Germany has emerged as a key destination for healthcare labour migration. Indonesia, on the other hand, has become one of the main source countries for nurses and care workers after the Philippines and India. This project investigates the institutional construction and governance of Indonesian-German care labour migration, as well as the cross-border mobility process of Indonesian healthcare workers, using the theoretical framework of transnational labour market making (Shire 2020). It explores how healthcare labour is commodified, regulated, and exchanged through bilateral agreements, recruitment infrastructures, and multi-level governance involving public and private actors. The study traces the process of market-making from intermediaries (i.e., labour brokers) and follows the workers from the sending to the destination country. This approach allows for an analysis of the full set of actors involved and the often antagonistic interests and power struggles among them. It aims to provide insights into how such market dynamics shape migrant healthcare workers’ career paths and mobility trajectories.
This research is part of a larger comparative project on Indonesian healthcare workers migrating to Germany, Japan, and Taiwan, funded by a research grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). By focusing on Indonesia as a sending country and Japan, Germany, and Taiwan – three non-English-speaking, non-settler migration countries – as destinations, the comparative study narrows the range of actors and sending-country variations, enabling a better understanding of the contractual conditions of exchange and the political and legal-institutional dynamics structuring cross-border labour mobility outcomes. While there have been many studies on the mobility of nurses and care workers, an analysis of how specific transnational labour markets for such workers are formed and transformed remains lacking.
The project includes field research in Germany with institutional stakeholders and Indonesian migrant healthcare workers, as well as data analysis Further planned outcomes are: 1) organising an international workshop to discuss the transnational labour market perspective on cross-border labour mobility; 2) authoring a journal article that uses the empirical case of Indonesia-Germany transnational labour market to evaluate the theoretical potential of this economic-sociological approach; and 3) contributing to a book project on the transnational labour market.
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Prof. Gracia Liu-Farrer
Waseda University (Japan) | Sociology, Migration Studies
Gracia Liu-Farrer is Professor of Sociology at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies and Director of the Institute of Asian Migration at Waseda University, Japan. Her research examines post-war immigration to Japan and the country's transformation into an immigrant society, focusing on migration policy, migration patterns, immigrants' economic activities, social integration, and sense of belonging and identity. She also studies the mobility of educational and labour migrants within and beyond Asia, exploring the actors and processes that shape transnational labour markets and the ways migrants' skills are assessed, utilised, and developed in cross-border contexts.
Gracia Liu-Farrer has participated in many Japan- and EU-funded projects on education and labour migration, and her work brings Asian perspectives into global discussions of international migration. Her recent books include Handbook of Asian Migrations (with Brenda Yeoh, Routledge 2018), Immigrant Japan: Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-nationalist Society (Cornell University Press 2020), Tangled Mobilities: Places, Affects, and Personhood across Social Spheres in Asian Migration (with Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot, Berghahn Books 2022), and The Question of Skill in Cross-border Labour Mobilities (with Brenda Yeoh and Michiel Baas, Taylor & Francis 2023). Her articles have appeared in the Annual Review of Sociology, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Migration Review, and Migration Studies, among others.
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Karen Shire, PhD, is Professor of Comparative Sociology and Japanese Society at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE). She is co-speaker of the DFG Research Training Group Cross-Border Labour Markets, a member of the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy, a member of the selection committee of the Humboldt Foundation’s Feodor Lynen Fellowship Program and President of the International Sociological Association Research Committee 02 Economy and Society. Her current research is on the economic sociology of migrant labour markets, and the macro-structural determinants of labour exploitation in the global economy. Her publications include ‘The Political and Social Economy of Labour Migration’ (2026, ed., with Heidi Gottfried and Rina Agarwala, Global Dialogues), Trafficking Chains: Modern Slavery in Society (2024, with Sylvia Walby, Bristol University Press), ‘The Future of Gender Regimes’ (2023, ed. with H. Gottfried and S. Walby, Women’s Studies International Forum), The dynamics of welfare markets: Private pensions and domestic/care services in Europe (2021, ed. with C. Ledoux and F. van Hooren, Palgrave Macmillan) and ‘The Social Order of Transnational Migration Markets’ (Global Networks, 2020).
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