Global Labor Migrations. New Directions. Ed. by Eileen Boris, Heidi Gottfried, Julie Greene, and Joo-Cheong Tham. [Studies of World Migrations.] University of Illinois Press, Urbana (IL) [etc.] 2023. xii, 343 pp. $125.00. (Paper: $32; E-book: $19.95.

Currently, labour migration is at the core of debates on the political future of the Western welfare state.What observers in the Global North have long assessed sceptically is now perceived as a chance to solve a problem many societies in the world are facing, in view of the ageing of large parts of the global population.Yet, while many contemporaries acknowledge the global dimension of labour migration, they continue to tackle the issue within a national framework that tends to blend out the inherently global patterns of migrant routes and connections and how they have shaped contemporary perceptions, patterns, and inequalities.The book under review sets out to fill this gap by addressing the regional and disciplinary limitations of much of the literature on the issue.To this end, it "forges multidisciplinary, transregional perspectives on global labor migration" (p. 2) and directs the reader's attention to particular connections, intersecting migration regimes, as well as to attempts to regulate labour migration on national, transnational, and global scales.The book brings together sixteen short case studies that attempt to shed light on different world regions, though with a clear focus on East Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America, and span a period starting in the mid-nineteenth century to the present day.What holds them together is the attempt to understand the emergence of particular migration patterns at the intersection of different economic systems, of the historical dynamics of political (including imperial and colonial) change, of global governance regimes, and of different categories of discrimination.Moreover, the volume brings the migrants into focus, their attempts to circumnavigate, resist, or struggle against political regulations, and their living and working conditions on the ground.This approach takes up current discussions in migration research that aim at decentring state and institutional perspectives by giving migrants a voice.Thus, the volume follows an ambitious agenda that aims to do no less than question established narratives on labour migration by applying transregional, intersectional, and critical perspectives in a longue dure that transcend the national and state-centred approaches that have long prevailed.The volume is organized in four thematic sections.The first, on "Colonial Authority and the Transimperial", emphasizes the significance of imperial migration regimes and policies.The chapters start from the observation that migration management formed part of imperial competition, with labour migrants and routes crossing imperial spheres of influence.Taking Chinese labour migration at the intersection of the Dutch and British empires in Southeast Asia as a case study, Bastiaan Nugteren shows, for instance, how British migration control was situated in a highly competitive labour