Between Broker and Professional: Immigration Consultancy, Migration Expertise and the Uneven Professionalization of Mobility

Abstract

Immigration consultancy has become an increasingly important form of migration intermediation as individuals and families navigate complex visa, residence, work, study, family and citizenship systems. Yet the professional status of those who provide such expertise remains unevenly institutionalized across jurisdictions. In countries such as Canada and Australia, immigration consultancy and migration-agent practice are embedded within formal educational and regulatory frameworks that establish pathways for training, authorization, professional conduct and public recognition. In Kenya, by contrast, immigration-related consultancy exists as an economic and professional activity without an equivalent dedicated statutory professional regime. This creates a paradox in which demand for specialized migration expertise is real and practitioners may establish substantial professional practices, while the profession itself remains institutionally difficult to name and locate. This paper examines that paradox through reflexive practitioner research grounded in the author's trajectory from undergraduate training in International Relations and Diplomacy to government immigration practice, private immigration consultancy and, subsequently, migration research. It reflects on the absence of a dedicated local professional pathway for immigration consultancy and on subsequent efforts to build professional standing through government-related training, formal business development, compliance and sustained specialist practice. The paper further examines how this ambiguous status shapes the social and economic valuation of migration expertise. Practitioners in the Global South may be expected to provide specialized services at discounted rates while simultaneously being presumed to possess informal influence capable of circumventing immigration rules, administrative timelines or government decisions. The paper argues that immigration practitioners in such settings occupy a paradoxical position: their expertise is increasingly necessary to navigate sophisticated mobility regimes, yet their professional identity remains vulnerable to being collapsed into the category of the broker. It distinguishes brokerage as a function of intermediation from professionalization as an institutional condition and situates this distinction within wider scholarship on migration industries, migration infrastructure and professional jurisdiction, including scholarship that treats professionalization itself as a project of social closure. Finally, the paper argues that practitioners should be recognized not merely as intermediaries in migration markets but also as situated producers of migration knowledge, while professional recognition should be developed in ways that protect migrants, distinguish legitimate expertise from fraudulent brokerage and avoid reproducing Global NorthSouth inequalities in access to professional credentials.