the state’s declared intention “[t]o reduce unemployment by developing skilled and competitive labor force in accordance with the demand of the domestic and international labor markets” (National Planning Commission 2007, 247), different goals are muddled together that might actually oppose each other. These frictions, which remain glossed over for now, are likely to become more apparent with future policy decisions and their outcomes in the coming years.

4.3.2

Competing instructions on recruitment and pre-departure conduct

In the same way that biopolitical rationalities—geared towards preserving the physical and mental integrity of the migrant population (see sections 2.2.1, 4.1.3)—have played a role in the promotion of skills training, they underlie other forms of instruction as well. In particular, the Nepali state has increasingly problematized the many subversive 189 However, this perception gradually seems to be changing as well: At least some of the brokers I interviewed increasingly followed the lead of recruitment agencies and realized that offering skilled positions is a factor that makes them more attractive among aspiring migrants. 190 Original: Khas hamro direct interview preparation garaunu ko main uddyesse bhaneko number of candidate jo hunuhunchha, tesko selection chahi dherai hos bhanera ho. […] So we have indirect benefit from there or from these candidates. Jastai ahile hamile uhaharu sanga kunai pani charge lidainau. Tara […] hamro intention uhaharulai train garayera selection list high garaunu ho. Ra tesko direct benefit chai organization lai hunchha nai. Kinaki selection list ramro bhaye pachhi, we get to work in a better way with the companies. Tyesari hami benefit linchhau.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

practices in the recruitment sector (see sections 4.1.4-5), which it sees as the core risk to migrants’ health and safety. According to the government, it is mainly workers’ general lack of knowledge about the formal recruitment process that makes them vulnerable to deceit, exploitation, abuse, financial loss, and various health risks. In response to this problematization, the Nepali state has not only required “manpower” agencies to inform their candidates on the formal steps of recruitment; it has also begun to educate them on these processes itself. Today, there are various techniques that teach aspiring migrants how to navigate the Nepali recruitment industry and conduct themselves on their path towards foreign employment. These instructions on migrants’ conduct before they leave the country are the topic of this section. I will begin this exploration by listing the different technologies of teaching and information that are currently being deployed by the Nepali state and nonprofit organizations. In a second step, I will outline the main content of those instructions, focusing primarily on the state. I will go on to show how recruiters, by contrast, subvert not only state regulations but even state instructions by teaching aspiring migrants how to subvert those regulations as well. Finally, I will explore the effect of these competing instructions on aspiring migrants.

The Nepali state and nonprofit organizations as providers of information and training In order to prepare migrant candidates for the recruitment process and their foreign employment experience, the Nepali government began running awareness campaigns during the 2000s and significantly expanded them following the Foreign Employment Act of 2007 (see section 4.1.3). Formally, these campaigns are implemented by the FEPB under supervision of the DoFE. Since its formation in 2007, the FEPB has issued a variety of informational material, including various booklets about safe migration in general (see Figure 40) and specifically for female workers, an informational bulletin (see Figure 41), and brochures on specific host countries (see section 4.3.3).

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Figure 40: Handbook for migrant workers, titled Pravas diary. Figure 41: Quarterly journal “Foreign Employment Bulletin.”

(Source: FEPB 2017; FEPB 2013a).

As the above examples illustrate, this printed material does not only contain information on different host countries and the experience of working abroad; it also teaches aspiring migrants about the recruitment process and the legal framework of foreign employment. The booklets and brochures are usually available at public offices such as the DoFE and the FEPB, as well as orientation centers (see section 4.3.3), some skills training providers, and nonprofit counseling centers.191 Additionally, the FEPB has also produced numerous PSAs in video and audio formats, which frequently run on national television and radio stations. Similarly to the commercials for private recruitment agencies (see section 4.1.2), those PSAs often employ humor or tragedy in order to evoke an immediate emotional response in the audience. Many of them feature short stories in the style of telenovelas, whose protagonists emulate the dialect and speech patterns of the most rural and uneducated members of their audience. Others take the form of music videos, which have many parallels to the pop and folk songs that are produced by the private music industry (see section 4.1.2). Additionally to the state’s technologies of instruction, numerous nonprofit organizations—many of them belonging to the development sector—have been raising public 191

Although the availabilty of those publications has increased in recent years, they are still not always easily accessible—in geographic terms (given that much of the infrastructure of migration is located in Kathmandu Valley and other urban centers, see sections 4.1.4, 4.2.5) and also regarding their text-heavy appearance, which renders them unappealing to workers of lower educational levels.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

awareness about labor migration, supporting specific groups of migrants, and advocating for their rights. For instance, the organization Pourakhi, in English “self-reliant,” which formed in 2003 as one of the first initiatives on the topic, focuses mainly on women migrant workers (Pourakhi Nepal 2019b). Among its many activities, the organization conducts community-based awareness training across the country. It also broadcasts a bi-monthly radio program on the channel Radio Nepal, in which it aims to inform potential migrants about the challenges and benefits of foreign employment. Furthermore, it runs information desks in different locations across Nepal and “publishes information, communication and education [...] materials related on [sic] safe migration with special focus on women migrant workers” (id. 2019a). Another initiative, the Safer Migration Project (SaMi), conducts community-based awareness training programs in rural areas and runs about 450 so-called “Migration Resource Centers” in small towns across Nepal (SaMi 2019). Funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and assisted by the Swiss development organization Helvetas, the organization is also well-known for sponsoring training programs at vocational and technical education institutes (see section 4.3.1). Furthermore, the most recent years have seen the arrival of digital initiatives, such as the mobile app Shuvayatra, in English “safe travels,” which offers aspiring migrants a wide range of information and advice on foreign employment (Shuvayatra 2019). In harnessing the increasingly widespread use of smartphones in Nepal, the app and other online platforms have opened up entirely new avenues of reaching and educating migrant workers. While the above institutions and techniques play a leading role in the Nepali migration regime, they are flanked by a growing number of smaller initiatives that seek to inform, advise, and counsel workers on all aspects of foreign employment. But what do they teach aspiring migrants specifically about the ideal conduct before their departure and, particularly, during recruitment?

State instructions on right conduct during recruitment As stated initially, instructions on this early stage of labor migration are firmly based on biopolitical rationalities, which identify subversive practices of recruitment as a core risk to the safety and health of the migrant population. I will now explore the content of these different types of information, recommendations, and advice—specifically among those published by the Nepali government. Above all, public information campaigns and material remind aspiring migrants to be aware of all formal details of their recruitment and the foreign position they are applying for. For instance, the migrant workers’ handbook Pravas Diary, in English “Abroad Diary,” suggests they should ask themselves the following questions: Which country are you going to? What salary are you going for? How much does it cost? Which manpower are you going from? These and more things need to be known before you go. You have to understand the expenses and income very well.192 (FEPB 2017, 40)

192

Original: Kun desh jane ho? Kati talabma jane ho? Lagat kharcha kati lagchha? Kun manpower bat jadaichhu? Aadi kuraharu bujhera janu parchha. Lagat kharcha ra aamdaniko barema ramrari bujhnu parchha.

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As the above quote shows, the most important details that workers should always keep in mind include their country of destination, the promised salary, the costs of recruitment, and the name of their recruitment agency. Moreover, the brochure urges aspiring migrants to use this information in order to make a rational decision on going abroad by calculating the expected expenses and income (see also section 4.3.5). In this and other ways, the government makes it very clear that it is absolutely compulsory for migrants to be aware of this information themselves, and that they need to do so before their departures. This directive is echoed in many PSAs, such as the following music video that emulates the style of Nepal’s popular folk songs (see Figure 42) and which reminds aspiring migrants to carefully choose a licensed recruitment agency and to pay attention to their contract conditions, such as job position, salary, working hours, and facilities:

Figure 42: Video stills and transcribed audio of PSA in the style of a folk song.*

(Source: FEPB 2012a). *Original: Baideshik rojgarma janele, afnai paurakh kamai khanele: Janu hai bujhera ijajat payeko, […] biswas bhayeko company khojera. […] Company kun ho, swikriti sangh ko liyeko chha chhaina? Ke kamma jane ho, kaha ho basne, ke ke chhan subidha? […] Helchakrai gare, aruko bhar pare; parla hai feri, dhuru dhuru runalai.

Like the printed brochure, the television spot tries to move its audience into action by speaking to them directly. As reflected in its song lyrics, migrants’ personal knowledge and awareness before going abroad are considered essential prerequisites so that they will not “end up in tears” after having arrived there. Furthermore, the PSA emphasizes that workers should carefully choose a recruitment agency that is licensed and trustworthy. This distinction between trustworthy and dubious recruiters also plays a role in the following television spot, which takes the form of a short story (see Figure 43).

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Figure 43: Video stills and transcribed audio of PSA in the style of a telenovela.*

(Source: FEPB 2012c). *Original: Srimati: Bela belama phone garnus, bidesh gaye pachhi ta srimatilai ni birsanchha bhanchhan. Tara malai chai nabirsanu ni. Kamdar: Testo nachaido kuro ni garne ho. Ma talai birsana sakchhu? Afno chhoriko khyal garnu. Ma gaye hai? […] Chhori: Ba-ba, Chadai aaunus hai, baba? Kamdar: la la. […] “Sir:” Bidesh jada aafno bimansthal prayog garnu. Agent wa dalal le arko mulukko bimansthal bat lana khojyo bhane najanu. Thagna sakchha. Baideshik bibhagbat visa lageka, sakkal samjhauta patra, karar patra, rahadani ani bima patra sadhai aaphu sath rakhnu. Natra samasyama parinchha ni.

As the above transcript shows, the PSA contrasts formal authorities and legal processes against “subterranean” recruitment practices (see section 4.1.4). Whereas “some broker” appears as potentially fraudulent and someone that might get workers “into trouble,” the formal documents and stamps by the DoFE serve as legitimizing tools that promise them security. Since many irregular migrants cross the open border to India and their employment is arranged from there, the announcement specifically reminds workers to only depart with a valid labor permit and via the only regular country exit, Kathmandu airport. In addition to those verbal instructions, the PSA also evokes—like many others of its kind—an affective response in the audience. For instance, the warning that inconsiderate workers “will get into trouble” takes on significantly more gravity in the context of the worker’s emotional goodbye from his wife and young daughter. Against the backdrop of his personal sacrifice, candidates are motivated even further to behave responsibly and with consideration, just as the respected “sir” in the story commands (Figure 43). A similar effect is caused by instructions that issue even more explicit warnings, such as the music video shown in Figure 44. As the PSA suggests, aspiring migrants need to be cautious and well-informed about every single step of their recruitment process. Anything else could have dire consequences for them since they might be cheated and come back “empty-handed” or “ruined.” This serious warning tone is used not only with respect to fraudulent recruiters but also to impress upon workers that they absolutely have to adhere to every formal requirement by the government. As numerous brochures,

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television spots, and radio jingles point out, workers who fail to do abide by even one provision cannot count on support from the Nepali state but should expect to be left stranded and “helpless abroad”193  (radio jingle, id. 2012d).

Figure 44: Video stills and transcribed audio of PSA in the style of folk song.*

(Source: id. 2012e). *Original: Bidesh jane bhandai tesai nagarau hai kharcha, baideshik rojgariko kura bujhnu parchha. […] Sodhbujh kehi nagari bidesh janchhu bhanda, paisa jati dubchha tesai bigrinchha ghar dhanda. […] Bidesh jane raharle thulo rin layera, rittai hat pharke kati gota khayera.

Remarkably, those instructions manage to be explicit in their warnings, yet voice no criticism of labor migration in general. Rather, they praise migrant workers as those who take their lives into their own hands (Figure 42, left) and show migrants’ wives enthusiastically smiling when they either hear of the husband’s plan to migrate (ibid., left) or happily clutch his earned money (ibid., right). At the same time, they do raise skepticism about the supposedly easy earning abroad (Figure 44, right) and thereby challenge the deeply embedded discourse of modernizing development and progress that has long fueled recruitment into migration (see sections 4.1.1-2). Ultimately, the sense of urgency that characterizes much of the public informational material is focused on unlicensed brokers and recruitment practices that undermine official regulations. In issuing such explicit and emotional warnings, they reflect the Nepali state’s strategic effort to fight against subversive practices. However, once aspiring migrants have actually come into contact with recruiters, they are subjected to a range of additional instructions and recommendations, some of which guide them in an entirely different direction.

Recruiters’ instructions between formal briefings and “subterranean” directives Once aspiring migrants have registered with a recruitment agency, that agency is legally responsible for informing and preparing its candidates about the details of their employment conditions before signing the work contract. Specifically, the Foreign Employment Act demands that recruitment agents send workers abroad only after “getting [them] to clearly understand [the contract’s] terms and conditions and provisions of remuneration” (GoN 2007, 25[1]). Thus, every worker must participate in a formal

193

Original: Natra bidesh pugera alapatra pariyela.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

briefing (purva-prasthan jankari) at the recruitment agency prior to his or her departure (see section 4.1.3). During those pre-departure briefings, a recruitment agent informs the candidate—or, as far as possible, all workers belonging to one lot at once (see section 4.2.3)—about the basics of their work agreement and provides them with their official documentation. In turn, they pay any outstanding bills and sign the contract. Moreover, migrants receive the details of their travel arrangements and instructions on the last things they should do before their departures, which is often scheduled for the following day. Although most of the content of the briefings is regulated, they can last anywhere from fifteen to sixty minutes, depending on the size of the group, the complexity of the work arrangement, and informal instructions added by the agent. Usually, these briefings, like those pictured in Figure 45 and Figure 46, occur shortly before migrant workers leave the country—sometimes even just hours prior to their departure. This often puts migrants in a difficult predicament: For many, their only direct contact up to that point has been their local broker, which means that their formal briefings are the first time migrants even set foot in the office that has officially arranged their employment. Moreover, these events are often the first opportunity to see their formal contract and find out what is written in their official recruitment papers. Usually, it is only then that migrants hear about the final costs of their recruitment and other “subterranean” technologies such as double contracts (see sections 4.1.4, 4.2.3). As they have virtually no chance to either resist or change those conditions at such a late stage, they are forced to accept them and simply “play along” (see section 4.1.5).

Figure 45: Signing a work contract during pre-departure briefing at a major recruitment agency in Lalitpur. Figure 46: Pre-departure briefing at a Lalitpur-based recruitment agency.

In Figure 45, the migrant candidate for the position of mason in Qatar (left) bows down to sign the contract, while his agent is talking on the phone. In Figure 46, the migrant candidate (right), who is headed for a job as a general laborer in Saudi Arabia, receives a frontal instruction on his work contract, expected behavior, and travel arrangements. (Source: H. Uprety 2018).

Based on my research insights, I argue that this standard timing of pre-departure briefings is no accident but intentional: By being left in the dark about these vital details, the last possible moment, workers are effectively disempowered. In this way, they

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exactly counteract the ideals of transparency and workers’ personal responsibility that are emphasized so strongly by state-run information campaigns. Rather than fulfilling those ideals and ensuring migrants’ well-being, the pre-departure briefings I observed appeared to be mostly about navigating the legal requirements and “ticking off boxes.” This also explains why I often experienced them as a performance of rehearsed questions and answers, with agents asking what they were legally required to and candidates answering what the government wanted them to say. As described in more detail in section 4.1.5, such performances culminated in some candidates (falsely) stating on camera that their recruitment fees had remained within the legal limit. Focusing specifically on the instructional aspects of these briefings opens up additional insights into them: They are not only events at which migrants find out about the various “subterranean” technologies that have shaped their recruitment and hiring—from double contracts to unlicensed brokers and hidden fees. Instead, they are also used as an opportunity to teach workers how to conceal these violations of the law and how to navigate the remaining pre-departure process without “being caught.” In particular, these instructions concern how to pass the final government checkpoint, which is the labor desk at Kathmandu airport (see section 4.1.3). During one of the briefings I observed, for example, recruitment agent Prasad casually informed one of the candidates that his actual employment contract was different from the one in his official labor permit. While briefly showing him each document in his portfolio, which would be checked at the airport, he suddenly reached into his desk and handed him a second document, saying: Put this away somewhere. Don’t show this at the airport, okay? [...] You are getting your salary according to this. You cannot show it at the airport. Fold it and maybe put it in your pocket. Your flight goes at ten in the evening, alright? [...] This is the permit letter, this is the contract according to the permit, this is the contract in Nepali, this is the life insurance, this is the service charge [receipt]. Now, after leaving here, you have to say 10,000, alright? This is the medical report, this is the sticker in the passport and the visa. Got it?194 (mp01 obs01, 27-36) According to the above quote, Prasad makes a quick distinction between the candidate’s actual work contract, which will determine his salary, and the “contract according to the permit.“ Thus, he follows the official script of pre-departure briefings almost completely—except for a short moment when he swiftly and casually inserts a “subterranean” technique. While doing so, he gives the candidate specific instructions on how to conduct before and during his journey. This includes not only hiding the real work contract from Nepali authorities but also declaring that his recruitment fees were only a fraction of what he actually paid.

194 Original: Rakha rakha yo. Nadekhau yo hai airportma? […] Tapaiko salary yo anusar ko paunu hunchha. Airportma dekhaunu bhayena, patyayera khaltima rakhnu hola. beluka 10 bajeko flight. hai? […] yo shramko chitthi, yo shram anusarko agreement, yo Nepalima agreement, yo jeevan bima, yo sewa sulka halya, Aba yaha bat nikle pachhi 10 thousand bhanera bhannu paryo, haina? Yo medical report, ani passportma sticker, ani visa chha, bujhyo ni?

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

This covert and subversive style of coaching becomes even more evident in the following quote by agent Ishwor, who briefs his candidate specifically on how to answer any question that government officials might ask him: At the labor desk, they will ask about the orientation class. Say you took two days of orientation. Say that one day, they were teaching and the other day, they showed something on the T.V. [...] And the person will ask you about the salary you are getting, okay? Tell them it is 800 plus 200, or 800 plus food. If they ask you what work you are going for, you tell them you are going for labor. Okay? [...] If they ask you to which company, you have to say [company name], okay? [...] Did you get all that? On this document, it says 10,000. If they ask you what overall expenses you had, tell them 20-25,000, all right?195 (mp11, 6-8) As my transcription of the event reflects, Ishwor teaches the migrant exactly what to say about his participation in the mandatory orientation class (see section 4.3.3), the content of his official work contract, and about the supposed recruitment costs. In using explicit commands like “tell them” and “you have to say,” he inculcates a precise form of conduct in the worker. Based on these different research insights, I conclude that pre-departure briefings might well fulfill all legal requirements at first glance, but are often used to teach workers covertly how to play along with, and thus perpetuate, the sector’s subversive practices. Thus, while these briefings originally became mandatory in order to uphold state regulations and ensure workers’ fair treatment, they sometimes serve the exact opposite purpose. However, licensed agents are not the only ones who instruct migrant workers on pre-departure conduct. Since most migrants’ direct contact is not with a recruitment agent but with a local broker (see section 4.1.4), these freelance recruiters have even more opportunities to influence their conduct. For instance, broker Suresh explains that he usually gives his recruits extensive advice, including detailed instructions on all steps of the pre-departure process, right up to their last preparations at home: We inform them: “Alright, your visa is coming in one week, one month. We give them information to prepare their household affairs according to that. […] Getting ready to go means, maybe go shopping, meet with your relatives, meet your friends, some have to do something about their land, they might have to transfer it. […] That’s what we tell

195

Original: Shram deskma sodhchha orientation ko barema. Tapaile dui din class liyo bhanne. Ek din padhayo ek din TVma dekhayo bhanne. […] Ani tapaialai sodhchha, kati salaryma jana lageko bhanera, ho? 800 plus 200 bhanne wa 800 plus khana bhanne. Ke kamma jana lageko bhanera sodhchha, laborma jana lageko bhanne, hai? […] Ke companyma bhanxa? [Name] company bhanne tha chha tapailai? […] Bujhnu bhayo ni? Ya kagajma 10 hajar lekhya hunchha, kati kharcha bhayo bhanera sodhyo bhane 20-25 hajar bhanne, hai?

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them ten, fifteen days in advance. Little brother, it’s like this and that, you have to do this and that.196 (iag02, 22) The instructions Suresh mentions here concern mainly practical and organizational advice. On the other hand, descriptions from migrant returnees and my own observations suggest that brokers’ recommendations are often more intricate and consequential than Suresh gives them credit: They frequently include personal, repeated, and powerful forms of coaching, training, and counseling that accompany the entire pre-departure stage. Often, these instructions contradict state information and regulations even more blatantly than the covert directives of recruitment agents. For instance, if a candidate—perhaps encouraged by a television spot—requests detailed information on his or her promised job position and conditions, many brokers deflect such demands and either reassure, discourage or rebuke him or her. Sometimes, this reflects that they, themselves, do not have detailed information about the offered position, but are dependent on the limited information they were given by their agency contact (see section 4.1.4). Furthermore, like with candidates’ professional skills training (see section 4.3.1), brokers generally do not benefit from a more well-informed candidate. For both freelance recruiters and licensed agents, having exclusive knowledge of the migrant labor market is a significant working capital, which ultimately means that neither of them is interested in making the recruitment process more transparent. As a candidate’s most direct contact and often a trusted member of his or her local community (see section 4.1.4), brokers have the unique opportunity to become his or her personal coach. This gives them considerable power and influence over aspiring migrants, as Niraj, a social worker at a nonprofit organization, laments: No matter where [aspiring migrants] are, [brokers] get there earlier than us. So the people don’t receive our message. [...] Because the broker has already arrived there before us. He has already told them: “Some organization might come and try to manipulate you that you have to do this and have to learn a skill before going abroad, that you need a receipt of your payment, that you should leave your documents [at home], that there might be problems abroad. But that’s all nonsense, don’t do any of that. I have already sent so many people just like you.” That’s how they instruct them, so that they have already made up their mind. Just like the thief is one step ahead of the police, they are one step ahead of us.197 (ngo01, 16)

196 Original: Hami uhalai inform garchhau, la, tapaiko aba one week, one monthma visa aaudaichha. Tehi anusar afno ghar tira preparation garnus bhanera hamile information dinchhau. […] Jane tayari bhannale afno shopping garne hola, koi istamitra lai bhetne, koi sathibhai lai bhetne, koi afno jaggako kam hunchha, pass garera janu parne hola. […] Tyo hami hapta, 10 din, 15 din agadi nai bhandinchhau uhalai. Bhai, yesto yesto chha, ke ke garna parne ho gara hai. 197 Original: Hami bhanda agadi uniharu bidesh jane manchhe bhako thauma pugchhan.Tara hamro kura receive gardainan. […] Kina ki already hami bhanda pahila agent pugisakya hunchha. Usle pahile bhanisakya hunchha: “Timiharulai bhadna sakchha, koi sanstha aayera yesto garnu parchha, sip sikera bahira janu parchha, bharpai garnu parchha, yo mathiko document chhodnu parchha [gharma], bideshma samasya paryo bhane yesto bhanchha. Kehi hudaina, garne kehi hoina. Hamile ta yesto manchhe kati pathayou pathayou.” Uslai yesari sikako hunchha ki u hami bhanda batho bhaisakya hunchha. Police bhanda chor ek kadam agadi bhanya jastai, uniharu hami bhanda ek kadam agadi jaile ni hunchhan.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Niraj’s statement reveals that nonprofit organizations and government authorities see themselves in competition with the recruitment industry—a competition over workers’ minds and conduct. As discussed earlier, they teach aspiring migrants about the legal process and that freelance recruiters are untrustworthy and often fraudulent. However, this message often falls on deaf ears with, as they have already been in contact with the broker, who, in turn, instructed them to perceive public and nonprofit institutions as untrustworthy. Contrasted against brokers’ local embeddedness and personal relationship with them, public and nonprofit institutions appear as unfamiliar and without direct relevance to their lives. Furthermore, as social worker Niraj argues, brokers often choose words like “manipulate,” “have to,” and “need” in order to transport a sense of coercion and domination, which makes aspiring migrants feel like their broker’s subversive practices will let them break free from an overly controlling state. As a result of these dynamics, it is usually recruiters who “win” the competition and have the most profound effect on migrants’ conduct.

Migrants in the crossfire between competing instructions Concerning their “ideal” conduct during recruitment and the pre-departure stage, aspiring migrants are thus exposed to multiple and competing instructions at once: On the one hand, the state tells them to be aware of all information on their recruitment and employment, and warns them against violating the legal framework. On the other, recruiters inculcate in them a suspicion of the state and other unfamiliar organizations, and teach them how to navigate state controls by concealing the subversive practices they have become involved in. Often, candidates see no option but to behave according to their recruiters’ instructions, although this frequently means they give up legal rights or leverage in case of fraud or maltreatment. However, even if they choose to follow the instructions they have received from state and nonprofit institutions, this does not necessarily play out to their advantage either. Technical instructor Rajendra shares the following experience at his training center, when a trainee whose professional skills course had included a one-day “awareness” class subsequently refused to pay the fee demanded by his broker: After the student leaves the training, the broker says: “Now, bring me the money. Your visa has come.” And the student asks: “How much is it?”—“80,000”—“No, I won’t. I will not give you more than 10,000. And if you don’t accept, I will make a phone call [to the authorities, H.U]. Because [the organization] has just given me the phone number.” After that, the next time the broker tells us: “We will bring no more people to the training. We have worked hard to get people from the village.” [...] From then on, the broker stops coming to us, stops bringing people.198 (sk15, 18)

198 Original: Bikas [karmachari] ta niskyo bahira. Tespachhi agent le bhanyo: “Visa aayo, paisa leu.” Ani tespachhi: “Kati leu?”—“80,000 leu.”—“Nai, hunna. 10,000 bhanda badhi hami didainau. Kura milena bhane, fone garau ta tinilai? Kina bhane ahile bharkhar [sanstha] le number disakeko chha.” Ani tespachhi arko patak dekhi agentle hamilai bhanyo: “Hami talimma manchhe lyaudainau. Hami dukha garera gaubat manchhe lyaune.” Ani tespachhi, tyo agent hamroma aaunai chhodyo, manchhe lyauna chhodyo.

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As Rajendra explains, the training participant, who had been taught never to pay a recruitment fee that exceeded the legal limit, applied this lesson with his local broker and even threatened to report him to the authorities. After losing his income from that particular candidate, the broker responded by prohibiting all of his subsequent recruits from taking skills classes because he now considered this a risk. In this sense, the “awareness” training offered by a nonprofit organization backfired because it led to a further hardening of lines between recruiters, migrants, and the skill sector. As a result of several such altercations, skills classes at the center received fewer and fewer participants, since these had largely been provided by local brokers. Whereas the oneday “awareness” training had been intended to empower migrants during the recruitment process, the clashing technologies triggered a contentious dynamic: Ultimately, migrant candidates are the ones who bear the negative consequences since they are left with even less access to information and education than before. Whereas government officials publicly express their dismay at this vulnerability of migrants, the state is not innocent in this situation. Public authorities put migrants in a difficult spot by instructing them to demand a process that is—as they know well—rarely provided by recruiters. For instance, the migrant workers’ handbook urges workers: “Before you take your flight, you absolutely should leave a copy of all the documents you got from your manpower agency with your family at home”199  (FEPB 2017, 17). While this recommendation is intended to protect workers from violations of their contracts, the current formal process, with its last-minute pre-departure briefings, makes this impossible for anyone coming from a remote area. In this and other cases, state authorities knowingly confront migrants with a virtually unsolvable problem. Similarly, the analysis of state instructions in this section has shown that the Nepali government puts most of its attention on telling aspiring migrants to be aware, informed, and take charge of their recruitment process themselves. Instead of offering more services that would address some of workers’ valid needs and the root causes of their vulnerability (see section 4.1.4), the state signals that it is their responsibility to ensure they will not be cheated or maltreated. Ultimately, the explicit warnings in brochures and television spots send a clear message to aspiring migrants: If you violate the legal framework of recruitment even in the slightest, you forfeit your right to be protected by your government. Hence, the security which the Nepali state promises its migrants is not an unconditional one, but one that is entirely contingent upon their “correct” conduct: While government instructions inform them of their rights as Nepali workers—such as receiving support from public authorities in different situations of need—they make it clear that migrants may only claim those rights if they have fulfilled their own “duties” and conducted themselves responsibly. This rationality is even more evident when it comes to workers’ conduct abroad.

199 Original: Manpowerbat udnu aghi sathma liyera jane kagjatko ek prati photocopy anibarye rupma ghar pariwarlai chhodera janu pardachha.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

4.3.3

Directives and advice on health, safety, and rules abroad

As part of the biopolitical rationality on reducing migrants’ individual risks and keeping them safe and healthy, the Nepali state and recruitment sector instruct them not only on the “correct” conduct before leaving the country but also during foreign employment. A crucial role in those instructions is played by orientation classes (abhimukhikaran talim), which were introduced and continue to be monitored by the DoFE and FEPB (see section 4.1.3). Whereas the population’s exposure to general information campaigns is hard to measure or control, orientation classes offer a more structured and comprehensive educational format. Although they provide details on the recruitment process as well, orientation classes are different from most other forms of instruction in that they focus in-depth on migrants’ conditions and conduct abroad, which is why I discuss them specifically in this section. I will begin by outlining orientation classes as a technology of instruction and pointing out the many discrepancies between the ways this technology has been planned and how it has been implemented. In a second step, I will discuss how the Nepali state has responded to this “messy” implementation and introduced additional technologies to combat subversive practices. It is only against the backdrop of this gap between statecrafted and practically deployed technologies of instruction that I will investigate different aspects of their content: After exploring the instructions that migrant workers receive on their health and safety abroad, I will examine the common directives on hostcountry rules and regulations. In doing so, I will assess the governmental effects these instructions have on migrants’ conduct, even in light of the potential violation of their personal rights, and unpack how these tie in with international market demands for a pacified and, specifically, submissive worker.

Orientation classes between plans and implementation Pre-departure orientation training was first introduced as an optional class for migrant workers in 2003. With the Foreign Employment Act of 2007, it became mandatory for each person bound for foreign employment (GoN 2007, 27). While the classes are facilitated by privately-run training centers, they follow a standardized schedule, their content being prescribed and continually regulated by government authorities. Accordingly, orientation trainers have to undergo a state-run qualification program in order to obtain a teaching license from the FEPB. Each orientation class is split into two sessions and takes place over two subsequent days, with a total duration of eight hours. As indicated earlier, the training is intended to teach participants not only about the legal recruitment process but also how to remain safe and healthy during their stay abroad. Before investigating the content of those classes, however, it is indispensable to understand their practical implementation. Like many parts of the Nepali migration regime (see sections 4.1.4-5, 4.2.3, 4.3.2), orientation classes are profoundly affected by “subterranean” practices: There are significant discrepancies between the ways these classes were initially planned, how they have usually been conducted, and the impact they have on migrant workers today.

