Social Mobility Springboard: Occupational Prestige of Thai Labour Brokers

Abstract

International labour migration is one of the major issues of our time. Records at present total around 200 million people working outside their country of birth. This rapidly increasing phenomenon is examined in a large number of studies on migration, most of which, however, focus on experiences and practicalities of migrants at the place of destination. In this study, we provide insight into another issue of migration study by presenting occupational prestige as an indicator of social mobility of Thai labour brokers who were return migrants from overseas employment. The data was collected via structured interview with 321 samples obtained by systematic sampling from all provinces in the Northeast of Thailand during the years 2010-2011. Data analysis for social mobility was performed based on occupational prestige. The results indicated that occupational prestige of labour brokers (0.1934) was higher than their former occupational prestige for agricultural occupations (-0.3100) and industrial/service occupations (0.1800). Moreover, social mobility of labour brokers could be classified in the upper vertical mobility category of the "Occupational Mobility."