Asylum reception workers in Spain face limited discretion in decision-making, as their daily tasks are dominated by seemingly meaningless bureaucratic duties, leaving minimal time for actual social work. Their primary responsibilities include distributing reception allowances in accordance with Ministry guidelines and gathering proof that asylum applicants spend these allowances only on permitted items. Despite having the option to present cases for extended allowances (based on set vulnerability criteria), the Ministry's response appears unpredictable to them, leading to a common perception that efforts to advocate for such cases fall on deaf ears.

The transient nature of asylum applicants in the reception centre, with stays lasting three to six months (or up to a year with maximum extensions), hinders the development of strong relationships between workers and applicants. Performing social work 'as desired' is considered a luxury afforded to only a few cases. The role of social workers as ‘brokers’ only becomes evident when they ‘do more’ or ‘go beyond their duty’ for those selected cases they believe are ‘worth it’, investing their time and effort in making sure they can gain access to all available resources. This selective investment unveils the significant impact of social workers’ interventions, or their absence, on the future trajectories of asylum applicants. Significantly, how they rationalise their decisions to invest more time and efforts on some asylum applicants exposes the moral economy of the asylum reception system, as well as gendered and racialised constructions of the ‘ideal refugee’ that underpin the humanitarian drive that motivates these decisions.

Formal job placement modes are easily studied by looking at how brokers – active actors in contemporary migration infrastructure (Xiang & Lindquist 2014), behave. Much has also been written recently about informal and unofficial intermediation in the context of the role of local intermediaries in migrants' countries of origin (Lindquist 2017) or migrant micro-influencers in destination countries (Jayadeva 2023).

Another interesting space for such practices has become sporting events, such as the Philippine basketball meetings in Warsaw, which focus on promoting specific sports values, and networking, but also on extensive job intermediation. Recent research into the varied role of sport, which can foster a sense of belonging among newly arrived migrants, helps in rebuilding home or bonding, as well as solely within their ethnic group in Poland has been conducted by Blachnicka-Ciacek & Trąbka (2022). However, sport has also become a new arena through which migrants can seek employment information, which is particularly crucial during the initial stage of acclimatization in a new place.

I aim to show how migrant participation in sporting events has become a new space for various intermediary practices for different migration infrastructure actors and most importantly – informal job placement.

I look at the Pinoy Warsaw Basketball [PWB] League organized by the Filipino community in Warsaw, which has quickly grown from a small local tournament to a nationwide event bringing together Filipino migrant players from all over Poland and Europe, as well as supporters and sponsors – official brokers and diplomatic services. The organization and participation in the matches reflect the interpenetration of the commercial and social dimensions of the migration infrastructure, giving migrants the opportunity to associate, cultivate traditions, and establish new contacts. For official brokers, these events provide a new space for promoting their agencies and attracting employees. Other dimensions of migration infrastructure, such as regulatory or humanitarian, are also visible at PWB meetings primarily through the involvement of diplomatic representatives or foundations. The dimensions, however, differ in their degree of relevance for the actors participating in the events.

The use of the sporting space as a place to source workers by promoting one's services, which is largely indirect, represents a new and important strand of research on informal brokering that has moved beyond local community, or online spaces.

In my analysis based on the observations, field notes, and interviews with the actors engaged in the PWB, I will explain by what practices involvement in sports initiatives has become a new space of intermediation and informal job placement for its various actors – newcomers’ migrants, brokers, diplomatic services, and NGO workers.

The UK state currently outsources many aspects of the asylum system to private companies, which Humphris and Sigona (2017) defined as the ‘marketization of asylum’. The current accommodation model contracts £4.5 billion over ten years to four private companies (Neal 2022). Due to a shortage of housing and a backlog in the asylum system, there are approximately 51,000 asylum seekers accommodated in hotels in the UK (BBC 2023). A new range of actors and relationships have been introduced as a result – including with hotel staff and other asylum seekers. The management of hotels by private housing or security companies has led to hotel staff becoming a large part of the daily lives of asylum seekers. The current system does not place these individuals as formal brokers within the system, and reporting to date has highlighted hostility and unhelpfulness from staff. However, among this there are informal examples of kindness and support – highlighting a blurring of the boundary between formal and informal brokering. Secondly, relationships with other residents are important because hotel accommodation has led to large numbers living in one building over longer periods, with many sharing rooms. As people are moved in and out of hotels, relationships are built, and knowledge and information is exchanged between older and newer residents. Drawing on nine months of ongoing ethnographic and qualitative longitudinal research with asylum seekers, this paper will examine the role of these two groups as both formal and informal brokers, and their potential to both support and hinder access to information and resources.

Much social scientific research on migrant arrival and settlement has looked at these processes through the lens of ‘integration’, investigating how migrants access societal realms such as the labour market, education, civil society and social networks, and mostly focusing on ‘integration outcomes’ within these realms. A complementary body of work has looked at how socio-economic contexts can shape integration and social mobility. This paper expands on this work by highlighting the importance of place in migrant arrival, settlement and, in the longer term, social mobility. It builds on an emerging body of literature on ‘arrival infrastructures’ that has emphasised that where migrants arrive, and the related place-based opportunity structures they encounter, play a crucial role in their ability to access resources. Arrival infrastructures consist of a range of places such as civil society organisations, religious sites, informal sites like barbers or cafés, as well as local authority funded places like libraries and support services.

Drawing on two sets of ethnographic fieldwork in East London, this paper analyses the opportunities and barriers which migrants encounter in accessing support through arrival infrastructures. The paper shows how individual factors such as cultural capital (language knowledge, knowing ‘the system’, etc.) and social capital (knowing the right people), combined with systemic barriers such as migration status and limited welfare entitlements differently shape access to support. It also highlights the crucial role of intermediaries or ‘brokers’ who facilitate access to support. These range from civil society actors to local pastors and shopkeepers, and they include street-level bureaucrats who go beyond the remit of their everyday jobs. By drawing on the notion of ‘infrastructures of care’, the paper highlights how in light of unprecedented cuts to welfare provision and their exacerbated effect in arrival areas (which are often amongst the most disadvantaged areas of the country), it is often thanks to these local acts of informal care that newcomers manage to forge a living.