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The most obvious example for this has been the low number of participants: Although orientation classes have been mandatory since 2007, it was entirely common until 2017 for candidates to attend only parts of the training or not to attend it at all. In 2018, orientation trainer Anita recalls her experience from the previous years: Previously, there [...] used to be a two-day class, but […] they felt lazy sometimes and said, “I have this and that to do.” We did try to keep them there till 5 o’clock. […] Sometimes, if [a person] had a problem, we let him or her go.200 (ori05, 7) As Anita points out, she and her colleagues tried to keep the candidates engaged with the class but had no way of enforcing their full participation. Instead, candidates still received the training certificate as long as they paid the participation fee. While Anita recalls that they underwent at least part of the class, a report from 2013 suggests that the majority of migrant workers actually did not receive any training at all. Drawing on empirical research among 101 aspiring migrants, it observes that 50 percent […] did not know the breakdown of the pre-departure training cost as it [...] was facilitated by the agents as [...] part of the “migration package” where in most cases, the migrants would either not attend the training or sit in the class for an hour or two for the certificate. (The Asia Foundation 2013, 16) As this data and my interlocutors in the migration industry confirmed, migrant candidates commonly paid their brokers for simply buying the participation certificate illegally, often so without even knowing about the exact practice behind it. Based on my interviews with returnees, trainers, and brokers, one important reason for brokers’ “subterranean” practices and migrants’ low participation was cost-efficiency, particularly for those based in remote regions. Similarly to professional skills institutes (see section 4.3.1), the vast majority of orientation training centers are located in Kathmandu Valley. Compared to the organizational effort and financial costs that would have come with a personal trip to the valley, buying fake certificates appeared like a more convenient and affordable option for many aspiring migrants—even if that meant a slight rise in their overall recruitment costs. Another potential factor was that many considered the training irrelevant to their specific situation or simply not interesting enough. Having participated in several training sessions myself, I can empathize with some of that reluctance. During my ethnographic research, I was particularly surprised about the many discrepancies I observed in those classes compared to the government’s official training curriculum (FEPB 2013b). Due to the limited timeframe, the content typically discussed in one class reflects only a fraction of what the official, 147-page curriculum prescribes. Moreover, the content that is included in the class is arguably not always the most relevant or engaging. For instance, most orientation teachers I observed spent a considerable portion of each session recounting demographic information about specific host countries, which many aspiring migrants consider to be of little relevance to their lived experience abroad. This 200 Original: Pahila,[…] 2 dinko nai class thiyo, tara […] kaile kahi alchhi lagyo bhane ani “hamro yesto kamchha” bhane pachhi. Tara 5 baje samma rakhna chai kosis gartheu. […] Kaile kahi samasya chha bhane, chhut dine thiyou.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

is further aggravated by the fact that candidates who are bound for a variety of different countries all take part in the same class. As a result, participants often have to listen to several hours of information on host regimes that do not concern them. Moreover, the official curriculum prescribes a highly participatory learning style, which includes discussion groups and even the practice of real-life scenarios. By contrast, all classes I observed consisted of lecture-style instructions. Sometimes, the teachers spent up to ten minutes at a time writing on the class room’s whiteboard, while candidates watched passively. For about two of the total eight hours, participants usually watch an educational video provided by the FEPB. Further cause for disengagement can be found in the material conditions at many training centers (see Figure 47 and Figure 48).

Figure 47: Participants waiting in the class room of an orientation training center in Kathmandu. Figure 48: Empty class room at an orientation training center in Kathmandu.

(Source: H. Uprety 2018).

To be sure, the small size and run-down appearance of most classrooms is not problematic per se—and, frankly, not all too different from many other teaching facilities across the country. However, the technical equipment at some centers is so low that it jeopardizes the entire class, given that a considerable portion of it relies on an educational video. In several sessions I observed, the video was played from a VHS tape on a television set whose quality had deteriorated so much that there was hardly any sound, much less any visual. Even in cases when the above problems do not apply, the content of most classes is not equally accessible to candidates of different backgrounds. This starts with the official curriculum, whose language style and exercises are often far too sophisticated for an audience primarily bound for low-skilled jobs. I made a similar observation during practical training sessions, whose teachers—all of whom hold a Master’s degree—frequently relied on advanced, bureaucratic, and often English terminology. Unsurprisingly, this type of language is little understood by participants from uneducated, poor, and geographically remote backgrounds—in short, the group of migrant candidates who would stand to benefit the most from an orientation training. However, as teacher Hari explained to me, providing equal access to all participants is not part of a trainer’s responsibility: “We teach what we are supposed to as trainers […]. But whether they can

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implement it or not, whether they follow it or not, that is their own business”201 (ori04, 41). Such issues of low accessibility are aggravated further by the fact that instructions are offered exclusively in the Nepali language, even though a significant portion of migrant candidates, particularly those coming from the Terai lowlands, only understand Hindi, Maithili, or Bhojpuri. As orientation trainer Anita admits, this means that some candidates have to participate without understanding what is being spoken: “There are language problems when people from Terai participate. I don’t know Hindi, and some of them don’t know Nepali. […] But I tell other participants in the class to tell them what they have not understood“202 (ori05, 25). Since candidates who do not speak Nepali are unable to benefit from orientation classes and this disproportionally affects candidates from Terai, the current situation reproduces and further deepens the marginalization of Madhesi migrant workers (see section 4.2.5).

Counter-technologies and their effects The widespread practice of faking training certificates ended with the introduction of the government’s online recruitment platform in April 2017, which enforces participation by requiring candidates to register with their fingerprints at the beginning and end of each class session (see sections 4.1.3, 4.1.5). Orientation trainer Anita recalls how this new technology has been highly effective and led to a sharp increase in the number of training participants: Usually they do come on time, because if they don’t appear online, there will be no labor permit. In the beginning, when they go to the class, we tell them: “If you do not enter the class at 1 pm, from 1 pm to 5 pm, then out, after that tomorrow morning 7 am in, 11 am out, you will not be seen online. If you are not online, there will be no labor permit. If you don’t have the labor permit, you do not get to go abroad.” And so they come. Our experience is that so far, only two people have missed the morning class.203 (ori05, 6) In the above quote, Anita observes that the state’s new technology against previous “subterranean” practices has been successful precisely because it leaves no room for human interference. Moreover, the way she informs migrant workers on this process is remarkable in that she tells them that any person who is not digitally registered “will not be seen” and essentially does not exist in the system. As such, her instruction adds

201 Original: Hamile auta trainer ko rupma training dine ho […]. Tyo kura uniharule lagu garne nagarne, follow garne nagarne bhaneko uniharuko afno internal kura ho. 202 Original: Bhasako samasya chahi hunchha. Terai basiharu aaunuhunchha. Malai Hindi aaudaina, uhaharu kattilai Nepali aaudiana. […] Ma aru classma huneharulai kei nabujheko kuraharu lai, yo ho bhandinu hai bhanera bhanchhu. 203 Original: Praye chai aaunuhunchha. Kina bhane online nabhaikana sram swikriti hudaina. Pahila hamie classma jada nai, “classma in bhaneko 1 baje, 1 baje bat 5 baje ko out. Tespachhadi bholi bihana 7 baje in ani 11 baje out chhaina bhane sram swikriti online dekhidaina. Online nabhayesi sram hudaina. Sram nabhai tapai bidesh jana paunuhunna,” bhane pachhi uhaharu aaunuhunchha. Ahile samma ko anubhama uharu dui jana chhutnu bhako chha bihana.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

one more layer to the objectification and standardization migrant workers routinely experience during the pre-departure phase (see sections 4.1.5, 4.2.1, 4.2.5). There are several other effects this new technology has had on aspiring migrants: While it effectively enforces workers’ participation in orientation training, it has not addressed the underlying reasons for its low accessibility. Instead, participation remains a challenge for candidates from geographically remote regions and lowest income levels, who arguably are the ones most in need of such training. Although there has been an effort to make participation less of a financial burden for female candidates by refunding their participation fee of NPR 700, their expenses for transport and accommodation in and to Kathmandu most likely weigh heavier. Instead of addressing those root causes of low participation—for instance, by reducing migrants’ expenses and making training available in different locations all over the country—state authorities simply introduced a stricter system of control. If anything, the new technology has added a layer of rigidity and bureaucracy that has reduced equal access to orientation training even further: To save on accommodation costs, many participants from remote regions choose to travel to Kathmandu overnight before the first day of the class. If the heavy traffic on Nepal’s clogged highways causes them to arrive at the training center even five minutes too late, the digital system has closed. Even if the actual class has not yet started, there is no space for negotiation: Candidates cannot be added into the system anymore and end up having to spend even more nights (and money) in the city in order to take part in the next available training. Another change that has arrived with the biometric system is that participation in training is now open only to those candidates whose job placements have already been registered on the online platform. As a result, workers take part in their orientation classes at a very late stage in the process, usually a few days before their departures. However, a considerable portion of the training covers general instructions on the recruitment process and how to find a suitable position—information that now comes far too late for participants. For instance, orientation teachers advise them not to employ an unlicensed broker. Even if this was a possibility for aspiring migrants from remote regions, the new application process means that migrants receive this directive long after most of them have already hired a broker. Similarly, some teachers recommend participants to undergo professional skills training before looking for foreign employment—a piece of advice that simply comes too late. Orientation teacher Nisha admits: We also tell them [about skills training] in the class. But the orientation training is at the last step of the process, they come one or two days or a week before their flight, so they cannot learn a skill in a week anymore. So we tell them, well, I tell them that they should consider this for the next time they are going abroad.204 (ori06, 29)

204 Original: Sakesamma ship sikera janu ramro bhaninchha. Tara uniharu yaha aaipugda chahi lasta conditionma, orientationma aaipugda sabai process bhyayera lasta conditionma, uniharu udnu bhanda dui, tin din wa ek hapta pahila aako hunchhan. Ek haptama sabai sipharu sikna sakdaina. Ramro bhaninchha, haina. tara uniharulai next choti jada sajilo hos bhanne hisable matra bhaninchha.

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As Nisha implies, the late scheduling of orientation classes means that participants can apply some of its information only “the next time they are going abroad.” In this way, the orientation training misses one of its core purposes, which was to widen aspiring migrants’ knowledge of possible pathways towards foreign employment and on how to go through recruitment safely. Even if the late timing was not an issue, the instructions given in orientation classes, particularly regarding the legal recruitment process, are often impracticable or unattainable for training participants (see also section 4.3.2). In many cases, the directives are outright disingenuous, in that orientation centers themselves often do not follow what they preach. During my research, I witnessed some contradictions between class instructions and actual practice that were almost comical. For example, one orientation trainer warned participants of working with freelance recruiters, while at the same time, he was moonlighting as a broker himself and regularly supplied his own candidates to the orientation center. Finally, the new technologies might force migrants to be physically present at orientation training sessions but change little about their mental and emotional presence. Accordingly, several orientation trainers complained to me that too many participants showed little interest in the training and did not take it seriously. As teacher Laxman laments, some of them even get drunk before attending class: We have seen many candidates for foreign employment being drunk, and even drinking during the class. In this situation, I tell them at the registration time: “If some of you have already drunk alcohol, you would better not stay in the class. Rather come tomorrow without having drunk anything.” But still, […] they come to the training drunk and are noisy during the class.205 (ori01, 9) To some degree, this and similar subversive behavior can be interpreted as a form of migrants’ counter-conduct against a technology that does not feel relevant or helpful to them. Echoing this perspective, freelance recruiter Deepak argues that it is unfortunate but also understandable that many candidates show little interest in orientation classes. Contrary to the outright skepticism some of his colleagues have about workers’ education, Deepak argues that migrant workers should receive information that genuinely helps them abroad: It would be good to improve this orientation training. Because it is good to have knowledge while going abroad. But it's not necessary to learn about the population, about the demographic information. […] We go to work. The main thing is which work you have to do and how you work, which training you take to do that work, that people here are like this and that—for example, that you have to say the name of the

205 Original: Baideshik rojgarma jane manchhele, adhikansha manchhele madira seban garne kura hamile dekheko chhau, ani classma basna aauda kheri pani madira seban garne. Maile yo abasthama ke bhanchhu bhane, bharna hune samayema nai: “tapaiharu koi aaja madira seban garnu bhayeko chha bhane, tapaiharu aaja classma nabasnu hola, bholi aaunu hola. madira seban nagarikana.” Ani athwa […] bhanda bhandai pani madira seban garera aaune, bibhinna kisimko halla garne, yesta kura haru chhan.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

company’s manager […]. I do not think there will be an achievement by just showing a video about the population and area.206 (iag06, 35) The fact that even brokers like Deepak think about ways in which orientation training “could be improved” reflects not only the inadequacies of its current version but, most of all, that it remains the object of continuous governmental interventions. Due to this ongoing negotiation and the vast gap between the formal design of orientation training and its messy implementation, the content of migrants’ instructions can only be analyzed by considering both official class curricula and ethnographic insights from interviews and participant observation. With this perspective in mind, I will now investigate what aspiring migrants are taught about their conduct abroad—not only in orientation classes but also through public information and by the recruitment industry.

Protecting workers’ safety and health When I asked my interlocutors in orientation centers, government institutions, and the recruitment industry about the purpose of orientation classes as well as public information and agency briefings, the most common answer was to keep Nepali workers safe and ensure their physical health. This indicates that the problematization of foreign employment as a serious individual risk to migrant workers (see section 4.1.3) has shaped not only biopolitical interventions by the Nepali state and nonprofit organizations but all parts of the migration regime. In response to increasing media reports on the disproportionally high numbers of migrant deaths in Qatar and other Gulf states in recent years (e.g., Booth et al. 2013; Carvalho 2020), workers’ physical health has become an even more salient topic in predeparture instructions. For instance, recruitment agent Rohan suggests that teaching migrants how to stay healthy is, in fact, the most important part of agency briefings: When normal, labor class people [sic] go abroad, they—normally, you can say these blue-collar people [sic], they don't have any idea about the temperature, how to maintain health problem [sic], they are facing in the Gulf countries. Maybe you have heard about this, that people work, go to sleep and die. [...] Another reason is that people don't drink enough. We teach them to do regular work, but drink enough water. The heat is so intense, and people get very dehydrated. [...] This is a precautionary briefing about their health, you could say. And we tell them about zebra crossings. Until now, people have been dying mostly in two ways. The highest cases are road accidents and falling asleep and never waking up.207 (agent 1, em05 obs02, 30) 206 Original: Tesko barema sudharna paye ta jhanai ramro. Kinaki jane manchhele ta dherai knowledge pauchha ni. Hamilai tyahako janasankhyako abassek pani chhaina. […] Hami ta kam garna jane ho. Main kun kamma jadaichha ani kasari garne. Tyo kam garnalai kun training linu parchha. Yahako manchhe yesto yesto ho, tyahako manau companyko managerko nam bhandeu, […] Tyahako jansankhya bhanera, chhetrafal dekhayera video dekhayera khasai upalabdhi hola jasto lagdaina. 207 Original: Another thing is that when normal, labor class people go, they - normally, you can say these blue collar people [sic], they don't have idea about the temperature, how to maintain health problem, they are facing in Gulf country. Tyaha ke sunnuhunchha tapaile bhane, manchhe kam garera aayo, sutyo ani maryo. [...] arko kura tya ke hunchha bhane, uniharule regular pani khadaina. Regular kam garnu, tara dherai

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As the above quote shows, the primary health risks Rohan identifies are traffic accidents, dehydration, and what has come to be known as “sudden nocturnal deaths” (Aryal et al. 2019, 789). The latter term describes a phenomenon that has led to a high rate of workers’ deaths in both Malaysia and the Gulf countries: The vast difference in temperature, which workers experience if they spend the night in air-conditioned rooms after having worked the entire day outside in extreme heat, is difficult to handle for the body and can lead to cardiac arrest even in otherwise healthy individuals. Since thirty percent of all recorded workers’ deaths over the past decade were classified as cardiac arrests (IOM 2019, 99)—a staggering number, given that each of these relatively young men had passed a pre-departure medical examination—recruiters and educators have become highly aware of the topic. Accordingly, they strongly advise migrants to always drink enough and not to keep their air-conditioning at a low temperature while sleeping at night. As Rohan suggests in the above quote, the problem is that “labor class people” do not know about such health risks, which is why it is necessary to teach them. While this information is certainly highly important for migrant workers, a topic that is interestingly left out of these instructions is their working conditions. The labor regime that routinely forces migrants to work in scorching temperatures for hours and beyond their physical limits, which is the very reason they are exposed to these extreme fluctuations in temperature, remains undiscussed. Instead of addressing such systemic conditions—for instance, by negotiating limits to outside work above certain temperatures—the Nepali state and recruitment industry tacitly accept those practices. By instead focusing their entire attention on workers’ instructions, they signal that migrants’ health and safety is their individual responsibility—thus implicitly suggesting that deaths and accidents could be prevented if “these blue-collar people” just conducted themselves “right.” Following the rationality that female migrant workers are a particularly vulnerable population that needs additional protecting (see section 4.1.3), the safety and health of women, specifically, take a prominent role in pre-departure instructions: For instance, the Nepali government has published several booklets and PSAs that explicitly address the safety of female migrants. For domestic workers, the state-mandated 21-day skills training reportedly devotes twelve hours to the topic of women’s safety (Paoletti et al. 2014, 147). Similarly, orientation classes include an additional two-hour-long session for female migrants, which specifically addresses their risk of sexual exploitation and violence. As part of this segment, the orientation curriculum reads: There is a high probability of sexual exploitation. Be very alert and aware while talking or interacting with anybody. Be ready to defend yourself fearlessly if somebody offers you sexual contact or tries to seduce you or force you. [...] There are many who want to cheat you under the disguise of help. [...] Always be aware that just because you are

pani khane bhanera hamile sikauchhau. Tyaha jada kheri dherai gham hunchha, dehydration hunchha. (.....) This is the precautionary orientation we can say about their health. Ani Zebra crossing we used to say. Tyaha dui kisimle dherai manchhe mariraheko chha. Ahilesamma highest case bhaneko road accident ra sute pachhi sutya sutyei ho.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

a woman, you could be kidnapped, raped, touched in sensitive places, etc.208 (FEPB 2013b, 108–9) As in the above example, women are repeatedly taught to be in a constant state of high alert and always ready to protect themselves. Meera, a former domestic worker who was employed in Kuwait, recalls what she learned about how to conduct herself safely: In Nepal, we talk by looking at each others' eyes and faces, right? But there, we cannot do it this way. We should talk by bowing down our heads. They tell us that we have to look down at the floor and listen to them. [...] Do not have a direct attitude or talk directly. [...] If their [the employer’s] son calls you, do not go near them and stay a bit away and do not look at their face. If you keep a bit of a distance while talking to them, there will be no closeness between you.209 (fmi03, 8-9) Thus, female workers are directed to maintain distance during any interactions with their employers and men in general. Again, those instructions show how the responsibility to keep themselves safe lies entirely with individual migrant workers rather than with the Nepali state. This responsibility means women have to protect themselves not only from sexual abuse abroad but also from the risk of a negative reputation upon their return to Nepal. For instance, broker Suresh asserts: Women need to learn a lot more before they go abroad than men. Women have a big responsibility: When women go abroad, people think, “What will happen there?” [...] Nowadays, this is usually unjustified, but people still think like that. [...] So we teach them these things. Don’t walk around outside. Don’t spend so much time with other men here and there.210 (iag02, 39-41) In response to what is perceived as women’s heightened vulnerability both abroad and upon their return to Nepal (see also section 4.1.2), the Nepali migration regime thus deploys two different strategies of governing female migrants: First, to ban female migration altogether, thus implementing policies of “protection by exception” (Rajan

208 Original: Youn Shoshan ko prabal sambhabana hunchha. Pratyek manchhe sanga byabahar garda yesma satarkata apa-naunu parchha. Kasai bat younsamparkako prastab, Pralobhan ra dabab aayema nirdhakka bhayera pratikar garnuparchha. […] Sahayog garidine bhanera thagne dherai hunchhan. […] Mahila bhayekai karan apaharan garne, balatkar garne, sambedanshil anga chalaidine aadi bebaharharu huna sakchhan bhanne kurama sadhai sachet rahanu parchha. 209 Original: Hami ta ya nepalma aakha aakhama herera kura garchhau, much herera kura garchhau, haina? Tara tya yesto system hunu bhayena, tya hamile shir nihurayera kura garna paryo. Uniharule bhanchha, hamile sunna paryo ani bhui tira herera sunna paryo. […] Tara thado swabhab le wa thado bolne garnu hudaina. […] Uniharuko chhora le bolauda, uniharuko najik parna bhayena, hami ali tadha basna paryo. Uniharule bolauda uniharuko kura sunna paryo. Uniharuko anuhar herna bhayena hamile. Uniharusanga bolda para basera bolne bhayesi hami sanga helmel nai bhayena. 210 Original: Mahila ra purshma ta mahilale dherai kura siknu parne hunchha bidesh jada. Mahilaharuko jimmewari thulo hunchha: bideshma gayera ketimanchheharu, “k hune ho?” […] Khasai achel pharak ta pardaina, tara tei ho. […] Tyo ta hami sikauchhau. Bahira yeta uti nahidnus, bahira manchhe sanga, dherai ketaharu sanga yeta uti nagarnus.

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& Varghese 2013, 22; see section 4.1.3). Secondly, to shift responsibility to individual women without addressing or problematizing the systemic circumstances that allow exploitation and abuse to happen. However, just like the ban on female migration has been routinely subverted by migrants and recruiters (see section 4.1.4), the strategy of giving women special instructions often fails or is only partially implemented. For instance, none of the orientation centers I visited in my research offered a session for female migrants that actually lasted two hours. Sometimes, they were reduced to half an hour; sometimes, trainers stated they were only necessary for domestic workers; sometimes, they were omitted altogether. For instance, teacher Anita explains that she and her colleagues at the training center have chosen to defy state regulations on instructions because female candidates “don’t like” to hear such warnings: For women, there needs to be some extra training. But we don’t do the separate class as mentioned in the course book, because they don’t like it. If we put them in a separate class and tell them about all the bad things that can happen to them, we feel that they get nervous. That is why we don’t teach them. [...] Why to scare them right before they are going abroad?211 (ori05, 20) According to Anita’s reasoning, teaching women about the potential dangers of being harassed, molested, or abused due to their gender would serve no purpose other than scare them. Aside from her somewhat fatalistic assumption that experiences of abuse cannot be avoided even if the person is prepared for it, Anita’s statement also reveals how casually some orientation teachers ignore or override state regulations, even though they were directly trained by the DoFE. Further warnings that are typically issued along with the above topics concern alcohol consumption (particularly if self-brewed) and sexually transmitted diseases. Ultimately, these and many other directives on migrants’ health and safety tie in directly with host country laws and regulations—from traffic rules to the prohibition of alcohol and what is defined as sexual misconduct.

Instructions on rules and regulations In addition to health and safety warnings, the majority of instructions on migrants’ conduct abroad concern host country rules and regulations. This is reflected in the information material the government provides on potential host countries, such as the following brochure on Malaysia (see Figure 49 and Figure 50), which predominantly discusses local laws, rules, and regulations. From sections on Malaysia’s labor law and traffic rules to regulations on working time and prohibited activities, a significant portion of the above brochure focuses on the regulations migrants need to observe. Further information, such as on the demographics, culture, and religion in the country of destination, is also largely intended to

211

Original: Mahilako lagi thap padhaunu parchha. […] Hamile mahilaharulai chhuttai extra class, coursema bhaye jasto didainau. Kinabhane uhaharule naramro mannuhunchha. [...] Extra course dida tyo khalko dinu parne ho. Tara tyo dida uaharulai ali nervous bhayeko jasto lagchha. Tehi bhayera hamile didainau. [...] Uhaharulai nervous banayera kina bidesh pathaune?

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

keep migrants from breaking local rules and norms. For example, the section on “religion and culture” in the brochure on Qatar reads: “At prayer time, business centers as well as shops are closed. During prayer time, non-Muslims have to heed the local rules as well”212 (FEPB 2015b).

Figure 49: Country brochure on Malaysia (Part 1).

Rubric headings read: “General information,” “Some important words,” “Malaysia’s labor law,” “Opening times for banking transactions,” “Traffic rules,” “Religion and culture,” “Working time,” “Services provided to migrant workers who possess a labor permit.” (Source: FEPB 2015a).

 

212

Original: Prarthanako samayama byaparik kendra tatha pasalharu samet banda hune garchha. Prarthanako samayama gair-muslimharule pani tyahanko niyamko samman garnu parchha.

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Figure 50: Country brochure on Malaysia (Part 2).

Rubric headings read: “Things you have to take care of when leaving for foreign employment,” “Prohibited activities and items not to carry on your journey,” “Helping offices and institutions.” (Source: FEPB 2015a).

During orientation classes and agency briefings, migrants are strongly advised never to break their contracts, their company’s rules of conduct, or the national laws in their respective host country. While the specific style of those directives varies depending on the teacher or recruiter, they are often laced with explicit warnings about the dire consequences if workers fail to comply with them. These include counting up the number of Nepali prisoners abroad, vivid descriptions of violent methods of punishment, and tragic hear-say stories of arrested and convicted migrants. For instance, in one orientation class I observed, trainer Hari spent nearly fifteen minutes recounting the penal system in the Gulf countries. His monologue included the following statements: Look, Arabian countries have rules like nowhere else in the world. People who have done something wrong are allegedly simply slaughtered. See, they gather a crowd around and show them how people are slaughtered. There is also a system of cutting off the legs and hands of those people who have […] stolen something from the company. Similarly, if a foreigner of another religion has done a crime that is supposed to be punished by hanging, they immediately terminate [the contract] and send the person back to his country. […] Soon after the person arrives in the home country, he will die within one or two hours. Because he was given a lethal injection, which kills the person automatically, see. There are cases of two or three Nepalis who were termi-

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

nated, sent to Nepal after being injected by Saudi Arabia and died in Nepal.213 […] For general, normal charges […], like simple mistakes here in Nepal, they have a system of whipping.214 (orice03 obs02, 15-17) By giving such detailed descriptions of the punishment each participant should expect if breaking the law or being disobedient, Hari mobilized fear and a sense of individual powerlessness among them. While not all orientation classes I participated in featured such vivid accounts, the core message on the restrictive and punitive regimes abroad was always the same. Furthermore, these warnings do not only play a role in orientation classes but are also echoed by recruiters. For instance, broker Deepak reiterates what he usually teaches his candidates: It is quite a strict place. For example, Nepalis behavior is a kind of open in our Nepal. [...]. But they know beforehand that Saudi, Qatar is this type of place. They also talk about things like: Do not look people directly in the face, it is dangerous there. It’s also possible that you will not return to Nepal.215 (iag06, 22) As this example shows, brokers and agents often see it as their duty to make workers aware of the dangers that await them abroad. By explaining to aspiring migrants that they might put themselves at risk by even looking people in the eyes and that they should come to terms with their possible death abroad, recruiters like Deepak cultivate in them a default state of high alert and fear. As discussed in section 4.2.2, it is well-documented that migrant workers in Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are indeed faced with a highly restrictive and punitive host regime. In light of recent reports of South Asian workers receiving severe punishment after accidentally coming too close to a local women or girl (QatarNews 2014; Shouk 2020), even Deepak’s most extreme warning appears to have some empirical basis. Thus, what is remarkable about those descriptions is not mainly their portrayal of workers’ host countries (and particularly those in the Gulf) as scary and threatening, and not even the graphic language and imagery employed to this end. Instead, what I

213

This suggestion that Nepali migrants who committed a crime have secretly received lethal injections before their deportation is a claim that was repeated to me by several recruiters and orientation trainers; however, no credible source has confirmed such information. 214 Original: Bishwoma nabhayeko niti niyem Arabian countryma raichha, hernus. Galti kehi bhayesi sidhai manchhe katne niti raichha. […] Dherai jana area bhariko manchhe jamma garepachhi thyakka agadi rakhera manchhe katdo raichha re. […] companymaharuma chori garneharulai hat khutta katidine system raichha, hernus. […] bideshi nagarik ra aru dharmako hakma, tyo katine kisimko ra fasi dine kisimko galti garyo bhane, testo lai turuntai terminate garera afno desh pathaidido raichha.[…] Thyakka u deshko airportma puge pachhi ek dui ghanta pachhi automatic kisimle marne kisimko injection lagayera pathaideko hunchha, hernus. Hamro nepalika dui tin ota testa udaharan chhan. Saudi arab bat terminate garera turunta Nepal pathaidiyo. Nepal aayera ek dui ghantama injection lagayera pathaidiyo Saudi Arable ani Nepal aayera mareko caseharu ni chhan. […] ekdam normal karbahi, uhi hamile nepalma samanye galti garera mafi de jasto bhaneko, tyaha korra lagaune system raichha. 215 Original: Tyaha testai tight thau. Jastai hamro nepalma jasto nepaliharuko aacharan alikati khulla. […] Uniharulai yehi thaha chha ki Saudi Qatar bhaneko yesto thau ho. Uniharule tesko barema ni bhanchhan: sidha mukhma na-her, tyaha khatara chha, ta Nepal nafarkina ni sakchhas.

