The Philippines and Israel as Transnational Spaces of Recruitment: The Migration Industry in the Caregiving Sector

This article analyses the recruitment of Filipino caregivers to Israel through the lens of migration infrastructures, based on original fieldwork conducted in 2011 and 2019. Using Xiang and Lindquist’s framework, we examine how regulatory, commercial, and social infrastructures interact to shape the migration process. We propose a typology of commercial infrastructures–first-order (recruitment agencies), second-order (training, medical, and documentation services), and third-order (logistical support such as housing and transportation)–to capture the layered and expanding structure of the migration industry. Our findings show that, over time, the recruitment process has become more complex, institutionalised, and commodified. The expansion of facilitative services illustrates the process of infrastructuralisation, in which the infrastructure itself becomes the central object of growth. Concomitantly, the rising costs and density of intermediaries reflect infrastructural involution, whereby expanded infrastructure increases burdens on migrants without improving outcomes. By disaggregating the elements of the commercial infrastructure and tracing their evolution over time, we provide a deeper understanding of how precariousness is embedded in the very systems designed to facilitate labour mobility.