This thesis is concerned with pre-departure medical examinations of transnational migrant workers from Indonesia. It focuses on the medical professionals who conduct migrant medical examinations, the biomedical practices that constitute these examinations, and the clinical institutions in which they take place.

Medical examinations that screen for infectious diseases and non-infectious conditions are a mandatory part of the pre-departure recruitment and preparation process for documented migrant workers from Indonesia headed to a variety of destination countries in Asia and beyond. They are regulated by policies in both destination and sending countries, integrated into recruitment procedures for prospective migrant workers, and enforced through certification requirements for the issuance of visas and work permits. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in medical institutions and labor recruitment agencies across Indonesia, this study shows how biomedical practices and administrative procedures in clinics are shaped by the competing demands of border control, labor recruitment, and the financial interests of clinics themselves.

In exploring these dynamics, the thesis charts migrant medical examinations as procedures in which biomedicine, bordering practices, and capitalist labor management intersect in the production and policing of a migrant workforce that is kept separate from the national communities of destination countries. It does so by paying close ethnographic attention to individual screening practices and the ways in which they are negotiated and contested by various actors involved, including medical practitioners, migration brokers, government officials, and prospective migrants themselves. At the same time, it relates these dynamics to broader discourses about international migration, health, protection, and the national community, which frequently inform government policy on migrant medical examination requirements.

The thesis contributes to wider academic discussions of contemporary labor migration and border regimes in Southeast Asia and beyond by examining a crucial but often overlooked dimension, the biomedical examination and certification of migrant workers’ bodies. Meanwhile, it also adds to discussions of the politics of biomedical screening by showing how border policies and employer demands not only use, but also transform biomedical practices operating in their contexts.