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consider most striking about recruiters’ and trainers’ instructions is the casual, matterof-fact tone in which they present those details. Listening to how they—and many of their colleagues—phrase their warnings, it seems like painful punishments and even the death sentence are simply what Nepali migrants should expect as a natural response to violating host country laws. Hence, the real power of these instructions lies not in the way they employ fear and an anticipatory sense of domination—but rather in the implicit acceptance and normalization of such treatment. This normalization of punitive and violent technologies concerns not only severe criminal behaviors but also internationally recognized labor rights, such as striking, forming unions, and changing one’s employer. Since these activities are illegal for foreign workers in Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and neighboring countries (see section 4.2.2), the Nepali state—in its effort to provide workers with “neutral information”—echoes this standpoint without any further comment. For example, the section on “prohibited activities” in the above brochure on Malaysia (see Figure 50) neutrally list “forming unions” and “going on strike” along with generally agreed-upon crimes like the possession and trafficking of drugs: Prohibited activities and items not to be carried on the journey: Use, possession, and transfer of drugs, sexual misconduct, political activities (forming unions, going on strike), vulgar misbehavior, intrusion into religious areas, [...] forming groups, transfer of sharp weapons.216 (FEPB 2015a; see also country brochures for Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, U.A.E., e.g., FEPB 2015b, 2015c) By listing the above “political activities” in this way, the brochure normalizes the criminalization of forms of conduct that are, paradoxically, used very frequently in contemporary Nepali society (see section 4.2.5). Instructors mend this underlying friction by contrasting life in Nepal against conditions abroad and depoliticizing those foreign rules as an abstract, neutral system. This rationality becomes evident in the following quote by orientation trainer Hari: In Nepal, we don’t care so much about laws and do not follow them. For instance, in traffic, we just cut across the road wherever we feel like it. But abroad, there is a very specific system. Foreigners do not step outside the rules there. There is a system that runs one hundred percent according to the rules. We have to follow these rules when we are abroad.217 (ori04, 6) Whereas Hari describes Nepal as a place where people do not care and simply bend or break the rules, he depicts foreign countries as places with “a very specific system,” in which divergent behavior of any sort is utterly unthinkable. In doing so, he creates a 216

217

Original: Garna nahune kuraharu tatha yatrama bokna namilne bastuharu: lagupadartha prayog garne tatha rakhne ra osarpasar garne, youn durbebahar, Rajnitik gatibidhi (union khada garne, andolan garne), ashlil bebahar, dharmik kshetrama hastakshep, Bhango, Morcha, dharilo hathatiyar prayog tatha osarpasar aadi. Original: Hamile nepalma testo kanun mandainau, follow up gardainau. Jastai traffice niyemma bado katda, jaha mann lagchha, hami tehi bat katdinchhau. Tara bideshma autai kisimko niyem, system hunchha. Uhaa niyema bhan-da bahira jadaina. 100 percent niyembadda tarikale rule regulation, terms value jammai challchha. Tyo niyem hamile mann paryo, baideshik rojgarma gaisake pachhi.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

sharp contrast between what migrant workers have known all their lives and what they have to conform to from now on. Furthermore, he implies that the various “subterranean” practices that have shaped most workers’ pre-departure journeys (see section 4.1.4) will have an end now. In this light, it seems only natural and right that migrants should keep up their end of the bargain and abide by their contract and local rules. The same rationality was echoed by my interlocutors across the Nepali migration industry. During our interviews, recruiters and orientation trainers presented their expectations of workers to conform to all host country rules as something completely normal and self-evident: After all, they were going abroad by their own choice and had knowingly signed the terms and conditions of their contract. Although this argument seems reasonable at first glance, it is misleading in that it implies migrants will encounter no problems abroad as long as they follow the rules. By placing the topic of law-abiding conduct at the absolute center of their instructions, teachers and recruiters suggest that most challenges arise from migrants’ own transgressions. In doing so, they completely obscure the fact that in most host contexts, it is often employers who first violate the terms of their contract or break the law—whether it is through the confiscation of workers’ passports, the withholding or reduction of salary payments, or failure to extend work permits (see section 4.2.2). Hence, and contrary to Hari’s claim, those countries are far from places where everything runs “one hundred percent according to the rules.” Given that the persistence of subversive practices has been well-reported, the suggestion that workers will be fine as long as they themselves abide by the rules is thus highly misleading. Instead of informing aspiring migrants about the possibility of employers’ malpractice and providing them with tools on how to deal with such instances, recruiters and instructors usually downplay their role. In one of the rare instances when the state does address the potential violation of workers’ rights, it advises them to “[n]ever ever make a big fuss or use physical force” (FEPB 2017, 51) and instead “consult […] [their] supervisor or manager“218 (ibid.). To be sure, brochures and booklets do provide the details of institutions like Nepali embassies, consulates, or host country authorities, which migrants are supposed to contact to make a complaint. Yet again, this is based on the suggestion that the formal mechanisms of holding employers accountable are reliable and effective. However, this is often not the case: Even if workers have the legal documentation to prove they are being mistreated (which is hard to come by), reports have shown they are frequently failed by the authorities that are supposed to protect them (e.g., Amnesty International 2013, 114–115).219 While it is true that migrant workers have signed a contract, which they should not violate, a more pressing question for them is what options they have if it is their employers who break the contract or local laws, and if formal mechanisms of solving

218 219

Original: Ho-halla, bal prayog aadi kahillai garnu hudaina. […] Supervisor wa Manager samaksha jankari garaunu parchha. As Amnesty International (2013, 114-115) reports for the case of Qatar, for instance, numerous institutional obstacles and language barriers hamper migrants’ access to and interaction with local authorities; and even if they manage to file a complaint, these cases are often not addressed effectively.

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that problem have failed. During my research, I witnessed only one instructor who openly addressed this question. In his exceptional orientation class, orientation trainer Manish gave his participants detailed advice on how to react and organize themselves in case their employers mistreated them: Let’s hope [...] there will be no problems, but if there are any, friends and brothers, do not panic. First, be clear about what the problem is. If you can compromise, do it. If you can’t, turn to a helping nonprofit organization. Do not get angry and leave the company. [...] Our country is not strong, but there is definitely an environment of many helping organizations. [...] If there is a problem, search for help as a group. As a group, you can make yourself heard much faster. [...] If you cannot compromise, if it is very hard, collect your friends into a group, no matter how small. After clarifying the problem, make a request to the company. Take care while talking to the company, all right, use the word “request.“ It is not possible to fight or go on strike there. [...] If that doesn’t work, pressure your manpower agency as a group, pressure your broker. [...] It will definitely take some time, but you can get help.220 (orice05 vidrec02, 1) Considering that organizing in groups and thereby “inciting people” is already considered a form of “troublemaking” by most employers and recruitment agents (see section 4.2.5), Manish’s advice is a remarkable and rare show of counter-conduct to dominant technologies of instruction. By contrast, the vast majority of state-based information and training provide aspiring migrants with no sufficient preparation for a regime that not only tolerates but even supports their abuse for financial gain, and whose laws fulfill the purpose of dominating rather than protecting them.

From rule-abiding to submissive conduct By presenting host-country rules like a neutral fact and leaving questions about systemic conditions out of the picture, the Nepali state, recruiters, and orientation trainers place all their attention—as with the topic of health and safety—on migrants’ individual responsibility. In doing so, they quietly accept not only the restriction of worker rights within the legal framework of different host regimes but also employers’ violation of that framework. As such, their pre-departure instructions are geared towards not only rule-abiding migrants, who obey their contracts and local laws, but submissive workers, who stay quiet and compliant even if these are being broken by their employers. In this way, the Nepali state has become complicit in foreign host regimes that value, above all, the pacification of migrant labor (see section 4.2.2-4). 220 Original: Aasha garau […] Samasya aaudaina, yedi aayo bhane sathibhaiharu naatinus. Kema samassya ho pahile clear hunus. Compromise garna sakne bhaye garnus, nasakine chha bhane dhyan dinus sahayogi nikayeko. Abeshma aayera company chhodne haina. […] Desh ta strong chhaina, tara kayou sahayogi batabaran baneko abastha definitely chha. […] Samasya aayo bhane ni groupwise sahayog khojnus. groupko awaz lai chadai sunuwai hunchha. […] compromise garnus. sakiyena, aftero bhayo vanesi group ta hunchha ni sano sano bhayeni, sathibhai samatnus. Kema samasya aayo paile tyo clearify garnus. Clarify garisake pachhi ek patak company lai request garnus. company sanga bolda dhyan dinus hai, request bhanne shabda. hamile ladai jhagada, hadtal garera possible chhaina. […] Yedi hudaina bhanyo bhane grouple manpowerlai pressure dalnus, agentlai pressure dalnus. […] definitely thorai samaye lagla, sahayog paune batabaran baneko chha.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

That Nepal’s private recruitment industry responds to the international market demand for submissive and overall pacified workers has already been shown with regard to selections (see section 4.2.5). However, the above investigation of pre-departure instructions has revealed that the same applies to the Nepali state. By accepting and even normalizing the domination and disenfranchisement that many migrants experience in foreign host regimes, and by mobilizing fear in order to coerce them into obedience and submissiveness, the government—and orientation trainers as its proxies—effectively contribute to the pacification of Nepali migrant labor. This section has offered a wide range of insights. Due to the dual focus on official curricula and printed information on the one hand, and interview quotes and the observation of practical training on the other, I was able to uncover significant discrepancies between the two. At the same time, I identified general themes that run through all of these instructions. Specifically, I have shown that recommendations on migrants’ health and safety abroad responsibilize individual migrants without addressing the role of structural conditions. Similarly, directives on foreign rules and regulations focus on workers’ responsibility to be unconditionally obedient—even if their own rights are being violated. In building on the imagination of a neutral and indiscriminating host regime, they deny that it is frequently employers who first break laws or contract conditions, at which point migrant workers often have few feasible options but to violate rules as well. Ultimately, this shows that the instructions on health, safety, and regulations that migrant workers receive before their departures are far more than just “neutral” information, but silently accept and respond to the international market demand for a submissive and overall pacified worker. This governmental pattern of instructing migrants towards their own pacification can also be observed in other forms of pre-departure information, training, and advice, which will be explored in the following section.

4.3.4

Instructing towards the submissive and productive migrant worker

Aside from directives on health, safety, and host country rules, many aspiring migrants receive pre-departure instructions that affect them on a far more personal level. A central purpose of the briefings, coachings, and advice in the recruitment industry, for instance, is to govern workers’ internal attitudes and bodily conduct. As agent Bishuram explains, it is essential to prepare candidates not only for their job performance abroad but also on “how to spend the time there, how to live there, with whom to talk how much, with whom not to be close”221 (ag19, 8). Similar opinions were shared with me by instructors across the infrastructure of migration—from government employees to orientation and skills trainers. My earlier investigation into techniques and criteria of selection has already shown that migrants’ personal qualities are widely considered even more important than their professional skills (see section 4.2.5). In this context, I also unpacked what types of behaviors and attitudes are generally evaluated as favorable or attractive, and that these 221

Original: Kasari rahane, kasari basne, ko manchhe sanga kati himchim badhaune, ko manchhe sanga najik nahune.

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largely mirror the imagination of the “Nepali worker” (see section 4.2.4). In response to the perceived problem that many candidates do not live up to this ideal standard, selections function as a static technology of standardization, which is mainly geared towards matching candidates to the seemingly most appropriate categories and sorting out potential “troublemakers.” Concerning those candidates who have passed at least the earliest rounds of selection, however, there is also the belief that these qualities can be acquired and improved through instruction and training. For instance, technical instructor Binod explains that his skills training programs are designed to transform participants’ personal behaviors and attitudes: [W]e teach them how a person’s behavior has to be, how you have to walk, how you have to talk. And by doing the practical work here and by learning these things, the person changes. Here, we have the strangest people coming to our training—I already told you crazy stories. […] But through our practical training, they change their mentality.222 (sk09, 41) As Binod suggests, even “the strangest people” can learn how to change their conduct and thinking under the right training. In these and other instruction scenarios, the imagination of the “Nepali worker” then implicitly functions as an ideal subjectivity that migrants are taught to aspire to. Although this connection was never made explicit by any of my interlocutors, my analysis has uncovered striking parallels between workers’ instruction and the international market values for low-skilled labor (see section 4.2.4). Building on that realization, this section focuses not so much on the what but on the how of those instructions: In revisiting the labor market values of submissiveness and productivity,223 it explores the directives, training techniques, and subtle instructions that govern aspiring migrants towards embodying these ideal qualities, and thereby advance the pacification of Nepali labor. I will begin this investigation by showing how submissiveness is “manufactured” not only through techniques of intimidation and commands but also through seemingly well-intentioned advice that normalizes workers’ low place in the hierarchy. I will then observe how those verbal technologies of governing are reinforced by regimes of candidates’ conduct and alterations of their bodies. In focusing on modes of disciplinary power, specifically, I will illustrate how the pacification of migrant laborers results from an interplay of technologies of coercion and self-conduct. This theme is continued with the market value of productivity, where I will retrace how recruiters and instructors try to cultivate productive “mindsets” and “habits” in their workers. Eventually, I will put these insights into context by outlining instances in which those ideal values are subverted.

222 Original: Manchheko bebahar kasto hunu parchha, kasari hidnu parchha, kasari kura garnu parchha. aha kam sikda sikdai manchhe yaha paribartan bhaisakeko hunchha. Yaha yesto yesto fataha manchheharu training garna aauchha. Tyo ta maile dherai kura bhanisakeko chhu. [...] Yo training bhaneko tehi ho, manasikta create garne kam nai tehi ho. 223 I arrived at these topics of submissiveness and productivity from the analysis of empirical material, not by looking for them.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Manufacturing submissive subjectivity While instructions are sometimes described as a more subtle mode of governing than sheer force, this does not mean that they are an entirely gentle technology. On the contrary, forms of pre-departure information, training, and advice routinely deploy techniques of intimidation and fear. For instance, they contrast individual workers against a seemingly overpowering and punitive host regime and threaten them with negative repercussions, as has become evident with warnings on their health, safety, and rules abroad (see section 4.3.3). One significant difference to other technologies of coercion, however, is that these instructions do not exert force at the moment of their implementation but rather prepare candidates for the coercive conduct that lies ahead of them. Ultimately, those anticipatory techniques of coercion generate in them a submissiveness that goes far beyond mere obedience towards host country regulations but defines their entire subjectification as migrant workers. This effect is reinforced by a number of accompanying techniques and rationalities. One of them draws on nationality as a marker of difference and power. For example, candidates learn to expect that, as orientation trainer Anita explains, immigrating into someone else’s country inevitably “means you are going to work as a servant”224 (ori05 int01, 13). This reasoning not only instructs migrants to behave subordinately but reactivates the national sense of inferiority that has been a long-established part of Nepali discourse (see section 4.1.1). Nepal’s low status as a “small country” serves as a reason to justify and normalize to Nepali workers that they will face reprehension and domination abroad. For instance, orientation trainer Manish says shruggingly to his group of students: “Well, if you [are] scolded: They are going to scold you. We are from a small level [sic]; they are at a high level.225 [...] We cannot go against that”226 (orice05 vidrec02, 1-4). While Manish is actually trying to encourage the group in this particular instance, he casually states the difference in status and power between Nepalis (“we”) and foreign companies (“they”), and instantly connects it to workers’ inability to resist domination by their employers. In preformatting their workplace interactions in this way before they have even taken place, he implicitly assigns his students to a place of submissiveness. The above examples show how Nepali instructors teach workers to adopt a submissive subjectivity not always through explicit statements. Instead, they often prescribe it performatively by normalizing the devaluing treatment migrants might experience abroad. These implicit and subtle techniques of instructions occur during every stage of the pre-departure process. They also teach migrants to anticipate their domination not only at the workplace but throughout their migration experience, starting with various micro-aggressions during their journey abroad. For instance, recruitment agent

224 Original: Arkako mulukma bhaneko arkako nokar garna gako ho, ho ki hoina bhannus ta? 225 Judging from the broader context of Manish’s instruction, he likely uses the term “level” in this moment to refer to workers’ inferiority not only by their nationality but also concerning their comparatively low levels of education and socioeconomic status. 226 Original: Ae gali garyo yar. Gali ta garihalchha ni. Hami sano level ko hunchhau, u thulo levelko hunchha. (….) hami tya lagera sakdainau.

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Prasad uses the following approach to inform two workers about their travel arrangements during a pre-departure briefing: Here, this is your ticket, from Kathmandu to Dammam. You arrive in Dammam at 12:30 at night. They don’t pick people up during the night. Maybe you better eat something when you leave in the evening. [...] A person from the company will come to pick you up only after eight o’clock in the morning.227 (mp01, 33) As Prasad casually mentions, the workers and other members of their “lot” will have to spend the entire night at the destination airport because the employing company is not willing to pick them up earlier. Considering that they will have spent five hours on a plane in basic service, without being given any drinks or food, and will probably not be able to afford to buy anything at the destination airport, this arrangement would be, at the very least, uncommon for other travelers. However, by stating this type of treatment like a general fact (“they don’t”) and giving no further comment as to why such a connection was booked, Prasad completely normalizes the situation. In a similar vein, recruiter Ishwor casually informs a group of workers during their agency briefing: After you have left from here, they will come to receive you there. All seven of you stay in one place. [...] You might have to wait for one, two, three additional hours, in case there is a delay in transit. Sometimes they say you must wait for eight hours, sometimes. If the passengers are full [sic], they will hold you guys and take others. That means they give the first priority to other countries rather than Nepal. You got that? That’s why, in case the plane is full, or you don’t fit in there, you have to wait longer, you might be three or four hours late.228 (mp11, 16) In describing the travel process like this, Ishwor mentally prepares the men that they will not only have to wait at the airport for hours but most likely be treated worse than their fellow travelers from other nationalities. In doing so, he—and many recruiters like him—format migrants’ subjectivities towards accepting that as Nepalis, they are less valuable than others, not deserving of “first priority” treatment, and that their personal needs and comfort will naturally be put last. Similar implicit and subtle “adjustments” to workers’ subjectivities are woven through instructions on their workplace performance, too. Most commonly, these instructions place the employing company at the center of the foreign employment experience, which reinforces workers’ seemingly inferior value. For instance, the state’s orientation curriculum draws on this effect by arguing that it is the worker’s responsibility to make him- or herself valuable to the company: 227 Original: la, yo tapaiko ticket. Ktm bat dammam, dammam tapai rati sadhe barha baje pugnu hunchha. Rati lina aaudaina. Beluka jada kheri khana khayera janu hola. […] bholi bihana 8 baje pachhi matra companyko manchhe lina aauchha. 228 Original: Aba yaha bat gaisakepachhi, tyaha bat receive garna aauchha. Sat jana ekai thauma basne. […] Ek, dui, tin ghanta extra basnu parchha. Yedi transit lambiyo bhane. Kaile kahi 8 ghanta kurnu parchha bhanya chha, kaile kahi passenger pugena wa passenger full bhayo bhane tapaaiharulai hold garera arulai liyera gako hunchha. Bhannale first priority aru deshlai dinchha, Nepal bhanda pani. Bujhnu bhayo ni? Tei bhayera tapailai yedi plane pack bhayo wa milena bhane, badhi basna parchha, 3, 4 ghanta dhila huna sakchha.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

The relationship between a worker and his or her employer could get worse if the worker cannot perform tasks without proper skills and training. In that case, the worker should continue learning the tasks quickly by being honest, hardworking, diligent, rule-abiding, obedient and disciplined so that you could make your employer believe that his investment in you has not been in vain. Some workers [...] do not get to the workplace in time and leave the workplace before their duty has ended. From such behaviors, the relation between the employer and worker will suffer.229 (FEPB 2013, 114) The above section makes clear that in order to have a good “relationship” with their employer, it is up to workers to be honest, hardworking, and diligent as well as ruleabiding, obedient, and disciplined. The quote also conveys that the employer is the protagonist of Nepali foreign employment, whose benefit, needs, and “investments” should naturally be considered first. By being implicitly directed to view their own experience from the perspective of their employer who “invested” them, workers thus learn to adopt a self-objectifying and self-commodifying subjectivity. As migrants witness their inferiority performed in these ways on a regular basis, they are successively nudged toward a position where they will not resist or speak up against devaluing treatment or violations of their rights—even by means that would remain within their legal boundaries. This rationality becomes evident even in instructions that are superficially aimed at workers’ well-being, such as the following recommendation in the orientation curriculum: Do yoga or exercise for some time before you go to work in the morning, read the newspaper or a book, watch movies in your leisure time, listen to the news on the radio. If you do the activities mentioned above and keep yourself busy, there is no risk of becoming tense, worried, or anxious. Keeping yourself busy somehow is the best medicine against tension and worries. If you work the whole day, cook and eat your food in the evening, sleep at night, [...] there is no time for worrying.230 (FEPB 2013, 114) While the above quote advises workers on how to take care of their mental and physical health, the conduct it describes and the rationale behind it also further their passive submission: By telling workers to stay busy with daily routines—and most of all their work—so there is “no time for worrying,” the curriculum teaches them how to remain

229 Original: Kamdarle tyaha pugera sipyoukta tabarle aaphno karya pradarshan garna nasaknule pani rojgardata ra amdar bichko sambandha bigranchha. Yesto abasthama kamdarharule ajhabadhi imandar, laganshil, mihineti, parishrami, niyemit, aagyakari, ra anushasit bhaera chadai kam siki rojgardatalai unko lagani jo aaphumathi pareko chha, khara jadaina bhanne bishwas dilauna saknuparchha. Katipaye kamdarle […] Niyamit ruple karyathaloma pugdainan. Tokiyeko abadhibhari kam nagari karyathalo chhodchhan. Yesta bebaharharule kamdar ra rojgardatabichko sambandhama nischaye nai aanch aauchha. 230 Original: Bihana uthera kamma janu purba kehi samaya kasarat ra yoga garne, patra-patrika ra pustak padhne, fursadko samayema sinema herne, khabar sunne aadi kamma afulai byasta rakhyo bhane pira gerne, chinta line, ra tanab sirjana hune abastha nai mildaina. Jasari bhaye pani aaphulai bestha rakhnu nai yesko aushadhi ho. Dinbhari kamma, beluka khana banaune ra khane, ratma sutne, […] ho bhane, pira ra chinta linaka lagi samayenai pugdaina.

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“content” instead of questioning their challenging working conditions and even violations of their rights. In this way, even well-intentioned recommendations on self-care and self-regulation ultimately serve to pacify migrant workers.

Disciplining workers’ bodies and conduct towards submissiveness While the above recommendations work towards creating a shift in migrants’ subjectivities, the underlying rationalities also inform explicit instructions of submissive conduct. For instance, the contrast between workers’ nationality and the foreign host country is used as a justification to prescribe exactly how they ought to behave. The following advice by broker Deepak illustrates this line of thinking: If you go to work abroad, do not think it’s as if you were in Nepal: You barely know anyone there, it is a country that belongs to other people, so you must speak well, politely, and quietly. Even for small things or things you don’t know, you have to say or ask “excuse me” if you do not understand something.231 (iag06, 22) Based on the observation that Nepalis are going to work in a country that does not “belong” to them, Deepak concludes that they need to show deferent and polite behavior. Similarly, freelance recruiter Rajan asserts: Workers should talk with a soft demeanor. They should greet people the very moment they meet them, “namaste” (smiling and bowing head). They should be able to conform to the local custom and language. The person has to have a soft nature.232 (iag07, 22) According to Rajan’s description, migrants should learn to behave demurely and to subordinate themselves to the people around them. These types of instructions are not only given by recruiters but also in orientation classes: Particularly when it comes to interactions with employers, candidates are advised to “compromise in small regards, be friendly to the head of the company, be disciplined”233 (ori06, 14) and to “always keep a smile on [their] face”234 (FEPB 2013, 115). Similar instructions permeate workers’ skills training, although they vary slightly depending on different professional contexts. For instance, technical and unskilled workers are usually instructed to maintain inconspicuous both in their outward appearance and bodily conduct, thus physically reflecting that they are simply there to follow orders. Similarly, trainees in the hospitality sector need to learn how to always maintain a respectful physical posture, friendly demeanor, and a pleasant smile. As hospitality trainer Krishna explains: “You need to be pleasing. You should have the capability to please others.”235 (sk13, 17). Female domestic workers are expected to display 231

232 233 234 235

Original: Kam garna aaye pachhi, taile yaha Nepal jasto nasoch, taile ek dui jana chineko hola, tara tyo ta arkako desh ho. Taile tyaha gayera ramro bolnu parchha. Mijas bhayera bolnu parchha. Sano kuroma, najaneko kuro, ya talai kehi bhanyo tara bujhena bhane, excuse me bhannuparchha. Original: Jaslai ni naram swabhab le bolna paryo. Namaste garna paryo bhetne bittikai. Tyahako bhasa ani bhesh je chha tehi anusarle dhalna saknu paryo. Naram swabhabko hunu parchha manchhe. Original: Sano sano kurama compromise garne, companyko boss sanga milansar hune, anushasanko palana garne. Original: Anuhar sadhai hasilo rakhau. Original: Pleasing hunu paryo tyahanera. Manchhelai rijhauna sakne capability hunu paryo.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

an even more subordinate attitude and conduct, likened to that of a “newly married daughter-in-law”236 (fmi04 int01, 08). Another profession for which a service-oriented behavior and demeanor are considered absolutely essential is security. Security guard instructor Shiva summarizes the instructions he gives to his trainees as follows: Be polite but firm when responding to the public and visitors. [...] Always address people by saying, “Sir, Madam, excuse me, please, sorry.” To make the company attractive, you should speak softly. [...] Because in order to attract customers, you have to talk politely. You always maintain a smile and a respectful look on your face. Even if someone said, “go and die now,” you should say, “thank you,” right? (chuckling) This is how you have to behave.237 (sk04, 31) As Shiva’s statement shows, security guards should remain polite and accommodating even when they suffer aggression against themselves. Although the training of Nepali security personnel also includes instructions on military conduct, the above directive reinforces that they are generally considered suitable for positions of lower service rather than those that warrant particular respect (see section 4.2.4). Just as aspiring migrants receive instructions on how to express submissiveness through their conduct, they learn how to do so by changing their physical appearance. Again, some of these guidelines vary depending on different professions. In the hospitality sector, for instance, participants’ well-groomed appearance is treated as an utmost priority (see Figure 51).

Figure 51: Presentation on “Personality Development” and personal hygiene in kitchen stewardship class at Lalitpur skill center.

(Source: H. Uprety 2018).

236 Original: Afulai bhanumna bihe garera naya behuli bhitryauda kasto hunchha, testai ho kya. 237 Original: Be polite but firm with responding to the public and visitors. […] Always address people by using “Sir, Madam, excuse me, please, sorry.” Companylai aakarshit banauna ko lagi usle mitho boli bolna paryo. […] Customerlai aakarshit garna ko lagi usle mitho boli bolna paryo. Always maintain the smile. Respected look on your face. Kasaile, “ta yaha bhaklakka mar,” bhanyo bhane, “thank you,” bhannu parchha, ho? (Haso) Testo kuro tyaha hunu paryo.

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As captured in the above photograph from a kitchen stewardship class, trainees are taught to “dress up properly from top to bottom” and to “tak[e] good care of [their] personal hygiene.” On the first day of another hospitality training program, teacher Krishna gives his new students a detailed list of demands and regulations on how to manage their bodies from that point onwards: “We do not wear big earrings, we do not wear lots of different types of make-up, and so on. […] We do not get tattoos done, unless they are at a hidden spot”238 (skce05 obs01, 12-21). As Krishna’s demands illustrate, some of the physical changes aspiring migrants are asked to conduct on their bodies are mandatory and non-negotiable. Particularly when it comes to participants in skills training programs, they simply have to submit to these requirements if they want to proceed towards foreign employment. While professional skills classes play an important role in teaching such norms, many of the mentioned criteria apply to all workers and are often enforced by recruiters. As the above examples show, it is not only tattoos and (for male candidates) earrings that are frowned upon (see section 4.2.5) but also trendy haircuts, dyed hair, and jewelry—in short, anything that could make the worker stand out or look unique. If such attributes have not led to a candidate’s outright rejection during the selection phase, he or she absolutely needs to “amend” them before the departure: It is typically during counseling sessions or the agency’s pre-departure briefing that recruiters perform a final check and direct workers to change any aspects of their appearance that could be interpreted as nonconforming and insubordinate. These instructions, which migrants receive on every aspect of their bodily conduct and perceived attitude—including how to walk, how to sit, how to speak, how to dress, and what alterations to perform or not to perform on their bodies—are targeted not only at their employment abroad but also at improving their performance at selection events. In the same way as with professional skills (see section 4.3.1), recruitment agents have recognized the benefits of coaching their candidates before interviews and skill tests in order to increase the ratio of hirings. To this end, candidates learn how to, for instance, speak in a way that does not make them seem bold or overconfident. This includes not asking too many questions and even being cautious in advertising their skills, as agent Sudhir advises one group of candidates: “Better don’t say initially that you speak Arabic; otherwise you will seem overconfident. Only tell them once they ask you”239 (ag20 obs02, 20). As Sudhir implies, declaring their knowledge without being asked to do so might put into question whether they will execute orders obediently and reliably, and could even be interpreted as a sign of a potential “troublemaker“ (see section 4.2.5). As most employers interested in hiring Nepali workers apparently “don’t need smart people [but] [...] fresh people, nice people, good people”240 (ag01 inf04, 4; see section 4.2.4), candidates learn how to perform precisely this innocent “freshness.” In other words, showing too much independent thinking will not make things easy for

238 Original: Kanma top thulo lagaudainau, hami make up garda dherai kisimka napotne, aadi. […] tattoo hamile banaudainau, tara nadekhine thauma paiyo. 239 Original: Over confidence hunu pani bhayena. Kahile kahi hamile janeko chhau bhanera arabic kura garchhau. Kasaile Arabic jannu bhako chha bahne, tapailai clientle Arabicma nabole samma arabicma nabolnus. 240 Original in English.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

them abroad, as orientation trainer Anita puts it aptly: “Abroad, it’s like this: The stupid one falls once, but the clever one falls ten times”241 (ori05 int01, 22). Since a candidate’s physical appearance serves as an important indicator to judge his or her character, attitude, and potential work performance during selections (see section 4.2.5), recruiters are eager to “improve” all attributes that, unlike someone’s height and perceived race, are open to change. For this reason, some agencies do not stop at giving their candidates verbal instructions but even engage in hands-on manipulation of their clothing, hairstyle, and other aspects of their appearances. Junior agent Prabin describes how he and his colleagues typically proceed before they send their candidates (in this case for jobs in the hospitality sector) into employer interviews: [The candidates] have already had a briefing, where we tell them to come wellgroomed. After they have showered, we let them shave. If their hair is long, we let them cut their hair. We let those who have dyed their hair color it black. We also check the nails. All of us do that here. [...] [T]hey look at hygiene, they check everything. [...] We also have a suit here that we let them wear.242 (ag14 inf01, 14-17) Although Prabin refers to the preparation of hospitality workers specifically, most of the physical alterations he mentions are required of workers across all professions. The higher the skill level and the potential benefit for the recruiters, the more effort they are likely to put into such verbal and physical interventions. While some of these changes on migrants’ bodies appear to address innocent issues of cleanliness and hygiene, their effects are far more profound. This is most apparent with female domestic workers, who are often instructed by agents or brokers not to wear the jewelry that is traditionally worn by married Nepali women,243 such as glass bead necklaces (pote), bangles (chura), nose piercings, and forehead decorations (sindhur or bindi). Even though such restrictions are sometimes not enforced by employers abroad, most female migrants obey their recruiters’ requests and do not even carry these items on their journey. Given that the wearing of those ornaments serves as an important symbol of female identity in many parts of Nepali society, their removal means a severe restriction of a woman’s gender performance, personal expression, and dignity. Similar effects can be observed among migrant workers of all professions and genders. After all, many of the verbal instructions and direct alterations of their bodies aim at removing any physical features that might render them unique. By stripping migrants of their individual expressions and reducing them to a uniform appearance, these techniques ultimately contribute to an objectified, standardized, and disposable form of labor. Furthermore, it is not only workers’ inconspicuous bodily appearance that 241 Original: Bidesh bhaneko, jasto: “lato ladchha ek baldyang, batho ladchha das baldyang.” 242 Original: Briefing already bhaisakeko hunchha. Well-groomed bhayera aau bhanera hami bhanchhau. Nuwai dhuwai garera, darhi bhayeko manchhelai shave garna dinchhau. Kapal lamo bhayekolai katna dinchhau. Color bhayekolai black dye garna dinchhau. Nang pani check garchhau. […] Hamile tyo sabaile garchhau yaha. [...] Uniharule hygiene herchha. Uniharule sabai check garchha. […] Kasai kasaiko ta lugaharu hudaina, tyetikhera hamile yehi bat formal tie and shirt provide garchhau. 243 This especially applies to high-caste hill Hindu women; however, slightly modified versions of those decorations have been popular among Nepali women of all different regional, religious, and ethnic affiliations.

