Mediating Mobility: Brokerage and the Making of Migration in the Malabar–Gulf Corridor

This article examines the evolving role of brokers in facilitating and sustaining migration from Malabar to the Persian Gulf, with a particular focus on Mappila Muslims. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Kerala, it traces how brokerage has remained central to mobility across different phases of the Malabar–Gulf migration corridor. Rather than treating brokers simply as exploitative middlemen, the article situates them as socially embedded actors who have long functioned as a crucial dimension of migration infrastructure. The earliest form of intermediation in the Malabar–Gulf corridor emerged through seafaring traders—figures I refer to as ‘merchant intermediaries’—who took on brokerage roles in organizing migrant mobility. With the rise of visa regimes and the consolidation of the kafala system, brokerage gradually expanded into locally shaped migration pathways, including work visas, free visas and umrah-based routes, while also mediating travel and access to employers and sponsors. Across these shifts, brokers helped migrants acquire ‘mobility capital’—the economic, social and cultural resources necessary for cross-border movement. The article contributes to mobilities scholarship by offering a historically grounded and ethnographically rich account of how migration is socially mediated and infrastructurally produced.