Catriona Stevens
This paper explores how constrained informational capital makes migrants dependent upon commercial intermediaries to facilitate their migration. It proposes migration literacy as a critical dimension of mobility capital and as a way to articulate the dependencies engendered through low information capital in relation to the regulatory regimes of the immigration state. These ideas are illustrated with reference to a cohort of working-class labour migrants to Australia whose experiences are shaped by their low migration literacy. Trade skilled migrants from China paid high fees to chains of brokers to secure sponsored employment in Australian workshops. Their low migration literacy, the result of their social class and educational backgrounds, conditioned these experiences, increasing the risk of financial hardship and unpredictable outcomes. Yet despite these dependencies and risks, commercial intermediaries are recognised by these capital constrained migrants as critical mechanisms for capital conversion that play an essential role in facilitating international mobility that would otherwise prove unattainable.