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signifies submissiveness—but the performative act of complying with these restrictive norms in itself. From a Foucauldian perspective, the above manipulation of workers’ bodily appearances and conduct are characteristic of techniques of disciplinary power (see section 2.2.1). In “Discipline and Punish,” Foucault argues that instruments of discipline target the body in a different way than other forms of power. Concerning their role in 18th -century French society, he explains that this difference lay in the scale of the control: it was a question not of treating the body, en masse “wholesale,” as if it were an indissociable unity, but of working in “retail,” individually; of exercising upon it a subtle coercion, of obtaining holds upon it at the level of the mechanism itself—movements, gestures, attitudes, rapidity: an infinitesimal power over the active body. [...] These methods, which made possible the meticulous control of the operations of the body [...], might be called “disciplines.” (1976/1995, 136–137) As the above quote reflects, discipline is unique in that it serves to direct and modify subjects at the individual level. It is precisely this focus on minute changes and meticulous forms of control that is so powerful about this mode of governing. In this respect, it differs from other forms of biopower such as biopolitics, which is also directed at human bodies, but on the collective level of the population (id. 1978, 139; see also section 2.2.1). Aside from direct bodily interventions like the ones described above, one of the most common techniques of disciplinary power is surveillance. Given the coercive, restrictive, and punitive approach of many Asian host regimes to governing migrant labor (see section 4.2.2), it is unsurprising that camera surveillance is a widely used instrument among employers in those countries. However, Nepali migrants’ exposure to surveillance does not begin with their arrival abroad. Instead, it shapes much of their path towards foreign employment, because many recruitment agencies and orientation training centers today have installed CCTV cameras on their premises. Arguably, the most profound effect of this practice lies not in the monitoring itself but in the way migrant candidates are repeatedly made aware of it—be it via stern admonitions, subtle reminders, or the numerous warning signs hanging on office walls (see Figure 52 and Figure 53). These warning signs urge aspiring migrants to conform and not to stand out from the crowd while they pass through the infrastructure of migration. Most importantly, however, they habituate them to a practice of surveillance that will most likely continue at their workplace. In talking about workers’ rule-abiding conduct abroad, orientation trainer Anita confirms the importance of this technique: “They have to understand that they will be seen on the CCTV camera in all places.”244 (ori05 int01, 9). Thus, the surveillance warnings serve the dual purpose of policing aspiring migrants’ present conduct and of teaching them to submit to a disciplinary system before they have even left the country.

244 Original: Pratyek thauma, malai CC camerale heriraheko chha bhanera bujhnu paryo uhale.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Figure 52: Warning about CCTV surveillance at an orientation training center. Figure 53: Notice of CCTV surveillance at a large recruitment agency in Lalitpur.

In Figure 52, the notice reads: “You are under CC camera surveillance.” Below the written sign, a fingerprint scanner is mounted to the wall. (Source: H. Uprety 2018).

Although disciplinary power is widely associated with coercion and control, it is also inextricably linked to more subtle forms of governing. As Nikolas Rose suggests, discipline ultimately “seeks to reshape the ways in which each individual […] will conduct him- or herself in a space of regulated freedom” (1999, 22), which means that technologies of the self play an essential role in it as well. With regard to the regimes of bodily discipline described above, this is a crucial insight, as many of these alterations are something migrant workers sign up for or undergo willingly—for instance, in order to succeed at job interviews or to avoid conflicts with their employers. The role of such subtle dynamics of government has been discussed in previous research on labor migration, which has found that embodied “technologies of servitude” (Rudnyckyj 2004) rely not solely on coercion but also workers’ internalization of prescribed subjectivities and their corresponding “self-discipline” (Constable 2007, 15). This shows that even those expectations that are not framed as explicit rules but rather work through incentives and internalized values play a crucial role in migrants’ embodied self-conduct. As Michelle Buckley argues in regard to racial and gendered identity scripts: [M]igrants themselves can internalize employer expectations about these embodied traits, and […] their employment security or promotion prospects can be shaped by how appropriately they perform their perceived […] identities at work. (Buckley 2016, 4) Parallel to these observations, we can conclude that the imagination of the “Nepali worker” serves as an ideal subjectivity that simultaneously informs both coercive technologies of government and techniques of migrants’ self-conduct. Although many of those procedures ultimately standardize workers and mirror the international market demand for pacified low-skilled labor, the methods of instruction used to accomplish

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these effects include not only strict commands and warnings but also subtle persuasion and seemingly well-meant advice.

Manufacturing the productive worker This entanglement of technologies of coercion and individual self-conduct becomes even more evident in instructions on workers’ productivity. Returning to the official orientation curriculum, we can see that even advice intended to be encouraging inspires slight but successive shifts of perspective in training participants. For instance, one section reads: You cannot work well and make the employer happy if you have tension and worries due to being far away from your family and home. You can only work well if you can manage this stress, anxiety, and worry, and keep yourself in a normal condition.245 (FEPB 2013, 114) While the quoted section reminds workers to take care of their personal mental health, it does so not necessarily for the sake of the migrant but for the purpose of “work[ing] well and mak[ing] the employer happy.” By suggesting, again, that the employer is at the center of every worker’s foreign employment experience, instructions like this imply that all issues and actions ultimately need to serve the company’s need for economic profit. In this way, they subtly reiterate the rationality that migrants’ value is determined by their productivity—and ask them to conduct themselves accordingly. As with submissiveness, aspiring migrants learn to internalize this value of productivity not only through explicit verbal instructions but also by undergoing disciplinary practices, including selections and the performative acts of domination that often shape them (see sections 4.2.1, 4.2.5). Other techniques of standardization have a similar effect, such as the mandatory pre-departure medical examinations (see section 4.1.3), which reinforce to migrant workers that their value depends entirely on their bodies’ abilities to perform. Step by step, they learn to internalize a self-commodifying view that essentially reduces them to an element of economic productivity. In the same way that workers are being governed towards submissiveness by both formatting particular subjectivities and guiding their bodily conduct, productivity relies not only on these shifts in migrant subjectivities but also on transformations of their conduct. According to Nepali recruiters and trainers, instructions on migrants’ productive and, specifically, hard-working behavior are absolutely vital, since too many of them go abroad believing that foreign employment means “money can be plucked from trees”246 (ag08, 57).247 As broker Suresh laments, his candidates are often not 245 Original: Gharpariwar chhoder tadha eklai basnu pareka karanle tanab line ra jyadai pir ra chinta linele pani ramro sanga kam garna sakdainan ra rojgardata lai khusi parna sakdainan. Yesta tanab, pir ra chintaharulai bebasthit garera aafulai samanye abasthama rakhna saknu parchha, ani matra ramro sanga kam garna sakinchha. 246 Original: Bidesh jane bhaneko there is like something aba euta paisako kunai bot chha. Tehabata ma tipera lyaudaichhu bhanne khalko. 247 While several recruiters complained to me about this misconception, it is deeply rooted in popular recruitment rationalities about wealth and development (see section 4.1.1), which have, ironically, been reproduced to no small part by recruiters’ own advertisements and commercials.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

willing to commit to hard work: “There are many people like that in Nepal: strolling around, smoking marijuana, smoking cigarettes, then going abroad, not wanting to do this task, not wanting to do that task”248 (iag02, 17). The behaviors listed by Suresh, which are often summarized as “bad habits,” are thought to threaten migrants’ labor input and need to be abandoned. Moreover, even those candidates who do not engage in such activities inevitably need to change their conduct when going abroad, as orientation trainer Sharmila asserts: Here in Nepal, it’s not common to work for eight hours daily. It’s only like that during the season. [...] When they have gone abroad, they have to do it regularly, daily. [...] Therefore, their habits do need to change. Here, there is no habit of doing regular work, but that is automatically going to change, the person will be under some force or a […] [foreman] and will automatically change. No matter how lazy you have been here—abroad, you have to work.249 (ori03, 04) According to Sharmila and many of her colleagues, the working requirements Nepali migrants face abroad stand in sharp contrast to what they were used to back home, where their productive output was far lower. As the above quote also shows, productivity is widely considered a matter of “habit” (bani), something that can be changed with regular practice and by placing workers under the coercive power of supervisors. Hence, broker Ajay is convinced that “[i]t might be hard for them in the beginning to follow the duty and so on, but after some time, it becomes their habit”250 (iag11, 46). Based on this perspective, agents, brokers, and trainers frequently promote “habits” that will increase workers’ productivity as well as a rationality that values “hard work” in itself (see section 4.3.5). At the same time, they also rely significantly on coercive techniques of government. As with instructions towards submissiveness, these are largely anticipatory coercive instructions, in that they plant the seed for, harness, and reinforce candidates’ imaginations of a strict foreign labor regime. Again, these techniques of teaching and governing workers are based on tools of disciplinary power. For instance, broker Rajan explains that workers need to learn how to submit their every action to a rigid daily regimen: Before going abroad, that person needs to know that he or she will have to work hard and that there is a timetable for all things: for eating, resting, sleeping, walking—there is a timetable for all things. You have to be able to follow that timetable. Some don’t build their mindset before—[thinking] it’s like “pluck, pluck the money.”251 (iag07, 5) 248 Original: Katipaye manchheharu testa pani chhan; Nepalma halline, gaja khane, churot khane, bidesh jane tara uha gayera kam nagarne, yo kam nagarne, arko nagarne. 249 Original: Yaha Nepalma regular 8 ghanta kam gareko hudaina daily. Season ko belama matra hunchha. […] Bideshma gayesi regular daily garnu parchha. […] Tei bhayera bani ta change garna parihalyo ni. Yaha regular kam gareko bani hudaina, tara tyo automatic change hudo raichha, manchhe alik badhyetama parisake pachhi wa […] underma parisake pachhi automatic change hudo raicha. Yaha jati alchhi bhayeni bahira gayesi kam garnu parcha. 250 Original: ek din garho hola, dui din garho hola, pachhi bani ni baschha. 251 Original:bidesh janu bhanda agadi tyo manchhelai yeti kura thaha hunu paryo, maile dukha garnu parchha, ani timetable hunchha harek kurako, khanako, basnako, sutnako, hidnako, harek kurako

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As Rajan emphasizes, it is important that migrant workers build a productive “mindset” (manasikta)252 before they leave the country. This mindset, he argues, includes the readiness to surrender to whatever assignment or duty will be put ahead of them—including a fixed schedule that will dictate every aspect of their daily life. Like many recruiters and trainers, Rajan illustrates his point by contrasting the common perception of Nepalis (as people without the “habit” of being punctual or caring about exact work times) with the foreign regime, where they will be forced to change. Such imaginations of difference are used to reinforce instructions throughout the pre-departure stage. Often, they even take the shape of short and casual micro-corrections, such as with recruitment agent Reshma, who reprimands a candidate who has arrived late to his agency briefing: “Why are you late? [...] Once you are abroad, there will be no more ‘Nepali time.’”253 (mp12 vidrec01, 1-5). Other times, they serve to fuel vivid tales of employment experiences, like that of recruiter Prabhas, who describes how the rigid schedule abroad frequently forces workers to leave their meal unfinished: “When the company siren rings, people still have rice in their mouth and leftover rice on their plates, they have to wash their hands and quickly run to duty”254 (iag05, 31). Whether it is by telling embellished anecdotes or dropping subtle remarks in-between formal instructions, recruiters and trainers thus find many ways to prepare candidates for situations in which they will have to override even their most basic physical needs for the sake of labor productivity. Through the extensive description of those tools of discipline—from fixed timetables to sirens and English terms like “duty” and “OT” (overtime)—their governmental effects unfold long before the worker has even arrived abroad. Although many of these techniques have a strong coercive nature, their effectiveness also relies on more subtle corrections and shifts of perspective. Ultimately, the productivity so desired in the “good Nepali migrant” becomes possible only through that interplay between externally forced “habits” and workers’ self-built “mindset” to truly submit to them.

Counter-conduct and subversive practices Although many of the instructions aspiring migrants receive aim at producing submissive and productive workers, there are several ways in which these governmental efforts are subverted. Most importantly, candidates do not always learn to internalize those values but simply how to perform them. For instance agent, agent Sudhir coaches a group of candidates specifically on what to say and not to say during their upcoming job interview:

timetable hunchha tyaha. Timetable anusar garna saknu paryo. Usle yaha yo manasikta banaunu bhayena; “tapak tapak tipera lyaune ho.” 252 Whereas “attitude” (attitude) is generally used to describe a candidate’s outwardy-displayed stance and behavior towards something (see section 4.2.5), the word “mindset” (manasikta) explicitly denotes that this is a mental preparation and internal position that can be fostered and “built” (manasikta banaune). 253 Original: kina dhilo garnu bhayo? (…….) Nepali time ho? uta pugesi arkai bideshi hunchha time. 254 Original: Companyko siren bajne bittikai mukhma bhat chha ani thalma bhat chhodera, hat dhoyera daudina parchha dutyma.

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If they ask you, “What are you doing now?” and you answer, “I am not working, I am just sitting at home.”—“How long?”—“Two years.”—That is a huge drawback. [...] Say that you have been helping your brother in his shop or that you have been working as a farmer.255 (ag20 ob02, 11) As the above quote shows, Sudhir wants his candidates to appear industrious and hardworking in front of foreign employers, but has no interest in their actual “habits.” Instead of coaching them to build a productive “mindset,” he merely teaches them what answers to learn by heart. In this regard, there are important parallels between these instructions and other scripted behaviors during the pre-departure stage, from selection events to agency briefings (see sections 4.2.1, 4.3.2). In all those instances, candidates are explicitly or implicitly taught how to “go through the motions” without actually internalizing the values behind such conduct. Furthermore, some orientation trainers and particularly nonprofit organizations explicitly advise migrants to distance themselves emotionally from any objectification, commodification, or domination they might experience abroad. For instance, orientation trainer Manish (whose subversive instructions I also discussed in section 4.3.3) uses humor to remind his participants that even though they might face domination and abuse abroad, they should not take it too seriously. Moreover, some instructors use the strict and demanding working conditions abroad as a backdrop to inspire solidarity among migrants. For instance, security guard trainer Harka encourages a group of candidates: “When you have gone to a country that belongs to other people, you have to get along. You have to remember that we are Nepali brothers, all right?”256 (skce08 vidrec16, 5). In this way, workers’ national identity, which has been shown earlier to signal inferiority and normalize their submissive subjectivity, is also being mobilized to empower them. Despite such instances of counter-conduct, this section has shown that many of the instructions aspiring migrants receive are targeted at producing submissive and productive workers. Whereas precisely these qualities are advertised as inherent and inborn to the “Nepali worker,” they are considered highly changeable when it comes to pre-departure training and information. This shift in perspective is enabled by framing each migrant’s subjectivity and conduct as a result of his or her personal “mindset” and “habits,” which turns them into objects of governmental intervention. As I have argued, these forms of governmental intervention draw on coercive modes of power, for instance by normalizing techniques of domination and discipline that workers will likely experience abroad. On the other hand, they also guide migrants’ self-conduct by offering friendly advice regarding their self-care, promising them a more attractive foreign employment experience, and shifting their internalized values. The insight that instructions towards productivity and submissiveness rely on both coercive techniques and workers’ self-conduct indicates that these values are 255 Original: “What are you doing now?” bhanera sodhda kheri, “I am not working, I am just sitting at my home,” bhanchha. “How long?” bhanyo bhane, “two years.” That is the huge drawback. [...] Tell that you have been helping your brother in his shop or you are working as a farmer. 256 Original: Arkako deshma gayesi tapaiharu milnu parchha. Nepali daju bhai hami ho bhanne samjhinu parchha, hai?

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not thought to benefit employers and recruiters alone. Instead, there must be rationalities that make workers’ pacification appear beneficial not only for the migration industry but for migrants themselves. Understanding those rationalities requires us to investigate how aspiring migrants are taught to improve not only for migration but through migration. This governmental twist, which leads us to revisit the regime of development (see also sections 4.1.1-2), will be explored in the following section.

4.3.5

Coaching towards development and self-marketization

Recent years have seen major governmental efforts towards countering some of the coercive and intransparent practices around low-skilled labor migration (see sections 4.1.5, 4.3.2). In this context, nonprofit organizations, as well as the Nepali state, orientation trainers, and even professional skills instructors, have increasingly begun to teach aspiring migrants how to improve their personal benefits from foreign employment. In particular, their information and advice are directed at giving them more control over the recruitment and migration process, “empowering” them after their return, and helping them fulfill their personal goals and inner potential. Echoing this agenda, orientation trainer Hari states: We need awareness of ourselves; we need to be self-empowered. For example, we should think positively. How we are going to save the earned money, how will we transfer the money to our family, and which work is good to do, which one isn’t—those are things we need to be able to distinguish. If we have gone towards a positive way, all things in the future will be good for us. [...] So the main thing we need to pay attention to when we are abroad is: Let’s go towards a positive way, let’s do good work, let’s keep positive thinking.257 (ori04, 20) According to Hari, the future that lies ahead of migrant workers is strongly influenced by the ways they transfer and spend their earned money as well as their internal mindset, their “positive thinking.” Similarly, orientation teacher Anita encourages her class of candidates that, although they might be looked down upon by others, it is up to themselves to determine their life trajectories: They call you “unskilled worker,” don’t they? But there are also people who learn a skill from going abroad, who make economic progress, who open some business and provide employment for others after they have come back to their country. [...] Before, they lived in a hut-like home; now, they have built a concrete house with a tin roof. [...] Before, they ate corn dhido; now, they are eating sweet rice. The reason for this is that the remittances from abroad have benefitted this country. [...] A person will not do something unless there isn’t any benefit to it. The Nepali government benefits from 257 Original: Main bhaneko hami sachetana hami afai hunu paryo. Sajagta hami afai hunu paryo. Jastai hami positive way tira thinking garau, kamayeko paisa hamile kasari save garne, hamile kasari ghar family lai paisa transfer garne, ra kun kam garda ramro hunchha, kun kam garda naramro hunchha bhanne kura ta hami afai chhuttyauna sakne hunchha. Tesaile hami positive way tira gayou bhane hamlai nai ramro hunchha. [...] Tesaile bideshma gayera hamile main kuro dhyan dinu parne kuro bhaneko hami positive wayma jau, ramro kam garau ani positive thinking rakhau.

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giving labor permits, and we benefit from going abroad, and that is why we go. Isn’t that true?258 (orice04, 25) As Anita reminds her training participants of the ways in which others have improved their standard of living through foreign employment, she encourages them to do the same. In describing the benefits of labor migration as “economic progress,” and in referencing food and building structures that signify a modern lifestyle, her advice echoes the discourse of development that is so prevalent in Nepali society (see section 4.1.2). Anita also mentions returnees who have provided employment to others and thereby made a positive impact on their community, thus reiterating that development is simultaneously considered an individual process and one of broader societal change. By establishing a positive association between the vocabulary of development and Nepali labor migration, and by emphasizing its economic benefits, the instructions of Hari, Anita, and many of their colleagues build on rationalities of the global migration-development nexus, and particularly so the GRT. As discussed in sections 2.1.3 and 2.2.2, the growing influence of these regimes on a global scale needs to be seen in light of the increasing neoliberalization of development. But what has been the genealogical context of their emergence in Nepal? As discussed at the beginning of my analysis, deeply internalized ideals and values of Western progress and development have served as important rationalities of recruitment into Nepali labor migration (see sections 4.1.1-2). However, the national government and development sector long held a far more negative view of foreign employment, framing it as unsustainable and counterproductive to Nepal’s development. Even though Nepali society at large underwent an “ideological shift toward economic liberalization and market-led approaches to development” (Rankin 2004, 167–168) from the 1980s onwards, this skeptical perspective remained dominant until well into the 2000s. Today, foreign employment continues to be the object of conflicting rationalities (see section 4.1.3), but its interpretation as a source of economic profit and development has significantly gained ground among policymakers and academics alike.259 258 Original: Adaksha kamdar bhanchhan ni, haina? Tara bideshma gaisake pachhi sip sikera, aarthik unnati garera, afno deshma aayera kunai bebasai kholera, rojgar diyera basne pani chhan. […] Paile ka jhupre gharma, ahile sabaima tin ko chhana chhan. […] Paila chyakhla dhido khanele, ahile mitho masino chaiyeko chha. Karan ke ho ta bhanda bideshko remittance le, yo rajye lai ni faida. […] Jo sukai manchhele pani faida nahune kam gardai gardaina. Nepal sarkarle shram swikriti dida faida chha ani hamlai ni bidesh jada faida hunchha bhane bidesh janchhau, ho ki hoina? 259 Looking back on the past two decades of scholarship on the topic (see also section 4.1.), it can be seen that mainstream positions have significantly shifted over time. For instance, Sharma’s 2009 argument against the “pathologizing [of] migration” (320) by hegemonic development discourse indicates that a normalizing and positive view on foreign employment was unpopular until the mid-2000s. As illustrated in sections 4.1.1-3, development rationalities and governmental strategies of the Nepali state continue to be pervaded by conflicting perspectives on the benefits and costs of labor migration. Such ambivalences in the political, development, and academic debates exist even on the specific topic of financial remittances. For instance, a 2013 economic study points to their negative effects, arguing “that high remittances have contributed to the emergence of Dutch disease effects and fostered policy complacency among policy-makers” (Sapkota 2013, 1316) and that “remittances should not be considered as a substitute to formulating and implementing growth and jobs creating investment policy reforms” (ibid., 1329).

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This recent shift potentially reflects the rapid increase of financial remittances, which, in total numbers, have more than tripled in the past decade (MOLESS 2020, 92; see also section 1.1). Also, over the past years has been significantly fostered by the international development apparatus, which has “discovered” labor migrants as potential “agents” of Nepali development. For example, a 2013 report titled “Foreign Employment and Inclusive Growth in Nepal” problematizes that “insufficient attention [is] paid to making the most of returning migrants and non-resident Nepalis, who could be an important developmental resource” (Jones & Basnett 2013, 13). Today, it is not only the international donor community but also the Nepali state and local nonprofit organizations that have identified labor migration as a new area of development interventions. Aimed at both the government of migration and the government of development through migration, these new interventions profoundly rely on techniques of instruction. Those instructions are the topic of this section, where I will identify and contextualize the role of GRT rationalities as well as their national and local specificities. This investigation begins with training and information that guide migrants’ remitting conduct, particularly by teaching them to send home their earnings safely, to save them rationally, and to invest them productively. I will show how many of these instructions fall into a neoliberal pattern of responsibilization, which affects not only migrants’ remitting behavior but their entire conduct. Based on this insight, I will explore how that pattern is tied to techniques by which workers are coached on governing their minds and behaviors towards constant improvement, and how these processes are increasingly interpreted through the lens of the “entrepreneurial self.” Finally, I will retrace how some of these rationalities ultimately frame even migrants’ submission to coercive technologies of labor productivity as beneficial to their development.

Governing remitting conduct Over the past decade, nonprofit organizations like SaMi, Pourakhi, and Shuvayatra (see section 4.3.2) have expanded their training, counseling, and even digital video tutorials to teach migrants how to be more productive “development agents” to their families and Nepali society at large. Similarly, state instructional material, orientation classes, and even counseling sessions by skills trainers and recruiters increasingly discuss what workers should do with their income from foreign employment. These instructions usually address three different aspects of migrants’ conduct: remitting, saving, and the investment of earnings. a) Careful remitting: In teaching aspiring migrants how to remit their earned money, state brochures and orientation classes, in particular, urge them to always use legal money transfer services. For instance, one brochure recommends: Money could be transferred from the following methods: 1) Bank: sending money through the bank means being safe. 2) Money Transfer: Money transfer companies,

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which help to send money, are affiliated with Nepal Rastra Bank. […] Money should be sent through trustworthy money transfer.260 (FEPB 2017, 40) As the quoted section suggests, migrants should send their earnings exclusively through formal pathways, such as bank transfer or reputable services like WorldRemit or Western Union. This piece of advice is particularly relevant because a significant portion of Nepali workers prefer to send their money via informal channels, such as family, friends, and the traditional hundi system (Sijapati et al. 2015, 57). By contrast, instructors warn aspiring migrants that these ways of remitting should be avoided at all costs because they are risky, unreliable, and untrustworthy. For instance, orientation trainer Sharmila explains to one class of workers: With regard to sending money, you have to send the money through the banking system. Have you heard of something called “hundi?” “Hundi” is illegal, okay? […] “Hundi” is illegal, and you don’t have to pay any tax with it. That’s why you get a little bit more money. […] If you send the money through banking, they subtract the tax, and it looks a bit less. But it is safe and reliable. Never ever trust in the “hundi” system.261 (orice03 obs01, 15) As Sharmila argues, informal transfer services like hundi might seem attractive because they circumvent state tax and promise higher conversion rates, but ultimately cannot be trusted. Similarly to other instructions on workers’ conduct abroad (see section 4.3.3), this lesson inculcates in them an awareness that they can only expect safety and protection if they conform to the legal framework. While these recommendations emphasize the Nepali government’s aim to protect workers, the benefits it draws from formal remitting practices—including tax revenue and data on citizens’ behavior, both of which are instrumental to its ability to govern—remain unmentioned. In order to have a lasting impact on migrants’ conduct, some instructors warn them urgently of the dramatic repercussions their use of informal remittance channels could have. For instance, orientation trainer Hari describes in detail how migrants in the previous years tragically lost their earnings to fraudsters: In each country, hundi has been creating one or two incidents every year when a person collects money from many people and disappears. […] If that happens, all we are left with is regret. That’s how hundi has taken away money from many people. […] One person took 20 million and 900,000 and disappeared. He still has not been found. Even if he was found, the police could not do anything or could not charge him. Because it is

260 Original: Nimna likhit dui rakam sthanantarka tarika bat garna sakinchha: (1) Bank: bank bat rakam pathaunu bhaneko surakshit hunu ho. (2) Money transfer: Money transfer jasta paisa pathauna sahayog garne Nepal rastra bank bat manyeta prapta money transfer garne companyharu hun. […] afulai biswashilo money transferbat rakam pathaunu parchha. 261 Original: Paisa pathauda banking system bat paisa pathaunu parchha. Hundi bhanne sunnu bhako chha? Hundi bhaneko chai illegal ho hai. […] Hundi illegal ho ani tesma tax tirnu pardaina. Tei bhayera alikati badhi paisa painchha […] Banking bat paisa pathauda chai tax katchha ani alikati kam jasto dekhinchha paisa. Tara surakshit ra bharpardo hunchha. Hundiko biswas kasaile pani nagarnu hola.

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illegal, there is no proof. […] Therefore, avoid the hundi system at all costs.262 (orice03 obs02, 30) In depicting the extent of migrants’ losses and the helplessness they have found themselves in, Hari convincingly argues that the only thing his students will earn from using informal money transfer services is “regret.” An important reason why these warnings are so effective is that they evoke the subjectivity of the “male migrant provider” (see section 4.1.2), with its profound sense of responsibility to his family and its deeply affective dimension. Research from other contexts has repeatedly shown that migrants’ remittance practices are an emotionally-charged field of conduct (e.g., Baldassar 2015; Parreñas 2005; Yea 2015). As Cheryll Alipio argues, the reason for this is that remittances are part of an “affective economy” (2015): For many migrants, the act of leaving their loved ones behind creates an emotional “debt” that they feel pressured to make up for by remitting as much and as reliably as possible. It is this affective economy that instructors like Hari utilize in order to convince Nepali workers to adhere to the legal remittance process. b) Rational saving: According to many pre-departure instructions, the channels migrants use to transfer their earnings affect not only their protection from fraud but also their ability to save money. For instance, orientation trainer Surendra advises his class to always transfer their income directly to their bank accounts as sending the money in cash might encourage their family members at home to spend it wastefully: What can happen if you send money into your wife’s hand every month? This month, it is used up buying a fridge, the next month it is used up buying a television, the following month by buying jewelry, and the month after that… And if we put so much money into a woman’s hands, it’s also possible we will spoil her mind and give her bad ideas, right?263 (orice01 obs02, 3) While not all pre-departure advice is as rife with sexism and traditional patriarchal norms about the “dangerous” and potentially promiscuous woman (see section 4.1.2) as the above quote, Surendra is not alone in his suggestion that bank accounts are the best way of transferring and saving workers’ income. In order to promote saving and to encourage the use of official remittance channels, the Nepali government recently introduced a provision that requires every applicant for a foreign labor permit to have a personal bank account (DoFE 2019d). Although this initiative has not yet been suc-

262 Original: Ahile pratyek deshma hundile barsha ek dui ota yesto ghatana ghatairaheko chha, dherai janako paisa collection garne, ani manchhe gayeb hune bhaideko chha. […] tyo bhayo bhane tapai hami pachhutaunu bhanda aru bikalpa nai hudaina. tesaile hundile dheraiko paisa yesari khaideko chha. […] Dui karod nabbe lakh rupiya liyechha ani manchhe gayeb bhayechha. Ahile samma patta lagako chhaina. aba tyo manchhe patta lage pani police prasasanle teslai kei ni garna sakdaina, kina bhane illegal kura, praman chhaina. bina pramanko kura k garne. […] Tesaile hundiko prayog sakbhar nagarna parchha. 263 Original: Yedi hamile pratyek mahina srimatiko hatma paisa pathayo vane ke huna sakchha bhanda, yo mahinama fridge kinera sidhyai, arko mahinama TV kinera sidhyai, arko mahina gahan kinne, arko mahina ke ke... Ani dherai paisa hatma parne bhayesi chhori manchheko dimagi halat ni bigrine sambhabana hunchha, haina?

