‘Thanks Sis! I Am Praying for Your Work Permit!’: The Role of the YouTube Vlogger’s Performance Authenticity in the Game with the Migrant Job-Seekers’ Needs

Recently, online searching has become as important as more traditional methods of getting a job abroad. International labour migration is now influenced by new key actors – migrant micro-influencers who share international job opportunities and are increasingly trusted over established authorities. While media scholars analyse influencers’ self-presentation, their role in international labour migration remains underexplored. Migrant YouTube vloggers blend formal and informal brokerage and intermediary practices through ‘performance authenticity’ (Taylor 2022), achieved by a ‘mediated’ presence and intimacy, as well as the strategic ‘game with the expectations and needs’ of job-seeking viewers. It allows them to shift between formal and informal intermediation and brokerage, depending on the context and audience’s preferences. Through authenticity, migrant micro-influencers build trust and adapt their content to audience expectations in an online spectacle. This trust requires strategically blurring vloggers’ dual formal and informal roles. Using a visual and thematic content analysis of a Filipina vlogger’s YouTube channel, the study examines how migrant micro-influencers impact labour brokerage and intermediation. They do so by adapting to audience expectations and leveraging informal media conventions to enhance their credibility as brokers.