More than 500,000 new emigrant workers are sent to the Gulf countries from India every year. Based on the Emigration Act enacted in 1983, which provides the institutional framework for the emigration, this paper aims to clarify the entire emigrant transfer system, focusing on recruiting agents (RAs), one of the main groups of actors involved in the system. The Emigration Act stipulates that no RAs shall commence or carry on the business of recruitment without a valid certificate issued by the registering authority. As of January 2017, 1,213 RAs were registered in India, and nearly half of them were located in Mumbai, followed by Delhi. In contrast, more than half of the emigrants were originated in the belt spans from Uttar Pradesh to West Bengal, which is not in accordance with the location pattern of the registered RAs. Therefore, it is thought that a mechanism is needed to bridge the spatial divergence between them. Conscious of this problem, the author visited 20 offices (nine registered RAs and 11 nonregistered RAs) engaged in the recruiting business in Jamia Nagar, South Delhi, to obtain information on their business activities and their roles in the emigrant transfer system.
It has become clear that the recruiting business consists of three tiers: The first tier directly sends emigrant workers to foreign employers, the second tier arranges candidates for the first one, and the third tier meditates job seekers from rural areas of North India to RAs. Aside from registered RAs, some non-registered RAs are situated in the first tier. The other non-registered RAs are in the second tier. The third tier consists of agents scattered across rural North India which is primarily managed by one individual. Most of the RAs use many agents, but the most important ones are run by the owners’ relatives living in those areas. This hierarchical business network functions as a mechanism to continuously pick up emigrant workers from the pool of laborers and sends them to the Gulf countries. Owing to this mechanism, the spatial divergence which was previously mentioned has been overcome.