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cessfully implemented,264 it—like the recommendations of Surendra and others—reflects the rationality that migrant workers need to be taught new techniques of saving and “financial literacy” (SaMi 2019). While financial literacy is a broad umbrella term, the above example illustrates that migrants are supposed to learn how to conduct and govern themselves rationally—often contrary to their impulsive and irrational family members. Thus, whereas some instructions on migrants’ remitting conduct utilize the affective economy of remittances, others teach them to distance themselves from their emotions and to take a rational approach to their remitting and saving practice. One crucial strategy connected to financial literacy is to create a deliberate saving plan and set a monthly budget. In his orientation class, teacher Manish urges workers to determine what portion of their monthly salary they are going to save and what portion they are going to spend. While sketching several possible plans on the whiteboard, he proposes the following approach: Have a clear concept. Make a plan. Create one way, develop yourself constantly from the start, and give your family a similar kind of pattern from the beginning. [...] At the very first, pay all the loans. Afterwards, make a plan. Make a calculation of 100 percent. Spend 25 percent, give 25 percent to your family, save 50 percent. After you have created the pattern of spending five to seven years there, saving a little, creating a [higher] level and accumulating a bit, you will have created an environment in Nepal where you can do something, won’t you? Your long-term problems will be resolved, won’t they? You will have become free from having to go abroad again and again, won’t you?265 (orice05 vidrec05, 2-3) By asking training participants to imagine how their lives could change if they saved consistently for several years, Manish connects their everyday conduct to the “big picture” of their development aspirations. Migrants are taught that their ability to control their affective and impulsive behavior, as well as that of their families at home, will be instrumental to their progress. In learning how to budget and track their earnings and expenses, they practice taking a distanced and rational approach to their household affairs. This economic approach, by which subjects learn to manage their households and even their family members like a private business, is not a new concept in Nepal’s development regime. As Rankin argues with regard to microfinancing programs, neoliberal development schemes in Nepal have created the subjectivity of the “rational economic 264 As of September of 2019, authorities had failed to disseminate sufficient information about the provision, and the rule was not fully implemented. Moreover, it was met with criticism by many aspiring migrants, who did not see its intended benefits and considered their new, mandatory bank account “useless and a waste of money” (Mandal 2019). 265 Original: Concept clear hunus, planning garnus, euta way lai create garnus, surudekhi nai constantly aafulai bikas garnus, ani pariwarlai ni suru dekhi nai ekai khalko batabaran dinus. […] sabbhanda firstma tirobharo garnus. Tespaxi euta planning garnus. 100 percentma hisab garnus. 25 tapai kharcha garnus, 25 pariwarlai dinus, 50 jogaunus. 5, 7 barsha basne batabaran create gardai, ali ali bachaudai ani ali ali level create gardai, ali ali badhaudai basnubho bhane bholi Nepalma kehi garne batabaran banchha ki bandaina? dirghakalin samasyako samadhan niskyo ki niskena? Barambar bidesh janu parne samasya bat tapai mukta hunu bhayo ki bhayena?

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woman [...] by which poor women are constructed as responsible clients […] [and] the onus for development falls squarely on their shoulders” (2001, 29). The above insights on migrants’ instructions show that they, too, are informed by such rationalities of neoliberal development. Resulting from the persisting gendered stereotype of the “immobile woman” (see section 4.1.2), however, the subjectivity of the “rational economic migrant” appears to be mainly targeted at migrant men. According to Kunz’ observations on a global scale, the GRT regime typically does not counteract but rather reinforces such gendered divisions of labor into the “male remittance sender” and the “immobile woman,” who is instead targeted with saving and microcredit schemes (Kunz 2011, 148). Accordingly, these gendered subjectivities can be identified as two different facets of the “rational economic subject” in Nepal. As such, they also reflect different strands in Nepal’s development discourse, which continues to be divided on whether the “correct” path towards the national progress lies in bottom-up economic activities or foreign employment. c) Productive investment: Building on these foundational values and subjectivities, predeparture instructions are also aimed at teaching migrants how to invest their remittances upon return. Policymakers, social workers, and instructors increasingly problematize that many returnees use their foreign earnings for short-term spending instead of long-term investments. For instance, technical skills trainer Prakash complains: It [the income, H.U.] has not been utilized properly at all […]. Because even if they use it for proper means, they build a house or buy a field. That means [NR] 1,500,000 to 1,600,000 is kept frozen, it cannot be mobilized. If the capital is not mobilized, it does not get you anything, that’s the one issue. The other issue is, the social balance has been broken. […] Most of the income has been spent in consumption. […] Only five percent of people might start a business. […] Another issue—we are not used to work according to your capacity or status. A one-storey house is enough for a family, but they build a two-and-a-half-storey house, and then they have to go abroad again to pay back the loan they had to take up for that.266 (sk01 int01, 107–115) As Prakash argues, many of people’s current practices and performances that signify a “successful return” from labor migration (see section 4.1.2) squander the country’s development potential and thus need to change. As a result of short-sighted spending and in light of the low employment opportunities in Nepal, returnees have to migrate again once their savings are used up. Rather than wasting their hard-earned money on status symbols and “frozen” assets, the trainer suggests, migrants should invest it “productively” in the economy by starting their own business. Similar advice is given in orientation training and awareness campaigns, including many of the PSAs released by

266 Original: Yesko proper utilization bhaekai chhaina […]. Kina bhanda aba alikati proper use garne bhanne, manchhele banaune bhaneko ghar banaune ho athawa khet bari kinne ho. Tyo bhaneko [Rs] 15000001600000 freeze bhayera basne ho, tyo mobilize bhayena ni. Capital mobilize nabhaye pachhi tesle kehi ta lyaundaina, euta kuro tyo. Arko kura social balance bigereko chha. […] Sabai paisa upagbhog ma kharcha bhayo. […] Thorai jamma 5% manchhele matra business gareko hola. […] Arko kura—hamro aukat anusaar ko kaam garne baani chhaina. Euta pariwar lai ektala ghar bhaye pugyo ni tara usle sadhe dui tala ko ghar banauchha rin garera, ani tyo rin tirnu pheri bides janu paro.

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the FEPB. As the following television spot (see Figure 54) suggests, migrants should not get into a pattern of serial migration but rather make use of the knowledge and skills they gained during their previous foreign employment. In finding ways to invest in and contribute to Nepal’s economy, they ought to become independent from having to go abroad in the future.

Figure 54: Video stills and transcribed audio of PSA in the style of a telenovela.*

(Source: FEPB 2012b). *Original: Chhora: “Swodesma basera kei garna sakinna.” Buba: “Kina sakinna? bhayebharka sabai jana bideshma gayera ramayeka chhan ta?” Srimati: “Teita, hajur tin barsa samma bideshma basnu huda maile pani talim li shilai gardaichhu. Pheri hajurle pathaunu bhayeko jetho ni chhadaichha. Yo bachcha ko lagi bhaye pani swodeshmai basera kei gare hunna ra?“ Ama: “Ho chhora, bideshma kamayeko sip ra punji lai swodeshmai bebasai garera aatma-nirbhar bannu parchha.” Buba: “Sadhai arkako deshma bhar parnu pani hunna.”

Instructions like the one above, which are increasingly being taught by orientation and skills trainers as well, do not stand by themselves but are embedded in a broader governmental strategy. Over the past years, the Nepali state has launched several programs and policies geared towards harnessing the money and skills migrants have earned abroad and combatting Nepal’s unemployment problem. Public initiatives like the Youth and Small Entrepreneur Self-Employment Fund (YSEF 2020) are meant to encourage entrepreneurship among both non-migrants and migrant returnees (Lohani 2016). So far, however, many of these policies have been implemented poorly or have not yet shown significant effects. Therefore, several nonprofit organizations have dedicated themselves to promoting self-employment and entrepreneurship among the Nepali youth and migrant returnees in particular. For instance, the Employment Fund provides technical and business skills courses, whose participants “focus[…] on enterprise start-up and are expected to register a new business at the end of training” (Employment Fund 2019b). Moreover, a growing number of television and radio programs have launched instructional programs about productive investment and entrepreneurship as well, making this Nepal’s most rapidly expanding field of governmental intervention.

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To summarize the above insights, aspiring migrants are increasingly taught to send remittances only through formal channels, to conduct themselves rationally in order to save their earnings and to invest their money productively in Nepal’s economy. Many of these instructions are aimed at “empowering” workers, for instance, by shifting traditional mindsets on fate and status, and encouraging them to make conscious and intentional choices around their foreign employment. However, the effects of these mental shifts are ambivalent as they not only put migrants in the driver’s seat but also hold them responsible for their development success. By reframing individual migrants as “development agents,” who have not only the power but also an obligation to “move ahead for the development of the country”267 (orice05 obs02, 5), such instructions thus draw on neoliberal technologies of responsibilization.

Responsibilization, self-improvement, and the entrepreneurial self Instructions like the ones above ultimately reframe the development subjects of the “male remittance sender” and the “rational economic woman” from “beneficiaries with social rights to clients with responsibilities to themselves and their families” (Rankin 2001, 20). As such, they are embedded in a broader global shift by which “national governments and international organizations [increasingly] link solutions to poverty to a responsibilizing ethos and depend on advanced liberal programs of empowerment [...] that encourage ‘the poor’ to become more responsible for their choices” (Ilcan & Lacey 2011, 74). Seen from this perspective, techniques of responsibilization can be recognized not only in instructions about migrants’ remitting behavior but also in the information and directives on their general conduct abroad. As argued in my earlier investigation regarding workers’ health and rule-abiding behavior (see section 4.3.3), these directives tend to emphasize their individual responsibilities while ignoring or downplaying the role of structural factors. This pattern continues throughout pre-departure instructions, illustrating that many of the recommendations discussed in the previous sections, including those on workers’ personal attitude and behavior (see section 4.3.4), are also tied to this neoliberal development rationality. For instance, one section in the orientation curriculum reads: [M]any have earned much money and become a successful person when they return home, but some return prematurely after they have broken the contract. So many are helpless abroad. To a high extent, the rate of successful and unsuccessful workers in foreign employment has been dependent on their attitude and behavior. Even though a worker is good at his or her skill, he or she cannot be successful if he or she fails to be disciplined, to respect elders and seniors, to show responsibility, morality, and so on. The worker’s success depends on his or her speech, impulse control, and facial expression.268 (FEPB 2013, 114) 267 Original: Tesle tapaiko matra hoina, deshko ni bikas hune batabarn tira agadi badhos. 268 Original: Rojgarma janeharu madhye dherai jana safalbanera paisa kamai ghar phirchhan bhane kehi bichaima samjhauta todera kam chhodi ghar phirchhan. Katijana bidesmai alapatra parera baseka hunchhan. Baideshik rojgarma janeharuko safalta ra asafalta dherai hadsamma afno bebahar ra aacharanma nirbhar gardachha. Kamdar tokiyeko kam garna sipalu bhayepani anushasan, mayarda palan, jawafde-

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

According to the above quote, whether a migrant’s foreign employment experience will be a “successful” one is ultimately in his or her own hands. Again, the factors that might be out of migrants’ control remain undiscussed. Instead, even in the rare instances where the curriculum addresses potentially negative employment scenarios, it largely focuses on the respective worker’s behavior that caused them. By asking aspiring migrants how the worker in each scenario might have acted differently, the curriculum teaches them to pose these very same questions to themselves. In the same vein, orientation trainer Manish instructs his class participants to always react to workplace conflicts by first questioning their own roles and responsibilities: If [the employer] scolds you, [...] it’s not good to say, “Why did he scold me? How bad, he has scolded me, even though I have done my job.” All right? That concept is negative. “Why did he scold me? What have I done, what mistake might I have made?” Make yourself conscious [sic], remind yourself, ask your colleagues, Correct yourself again. That’s how it will go positively.269 (orice05 vidrec02, 4) In telling the candidates to approach any negative experience with a “positive” mindset, i.e., assessing what they could do to avoid such experiences in the future, Manish aims at keeping them malleable and flexible to whatever challenging work scenario they might encounter. However, the perspective that any troublesome experience might be caused and alleviated through their own behavior ultimately teaches migrants to take responsibility even for things that are outside of their control—including the potentially dominating and oppressive treatment by their employers (see sections 4.2.2, 4.3.3). As the above examples indicate, a worker’s personal attitude and behavior are seen not only as relevant for employers and recruiters but as having a direct impact on his or her own ability to benefit from labor migration. Based on this rationality, the responsibilization of individual migrants functions as an effective technique of governing migrant subjects towards submissive and productive conduct: First, workers who suffer domination or abuse are less likely to unite in solidarity over their shared experience if that experience is split up into countless individual cases. In this way, instructions towards migrants’ responsibilization create “lone warriors” who are too preoccupied with their own development than with changing structural inequalities that affect them. Secondly, since migrants’ development success seems to depend largely on their own performance, they are incentivized to conduct themselves precisely according to the demands of the host regime. Compared to the coercive and controlling technologies towards submissiveness and productivity that were discussed in the previous section, the rationality of neoliberal development lays the foundation for a different approach of governing—one that relies entirely on technologies of the self.

hipan, naitikta aadima chukyo bhane u safal huna sakdaina. Kamdarko safalta usko boli, sambeg pradarshan ra mukhakriti prastutikaranma pani bhar parchha. 269 Original: Ae, gali garyo yar. […] Tesaile, “gali kina garyo?” bhanne hoina. […] “Ye kasto khattam raichha, yar, gali po garchha. kam ta garirako chhu.” ho? Yo concept negative. “Kina gali garyo? Ke gare maile, maile galat gareki kya ho?” Afulai conscious garnus, remind garnus, sathi bhai lai sodhnus. feri re-correction garnus. positive tira janchha tyo.

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According to this approach, migrants’ willingness to transform their mindsets and habits is central to their ability to reap development benefits from migration. For instance, orientation trainer Pramila argues that “successful” foreign employment always depends on the worker’s own mental preparation and determination to “improve.” She says: [The person] should have a prepared mindset. Having a prepared mindset means that the person who is about to go abroad needs to be self-oriented. [...] you need to think, “I am going abroad in order to earn and do something.” [...] [S]ome people think their children who misbehave or don’t study will improve if they send them abroad. [...] And that is a compulsion. But if they are not interested, if we send them abroad by force, all kinds of things might happen. [...] Therefore, rather than going abroad out of pressure from others, people should only go if they have prepared themselves mentally.270 (ori06, 12) As Pramila explains, development can never come from coerced migration—it needs to stem from migrants’ readiness to govern themselves for its sake. In other words, they must be determined to improve both for and through migration. In a similar vein, orientation trainer Anita teaches her class participants that they should determine clear goals in order to make the most out of their employment abroad: [Y]ou should at least go abroad with a goal [in mind]. […] There is a saying, “What should you aim for, if not flying to the moon and touching it?” If you wish to touch the moon, even if you cannot reach it, you will at least arrive somewhere a little below it. But to go abroad without any aim or target, just in a mood to see the country, just to get a different taste in your mouth, that makes no sense.271 (orice04 vidrec08, 28) As the above quote indicates, Anita and her colleagues instruct migrants not only, as discussed earlier, to create a strategy for saving and investment. Instead, they encourage them to “dream big,” to have a larger vision for development that encompasses all aspects of their lives. From this perspective, foreign employment becomes merely a short-term means of pursuing a long-term project of self-improvement. As such, it is something that “successful” migrants should learn to endure even during difficult times, as long as it gets them closer to their development vision. A section in the orientation curriculum reads:

270 Original: Manasik tayari hunu paryo. Manasik tayari bhannale kasto bhane ni, jo bekti bidesh jana lagdaichha, tyo bekti aphai self-oriented hunu paryo. […] Ma bidesh gayera kamauchhu ra maile kehi garchhu bhanne hunu paryo. […] Balbachchaharu bigriyo bhane, padhenan bhane, yeslai chai bidesh pathauna paye, u sudhrera aauthyo bhanne chha. […] Jabarjasti bhayo ni tyo ta. U interested nai chhaina bhane, hamile jabarjasti garera pathaidiyo bhane tyha j pani huna sakchha. […] Tesaile usle chai aruko dababma bhanda pani jo bekti bidesh jane ho, tyo bekti afai mental prepare bhayera janu paryo. 271 Original: Bidesh jaada auta lakshya bokera jana paryo. (….) „Uddyesse ke linu, udi chhunu chandra ek,“ bhanchhan ni. Chandrama chhune ichchha rakhyo bhane chhunai nasake pani, alikati tala tira samma ta puginchha. Tara hachuwako talma desh pani dekhine, mukh pani pherine, jaunata ekpalta bidesh bhanera jhola bokera janu bhayena.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

In case if you sometimes get worried about your household things or family matters, you have to be positive by thinking that you are abroad to make the situation better, you have sent money times and again so that your family will get to live at least hand to mouth.272 (FEPB 2013, p.114) According to this recommendation, migrants should not get distracted by “negative” emotions like worry or homesickness but rather remain focused on improving their livelihood. In a similar vein, security guard trainer Harka explains that migrant workers will probably face emotionally challenging times but should redirect all their attention and energy towards the desired development outcome: [You will be] far away from your children, your parents, your wife. […] From that, there might be something going on in your mind. It is normal; it is something I have faced myself. It is normal when you are in another country. But you have to forget all of that. Forget it, just think: “I will work well, I will go on vacation in two years, then I will come to Nepal. And if I am called [back], I will go again.” You need that kind of goal. When working abroad, especially at the time of festivals, your heart will be hurt very much.273 (sk12, 16) In admitting that migrants’ separation from their families will be painful, Harka again references the Nepali dukha narrative of migration, according to which migrants—often in the gendered role of the “male provider”—sacrifice their own happiness for the well-being of their loved ones (see section 4.1.2). However, in retelling this tale through the rationality of neoliberal development, any pain suffered abroad is reframed from a personal tragedy, which has to be endured, to an intentional step towards one’s development vision. For instance, orientation trainer Manish encourages his students: “Do not worry! [...] Convince your family: If living apart for some years will give us a successful, safe life, a progressive future, then why shouldn’t we live apart?”274 (orice05 vidrec02, 02). According to Manish, even the decision to migrate and to endure the pain of being apart from one’s family is a temporary investment that promises attractive returns. As the above examples show, migrants are increasingly taught to govern both their minds and their hearts for the sake of development: Many of today’s governmental interventions aim at transforming not only migrants’ saving and remitting behavior but every aspect of their migration and work performance abroad. Candidates learn to apply a rational, economic, and strategic approach to their entire lives and, ultimately,

272 Original: Kathankadachit gharko chintale satayo bhane, tesaiko paristhiti ramro parna bidesh aayeko ta hun ni, samaye-samayema paisa pathaekai chhu, ramrai sanga garikhalan ni ta bhanera gharpariwar prati sakaratmak ruple sochnu parchha. 273 Original: Chhora chhori, aama buba ani srimati bat tadha bhayo. […] Alikati dimag pani kehi hunchha hola. Kehi normal ta hunchha, maile ni bhogeko kura ho. Arkako deshma ali normal lagchha. Tara teslai sabai birsana parchha. Birsera,„ma ramro kam garchhu, ma chhutti pura garchhu dui barsha. Ani ma Nepal aauchhu. Pheri dakyo bhane Pheri janchhu,“ bhanne uddessele garnu parchha. Uha gayera kam garda kheri, chad-wad aauchha, tyo bela ekdamai mann dukhera aauchha. 274 Original: Naatinus! […] Pariwarlai convince garnus: tapaile, 2, 4 barsha tadha basda jeevan safal chhan, surakshit chhan, bhabishye unnat chhan bhane hami kina nabasne?

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their own being. Seen in a broader geographical and thematical context, the production of subjects who have internalized economic rationalities so much that they see their lives and even themselves through this lens is an essential part of neoliberal forms of government. In Foucault’s own words, “[h]omo œconomicus is an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur of himself” (1979/2008, 226). For the “entrepreneurial self” (Bröckling 2015), every one of his or her decisions, actions, and abilities is instrumentalized for economic gain. As Jason Read observes, “[s]alary or wages become the revenue that is earned on an initial investment, an investment in one’s skills or abilities. Any activity that increases the capacity to earn income [...] is an investment in human capital” (2010, 5). In a reflection of this global trend, Nepali migrants are increasingly instructed to become not only entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurs of the self : More than just creating a development vision for their lives, they learn to reframe every part of themselves—every action, every step of personal growth, every skill improvement—as an economic investment towards that vision. Thereby, they internalize a self-commodifying perspective that interprets each of their physical features, personal qualities, and skills as an economic asset that can be capitalized on. Following international rationalities of value (see section 4.2.3-4), one of the main economic assets of a Nepali worker is his or her functioning and productive body. As a result, migrants are incentivized to submit themselves to healthy “habits,” physical training, medical examinations, and gendered body regimes precisely because those techniques either maintain, enhance, or ensure that valuable asset. Similarly, the promotion of professional skills is grounded in an economic imperative as well: When candidates are told they should harness their individual potential, this is often not considered a goal in itself but rather a means to increase their international “market value”—not only for recruiters but also for their own sake. Paradoxically, even instructions on workers’ mental health and well-being, which are supposed to value their individual value and humanity, can be subjected to this entrepreneurial mindset, too. Personal growth is then reduced to an economic investment, a resource capitalized on for the sake of the migrant’s development success.

Productivity and submissiveness as tools of development and self-improvement Whereas the “entrepreneurial self” in highly industrialized Western societies is often incentivized to be creative, curious, and non-conformist (Bröckling 2015, 107–114), the personal qualities that are regarded as valuable in Nepali laborers are mainly their submissiveness and productivity (see sections 4.2.4, 4.3.4). Thus, as argued earlier, candidates are motivated to adopt a hard-working lifestyle and submissive attitude not only in order to please employers and agents but as an investment into their development. Tying all of the earlier insights of this section together, what instructions towards migrants’ submissive and productive conduct do the rationalities of neoliberal development and the subjectivity of the “entrepreneurial self” translate into? During orientation classes, skills instructions, and agency briefings, candidates are often taught that in order to reach their development goals, they will have to challenge themselves and work harder than ever before. In this light, the strict labor regimes of many host countries are considered not only a sacrifice migrants have to endure but

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

something that is necessary in order to maximize their economic output. The extensive systems of disciplinary techniques, as outlined in the previous section, seem like the perfect framework for pushing workers to their limits, resulting in a level of productivity they could not achieve otherwise. Even among many Nepalis who have found full-time domestic employment, labor migration is widely considered to be far more “effective” because it requires them to work much harder than if they were in Nepal (see also section 4.3.4). Orientation trainer Anita explains the reasons behind this: Being abroad means you have to go to work from a certain time to a certain time, you won't get free time if you get sick here in your family, you get to sleep if you have a headache or anything, it doesn't matter at all, right? And if you work in Nepal and say, “I'm sick,” it's not that difficult. But abroad, there is no chance.275 (ori05, 14) As Hari suggests, even with the “right mindset” to work hard and the determination to develop themselves, migrants’ capacity for self-conduct is no match to the coercive power that they have to submit to abroad. The ways in which the disciplinary labor regime steers them towards productivity by leaving no room for disobedience, precisely scheduling duty hours, restricting free time, and social activities, and giving them nothing to concern themselves with except for their work thus appear to help them maximize their development output. Furthermore, restrictive and disciplinary host regimes are considered beneficial not only for migrants’ economic improvement but even for the development of their character, values, and “habits.” Both recent rationalities of neoliberal development and older recruitment discourse draw on the concept that migrants’ experience of hardship and discipline serves as an opportunity for positive personal transformation. Broker Deepak demonstrates how this rationality works: You have to think like this: “I am going to an unknown place.” You have to be very good [...] Even if you used to talk very badly—now you have to talk well. You have to learn to improve. [...] And they also, Any Nepalis, you know, once they are abroad, they are on their own, are always scared and come to the track anyway. Many people have been to Saudi, Qatar, they have really improved when they return. Because it is a pretty strict place.276 (iag06, 23–24) As Deepak expresses, foreign employment is expected to build workers’ good character: It is supposed to make them more enduring, hard-working, time-efficient, diligent, responsible, and polite. In particular, the strict regime might stop them from falling into “bad habits,” as broker Suresh suggests: “How often people have habits of drinking, smoking cigarettes here and being careless, and they do improve after being abroad. 275 Original: Bideshma bhaneko tapai time to time jana paryo. Birami bhaye pani tyaha fursad chhaina. Yaha bhaneko ta hami pariwarlai tauko dukhyo wa kehi bhayo bhane suti dinchhau [sic]. Kehi matlab chhaina. ho ki hoina bhannus ta? Aba nepalma jagira khada kheri, “ma birami bhaye,” bhane pachhi testo garho hudaina. Tara bideshma bhaneko tyo pani chhut chhaina. 276 Original: Tapaile yesto sochnu parchha ki, “ma parai thauma jadaichhu.” Tyo ta ekdam ramro hunai paryo. […] Ekdam naramro bolthis ta. Aba chahi ramro bol. Ta sudhrina siknu parchha. […] Junsukai Nepali, bidesh gayesi tiniharu afnai thiunama ho kya, darairahekai hunchhan, linema ta aainai halchhan. Saudi qatar tira jan parchha, manchhe sudhrera nai pharkinchha. Kina ki tyaha testai tight thau.

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[...] They have to work there and get along with coworkers […] and conform; they have to work according to what the company says”277 (iag02, 21). Especially considering the high rate of unemployment in Nepal, broker Rajan argues that recruiting young, underchallenged men into migration is doing them a favor, because it protects them from getting into trouble: “My mindset is this: There’s a couple of young guys living around here. If they become unemployed, they will become thieves, cheaters, or good-for-nothings. If they don’t work here, it is better if they go abroad”278 (iag07, 13). Due to its restrictive, coercive, and disciplinary techniques, foreign employment thus serves as a regime of self-improvement in terms of both economic and moral development. While keeping migrants from “bad habits” has an ethical effect, it has a direct economic impact as well, since being abroad puts them at a far lower risk of spending their earned money unwisely. For instance, technical skills trainer Suman observes: Whatever there is in Nepal, people rather look for work abroad. This is because they say, “There is no saving in Nepal.” Today you ask for an advance, and again tomorrow. And at the end of the month, on payday, you can only save ten to twelve thousand, because you have already gotten an advance. That is the system in Nepal, and for that reason, people don’t stay here. They say, “If you stay in Nepal, you don't save money.” When you are abroad, you don’t get to ask for an advance like here.279 (em05 obs02, 70) Similarly to Suman, trainer Prakash concludes that compared to Nepal, the strict foreign labor regime offers no wasteful spending opportunities: “Even if you earn only twenty thousand when you are abroad, there is no place where you can spend it. So you can save money fast”280 (sk01, 25). Aside from unproductive spending habits, another reason that keeps people from working and saving effectively in Nepal is that their closeness to family, relatives, and friends leaves them with numerous social engagements and obligations on which to spend their time, energy, and money. Orientation trainer Anita explains: [W]hen we have gone abroad, there is a distance from our home and family. There are nobody else’s worries, you have your life to yourself, right? Therefore, if you work there,

277 Original: Katipaye manchhe jastai yaha bigrera, rakshi churot khane, laparwahi garne ani uta pathaidiyo sudhrinchhan. […] Uha gayesi kam garnu paryo, sathi bhai sanga milnu paryo. […] Company anusar kam garna paryo. 278 Original: Mero manasikta ke ho bhane: mero yaha 2-4 jana bhaiharu baschhan. Berojgari bhayo bhane, phataha hunchha ki chor hunchha ki kehi kamma lagdaina ki bhanne mero mansaye ho. Yehi kam nagare pani, mero bhaiharu jaos bhanne mero manasikata ho. 279 Original: Manchheharule bideshma Nepalma bhanda je bhaye pani bideshmai kam garna khojne karan ke bhanda kheri, „Nepalma saving hudaina,“ bhanne. Aaja advance magyo, bholi advance magyo, lastma pay garne dinma thorai 10, 12 hajar matra bachchha, kinaki already advance liyeko hunchha. Tyo euta system chha Nepalma, tehi karanle pani manchhe Nepalma basdainan. “Nepalma basyo bhane paisa bachdaina bhanchha.” Bidesh gayo bhane ta yaha jasto advance magna paudaina. 280 Original: Bideshma 20,000 matrai kamaayo bhane pani, kharcha garne thau hudaina. Usle paisa chadai jamma garna sakchha.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

you are able to save money. But in Nepal, no matter how much money you earn, there is your family, your friends—you cannot save money!281 (ori05, 14) By enforcing workers’ disciplined conduct and physically removing them from their social networks, foreign labor regimes allow them to leave their old habits and daily obligations behind. Despite its often highly coercive nature, low-skilled foreign employment thus gives some migrants a sense of “freedom” and an opportunity to “start fresh” in their development journey. Temporarily submitting themselves to these systems of discipline becomes an intentional investment in their development. Considering the different insights gathered over this section, I draw the following conclusion: For a growing number of Nepalis, their conduct during foreign employment and even their decision to migrate in the first place are based on neoliberal rationalities of development. Aside from remitting behavior and a trend of responsibilization, this also means that workers develop a self-entrepreneurial mindset, where each of their qualities and decisions operates as an asset or investment towards a broader development vision. Ultimately, even temporarily submitting to a coercive and disciplinary labor regime is interpreted as such an investment, since it will help the migrant boost economic productivity. In this way, many instructions towards development—despite being intended to subvert coercive practices around labor migration—actually perpetuate the ideal subjectivities of the productive and, at least temporarily, the submissive worker. In the current regime of development, technologies of coercive power and techniques of the self have thus entered a synergistic relationship. Even migrants’ self-conduct towards submitting themselves to a coercive and disciplinary foreign labor regime abroad that pushes them to the limits of their productivity is framed as a strategic decision to harness its coercive power for maximal economic gain. But even more generally, the subjectivity of the “entrepreneurial self” makes workers more likely to submit themselves to many other techniques that are part of the marketization of Nepali labor: Through this lens, the numerous technologies of objectification, commodification, standardization, and pacification that facilitate this process serves not only the economic interest of employers and the recruitment industry but also that of Nepali “development agents.” By conducting themselves to become submissive, productive, predictable, and reliable laborers in order to increase their development output, self-entrepreneurial migrants thus actively contribute to their own marketization.

