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Many workers in Asia and the Middle East rely on placement agencies to facilitate temporary employment abroad, yet such agencies vary in quality and sometimes engage in exploitative practices. Exploitative agencies may manage to stay in business if potential migrant workers have little information about them. Can providing information to potential migrants about the quality of placement agencies improve migrant welfare and the quality of such agencies?

The study conducted a randomised evaluation of the impact of providing information about the quality of migration agencies to potential migrants on migrant welfare and the migration market more broadly, focusing on female migrant workers. Four hundred migrant-sending villages were assigned to either a treatment group or a comparison group. To measure the impact of the information-sharing intervention the researchers conducted three rounds of surveys (one prior to and two after implementation) in all these villages of migrant workers, non-migrants, and local sponsors who connect migrants to agencies.

Dr Firman Witoelar, Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU