Labour migration has been on the agenda of many countries around the globe at the same time as governments of both sending and receiving countries have been trying to develop regulatory mechanisms. This book opens the debate on the global politics of labour migration by proposing a re-assessment of the interaction between states regarding labour migration. Presenting case-specific scholarship from leading experts from five different continents, each contribution engages with the changing landscape of migration control and teases out emerging control patterns, dynamics and correlations that can be made between them and existing control paradigms. The multidisciplinary and global focus in 'Constructing and Imagining Labour Migration' sheds much needed light on the mechanisms deployed by states in their attempts to control labour migration and on the manner in which these mechanisms impact upon migrants themselves, leaving some caught up in the politics of labour market control

Introduction; I: Uncertain Borders, Empty Control Claims: Labour Migration Regimes with Weak Control Claims; 1: When Borders Fail: 'Illegal', Invisible Labour Migration and Basotho Domestic Workers in South Africa; 2: (In)hospitable Border Zones: Situating Bolivian Migrants' Presence at Brazilian Crossroads; 3: Labour Migration Regulation in Malaysia: A Policy of High Numbers and Low Rights; 4: Examining Labour Migration Regimes in East Asia: Appearance and Technique of Control in Taiwan *; 5: Implications for Policy Discourse: The Influx of Zimbabwean Migrants into South Africa; II: The Appearance of Control: Examining Labour Migration Regimes with High Control Claims; 6: 'Advantage Canada' and the Contradictions of (Im)migration Control; 7: Competing Interests in the Europeanization of Labour Migration Rules; 8: Australia and Labour Migration; 9: The 'Outside-In' -An Overview of Japanese Immigration Policy from the Perspective of International Relations 1; III: Equivocal Claims: Examining Labour Migration Regimes with Ambivalent Control Claims; 10: Equivocal Claims? Ambivalent Controls? Labour Migration Regimes in the European Union; 11: Nationality: An Alternative Control Mechanism in an Area of Free Movement?; 12: Migration Flows and Security in North America; 13: Equivocal Claims: Examining Labour Migration Regimes with Ambivalent Control Claims - Central Asian States' Policies on Migration Control; 14: Reflections on Immigration Controls and Free Movement in Europe