281

Original: Hami bideshma gaisake pachhi, ghar pariwar bat tadha chhau. Kasaiko tension chhaina, aafu eklai jindagi chha, haina? Tesle garda kheri tyaha kam garda hamile paisa bachauna sakchhau. Tara Nepalma jati paisa kamaye pani, afno pariwar sanga chha, sathibhai bhayo, paisa bachauna sakiyena.

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4.4

Discussion: Governing Nepali Labor Migration and Migrant Subjectivities

At the beginning of this analysis, I set out to explore the diverse and mutually entangled rationalities, technologies, and subjectivities that have contributed to the formation of the regime of Nepali labor migration. In particular, I focused on the ways in which migrant subjects are being generated and governed before they even leave the country. I did so by investigating the core institutional contexts that serve as an infrastructure of migration—such as state authorities, the recruitment industry, orientation classes, and skills training providers, but also local communities—and examining how different techniques of governing have been embedded in or further enabled the global marketization of Nepali migrant labor. In this last part of the chapter, I will first recapitulate the main insights I gained over the course of my three-tier empirical analysis. Following that brief chronological summary, I will move on to deepen my analysis: Reaching a concluding interpretation of my research, I will identify five principal avenues of migrant subjectification, assess the dynamics between coercive modes of power and technologies of the self, and point out the inequalities that shape migrants’ access to these different forms of governing.

4.4.1

Three pillars of the migration regime

As laid out at the start of this chapter, I laid out the findings of my analysis along three main parts—each of which, according to my empirical insights, represents a foundational pillar of the Nepali migration regime. Over the course of my investigation, I showed that these three pillars simultaneously serve as different components that interlock in order to generate and govern migrant worker subjects on their path towards foreign employment (see Figure 55). Thus reflecting the dual perspective of governmentality—which views broad configurations of power through the lens of the self (see section 2.2.1)—these components to the constitution of migrant subjectivity are: (i) the generation of migrant “candidates” by recruiting them into the infrastructure of migration, (ii) the integration of these “candidates” into the international labor market by enabling and formatting market encounters, and (iii) the governing of aspiring migrants’ conduct and subjectivities through techniques of instruction.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Figure 55: Three pillars of the Nepali migration regime.

As illustrated, each of these three pillars simultaneously serve as essential components to the constitution and government of migrant worker subjectivities (Source: I. Lindemann & H. Uprety 2020).

As argued at the outset of the analysis, the above components do not represent mutually exclusive or chronological distinctions, but rather intersect and interlock in order to constitute and govern migrant worker subjects on their path towards foreign employment. My central insights on each of these components—or pillars—are summarized below.

Governing through recruitment The first part of my analysis was not limited to the professional recruitment industry or the state government of recruitment but rather included all forms of knowledge and practices that help transform “regular” people into aspiring migrants. For this reason, I began my investigation by uncovering the historically grown and deeply normalized problematization of Nepal’s perceived lack of development. I unearthed how concepts of Western progress, modernity, and development have affected Nepali society and na-

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tional identity not only since the formal start of development interventions in the mid20th century but already generations earlier as part of a “crypto-colonial” relationship. While labor migration has since grown into a well-established “solution” to the problem of low development, it has also been extensively problematized itself. As I pointed out, academic scholarship, along with other societal forces, has played a significant role in reproducing those different problematizations but also in writing alternative histories of Nepali migration. These broad forms of knowledge serve as a foundation to gendered cultural norms and everyday material practices that generate and format basic migrant subjectivities, which was the topic of section two. By exploring the everyday modes of governing and subjectification that help recruit individuals into foreign employment, I demonstrated that these early stages of recruitment are shaped along three intersecting dimensions: First, they are deeply gendered and thereby result in the normative roles of the “male migrant provider” and the “immobile woman.” Secondly, they are continuously reproduced—but also subverted—in embodied and performative scripts, such as that of the “successful” returnee. Thirdly, a reason why they are so effective in governing the conduct of potential migrants is that they mobilize an emotional and affective response from them, for instance, by tying the narrative of suffering (dukha) to the ideal subjectivity of the “male migrant provider.” Based on these everyday, socially embedded, and seemingly unpolitical forms of governing, my analysis turned to the more visible and professional technologies of recruitment—beginning, in section three, with the Nepali state’s government of migration and recruitment. Following a brief overview of state policies and the legal framework of migration, I unpacked the core rationalities that have informed these techniques of governing and traced their genealogical emergence over the past decades: Since the Nepali government long viewed international migration primarily as a means of education, the spread of foreign employment practices in the past decades was initially interpreted as a detriment to Nepali society. However, awareness of the possible advantages to the practice grew as well, such as its production of economic revenue and its ability to alleviate social tensions and frustrations, particularly among the country’s male youth. At the same time, there was an emergence of biopolitical rationalities that problematized the risks of foreign employment to the migrant population and defined migrant women as a particularly vulnerable group that needed additional protection. In giving this brief overview, I showed that the state’s governmental interventions on labor migration were, and continue to be, conflicted and contradictory. In the last part of the section, I focused on the state’s government of recruitment, specifically, by outlining its current legal framework and the official recruitment process. Section four starts with the recognition that those state regulations are frequently subverted by everyday recruitment practices. In framing such practices as “subterranean” technologies, I expressed that they are often invisible on the surface, yet absolutely fundamental to the functioning of the Nepali migration regime. Focusing particularly on migrants’ continuous reliance on freelance recruiters, I unpacked different rationalities that inform their self-conduct towards using these “subterranean” services, for instance, by framing local brokers as capable networkers, trustworthy patrons, and powerful advocates. Furthermore, I explored the dynamics between licensed

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

and unlicensed recruiters, showing that their relationship is not only contentious and hierarchical (as it is often portrayed) but also shaped by mutual interdependencies. Finally, I retraced how several subversive recruitment practices are tied to international market structures and processes, such as the commodification of jobs, the intense competition between recruiters, and the resulting hidden costs of recruitment. Due to the fragmentation and steep hierarchies within the industry, it is only at the level of migrants that these multiple incremental effects of coercive and exploitative modes of power ultimately add up. The final section of this part of my analysis focused on the continuous struggle between official and “subterranean” technologies of governing recruitment. Although the Nepali government has deployed several far-reaching interventions against subversive recruitment practices, a closer investigation reveals that the dynamics between the public and private recruitment sectors are more complex than they seem: “Subterranean” practices permeate state institutions and actions in and beyond Nepal as well, particularly so in the form of clientelist and oligarchic structures of power. Based on this insight, I investigated how those conflicting technologies of governing recruitment have affected the conduct and subjectification of aspiring migrants. Specifically, I argued that the state’s new digital and biometric technologies have not only brought more “freedom” but also facilitated workers’ objectification and commodification, reinforced coercive modes of government, and, in turn, engendered new forms of counterconduct.

Governing market encounters In the second part of my analysis, I distinguished recruitment—as forms of governing that turn regular men and women into “migrant candidates” and thereby incorporate them into Nepal’s infrastructure of migration—from the different steps required to integrate these workers into the international market. Mainly focusing on practices of selection and hiring, I argued that these processes, which format the market encounter between Nepali migrant labor and foreign employers, are an essential component of the Nepali migration regime. My investigation of this component began with a detailed empirical analysis of a specific type of selection events, namely in-person interviews and skill tests with executives of the hiring company. In identifying these events as the only physical market encounter between migrant candidates and their potential employers, I recognized that they offer a rare glimpse into technologies and power dynamics that define workers’ entire pre-departure stage but largely occur remotely or behind closed doors. Drawing on my ethnographic observations, I illustrated how migrant candidates are often subjected to coercive and restrictive modes of government that ultimately treat them as disposable and render them passive. Taking a marketization perspective, I argued that these governmental effects represent processes of detachment and pacification, and thereby play an instrumental role in the commodification of Nepali labor. Finally, I shone a light on the ambivalent and often contradictory roles of recruitment agents and brokers, and explored avenues of counter-conduct that enable candidates to subvert some of the dominant technologies and asymmetrical structures of these events.

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Based on my recognition that many of these technologies and structures are not specific to Nepal but have emerged from a broader geographical and historical context, the subsequent sections examined different aspects of this genealogical background. In section two, I identified the most common host countries of Nepali migrant laborers, and then—focusing on Malaysia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia—outlined the approach these states have taken to governing migrant labor. Largely drawing on external literature, I argued that these host regimes rely predominantly on three governmental strategies—the marginalization and commodification of low-skilled laborers, the silent toleration of employers’ “subterranean” paired with a highly punitive approach towards migrant workers, and the segmentation of the labor market based on workers’ nationality. In section three, I argued that this segmentation of the labor market and the underlying calculations of labor value do not only emerge during employment in the host economies but are already expressed in practices of transnational hiring. Focusing on the Gulf states, I illustrated this point by spotlighting three sets of technologies that shape the hiring of migrant labor into these countries: First, workers are quantified, for instance, by being placed into pre-approved visa “lots,” which further pacifies them and already determines which national markets employers will approach for specific positions. Secondly, companies are not free to choose their preferred nationalities when hiring, but they are bound by a legal framework that is geared towards “workforce diversification.” Thirdly, various policies of “workforce nationalization” make it difficult and expensive for companies to place foreign workers into highly-skilled positions, which inspires “subterranean” practices of hiring that further complicate the process. Finally, I showed how Nepali workers’ readiness to accept low wages puts them at a comparative advantage against workers from other nationalities but also sends employment conditions into an ongoing “race to the bottom.” In light of their perceived disposability in a highly competitive market, I concluded that the singularization of Nepali workers as “cheap” labor is instrumental to their successful marketization. Continuing on the topic of singularization, section four moves from the external factors that inform targeted hiring of Nepali workers to their supposed personal qualities—in particular, a specific type of character and conduct. I showed that members of Nepal’s migration industry have advanced an essentialist imagination of the “Nepali worker,” which often boils down to the signifier “honesty,” but can be broken into four main components: the ability to work hard, truthfulness, obedience, and naïve compliance. In a second step, I concluded that these different facets of the “Nepali worker” mirrored the broader market ideals, namely productivity, reliability, predictability, and submissiveness. Tying my findings from this and the previous sections together, I argued that these ideals reflect core rationalities of labor value, which inform employers’ demand for low-skilled labor and iterate dominant techniques of governing foreign workers in the Malaysian and GCC host regimes. In the remainder of the section, I focused on two specific components of the “Nepali worker:” the idea of the “simpleminded laborer” and the “brave warrior.” In retracing their lines of descent, I showed that both represent racist scripts, whose emergences were tied to two different colonial practices of employing South Asian workers: Indian menial labor in the Gulf protectorates and Malay, and the recruitment of Gurkha soldiers from Nepal.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Based on those insights into the broader spatial and historical factors that format the market encounter between Nepali migrant labor and foreign companies, I returned to the topic of selections. This time, however, I did not look at specific events but at technologies of selection at large, exploring how practices of differential hiring play out among the pool of Nepali candidates. I argued that the majority of selections are actually conducted by recruiters and that processes of matching and selection are inextricably woven into their work, where they often occur intuitively and without documentation. Read through a marketization perspective, these processes function as techniques of standardization. These allow recruiters to deal with the risk of ambiguous and competing forms of qualification by framing migrant candidates as stable, tradable entities with “objective” traits. I briefly outlined the main criteria that guide these selections, which I grouped by professional skills and education, personal attitudes and conduct, and bodily features. In focusing on two of these criteria, specifically, I illustrated how narratives and rationalities of value on different geographical scales can both reinforce and subvert each other. For instance, contrary to the imagined personal qualities of the “Nepali worker,” internal rationalities among Nepal’s recruitment industry increasingly depict Nepali candidates as dangerous “troublemakers,” a concept that is tied to the country’s recent history of political turmoil. With regard to migrants’ “suitable” bodies, I demonstrated how racist colonial scripts in the larger region reinforce structural asymmetries within Nepali society, producing a complex differentiality of access that marginalizes Madhesi candidates while (partly) privileging those from Janajati and highcaste hill Hindu backgrounds.

Governing through instruction The third pillar of my analysis focused on pre-departure instructions, which play an essential role in the constitution and government of migrant subjects. I explained that these instructions are informed by different and often conflicting rationalities and problematizations: They range from the biopolitical strategy to shield the migrant population from fraud, health risks, and other harm abroad to efforts of standardization, which are geared towards closing the gap between candidates’ present “qualities” and the skill levels, conduct, and mindset valued in the international labor market. I argued that much of the information, direction, and guidance workers receive on their path towards foreign employment is deeply personal since it is ultimately targeted at the transformation of their conduct, bodies, and subjectivities. My investigation began with the topic of professional skills training, where I focused not so much on the content of these instructions but instead explored the reasons for the widespread low skill levels among Nepali migrants and the governmental interventions deployed to counteract them. After a brief overview of the skills classes that are specifically targeted at aspiring migrants, I set these insights into the broader context of technical and vocational training in Nepal. I tracked some of the issues of the training sector that have been increasingly problematized, such as insufficient training capacities and the lack of regulation, the low interest among many aspiring migrants, and the unequal access to classes. In response to these recent problematizations, skills promotion has become an increasingly important strategy in the government of Nepali

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migration. However, the underlying rationalities that inform these governmental interventions are diverse and sometimes contradictory. For instance, the promotion of skills training is thought to not only lower individual risks to the migrant population and improve migrants’ chances of development but also offer them an alternative to foreign employment altogether. Moreover, it is considered to stabilize economic benefits for the Nepali state but also increase financial profit for recruiters. Just as with the Nepali state’s general approach to labor migration, these contradictions between different rationalities are rarely articulated openly, and instead remain an unresolved but glossed over friction in the current migration regime. In section two, I investigated the instructions aspiring migrants receive on navigating the Nepali recruitment industry and conducting themselves on their path towards foreign employment. First, I outlined the main techniques of information, training, and advice deployed by the Nepali state and nonprofit organizations. I then focused on the content of the government’s advice on “correct” pre-departure conduct. I showed that the state warns workers to be aware of all details of their recruitment and employment, to strictly adhere to Nepal’s legal recruitment framework, and to avoid any “subterranean” practices. By contrast, recruiters, who play a crucial role in delivering pre-departure instructions, partly undermine not only the state’s regulations but also its instructions. Based on my ethnographic research, I revealed that agency briefings often teach candidates how to “play along” with the subversive acts done by the industry so as not to be caught by authorities. Ultimately, I argued that migrant workers are typically the ones left in the crossfire between those competing instructions, being signaled by the state that it is first and foremost their own responsibility to ensure that they will not be cheated or maltreated. This pattern of teaching migrants about their responsibilities and that their rights to state protection are contingent upon their dutiful conduct continues with directives on health, safety, and rules abroad, which I explored in section three. After introducing pre-departure orientation training as a technique of instruction that has become mandatory for all migrant workers, I revealed numerous discrepancies between the formal design and the actual implementation of these classes, such as the low attendance rate and issues of unequal access. I then discussed the state’s most recent interventions to counter such subversive practices, particularly so the biometric system and online platform FEIMS, which have vastly increased participant numbers but caused several other effects, such as the further objectification of workers and an even higher inequality of access. Following this examination of the technical side of instructions, I returned to their content, this time focusing on workers’ conduct abroad: I observed that recommendations on health and safety tend to responsibilize individual migrants (even more so in the case of women) without addressing the role of structural conditions. Regarding host-country rules and regulations, I showed that many instructions mobilize fear and intimidate workers with warnings about the coercive and punitive regime, yet are presented as “neutral” information. Ultimately, I argued that workers are taught to be unconditionally obedient, even when experiencing a violation of their own rights. By suggesting that the justice systems in their prospective host countries are impartial and unfailing, these instructions deny that it is frequently employers who first break

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

laws or contract conditions, and thus offer migrant workers few feasible options on how to deal with such challenges. In section four, I argued that a central purpose of the training, information, and advice given to aspiring migrants is to govern their internal attitudes and bodily conduct, which are widely regarded as even more important than professional qualification. Based on empirical insights, I recognized that the personal qualities most of these instructions aim at are precisely those which I had identified earlier as core ideals in the international calculation of “valuable” migrant labor: Focusing on the values of submissiveness and productivity, specifically, I turned to examine the techniques by which they are being taught to aspiring migrants. I began by tracking the “manufacture” of submissiveness through not only forms of intimidation and commands but also seemingly well-intentioned advice that normalizes workers’ domination. I then illustrated how those mental shifts and verbal techniques of governing are reinforced by subjecting candidates to embodied regimes of conduct and physical alterations. I argued that the modes of disciplinary power at play here rely not only on coercive techniques but also on migrants’ self-conduct—a pattern I recognized in instructions towards productivity as well. By retracing how recruiters and instructors try to cultivate productive “mindsets” and “habits” in their workers, I illustrated that these efforts, too, range from gentle advice on self-care to strict warnings about the rigid system of coercion, domination, and discipline that workers will have to conform to abroad. Eventually, I put the above insights into context by outlining instances of counter-conduct against those values. In the fifth and final section, I turned my attention to the growing number of instructions aimed at “empowering” workers to increase their development output from foreign employment. Based on the international migration-development nexus and particularly the GRT, a lot of these interventions focus on teaching migrants ideal remitting conduct. In particular, I illustrated how workers learn to remit their earnings exclusively through legal and “trustworthy” channels, take a rational approach at saving, and invest their incomes “productively.” I argued that the definition of migrants as “development agents” further deepens the neoliberal pattern of individual responsibilization, which means that workers become determined to continuously “improve” themselves. More specifically, they adopt a self-entrepreneurial mindset, where each individual quality or decision functions as an asset or investment towards their vision of development. According to this rationality, even migrants’ temporary submission to a coercive and disciplinary foreign labor regime is read as such an investment, since it will help them boost their economic productivity. Based on this observation, I concluded that recent instructions on development, despite aiming to “empower” workers against coercive practices around migration, can actually perpetuate the ideal subjectivities of the productive, submissive, and thus pacified migrant worker. Ultimately, the empirical findings of my analysis are clearly diverse and complex, yet each of its parts has fulfilled a distinct function: The first pillar has outlined the fundamental constitution of migrant candidates, the construction of the institutional framework of the migration regime, and the continuous struggle between official technologies and “subterranean” practices of recruitment. The second pillar has shown that the Nepali migration regime could only emerge based on the formatting of a market en-

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counter between Nepali workers and the international labor market, whose rationalities of calculating labor value and techniques of increasing or stabilizing that value are instrumental to the production and government of migrant subjects. The third pillar has represented the government of migrants’ conduct and self-conduct through technologies of instruction, whose underlying rationalities range from protecting workers from risks to standardizing and raising the “quality” of migrant labor, as well as a neoliberal development agenda.

4.4.2

Subjectification and marketization of migrant workers between coercive conduct and technologies of the self

Based on the conceptual framework of this study, my analysis has taken into account five different but intersecting dimensions (see part 2.4). First, it has examined the practical tools and technologies of governing, the rationalities and other forms of knowledge that inform them, and the relationship between techniques of coercive power and migrants’ self-conduct. Secondly, it has considered the role of large-scale formations of power on the one hand, and their reinforcement, transformation, or disruption by locally specific conditions and practices on the other. Thirdly, I acknowledged the importance of material, embodied, performative, and affective dimensions of government, as well as the messy ways in which governmental strategies can play out in everyday practice. Fourthly, I explored the mechanisms by which those modes of governing serve to advance the marketization of Nepali migrant labor. Fifthly, I paid attention to the ambivalences, contradictions, and ruptures throughout the regime, particularly so the subversive practices and techniques of counter-conduct among aspiring migrants and members of the migration industry. This last section of my analysis brings these different dimensions together and draws a final conclusion on the constitution and government of migrant subjects. I will begin by extracting, from my earlier analysis, five ideal subjectivities that guide the subjectification of aspiring migrant workers. On this foundation, I will retrace the interplay between coercive modes of power and techniques of the self that shapes the formation of these subjectivities. In a third step, I will point out several factors of difference that determine migrants’ exposure to either more coercive or more subtle technologies of governing, and thus render their access to certain facets of migrant subjectification highly unequal. In my final assessment, I will summarize the main benefits but also some of the limitations of my conceptual and methodological approach.

The Nepali migrant worker amidst multiple forms of subjectification From the beginning of the analysis, I have argued that the main function of the governmentality of Nepali labor migration is to generate and govern migrant subjects. The “Nepali migrant worker” does not simply step into the international labor market but emerges as a result of multiple techniques of governing and underlying rationalities, all of which frame and renegotiate the very concepts of migration, labor, and Nepali identity in the process. Furthermore, migrant workers are not just any type of subjects that are produced by rendering a particular body of people governable, but they are also produced in a more explicit sense as labor commodities around which a market emerges.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

As argued, these processes of marketization and government overlap and interlock in techniques of commodification, evaluation, and the formatting of market encounters, which unfold across the infrastructure of migration in Nepal and beyond. Since aspiring migrants are simultaneously exposed to diverse and even contradictory forms of governing, their processes of subjectification are multi-faceted and fragmented. Based on the insights gathered throughout my empirical analysis, I identify five major types of subjectivity that serve as “prototypes” or “blueprints” in the subjectification of aspiring migrants on their way abroad. These ideal subjectivities can be called the “self-sacrificing provider,” the “submissive servant,” the “productive worker,” the “responsible citizen,” and the “entrepreneurial self” (see Figure 56).

Figure 56: Constitution of the Nepali migrant subject.

As illustrated, the Nepali migrant subject is constituted amidst multiple conflicting and fragmented subjectivities, each of which is associated with particular technologies and embedded in broad regimes of government. (Draft: H. Uprety 2020; Design: I. Lindemann 2020).

These ideal subjectivity types are normative and thus represent different facets of what has been, in other migration regimes, described as the standard of the “good migrant worker” (Findlay et al. 2013). Hence, I do not suggest these exist in their pure form in any one particular migrant—instead, I argue that each worker assumes a unique combination of these facets at different points in his or her subjectification, be it before, during, or after foreign employment. Furthermore, many of these ideal subjectivities intersect, sometimes reinforce, and at other times subvert each other. Despite such overlaps, each type of subjectification is informed by specific rationalities, cultivated by

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a different set of technologies, and predominantly attached to certain institutional contexts. Based on my earlier empirical insights, and loosely following the chronological order of their emergence, each of those types can be outlined as follows: a) The self-sacrificing provider: This form of subjectification is deeply embedded in social and cultural values that continue to shape daily life in communities across Nepal. Drawing particularly on high-caste hill Hindu norms about the male role of the provider, it tends to be gendered and reiterates the historically-grown dichotomy of the “male migrant” and the “immobile woman” (see section 4.1.2). As such, the subjectivity is intertwined with the centuries-long practice of migration among communities across Nepal (Gellner 2014; Graner & Gurung 2003) and the gendered dukha narrative that romanticizes the sacrifice of (predominantly male) migrants. At the same time, it also iterates rationalities of modernizing development, particularly Nepal’s glocalized discourse of bikas (Pigg 1992, section 4.1.1). Since the above forms of knowledge and practices are primarily tied to dynamics in families and local communities, the subjectivity of the “self-sacrificing provider” is most powerful in those contexts, where it manifests in everyday embodied and material practices. While the governmental effect of these practices can largely be observed in performativity, more deliberate techniques of governing have emerged as well, such as in popular music and professional recruitment commercials. As illustrated in section 4.1.2, these techniques often operate by mobilizing emotions in their audience, ranging from guilt and shame to pride and love. Due to this deeply personal and affective dimension, the subjectivity of the “self-sacrificing provider” plays an instrumental role in the earliest stage of recruitment. However, it also lays a lasting foundation for migrants’ conduct abroad and after their return, for instance, by morphing into the ideal of the “successful returnee.” b) The submissive servant: As has become evident through large parts of my analysis, the “submissive servant” is one of the most powerful subjectivities in the Nepali migration regime. For instance, I have shown that instructions on migrants’ conduct abroad are often directed at manufacturing a submissive subjectivity and conduct (see section 4.3.4). This includes pre-departure briefings, during which recruiters subtly teach workers to internalize their own inferior “value” compared to foreign residents and even migrants from other nationalities. Similarly, instructions by state authorities and orientation trainers are predominantly geared towards keeping Nepali migrants unconditionally obedient, even in the face of the differential treatment and violation of their rights that they might experience abroad (see section 4.3.3). Furthermore, techniques during professional skills classes and procedures like selections govern not only candidates’ “mindsets” but also their bodily conduct. Often drawing on disciplinary modes of power, these interventions are largely aimed at rendering their physical appearances neutral and inconspicuous. Concerning selections, I could show that submissiveness is the ideal behind a number of—mostly coercive—technologies, from the identification and elimination of potential “troublemakers” (see section 4.2.5) to the effects of disposability and detachment that manifest in the regimes of bodily conduct during in-person interviews and practical skill tests

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

(see section 4.2.1). All of these techniques ultimately serve to pacify migrant labor, which is a prerequisite to its successful marketization. Regarding its function in the marketization of Nepali labor, specifically, I have illustrated that submissiveness is one of the core factors internationally that determines the calculation of low-skilled migrant labor “value,” and that this market ideal is reflected in the singularizing imagination of the “Nepali worker” (see section 4.2.4). I revealed how this standard reiterates the widespread technologies of employment and hiring in the migrant labor regimes of Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, which are geared mainly towards objectifying, detaching, pacifying, standardizing, and thereby commodifying migrant labor (see sections 4.2.2-3). Moreover, I traced its genealogical emergence even further into the past, revealing its direct links to the century-long practice of South Asian labor in the British colony of Malay, the Gulf protectorates, and beyond (see section 4.2.4). Both the racist script of the “simple-minded lowland laborer,” who is naïve and easy to dominate, and the “brave mountain warrior,” whose obedience and loyalty know no bounds, embody the ideal of the “submissive servant.” c) The productive worker: Another vital component of these colonial stereotypes is the ideal of productivity. While the “simple-minded lowland laborer” is framed as hardworking, physically tough, and enduring—essentially a sturdy labor machine—the facet of productivity that speaks from the “brave mountain warrior” is one of capability, strength, and reliability. In both cases, however, the bottom line is that they singularize Nepali migrants as workers with a high labor output. Importantly, the ideal subjectivity of the “productive worker” has not only emerged from regimes of employment and techniques of selective hiring among foreign host countries (see sections 4.2.2-3). Instead, it is being reinforced in numerous domestic steps of the migration process—from selections and medical exams that performatively reduce candidates’ value to the likely “usefulness” of their bodies (see section 4.2.5) to pre-departure instructions on “habit” and “mindset” changes (see section 4.3.4). As shown at different points during my analysis, the ideal values of submissiveness and productivity are closely intertwined and often tied to the same processes or techniques of governing. Along with the values of reliability and predictability, they are fundamental to the pacification—and thus successful marketization—of Nepali migrant labor (see section 4.3.4). Furthermore, my empirical findings led me to recognize that both are cultivated in migrants via techniques of disciplinary power.282 This tight connection between submissiveness, productivity, and discipline is worth closer scrutiny. Particularly Foucault’s own writings on disciplinary power provide enlightening insights as to why the two subjectivities appear together so often: [D]iscipline produces subjected and practised bodies, “docile” bodies. Discipline increases the forces of the body (in economic terms of utility) and diminishes these same forces (in political terms of obedience). In short, it dissociates power from the body; on 282 Importantly, none of this analysis was initially conducted with the values of “submissiveness” and “productivity” in mind. Instead, it was only as the result of in-depth analysis and the subsequent comparison of my insights that I recognized those parallels in host regime practices of employment and hiring, the singularization of the “Nepali worker,” selection criteria, and aspiring migrants’ instructions.

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the one hand, it turns it into an “aptitude,” a “capacity,” which it seeks to increase; on the other hand, it reverses the course of the energy, the power that might result from it, and turns it into a relation of strict subjection. (1976/1995, 138) In the above quote, Foucault argues that the power that is removed from individual subjects by making them obedient and subordinate is precisely what turns into their increased economic utility, and vice versa. Consequently, submissiveness and productivity are not only inextricably linked but mutually reinforce each other. Foucault’s perspective offers a useful explanation on why both of these factors are so vital in the government of aspiring migrant workers: Submissiveness and productivity are integral and mutually dependent parts of a docile subject, a subject that is simultaneously useful and compliant. Furthermore, as argued in section 4.3.4, the docile worker is one who does not endure only coercive modes of government but who even conducts him- or herself exclusively in ways that are expected and desired by the industry. This form of conduct represents precisely the “tamed” agency that is the bottom line of the many techniques that pacify migrant labor (see sections 4.2.3-5). Hence, a closer investigation of the relationship between the subjectivities of the “submissive servant” and the “productive worker” reveals that both are profoundly shaped by the disciplining and pacification of Nepali migrant labor, which can be understood as two sides of the same coin. d) The responsible citizen: Compared to the three previous blueprints of migrant subjectification, the subjectivity of the “responsible citizen” appears to have emerged somewhat later in the genealogy of the Nepali migration regime. To be sure, the concept of responsibility is already present within the role of the “self-sacrificing provider,” who takes care of his or her family. Rather than limiting themselves to these personal contexts, however, the emerging governmental interventions of the 1990s and 2000s profoundly redefined the relationship between migrant workers and the Nepali state. Whereas I have just illustrated the role of discipline as a type of biopower that focuses on individual bodies, my empirical analysis showed that another expression of biopower—namely biopolitics, which aims at preserving the population’s health, physical integrity, and reproduction—has grown increasingly relevant as well (see section 4.1.3). In response to the problematization of foreign employment as a risk to the migrant population (and particularly so to female migrants), a growing number of governmental techniques have been deployed to reduce these risks. It is in the context of such biopolitical interventions that efforts to responsibilize aspiring migrants have gained influence: Instead of focusing on changing structural conditions, for instance, by answering workers’ needs that lead them to unlicensed recruiters (see section 4.1.4) or negotiating minimum wages with host regimes, the Nepali state placed more attention on holding migrants accountable and teaching them how to protect their physical, mental, and financial integrity themselves. To be sure, these instructions provide aspiring migrants with valuable tools to ward off some of the intransparent and coercive practices they might encounter during recruitment and employment. The flip side, however, is that migrants are left not only with the opportunity to take care of their own safety—but with the ultimate responsibility to do so (see sections 4.3.2-3). All the while, the Nepali state evades much of

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

its own liability: By suggesting that every migrant can be sure of a healthy and safe foreign employment experience as long as he or she acts as a “responsible citizen,” it downplays the potent role of coercive structures, institutionalized inequality, and other factors that are out of individual migrants’ control. Even in those cases where the government promises protections against rights violations and the like, workers’ claims to receive those protections are contingent upon their “correct” and responsible conduct. While the subjectivity of the “responsible citizen” has become well-established in the migration regime at least since the new legislation of 2007, the recent years have seen an even stronger trend of responsibilization: With the emergence of GRT rationalities in Nepal, aspiring migrants are increasingly being “empowered” to take charge of their lives and become “development agents” for their families and their country (see section 4.3.5). Whether these technologies are geared towards keeping migrants safe and healthy or towards improving their development output, their pattern of highlighting individual responsibilities while downplaying structural factors is indicative of neoliberal modes of governing. e) The entrepreneurial self: As I argued in section 4.3.5, those neoliberal modes of governing also encourage an economic and entrepreneurial mindset. This concerns migrants’ remitting conduct, where they learn how to send, save, and invest their earnings from a rational and detached point of view, essentially running their households like a business. According to neoliberal development rationalities, the ideal migrant is one who is in constant search of self-improvement and remains focused on his or her development vision. Hence, this economic and entrepreneurial approach essentially redefines migrants’ entire perspectives on their lives and their selves: They learn how to evaluate every single decision in terms of how much it will serve as an “asset” or “investment” in their development progress. This evaluation is also extended to workers’ personal qualities and physical features, which enables them to instrumentalize the rationalities of value that guide processes of selection in order to increase their own economic output. By offering migrant workers new avenues to maximize their personal benefits from foreign employment, today’s development instructions partly subvert more traditional subjectivities, like those of the “self-sacrificing provider” and the “submissive worker.” They “empower” candidates to prioritize their own gain from foreign employment and to find a more “productive” and dynamic way to make sense of their experiences. Even the forced productivity and restriction of workers’ personal rights in the rigid disciplinary labor regime abroad no longer appear as something migrants have to internalize permanently—but are framed as an opportunity, a deliberate investment, to temporarily boost their development. However, the question remains whether this shift of perspective does, indeed, subvert those subjectivities, or rather reinforces them. Despite arguing that migrants’ submissiveness and forced productivity are only a temporary, strategic investment, those instructions do not challenge their necessity and thus ultimately reinforce their powerful role in the calculation of migrant labor value. Ultimately, the price for this form of “empowerment” is self-commodification: By learning to “play along” with the technologies of selective hiring and underlying rationalities of value, migrants do not only conduct themselves accordingly but internalize those rationalities at least to some de-

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gree. For the sake of more efficient development, migrants who adopt the subjectivity of the “entrepreneurial self” thus govern themselves to be submissive, productive, predictable, and reliable, and thereby actively contribute to their own marketization.

