Moving to a new country always involves navigating confusing bureaucracy. Like all migrants, the Southeast Asians we spoke to encountered a variety of legal arrangements based on their purpose of migration. Students, for example, need school-sponsored visas while people applying for asylum have to undergo an entirely different immigration process. Migrant workers without connections and language fluency must rely on labor brokers to help them find employment, communicate, and fill out paperwork – all for a considerable fee that plunges many into debt

The way the state controls the movement of people depends on the political climate of the host country. In this section, you will see examples of how legal structures impact migrants’ abilities to make lives for themselves in their new countries and how civil groups organize against oppressive policies to defend their communities

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