Irregular and Forced Migration within Asia: Governance, Marginality, and Labor

This special collection of International Migration Review brings together a series of articles that collectively situate Asia at the heart of contemporary discussions of irregular and forced migration. Foregrounding the scholarship of researchers working in and from Asia, we position the collection as a deliberate decentering of Global North preoccupations with border control, instead emphasizing the diverse expressions of inequity and resistance that characterize the “routine irregularities” of migration governance in the majority-world. Our editorial introduction traces the origins and normative commitments of the special collection, before discussing the key themes that emerged from a subsequent workshop held in Kuala Lumpur in 2024: governance from above and below, marginality and social exclusion, and labor market segmentation. Each of the papers in the special collection offers a timely intervention in irregular and forced migration debates, hastening analytical departures from Eurocentric epistemes by centering the knowledge production of those directly researching the contextually specific histories, policies, practices, and outcomes of migration in the region where it occurs most.