Dynamics between coercive modes of government and technologies of the self In invoking these ideal types of migrant subjectivity and governing aspiring migrants towards them, the Nepali migration regime oscillates between coercive and more subtle modes of government—between modes of subjection and subjectivation. Throughout my empirical analysis, I illustrated how aspiring migrants’ path towards foreign employment is paved by obscure, dominating, and even coercive practices. At the same time, I revealed that many pre-departure processes are also shaped by migrants’ technologies of the self—even in instances where they seem unlikely, such as their choice of unlicensed recruiters and their navigation of selection events. However, the degrees to which these modes of governing invoke particular subjectivities differ significantly: Whereas the “submissive servant” and the “productive worker” are predominantly rooted in coercive technologies, the “self-sacrificing provider,” the “responsible citizen,” and the “entrepreneurial self” tend to rely more strongly on migrants’ self-conduct. Given that the latter two subjectivities have emerged comparatively recently, the Nepali regime appears to be increasingly geared towards interventions that inspire migrants’ techniques of the self rather than relying on coercive modes of conduct. As subtle modes of governing have been purposefully introduced to combat and replace intransparent, dominating, and coercive techniques of government, newer forms of subjectivation thus increasingly subvert older modes of migrants’ subjection. At the same time, new technologies of coercion and control have also entered the regime “through the back door,” for instance, with the introduction of digital, biometric, and surveillance technologies (see sections 4.1.5, 4.3.3), as well as the growing influence of professional skills classes, which often operate via regimes of bodily discipline (see section 4.3.4). Furthermore, while it seems like these different modes of governing represent opposing paradigms and are thus in direct conflict, it often is precisely their combination and interaction that makes the Nepali migration regime so powerful. This becomes particularly clear in the third pillar of government, where pre-departure instructions are often phrased as well-intentioned advice—but simultaneously mobilize fear in aspiring migrants and prime them to submit to coercive technologies of employment (see sections 4.3.3-4). As argued earlier, discipline is a crucial mode of governing in this context, which relies not only on techniques and devices that force individual bodies into submissiveness and productivity but also on migrants’ readiness for self-government, or “self-discipline” (Constable 2007, 15). In this and other respects, my research insights have demonstrated the value of enriching the idea of “government” with other Foucauldian concepts of power. While the theoretical premises of governmentality have been the cornerstone of my research, some of the specific technologies and rationalities deployed in the Nepali regime can be understood more clearly through the conceptual lens of biopolitics and discipline.

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

By investigating these two forms of biopower as different expressions of government, I was able to reveal how both have played an instrumental role in the Nepali migration regime: While some governmental interventions have “centered on the body as a machine: its disciplining, the optimization of its capabilities, the extortion of its forces, the parallel increase of its usefulness and its docility, its integration into systems of efficient and economic controls” (Foucault 1978, 139), other interventions have focused on preserving the health, productivity, and reproduction of the collective migrant “body.” The relevance of both forms of power in the government of Nepali migration becomes evident in the following distinction by Mark G. E. Kelly, who states: “Where discipline is the technology deployed to make individuals behave, to be efficient and productive workers, biopolitics is deployed to manage population; for example, to ensure a healthy workforce” (2004, 59). While Foucault’s “neighboring” concepts of power have thus been a valuable addition to my general perspective of governmentality, the conceptual tools I borrowed from other theoretical frameworks have been instrumental to my analysis as well. In particular, the perspective of marketization has provided the vocabulary to recognize not only how certain technologies govern migrant subjects but what mechanisms they are composed of and what common purposes they fulfill in the migration regime at large. Instead of stopping with the commodification of migrant workers, it has allowed me to explore the specific subprocesses that have enabled an international market to emerge around that commodity. For instance, I showed that foreign host regimes and techniques of selective hiring govern aspiring migrants by framing them as detached, quantifiable, and standardized objects. The pacification of migrant labor, which is achieved through these techniques, also defines the singularization of the “Nepali worker” and instructions that govern workers towards the ideal subjectivities tied to this “brand.” All these insights indicate that the marketization of Nepali migrant labor predominantly relies on coercive modes of government. By its very definition, marketization is a process that creates “a stark distinction between the ‘things’ to be valued and the ‘agencies’ capable of valuing them […], [an] asymmetrical ontological divide, in which only the latter are considered to have agency in the valuation process” (Çalışkan & Callon 2010, 5; see also section 4.2.1). Accordingly, detachment, pacification, and other subprocesses of commodification are, by their nature, intended to reinforce the steep hierarchy between a powerful migration industry and subjected, objectified migrant workers. At the same time, this does not mean that migrants’ subjectivation plays no role in marketization at all. On the contrary, as I showed at the end of my empirical analysis, the subjectivity of the “entrepreneurial self” lays the foundation for workers’ own selfcommodification. For the sake of optimized development results, they conduct themselves to (at least temporarily) submit to techniques of detachment, standardization, pacification, many of which rely on disciplinary power. In doing so, they do not remain passive victims of their marketization but become complicit in these very processes. This means that even in instances that I have previously discussed as forms of counterconduct, such as the negotiation of higher salaries during selection events, aspiring migrants do not challenge the rules of the regime but merely extend their space of personal freedom within those boundaries. Ultimately, this contradiction is an inherent

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part of the Nepali migration regime and will not be resolved unless the structural circumstances of foreign employment change.

Differentiality of access In light of the heterogeneity of the Nepali migration regime, aspiring migrants are not exposed to all techniques and rationalities of government equally. Which ideal subjectivities become more or less influential in the subjectification of a particular migrant worker depends on various factors of difference. In particular, being able to conduct oneself and adopt subjectivities that largely rely on technologies of the self remains a privilege that many aspiring migrants have limited access to. As argued in part 4.2, technologies of selection play an instrumental role in granting or denying this access. Ultimately, however, selections are only one of many mechanisms that render labor migration differential—mechanisms that, for most migrants, affect the entirety of their experiences. Throughout my empirical analysis, I unearthed several crucial factors: First, the experiences and opportunities of foreign employment greatly differ depending on the aspiring migrant’s gender. Whereas men are treated as the standard and ideal migrant workers, who glide seamlessly into the roles of the “self-sacrificing provider” and the “successful returnee,” women’s mobility is far more complicated. Not only are their options to migrate through legal channels limited, so too are their choices of positions abroad.283 Furthermore, even if a woman takes care to strictly follow the legal recruitment process and chooses an entirely “respectable” form of employment, it is still likely that her decision will be met with skepticism and might earn her a negative reputation in her community. As I showed in section 4.1.2, such patterns are an expression of deeply embedded patriarchal structures, high-caste hill Hindu values, and concepts of ijjat, which have traditionally limited Nepali women’s role to the household. While these gendered norms continue to be influential today, they have been iterated in the regime of development, which—even in the case of most recent interventions—often reinforces the dichotomy between the “immobile woman” and the “male remittance sender” (see section 4.3.5). It is based on this foundation that the Nepali state’s definition of migrant women as a particularly vulnerable population needs to be understood (see section 4.1.3). While public leadership has been relatively united on this biopolitical rationality for decades, its governmental response to it has followed a dual strategy. On the one hand, it has severely restricted female migration in an approach of “protection by exception” (Rajan & Varghese 2013, 22), which, however, many women have responded to by migrating through illegal channels, which has put them at an even higher risk of fraud, abuse, and exploitation. On the other hand, the state has expanded pre-departure instructions that teach female workers to always be on high alert and take full responsibility for their own safety (see section 4.3.3).

283 This limited range of Nepali women’s employment options is also significantly caused by the gendered division of labor in their prospective host countries, which results in only a small number job categories being open to female applicants and is reflected in labor markets that are profoundly segmented not only along nationality but also gender (e.g., Leonard 2003; Mills 2003; see also section 4.2.2).

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Ultimately, all those insights demonstrate the importance of an intersectional approach to studying migration regimes, which, as suggested by Helen Schwenken (2018, 221), considers the complex effects and mutual reinforcements between gender regimes, migration regimes, and other dimensions of difference (see section 2.1.2). Seen from such an intersectional perspective, a second crucial dimension of difference is place. Due to the centralism of Nepal’s infrastructure of migration, aspiring migrants from remote and rural locations depend on extensive recruitment networks and face particular challenges in accessing the more recent technologies of the migration regime, such as pre-departure instructions and skills training (see section 4.3.1). Instead of having access to these subtle modes of governing, these candidates are largely exposed to traditional and intransparent techniques of recruitment, which leave them with significantly less control over the pre-departure process (see section 4.1.4). As a result, the ideals of the “productive worker” and the “submissive servant” affect their processes of subjectification far more than those of the “responsible citizen” or the “entrepreneurial self.” With the recent spread of communication technologies and the expansion of pre-departure instructions into digital media, such as internet platforms and mobile apps, some of those place-based discrepancies are increasingly being counteracted. However, even these current transformations depend on the material infrastructure that provides such technologies, such as mobile towers, internet, and electricity, whose distribution across the country continues to be highly uneven (Sharma & Kim 2016). Thirdly, the place-based differentiality among aspiring migrants is reinforced by their ascribed categories of ethnicity and race. As illustrated in section 4.1.5, politicaleconomic hierarchies and inequalities within Nepali society—particularly the historical dominance of high-caste hill Hindus over Janajati groups and Madhesi people—intersect with racist colonial stereotypes of the “simple-minded lowland laborer” and the “brave mountain warrior” in the wider region, which continue to influence the transnational hiring of South Asian labor. While I initially set out to investigate the marketization of “Nepali migrant labor,” my empirical insights thus revealed that it is more complex than that: Contrary to what the singularization of the seemingly homogenous “Nepali worker” suggests, the selective hiring of migrant workers is a process that strongly differentiates within the category of Nepali candidates. Shaped by both internal and international asymmetries of power, this process builds not only on discursive scripts but on generations-old infrastructures of recruitment. In other words, low-skilled Nepali labor migration is enabled by two intertwined but distinct threads of marketization, each of which centers on its own type of migrant labor commodity. As a result, aspiring migrants of different racial categories tend to be exposed to different technologies of recruitment, selection, and hiring, and often have vastly different experiences of foreign employment: Whereas members of indigenous nationalities have long been marginalized in Nepali society, they tend to benefit from the imagination of the “brave mountain warrior,” which grants them access to employment positions in security, hospitality, and other services. High-caste hill Hindu candidates, whose families have traditionally been privileged in the political economy of Nepal, are frequently—due to their facial features and “fair” skin tone—subsumed under this comparatively “noble” labor category as well. By contrast, aspiring migrants from Madhesi groups, who

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have been disenfranchised in Nepal for generations, are primarily associated with the “simple-minded lowland laborer” and preferably selected for so-called “3D”—dirty, dangerous, and difficult—jobs. A fourth important dimension of difference is, unlike the previous three, a changeable quality, namely the level of a candidate’s education and skills. As illustrated in section 4.2.5, this marker not only serves as an important criterion during selections but determines workers’ access to specific techniques of selection in the first place. For instance, unskilled workers tend to be not considered “valuable” enough to warrant an in-person, time-consuming, and expensive selection process, whereas candidates with higher levels of education or skills are far more likely to participate in personal interviews and skill tests. Compared to anonymous and invisible modes of selection, in-person selection events are thus a privilege in themselves and lead to a compound effect, since they give candidates the opportunity to use their own performance to challenge pre-assigned scripts and influence the course of their migration experience. Even in those cases, however, workers’ self-conduct still remains within the rigid framework that was outlined earlier in this section. Furthermore, selections are only one of many areas that demonstrate the differential effects of professional skills. Aside from being associated with higher salaries and better working conditions (see section 4.3.1), workers’ skill training also exposes them to more subtle techniques of governing, such as instructions that foster conduct and subjectivities of the “productive worker,” the “responsible citizen,” and the “entrepreneurial self.” By contrast, the experiences of recruitment, selection, and hiring of workers who have not received any skills training are far more affected by coercive technologies that dominate and objectify them (see section 4.2.5). Since I have shown that access to skills training is itself differential and depends on factors such as workers’ geographical location and socioeconomic status, it is here that the intersections and compound effects between multiple dimensions of difference become most evident. Ultimately, my research thus provided detailed empirical insights that support the argument that Nepali migration “must […] be seen as a highly selective and non-egalitarian” (Thieme & Ghimire 2014, 403).284 This differentiality includes that [t]housands of [Nepalis] intend to migrate, but fail to depart for various reasons, such as not being able to find a suitable position, failing a medical examination, not being able to obtain the funds to pay recruitment fees or as a result of misconduct by manpower agencies or local agents. (Taylor-Nicholson et al. 2014a, 2) Moreover, my analysis showed that even those aspiring migrants who “make it” abroad have profoundly different experiences of their pre-departure and employment stages. 284 At the same time, research has also indicated that the actual experience of foreign employment can also be a social equalizer by placing all migrant workers under the same national collective identity and allowing them to break free of restrictions of caste and class that might have restricted them at home. While those workers will like experience technologies of domination in their foreign employment context, the experience of being free from caste- or class-based discrimination can also be emancipating and eye-opening (Sunam 2014). However, whether such moments of emancipation actually lead to permanent social mobility upon return remains a contested question (cf. Sharma 2016).

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

Because each of them is exposed to different techniques of government, the subjectification of each migrant worker occurs somewhere between the different “poles” of ideal subjectivities and is a process that fluctuates from the moment of their initial recruitment to after their return.

Assessing the benefits and limitations of the analytical approach As shown throughout this discussion, the perspective of governmentality has been invaluable to my analysis in that it enabled me to understand not only coercive forms of power but also migrants’ techniques of self and the dynamics between both modes of governing. It was this theoretical access that brought about insights on the subjectification of migrant workers, which are now at the heart of my analysis. Furthermore, it allowed me to take into account both the techniques by which labor migration has been governed and the rationalities these have been rooted in, whereas many conceptual approaches tend to be limited to either one of these dimensions. However, one of the main factors that made this study of the governmentality of migration possible was the exploration of numerous other concepts and methodologies that enriched, deepened, and sharpened my analytical tools. Most importantly, my investigation fundamentally relied on an ethnographic approach to governmentality, which allowed me to move below the surface level of governmental plans and the administrative apparatus, and instead explore their messy, often subversive, and sometimes failed implementations. Drawing on previous studies of governmentality that emphasize the importance of “subterranean practices” (O’Malley 1996, 311) and the “witches’ brew of processes, practices, and struggles” (Li 2007b, 28), I was able to reveal the many contestations, contradictions, and fragmentations that are so central in shaping the Nepali migration regime. In carving out the governmental effects of these everyday and normalized practices, the concept of performativity proved especially useful to me. It also helped me conceptualize different instances of migrants’ counter-conduct—whether they subvert state technologies that were initially intended to protect them, challenge hegemonic scripts at selection events, or reinterpret their own commodification through a selfentrepreneurial mindset. Particularly concerning technologies of the self, the consideration of embodied, affective, and emotional dimensions of government has been crucial to my analysis as well: For instance, it enabled me to illustrate how gendered subjectivities of mobility and immobility, which are catalyzed by affective family bonds, leave many Nepali men feeling responsible and pressured to search for foreign employment. Similarly, instructions on workers’ remitting behavior demonstrate that affects play a role not only in recruitment but in their conduct abroad and upon their return. In a broader sense, material and embodied dimensions of government appeared as crucial factors throughout my analysis, from their role in biometric technologies and surveillance, as well as the formatting of in-person selection events, to the use of bodily discipline and modifications by skills trainers and recruiters. In addition to ethnography, another general approach that proved instrumental to my analysis is the genealogical method—especially so my reading of it, which deliberately includes not only the historical but also the spatial backgrounds out of which

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current forms of governing have emerged. From this perspective, I was able to point out how certain transnational formations of knowledge and practices have glocalized over time by attaching themselves to and transforming cultural values, hierarchical structures, and normalized practices that had long been established in Nepali society and local communities across the country. As I showed at various points in the analysis, one of the most influential transnational formations has been colonialism. Whether it has been in the shape of “cryptocolonialism” (Herzfeld 2002, 900) or the direct colonial heritage of South Asian labor migration (Bates 2017; Jain 1988; Kaur 2004; Rajan & Oommen 2020, 1), racist rationalities and colonial infrastructures of recruitment have had a profound impact on today’s marketization of Nepali labor. Based on a genealogical investigation of these historical and geographical lines of descent, I unmasked Nepali labor migration as the continuation of a colonial project that had been, from its very inception, designed to objectify and commodify workers. Recognizing this colonial legacy was instrumental in my understanding of the mechanisms of marketization, the transnational entanglements, and their governmental effects that shape aspiring migrants’ experiences today. At the same time, these experiences are also affected by far more recent and dynamic developments, such as the regime’s response to new configurations in the global economy. For example, the global trend of neoliberalization has informed profound changes in the Nepali regime, from the privatization of recruitment services to an increasingly entrepreneurial state approach to governing migration, as well as spreading techniques of responsibilization towards migrant workers. While recognizing the role of this largescale regime in governing migrant subjectivities and advancing the marketization of Nepali labor was vital to my analysis, I also demonstrated the importance of its specific adaptations and negotiations on a national and local level. Hence, these uniquely Nepali expressions show some parallels to neoliberal formations in other labor migration regimes across Asia (e.g., Constable 2007; Hoang 2016; Ong 2006; Rodriguez 2010; Rudnyckyj 2004; Xiang 2012b); at the same time, they cannot be equated to them. The same is true for the Nepali iteration of the global regime of development, which was a vital focus point of my analysis. On the one hand, transnational trends of neoliberal development, such as the migration-development nexus (Faist 2008; Schwertl 2016) and the GRT (Kunz 2011), have increasingly introduced rationalities that emphasize the benefits of foreign employment and aim at optimizing these. On the other hand, more skeptical views on labor migration, which favor an agrarian and self-reliant vision of Nepal’s development, remain powerful as well. Today, modernist ideals and geographical imaginaries of progress, gendered cultural norms, and neoliberal development rationalities that reframe migrants as “development agents” all persist in the Nepali migration regime simultaneously and leave their different marks on migrants’ subjectification. As the above examples have shown, the genealogical approach enabled me not to view contemporary technologies of governing as static or fixed structures. Instead, I took a processual perspective that focused on how different “problems” have gradually emerged as targets of governmental intervention, and how particular practices have been rendered increasingly technical. The method was also instrumental in allowing me to recognize the heterogeneity of the Nepali migration regime and the continuous

4 Analysis: The Governmentality of Nepali Labor Migration

ruptures and contradictions between different technologies and rationalities. By taking into account both the historical and spatial contexts of their emergences, I was able to retrace how continually changing global regimes have been so deeply woven into the social fabric of local communities that many of them have shaped people’s lived realities for decades and continue to do so. Whereas thought and spoken rationalities may change swiftly, their manifestation in normalized practices and material technologies can persist even long after governmental interventions from the “top” have shifted towards a new strategy. It is this simultaneity of rationalities and techniques that have emerged along so very different lines of descent, with newer modes of governing struggling to supersede older ones, that explains much of the persistent ruptures and conflicts in the Nepali migration regime today. Ultimately, one of the core contributions of my analysis has been to bring these different conceptual perspectives together and to demonstrate that they all play an instrumental role in the government of Nepali labor migration. This broad agenda, however, has come at the cost of not being able to do full justice to each of the aspects I have shone a light on. Instead of a detailed examination of single rationalities, technologies, or a specific process of marketization, it has been my aim to identify these different fragments, to recognize the connections between them, and to set them into the context of the migration regime at large. While I consider this to be a vital first step in understanding the governmentality of Nepali labor migration, I also suggest that many of the areas I was able to explore only briefly warrant further, more detailed research. To name but a few examples, such research should include a separate examination of professional skills training and the specific techniques of governing that are being employed in different sectors, as well as an in-depth genealogy of the GRT as it has touched down in Nepal’s development regime. Similarly, more extensive and exclusive insights are required on different subsectors of the migration industry, such as freelance recruiters and their far-spanning networks, the implementation and content of orientation classes, and the growing role of nonprofit organizations. Furthermore, research should also assess the impact of the recent state technologies of digitalization and surveillance that are being directed at aspiring migrants. Particular attention should also be paid to the migration experience of Nepali women especially, who, despite my efforts to include their perspectives, have remained underrepresented in my research. From the perspective of feminist scholarship, another intriguing topic of further investigation is the roles and subjectivities of female recruiters, which remain part of a male-dominated profession.

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5 Conclusion

The main purpose of this book has been to explore the governmentality of Nepali labor migration. Specifically, I set out to unravel how Nepali men and women have been conducted, and have conducted themselves, towards becoming “migrant workers” before they have even left the country. I did so by investigating the techniques and tools that are being deployed to govern aspiring migrants from the time of their initial recruitment to their departures, as well as the forms of knowledge that have rendered those techniques possible. Focusing on the empirical contexts that function as an infrastructure of migration, I particularly tried to identify and understand the ways in which those modes of government serve to advance the emergence of a transnational market around Nepali migrant labor. My analysis demonstrated that Nepali men and women do not simply “turn into” labor migrants the moment they go abroad, but that their experiences before departure vitally affect their constitution as migrant worker subjects. I suggested that this process is comprised of three interlocking components, which represent foundational pillars of the Nepali migration regime: (i) the constitution of migrant candidate subjects by recruiting them into the infrastructure of migration, (ii) the integration of these candidates into the international labor market by enabling and formatting market encounters, and (iii) the governing of aspiring migrants’ pre- and post-departure conduct and subjectivities through techniques of instruction. Since the regime is shaped by multiple subversive and competing forms of governing, migrants’ subjectification is not uniform but multifaceted and fragmented. As I argued, those processes are usually geared towards five primary subjectivities; however, every aspiring migrant is ultimately affected by a unique blend of these ideal forms. In other words, he or she is exposed to a specific combination of coercive modes of power and technologies of the self at every stage of the pre-departure process. This is even the case with the marketization of Nepali labor, which is mainly advanced through techniques of external domination, pacification, and commodification—but also, to some degree, through workers’ own conduct of selfcommodification and self-pacification. As I argued at the end of my analysis, a person’s access to these different forms of government and corresponding modes of subjectification differs greatly based on his or her intersecting categories of gender, geographical location, ethnicity, race, and professional skills.

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In this final chapter, I will briefly retrace how I came to the conclusions mentioned above and summarize the central insights of my analysis. I will then highlight the conceptual and methodological contributions the study makes to contemporary scholarship, while also pointing out aspects that should be explored further. Finally, I will outline what the book contributes empirically to contemporary scholarship on Nepali labor migration, and what implications this could have on the broader public debate in Nepal.

5.1

Governing Nepali Migrant Subjects—a Synopsis

As demonstrated, the book critically engages with the perspective of governmentality by setting it in the context of a political geography of migration and incorporating the conceptual lens of marketization studies. This three-fold conceptual framework evolved over the course of a multi-sensory ethnographic research project among aspiring and former migrant workers, as well as institutions that function as an infrastructure of labor migration in Nepal. Furthermore, I complemented those in-depth empirical insights with the collection and discourse analysis of a variety of textual documents and multimedia material that helped deepen my understanding of the migration regime. On this conceptual, methodological, and empirical foundation, the analysis has produced several crucial insights: The past three to four decades have seen the emergence of an ever-expanding regime of government around Nepali labor migration. Some of the interventions directed at the practice have been spearheaded by the Nepali state, which were, for instance, based on rationalities that view foreign employment as a threat to society, a risk to the migrant population, or, alternatively, a vital source of economic revenue. Others have manifested in everyday practices in local communities across Nepal, among the recruitment industry, at institutions that offer instructions and training, and most recently in the development sector. It is important to note that those emerging forms of government were never limited to the domestic context; rather, they have been closely entangled with transnational migrant labor regimes. The exploration of these transnational ties has allowed me to reveal how contemporary techniques of governing aspiring migrants often advance the marketization of Nepali migrant labor. Their effects include the regular objectification, pacification, standardization, and overall commodification of workers as they pass through pre-migration and pre-departure stages. As a result, many of the rationalities on migrants’ desirable qualities and conduct, which are expressed in techniques of selection and instruction, draw on international market calculations of labor “value” and the corresponding market encounters between those labor “commodities” and host-country employers. In these efforts of marketization, as well as most other governmental interventions that target labor migration, techniques of domination, control, and other coercive modes of power play an instrumental role. For instance, the objectification and intimidation that aspiring migrants face during recruitment and selection processes have been part of the Nepali migration regime for decades and, in some cases, even longer. Other coercive forms of government that have emerged more recently include expanding digital, biometric, and surveillance technologies and the bodily discipline that is

5 Conclusion

part of professional skills training and pre-departure instructions. At the same time, governmental techniques that inspire migrants’ self-conduct have gained influence as well, such as the growing number of instructions meant to “empower” them by offering information and friendly advice. Although those modes of governing are playing an increasingly central role in the regime today, technologies of the self have always played a role in shaping Nepali migration, for instance, through culturally embedded values and ideal subjectivities that have inspired workers to consider migrating in the first place and to conduct themselves in ways that will be most attractive to foreign employers. While the differentiation between more coercive and more subtle techniques of conduct has been vital to my understanding of migrants’ pre-departure subjectification, it is impossible—as well as counterproductive—to draw a clear line between both modes of governing. Instead, my analysis aimed to grasp the complex ways these modes have become entangled within the triangle of technologies, rationalities, and subjectivities. It is ultimately through this entanglement that the migration regime has unfolded its most powerful effects. Furthermore, these forms of governing neither constitute a coherent whole nor follow a singular strategy. Instead, Nepali labor migration has been the target of multiple competing and often contradictory interventions. This heterogeneity is partly the result of technologies and rationalities that have emerged on different geographical scales and which, at times, either reinforce or subvert each other. Moreover, it reflects the vast discrepancies between planned governmental interventions and the messiness of everyday practices, which frequently govern subjects through performativity and “subterranean” technologies. As I concluded in the last part of my analysis, the variety of governmental interventions aspiring migrants are exposed to from the moment of their recruitment to the point of their departure conduct them towards several different avenues of subjectification (see Figure 56, section 4.4.2). In light of its iteration of traditional gender roles and rationalities of modernizing development, perhaps the oldest avenue is the subjectivity of the “self-sacrificing provider.” Two subjectivities that I have found to be particularly essential to the marketization of Nepali migrant labor are the “submissive servant” and the “productive worker.” However, I also pointed to the growing importance of modes of governing that partly subvert these subjectivities. Largely advanced by the Nepali state, orientation training providers, and nonprofit organizations, these modes inspire migrants’ subjectification towards the “responsible citizen” and the “entrepreneurial self.” Both of these subjectivities are meant to “empower” workers by fostering their capacities for self-conduct while challenging coercive forms of government. At the same time, their effects are quite complex: By shifting responsibility to the individual migrant rather than focusing on improving structural conditions in Nepal and abroad, those interventions covertly support the status quo in coercive migrant labor regimes. By not only accepting but also capitalizing on these conditions and practices, the self-commodifying mindset of the “entrepreneurial self” thus partly reinforces those very technologies and the corresponding subjectivities of submissiveness and productivity. Ultimately, these ideal modes of subjectification are reflections of diverse rationalities and techniques of government, all of which are associated with differing degrees of self-conduct. For aspiring migrants, navigating through this heterogeneous and contra-

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dictory space can be quite dynamic throughout their pre-departure stage (and beyond). At the same time, the extent to which they are exposed to certain modes of governing and enabled to access particular forms of subjectification is predetermined by a number of structural, intersecting factors of difference. Due to these factors—particularly a person’s gender, geographical location, ascribed ethnicity or race, and skill level—the Nepali migration regime does not affect all aspiring migrants equally. Instead, its affects are multiplicious, fragmentary, and sometimes contradictory. Ultimately, it is not only access to foreign employment that is highly differential—but also access to specific migration experiences and subjectivities of the migrant worker.

