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Private recruitment agencies orchestrate much of the migration process, from predeparture to return. They provide information, assistance, and even financial support to migrants; facilitate transit to and from the destination; and in some cases employ migrants directly. While recruitment agencies have been known to advocate for migrant workers by removing them from abusive workplaces or even organizing repatriation, migrants’ dependence on them for so many services also creates many opportunities for exploitation and abuse.

In What We Know: Regulating the Recruitment of Migrant Workers, Migration Policy Institute Senior Policy Analyst Dovelyn Agunias examines the exploitation that can take place as well as the forms of regulation that are being proposed and enacted to oversee recruitment agencies. Existing recruitment regulations have several areas for further improvement, the author finds, among them that they often do not strike the right balance between too little and too much intervention, that they fail to address the real cause of recruitment irregularities, and that there are loopholes that can be exploited amid regulation by multiple jurisdictions with differing regulatory regimes.

Effective regulation requires strong cooperation between origin and destination countries and efforts by employers and civil society to reduce pressure throughout the supply chain. It also requires more active government consultation with migrants themselves, the author concludes.

This series, which focuses on the linkages between migration and development, is being published in advance of the UN General Assembly’s High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development on Oct. 3 -4. Earlier briefs in the series can be read here .