LAUSR

This paper conceptualizes the digitalization of foreign workers’ management as a gradual move by the state to phase out intermediaries and to reduce undocumented migration in Malaysia. The privatization of digital migration management to information technology (IT) firms is necessary in line with the centralization of all immigration functions. However, privatizing digital migration management has subject the employers and foreign workers to new non-state actors (IT firms and immigration service providers) while gradually eliminating the existing non-state actors (private agencies). The main theoretical question of the privatization of migration management concerns the role of immigration service providers as a result of digitalization. Using Malaysia as its case study, this paper highlights the need to re-conceptualize the role of service providers as “paper shifters” in providing front-line services, collecting agent services, and post office services and thus facilitating the online platform’s operations. This paper concludes that privatizing foreign worker management has not achieved the objectives of digitalization in reducing undocumented migration, eliminating intermediaries, improving efficiency, and reducing recruitment cost. The state’s privatization framework based on the employer-pay-model has resulted in the commercialization and monopolization of the foreign worker industry. In order to achieve the benefits of digitalization, the process should be done by the government without any form of privatization. The analysis draws upon official documents, parliamentary debates, statements by trade associations and civil societies, newspaper articles, and secondary literature. Based on the media discourse analysis of online news media and document analysis of official publications, this thought piece article explores immigration service providers’ role in Malaysia’s migration management.