5.2

Conceptual and Methodological Contributions

As outlined above, the study provides in-depth insights on the contemporary government of Nepali labor migration and, specifically, aspiring migrant subjects on their path towards foreign employment. Yet due to its conceptually-grounded analysis and multifaceted methodological approach, it also contributes to existing scholarship in ways that go beyond this topic. Conceptually, one such contribution is to advance the productive encounter between critical migration studies and the perspective of governmentality. Joining the limited number of studies that have previously explored this junction (e.g., (Hess et al. 2018; Hoang 2016; Rudnyckyj 2004; Steuerwald 2014; Tazzioli 2015; Walters 2015), my research draws attention away from the narrow focus on official state policies and towards forms of governing migration that emerge throughout society, including processes that are often considered “unpolitical.” Furthermore, my book is not limited to descriptions of practical interventions and techniques; rather, it also explores the underlying forms of knowledge that enable and inform them. While most scholarship that has dealt with the encounter of migration and governmentality up to this point focuses on questions of securitization and restrictive migration regimes, my book shifts that focus beyond this trend of “borders-centrism” (Walters 2015, 9) and instead centers on the facilitation of labor migration. A second conceptual contribution of the study lies in my feminist reading of governmentality as something that explicitly includes effects of performativity and embodied practice. This perspective does not remain fixated on planned governmental strategies and the administrative apparatus but regards their iteration, subversion, and “failure” in everyday, seemingly mundane, and often unverbalized practices as equally important technologies of governing. Furthermore, I emphasized the critical role of affect and emotion, which frequently serve as catalysts for technologies of government. Although a significant portion of the existing scholarship on performativity, materiality, affect, and emotion builds on poststructuralist theory, explicit connections between these concepts and governmentality have rarely been drawn so far (exceptions include Barrios 2017; Marquardt 2015; Rudnyckyj 2011, 2014; Winkler 2020). Based on my empirical insights, however, the book demonstrates that such a connection is insightful, productive, and even necessary in order to understand the mechanisms and reasons why certain forms of governing are more effective in some contexts than others.

5 Conclusion

As a third conceptual contribution, the book proposes the encounter between governmentality and the studies of marketization as a fruitful and mutually enriching one: For instance, it allows for a more profound understanding of governmental techniques that commodify subjects (in this case, migrant workers) by providing the vocabulary to describe the detailed mechanisms and effects of those processes. In turn, the perspective of governmentality can also contribute to studies of marketization, which to this point have focused primarily on non-human commodities (recent exceptions include Findlay et al. 2017; Pero & Smith 2014; Schurr & Militz 2018). Particularly concerning the commodification of human labor, I consider the dual conceptual lens of government and marketization to be highly productive. This intersection, which has only been discussed by a small number of scholars to date (e.g., Miller & Rose 1990; Ouma 2015), not only allows the formation of markets to be read as techniques of government but also helps conceptualize labor “commodities,” despite their objectification and even pacification, as self-governed subjects. While the theoretical foundations of both approaches show discrepancies that certainly need to be considered carefully (see section 4.4.2), I argue that the additional insights derived from their mutually productive encounter or “cross-fertilization” (Ouma 2015, 17) ultimately outweigh the risk of conceptual incongruencies. Beyond the conceptual level, my work also offers contributions to current methodological debates in geography and beyond. First, it steps in line with a small but growing number of studies that have paired the perspective of governmentality with an ethnographic research approach (e.g., Ferguson & Gupta 2002; Kunz 2011; Li 2007b; Walters 2012, 146). In doing so, the book mirrors the conceptual shift towards seemingly mundane and everyday embodied practices, which was mentioned earlier. Somewhat differently to Foucault’s own views on the matter (e.g., 1979/2008, 2; see also section 2.2.3), it thus argues for a study of governmentality that empirically investigates not only the plans and strategies of governing but how these are entangled in people’s lived experiences and communities. Secondly, the study demonstrates the potential of an ethnographic approach in geographic research at large. While such scholarship has gained considerable influence in anglophone as well as German-language geography (e.g., Crang & Cook 2007; Schurr 2012; Verne 2012a; see part 3.2), my emphasis of an iterative-inductive and consistently reflexive approach—which not only considers the positionality of knowledge but also applies that situatedness productively in research and analysis—is still far from the norm in geographic scholarship. Moreover, the book illustrates the use and importance of a visual and multi-sensory ethnography (Pink 2001, 2009; Schurr 2012, 2014). On the one hand, it includes empirical material that goes beyond the conventional media of interview transcripts and textual documents—for instance, by drawing on visual modes of data collection but also explicitly using multimedia material as a source for content and discourse analysis. At the same time, I explored alternative avenues to express these multidimensional analytical insights by speaking to several different senses. In purposefully enriching my written analysis with photographs and images, a combination of text and visuals, and sections of autoethnographic writing, I was inspired by the growing feminist and ethnographic scholarship that shifts the boundaries of what is

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considered “proper” academic data (e.g., Ellis & Bochner 1996; Holman Jones et al. 2013; Militz 2019; Pink 2009; Schurr 2012). A third methodological contribution of the study lies in its distinctly geographical reading of the genealogical method, which traces the emergence of governmental formations over time while deliberately considering their spatial dimensions as well. For instance, my exploration of the colonial, development-related, and neoliberal lines of descent that have led to current techniques of governing Nepali migration was based on the recognition that global regimes always lead to unique iterations or manifestations in different regional contexts and localities. Although somewhat unconventional (cf. Dean 2010, 56–61), this combination of genealogy with geographical concepts of globalization and scale has been truly essential to my analysis. As such, it has demonstrated the importance of grasping not only how particular forms of government emerge over time but also how they are constituted through an entanglement of influences from different places and scales that continuously merge, reinforce, and challenge each other.

5.3

Empirical Contributions and Implications

Aside from its conceptual and methodological contributions, the study also provides empirical insights that speak to wider debates on labor migration. For instance, by focusing on the pre-departure stage and the manufacturing of transnational market encounters, it offers an alternative view on migrant labor regimes in Asia, which has, so far, predominantly been discussed with regard to migrants’ experiences abroad (e.g., Elias 2018; Fan 2004; Hoang 2016). In doing so, it particularly contributes to research on the infrastructure of migration and migrant intermediaries—a “black box” (Lindquist et al. 2012) that has only recently been opened (e.g., Chau 2020; McKeown 2012; Xiang 2012). Furthermore, it not only explores practices of recruitment but also sheds light on other parts of the infrastructure, such as pre-departure orientation and professional skills training, which play a role in many migrant-sending regimes but have received little attention as of yet (exceptions include Rudnyckyi 2007; Constable 2007; Rodriguez & Schwenken 2013). Finally, the book needs to be seen in the context of contemporary scholarship on Nepali labor migration. Here, it contributes to four trends in the current academic debate, which I will outline below. a) Tying contemporary labor migration to broader structures and processes: One such contribution is to shift attention from the current practices of Nepali labor migrants to a more structural view on the economic mechanisms and historical conditions that have shaped them. For instance, the book illustrates how labor migration has only been possible because of the continuous framing of Nepali workers as marketable commodities and the formatting of a market encounter with foreign companies. Although the Nepali state has been far more ambivalent towards such processes than the national governments of other countries in Asia (e.g., Ortiga 2017; Rodriguez 2010; Yeates 2009), I showed that the commodification and marketization of migrant labor have, nevertheless, been vital prerequisites to Nepali foreign employment.

5 Conclusion

In this context, the study also sheds further light on the historical background of the practice: While Nepal’s history of Gurkha recruitment has been discussed at length (e.g., (Des Chene 1991; Gellner 2014; Rathaur 2001), its genealogical ties to low-skilled labor migration—particularly its effects on Nepalis’ employment not only in security (Chisholm 2014; Coburn 2018), but also in hospitality and other service industries—have hardly received any attention. Furthermore, I revealed that the Gurkha narrative is not the only colonial remnant that affects foreign employment today, but that the marketization of Nepali migrant labor also builds on the colonial recruitment of South Asian manual laborers for British Malaya and the Empire’s Gulf protectorates. In my opinion, these insights are crucial for understanding contemporary Nepali migration since they demonstrate that the coercive, objectifying, and commodifying structures and mechanisms that shape the regime today are no accidental byproduct but lie at the core of how its genealogical predecessors were designed. At the same time, my research shows that foreign employment is not determined exclusively by those historical foundations—but that in the past decades, efforts of marketization (ranging from workers’ singularization to techniques of standardization and commodification) have grown increasingly elaborate and targeted. b) Providing insights into migrants’ instructions: Whereas much of the previous scholarship on Nepali labor migration focuses on legal regulations and migrants’ socioeconomic practices, pre-departure classes and training have received very limited attention (exceptions include Sijapati et al. 2015, 54–55). In contrast, this book explores numerous forms of instruction typically given to aspiring migrants—from structured settings like orientation classes, skills training programs, agency briefings, and nonprofit counseling to more unstructured media, such as information brochures, awareness campaigns, and informal advice. For example, it outlines migrants’ professional skill training, which has been identified as one of the most important fields for Nepali labor migration in the coming years (e.g., GoN 2020, 33; Sijapati et al. 2015, 76; Thami & Bhattarai 2015, 9–10), but remains understudied. Because I took such a broad approach with my research, I was only able to touch briefly on those different forms of teaching, training, and coaching. Each of these forms deserves to be examined separately in future research. Nevertheless, the study offers vital first insights into the content of these instructions. Particularly when it comes to interventions that intend to inform and “empower” aspiring migrants, I critically discussed the growing role of responsibilizing and entrepreneurial rationalities. In this context among others, the book ties the topic of labor migration to the academic debate on development in Nepal by highlighting the inextricable linkage between both regimes—be it in the form of deeply embedded concepts of modernity and progress (Ahearn 2004; Liechty 2003; Pigg 1992) or more recent, neoliberal incarnations of development (Rankin 2001; Sanders & McKay 2014). c) Emphasizing ambivalences in a polarized field: Similarly to Nepal’s public and political debate about labor migration, much of contemporary scholarship on the topic tends to take one of two sides: While some studies have focused on migrants’ personal motivations and positive economic outcomes, others have highlighted negative aspects of foreign employment, such as the coercion, fraud, and exploitation of workers. This book integrates both perspectives—not taking them as given facts, but exploring the underlying dynamics that have caused those views to emerge. Furthermore, it offers a more

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nuanced understanding of the role of migrant intermediaries in and beyond Nepal, a topic that has gained attention only in recent years (Kern & Müller-Böker 2015; Sijapati & Limbu 2017). Looking much further than the official regulations on foreign employment, it provides in-depth ethnographic insights into the complex day-to-day practices of both licensed and freelance recruiters. For instance, it discusses their problematic role in perpetuating coercive modes of government that objectify, pacify, and commodify workers, but also reveals their ambivalent positionalities as service providers who must navigate between the worlds of client companies and migrant candidates. Moreover, my work rejects the widespread vilification of unlicensed brokers, illustrating instead the essential functions they currently fulfill in the recruitment sector, as well as their embeddedness into broader structures and mechanisms in the international labor market. Finally, it breaks down the dichotomy between a seemingly orderly Nepali state and disorderly private recruitment industry by demonstrating that “subterranean” forms of governing, including those rooted in oligarchic and clientelist structures, pervade the entirety of the migration regime. d) Transcending the dichotomy between coercion and freedom: As stated in the introduction to this book, the academic and wider societal debate on Nepali labor migration has remained particularly stuck in dichotomous thinking that either emphasizes the “forced” or “voluntary” nature of the practice. Rather than positioning itself on this scale, this book proposes a different frame of thinking about the issue. Based mainly on the concept of governmentality, this shift in perspective is threefold: First, I propose that migrant workers are not entirely passive victims of an exploitative system but that even under the most coercive and objectifying circumstances, they also actively conduct themselves towards and through the foreign employment experience. Even regarding the marketization of migrant labor, which subjects workers to techniques of objectification, pacification, and commodification, my research has shown aspiring migrants do not necessarily endure these techniques passively but often participate in their marketization. Secondly, I argue that in turn, there is no such thing as “voluntary” labor migration, because even the seemingly most “free” decisions are influenced by normalized rationalities, internalized subjectivities, and other subtle techniques of government, which reproduce different hegemonic strands of the migration regime. Thirdly, I conclude that workers’ exposure to particular technologies of governing and their access to higher degrees of self-conduct is profoundly unequal and depends on intersecting categories of difference, thereby further deepening existing power asymmetries in Nepali society. Based on the empirical and conceptual insights of the study, the widespread dichotomy between “forced” and “voluntary” migration is thus inaccurate. Moreover, and shifting from a strictly academic view to the current social and political debate on the issue, it is also misleading as it obscures precisely the ethical questions that the debate often aims to address: By suggesting that the most problematic aspects of labor migration reside in its “forced” nature, this view implicitly assumes that, as long as the person has “voluntarily” chosen a certain path, it must be ethically acceptable. In fact, it is a popular line of argument among recruiters and employers to emphasize that it has been a candidate’s rational choice to accept certain given conditions. According to this rationality, the person who has agreed “freely” to a particular job offer surely will

5 Conclusion

have to follow through with every aspect of this agreement. By contrast, I argue that aspiring migrants’ choices to accept certain living and working conditions, to take part in their own commodification, or to temporarily submit themselves to a disciplinary regime that objectifies and pacifies them do not render those practices ethical. The fact that these men and women do not demand better does not mean they do not deserve better. Whereas the view that focuses on “forced” migration tends to normalize and depoliticize many of those seemingly “voluntary” practices, this book draws attention to the mechanisms of disempowerment, exclusion, and exploitation precisely when they are normalized and appear unpolitical. e) Exploring new dimensions of inequality in Nepali foreign employment: While foreign employment is often discussed as a tool of social mobility that helps people overcome socioeconomic hierarchies and discriminatory structures (e.g., Gellner & Adhikari 2019; Sunam 2014), recent scholarship increasingly points to inequalities within the Nepali migration regime (e.g., Thieme & Ghimire 2014, Paoletti 2014). As stated above, my work provides detailed insights on this differentiality, suggesting that structural asymmetries have a profound impact on aspiring migrants’ exposure to different techniques of governing and corresponding modes of subjectification. Furthermore, the book emphasizes the role of selections, shining a light on not only formal procedures but also the covert mechanisms and underlying rationalities of value that profoundly impact candidates’ migration trajectories. Since more highly-skilled job positions, an exposure to subtle instructions, and opportunities for self-conduct tend to increase workers’ socioeconomic benefits from foreign employment, their different experiences on the path towards labor migration can further deepen existing asymmetries within Nepali society. In recent years, several structural factors of inequality around migration have increasingly been discussed in academic scholarship and have even become the object of practical governmental interventions. This includes the conditions and foreign employment prospects for Nepali women, which have been problematized (e.g., GrossmannThompson 2019; Simkhada et al. 2018) and have come into the focus of several nonprofit organizations (see section 4.3.2). Similarly, critical attention to place-based factors of inequality has grown as well, a topic the Nepali state has increasingly met with measures to decentralize the foreign employment apparatus, such as the Local Government Operation Act of 2017 (Acharya 2018, 41–45). However, despite those recent shifts in the academic debate and the Nepali migration regime at large, the intersections and dynamics between these structural factors of inequality are not yet being adequately considered. Particularly when it comes to the complex intersection of transnational regimes of difference with Nepal’s internal social hierarchies and political economy, the study contributes crucial new insights. For instance, the ways in which racist colonial scripts active in the wider geographical region are entangled with ethnicity-based and place-based hierarchies within Nepali society profoundly affect workers’ differential exposure to technologies of recruitment, selection, and instruction. The book brings these dynamics to the forefront. It demonstrates that inequalities within the Nepali migration regime need to be understood not only in terms of access to foreign employment itself, but also through the different experiences and avenues of migrant subjectification.

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While I am grateful for the insights my work can contribute to the state of academic research, I wish that its conclusions and implications will also be of relevance to the broader social and political debate on Nepali labor migration. Owing much to a new, rising generation of Nepalis and the recent democratization of media, these past years have seen an increasingly honest and productive public conversation about the many inequalities that continue to shape Nepali society, ranging from gender relations (Rai 2019; Shrestha 2020) to issues of caste, race, and ethnicity (Giri 2019a; Rijal 2020). Given that labor migration is not a separate system but rather an integral part of society, I hope that public perspectives on foreign employment will become increasingly progressive and politicized as well. I am confident the book offers empirically-grounded insights and inspiration that can encourage the debate to move further in this direction.

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Music Nepal (2013). Chinta Chhaina Kei, Malai America Yahi. Folk Song by Pashupati Sharma and Sita K. C. Kathmandu: Music Nepal. https://​www.youtube.com​/​watch​?​v=​hErPF TzCK4U. Accessed 2020/10/12. National Planning Commission (1956). First Five Year Plan, 1956-61. His Majesty’s Government. https://​www.npc.gov.np​/​images/​category/​FirrstPlan_​Eng.pdf. Accessed 2020/10/13. — (1965). Third Five Year Plan, 1965-70. His Majesty’s Government. https://​www.npc.gov.np​/​images/​category/​Thirs_​ENG.pdf. Accessed 2020/10/13. — (1970). Fourth Five Year Plan, 1970-75. His Majesty’s Government. https://​www.npc.gov.np​/​images/​category/​fourth_​eng.pdf. Accessed 2020/10/13. — (1992). Eight Five Year Plan, 1992-97. His Majesty’s Government. https://​www.npc.gov.np​/​images/​category/​eighth_​eng.pdf. Accessed 2020/10/13. — (1997). Ninth Five Year Plan, 1997-2002. His Majesty’s Government. https://​www.npc.gov.np​/​images/​category/​ninth_​eng_​2.pdf. Accessed 2020/10/13. — (2007). Three Year Interim Plan, 2007-10. Government of Nepal. https://​www.npc.gov.np​/​images/​category/​11tyip_​eng.pdf. Accessed 2020/10/13. — (2019). 15th Five Year Plan 2019-24. Government of Nepal. Kathmandu. https://​www.npc.gov.np​/​images/​category/​15th_​Plan_​Final1.pdf. Accessed 2020/ 10/14. Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (2019a). Introduction. Official website. http://​www.nafea.org.np​/​. Accessed 2017/01/02. — (2019b). Member List. http://​www.nafea.org.np​/​members. Accessed 2020/10/18. Nepal Pragya Pratisthan (2018). Nepali Brihat Shabdakosh. (Tenth edition). Kathmandu: Nepal Pragya Pratisthan. Paradise International (2018). Company website. https://​www.paradise.com.np​/​home/​ho mePage. Accessed 2019/10/12. Permanent Population Committee (2017). The Population Policy of The State of Qatar 2017-2022. https://​www.mdps.gov.qa​/​en/​statistics/​Statistical%20Releases/​Population/​Population/​2017/​population_​policy_​2017_​EN.pdf. Accessed 2020/07/25. Pokhara Metropolitan City (2020). Pokhara Mahanagarpalikako sankshipta bibaran. https://​pokharamun.gov.np​/​. Accessed 2020/10/18. Pourakhi Nepal (2019a). Information, Education & Communication Materials. Website. http://​pourakhi.org.np​/​services/​information-​education-​communication-​materials/​. Accessed 2020/10/15. — (2019b). Welcome to POURAKHI Nepal. Website. http://​pourakhi.org.np​/​. Accessed 2020/10/15. Pyramid International Employment Service (2019). Home Page. Company website. https://​pyramidmanpower.com​. Accessed 2019/07/31. Rajdhani Dainik (2019). Vacancy Announcement Surya International Pvt. Ltd. Rajdhani Dainik, 2019/08/21. República Daily (2018). Nepali migrant workers bound for Malaysia at Tribhuvan airport. https://​myrepublica.nagariknetwork.com​/​uploads/​media/​2018/​September/​malays ia-​nepali-​migrant-​workers.jpg. Accessed 2020/10/15. Safer Migration Project (2019). Homepage. Website. http://​www.sami.org.np​. Accessed 2020/10/15.

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Shuvayatra (2019). Website. https://​shuvayatra.org​. Accessed 2020/10/15. Sky Overseas (2019a). Company website. Company website. http://​www.skyoverseas.com.np​​. Accessed 2019/07/31. — (2019b). Selection Procedure. Company website. http://​web.archive.org​/​web/​20181217041 400/​http://​www.skyoverseas.com.np/​contentpage.aspx​?​Id=​15. Accessed 2019/07 /31. Smith, E. D. (1998). Valour. A History of the Gurkhas. Woodstock: The Overlook Press. SRK Nepal (2019). Company website. http://​www.srknepal.com.np​/​. Accessed 2019/07/31. Wise International Nepal (2019). Vision. Company website. http://​wisenepal.com​​. Accessed 2019/07/31. Youth and Small Entrepreneur Self-Employment Fund (2020). Website. http://​www.ysef .gov.np. Accessed 2020/10/15.

Appendix: Interview Guidelines

Example 1: Guideline Recruitment Agencies (2018) Tapaiko parichaya gardinus. Could you introduce yourself? What position do you have in this company? How long has this company existed? How many staff members work here? Bidesh kam garna jane manchheharu praye kasari tapaikoma aaipugchhan? Aphai aaunchhan ki agent le lyauchhan? Anupat kasto chha? So, how do those who want to work abroad usually come to you (being sent through agent or independently)? How is the ratio? Tapaiko bicharma euta ramro kamdarma ke ke ramro bisheshtaharu wa gunharu hunu parchha? What do you think are the traits that make up a good migrant laborer? Auta byakti bidesh kam garna jada ke kasto bani, bebahar, ra aacharan bhayo bhane ramro hunchha? Ti katiko mahatwopurna hunchhan? What attitude, motivation, and habits should a person have when working abroad? How important are these? Tapai kasari bidesh jane kamdarlai kamko lagi tayar garnu hunxa? Bidesh pathaunu bhanda agadi ke ke kuraharu samjhaune bujhaune garnu hunchha? Ke ke bhannu hunchha? How do you prepare and shape your clients for working abroad? Before you send workers abroad, what things do you make them understand and remember? What do you tell them? Adaksha, Ardha-daksha ani Daksha kamdar pathauda tapaiko anubhab kasto chha? What is your experience with sending unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled workers? Mahila kamdar ni pathaunu bhako chha ahile samma? Mahilale bideshma kam garda purshko tulanama ke kura pharak tarikale garnu abassek hunchha?

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Did you ever send female worker till now? What do women need to do/be differently when working abroad compared to men? Abhimukhikaran taalim ko barema tapaiko bichar ke chha? Tyo taalimma tapailai mann parne kura haru ke ke chhan ani ke ke kuraharu sudhar garnu parne hunchha? What do you think about the orientation training? What do you like about them, and what aspects should maybe be improved? Bidesh janu bhanda agadi sip bikasko taalim linu ko barema tapaiko bichar ke chha? Ti kattiko mahatwopurna chhan? Ke testo kurama kehi sudhar garinu parchha jasto lagchha tapailaii? What do you think about skill training before going abroad? How important are they? Are there any aspects you think should be improved? Bideshi rojgardataharu kailekai yaha aayera jane kamdarharu aphai chhanne kam garchhan ki gardainan? Do foreign employers sometimes come here to select prospective employees themselves? Tapailai kasto lagchha bideshi rojgardataharule Nepali kamdarko mahatwolai kasari linchhan? Aru bideshi kamdarko tualanama, Nepali kamdarko ramro kuraharu ke ke hun bhanchhan? What do you think foreign employers value about Nepali workers? What is special or good about them, compared to workers from other countries? Anaupacharik agent harule kamdarlai bidesh pathaune prakriyama ke kasto bhumika khelchhan? What role do informal agents play in the recruitment process? Tapailai kasto lagchha, ahile badhdai gayeko baideshik rojgariko chalanle samajma kasto asar pareko chha? How do you think Nepali society has been affected by the widespread practice of labor migration?

Example 2: Guideline Technical Skill Training Institutes (2018) Tapaiko parichaya gardinus ani tapaiko sanstha ko barema kehi bhandinus (tapai sansthako kun padma hunuhunchha? Kati barsha dekhi yo sanstha khada bhayeko? Kati jana karmachariharule yaha kam garchhan?) Could you introduce yourself? What position do you have in this institute/center? How long has this institute/center existed? How many staff members work here? Tapaiko institute le mukhye kun kun sewaharu dinchhan? Ani aru kati prakarka taalimharu dinuhunchha? (kun kun pesha ani kati abadhikka chhan) tapaile sahabhagiharulai kebal taalim matra dinuhunchha ki taalim lisakeko manchheko certificatelai parichhan garera wa check garera tei anusar praman-patra dinuhunchha?

Appendix: Interview Guidelines

What are the core services your institute provides? What different types of training to you provide? (what professions, durations). Do you only give out certificates after training your clients or do you also just check their qualifications and certify them accordingly? Tapaile dine taalim tatha sewaharu bidesh janeharulai matrai badhi kendrit hunchhan ki Nepalmai kam garera baschhu bhanne lai pani kendrit chhan? Are your services targeted specifically at those who want to work abroad, or do you mainly provide skill training for people who will stay in Nepal? Hamile garne khoj chai bideshma kam garne kamdarko barema ho. Tesaile, tiniharu tapaikoma kasari aauchhan? (Manpower Agencyle pathayera ki afai eklai aauchhan) Our research is about migrant workers. So, how do those who want to work abroad usually come to you (being sent through a manpower agency or independently)? Praye jaso tapaikoma taalim lina aaune haruko kati sammako shaikshik yoggyeta hunxan? Prayejaso kasto khalko taalimharu uniharule linchhan (pesha, abadhi). Ti taalimharu kati paisa parne khalka huna ra kasle tirchhan tyo paisa? Paisa tirne kurama gayeka barshaharu dekhi ahile samma kei farak aako chhan ta? What education level do they usually have? What kind of training do they usually take (profession, duration)? How much do these courses cost and who pays those costs? Has anything changed in these regards over the past years? Bidesh kamdarlai dine taaliharu ra yei kam garera basne manchhelai dine taalimma kei farak chhan ta? Tapaiko bicharma, bidesh kam garna janeharule jannai parne wa siknai parne testo kei chhan? Are the courses for migrant workers different in any way different from other training programs? In your opinion, are there any things that are important to know/learn when going for foreign employment? Tapaiko bicharma euta ramro kamdarma ke ke ramro bisheshtaharu wa gunharu hunu parchha? What do you think are the traits that make up a good labor migrant? Taalimko abadhima tapai harulai ani sahabhagiharulai sabvanda badhi chunautiko kuro ke hunchha tapaiharulai? What are the biggest challenges you / your training participants usually encounter in the training? Tapaiko bicharma, bidesh kam garna janeko aani, bani, bebahar, aacharan katiko mahatwopurna hunchhan? In your opinion, how important are a person’s attitude, motivation, and habits when working abroad? Bideshi rojgardatale Nepali kamdarlai kasari linchhan? Katiko mahatwo dinchhan? Aru deshbat aaune kamdar bhanda, tiniharuko ke ke biseshta wa ramra kura haru chhan?

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What do you think foreign employers value about Nepali workers? What is special or good about them, compared to workers from other countries? Abhimukhikaran taalim ko barema tapaiko bichar ke chha? Taapailai tyo talimko ramro paksha haru ke ke chhan ani ke ke pakschaharu chai sudhar garinu parchha jasto lagchha? What do you think about the orientation training? What do you like about it, and what aspects should maybe be improved? Tapailai thaha bhaye anusar, swotantra wa independent taalim dine sanstha, sarkari sip bikas sanstha, ani manpower sanga aabaddha sip bikaska sansthaharu bichma kei farak paunuhunchha? Ke ke farak holan? According to your knowledge, is there a difference between independent skill training centers and those affiliated with a manpower agency and government? Ke bideshi rojgardataharu yei kendrama aayera aafulai chaine kamdarharu chhanne pani garchhan? Do foreign employers sometimes come here to select prospective employees themselves? Kei media report anusar, kei taalim dine sansthharu sip sikeko taalim naliyeka lai ra tiniharuko sip sambandhi yogyeta check ni nigari taalimko pramanpatra dinchhan re ni. Tapaiko anubhavma ke tiniharu satye hun? In the media, it has been claimed that some training institutes just give out vocational certificates without even training or checking someone’s qualification. According to your experience, do you think these claims are true? Tapailai kasto lagchha Nepali samajma kamko lagi bidesh jane chalanle kasto asar pareko chha? How do you think Nepali society has been affected by the widespread practice of labor migration? Bideshma kam garna jada afu bhanda senior lai kasari bolne, kasari bebahar garne, rojgardatasanga kasari behave garne bhanera ni kei kuro sikaunu hunchha ki nai? Would you also teach the trainees about how to behave or speak with their seniors while working abroad? Garib ani paisa nabhayekaharule kasari taalim linchhan ta ya? Uniharulai kasaile sahayog garchhan? Are there special facilities for those who are poor and still want to learn? How did they get help?

Cultural Studies Gabriele Klein

Pina Bausch's Dance Theater Company, Artistic Practices and Reception 2020, 440 p., pb., col. ill. 29,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-5055-6 E-Book: PDF: 29,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-5055-0

Ingrid Hoelzl, Rémi Marie

Common Image Towards a Larger Than Human Communism 2021, 156 p., pb., ill. 29,50 € (DE), 978-3-8376-5939-9 E-Book: PDF: 26,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-5939-3

Elisa Ganivet

Border Wall Aesthetics Artworks in Border Spaces 2019, 250 p., hardcover, ill. 79,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4777-8 E-Book: PDF: 79,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4777-2

All print, e-book and open access versions of the titles in our list are available in our online shop www.transcript-publishing.com

Cultural Studies Bianca Herlo, Daniel Irrgang, Gesche Joost, Andreas Unteidig (eds.)

Practicing Sovereignty Digital Involvement in Times of Crises January 2022, 430 p., pb., col. ill. 35,00 € (DE), 978-3-8376-5760-9 E-Book: available as free open access publication PDF: ISBN 978-3-8394-5760-3

Tatiana Bazzichelli (ed.)

Whistleblowing for Change Exposing Systems of Power and Injustice 2021, 376 p., pb., ill. 29,50 € (DE), 978-3-8376-5793-7 E-Book: available as free open access publication PDF: ISBN 978-3-8394-5793-1 ISBN 978-3-7328-5793-7

Virginie Roy, Katharina Voigt (eds.)

Dimensions. Journal of Architectural Knowledge Vol. 1, No. 2/2021: Spatial Dimensions of Moving Experience 2021, 228 p., pb., ill. 39,00 € (DE), 978-3-8376-5831-6 E-Book: available as free open access publication PDF: ISBN 978-3-8394-5831-0

All print, e-book and open access versions of the titles in our list are available in our online shop www.transcript-publishing.com