Search Results

This chapter discusses globalisation and the export sector of India, looking at employment and economic growth in the country. It starts with a study of the rise of small-scale industries, which are part of the fastest expanding sector in India. Merchant producerism and cheap labour is discussed, followed by globalisation and social audits. Child labour, contract labour, the absent present worker, and overtime are some of the topics discussed as well. Finally, the chapter ends by determining whether globalisation has made a difference in the economy of India.

Western European governments face a dilemma. On the one hand, their immigrant population is growing. On the other hand, the public opposes large-scale immigration and wants to restrict immigrants’ access to social benefits. We argue that in ‘reluctant countries of immigration’ such as France, Germany, and Great Britain, this tension is attenuated by reforms of social and migration policies. Firstly, migration policies are changed to encourage the arrival of ‘desired’ workers, while barriers to entry for ‘undesired’ immigrants are erected. Secondly, immigrant-specific social security schemes are reformed in order to reduce the incentive for immigrants to come in the first place. Finally, immigrants are disproportionately affected by the cutbacks in social security programs since the 1990s. These reforms contribute to the persistence of socio-economic differences between immigrants and citizens despite considerable efforts aimed at integrating the immigrants into their host societies.

This chapter focuses on the final key to prosperity: the cheap labor of the underprivileged classes, particularly young women. It explains that cheap labor was Japan's traditional advantage in the national marketplace, and was surprisingly appropriate to the manufacture of “high-tech” goods such as radios and televisions. The chapter explains that cheap labor lay behind Japan's first great export success in the electrical goods industry: the portable transistor radio.

Noting the most recent effects of globalization and U.S. policy on the Haitian economy, Alex Dupuy explains the “politicization of economic reforms occurred in the late 1980s under the aegis of what became known as the ‘Washington Consensus’” that involved “‘neoliberal’ or ‘structural adjustment’ reforms adopted by the World Bank.” The results have been disastrous for Haiti because, although these economic reforms were “ostensibly designed to alleviate poverty by stimulating sustainable economic growth, the policies of the bank and the other international financial institutions in fact maintained Haiti's position in the international division of labor as a supplier of cheap labor to foreign capital.”

“The Roots of White Poverty: Cheap, Lazy, Inefficient … Black” examines the alarming lack of difference between liberal and Marxist historiographies as they misunderstand the relationship between poor whites and black workers through the racialized concepts job competition and cheap labor. The chapter draws on the concept of a racial wealth divide to demonstrate how the concept of cheap labor and the concept of inefficient African labor are features of the production of racial difference. The chapter foregrounds the often-obscured role of white working-class women in the making of white male proletarian providers. The chapter critiques the impulse to interrogate African culture as a stand-in for looking at African economic organization and the inattention to African economic agency.

This chapter examines the continued importance of this form of labor relations in the years since the 1960s, as South Texas has continued to serve as a model for employers elsewhere eager to avail themselves of poorly-paid workers who lack the ability to claim the basic rights of citizenship. The lessons learned in the fields of South Texas, in other words, were not only borrowed by agricultural employers. Instead, employers have increasingly sought to use the model of farmworker treatment and apply it to workers far removed from the fields. Industrial and service employers continue to try and emulate the enforced powerlessness of agricultural workers, even if they no longer consciously point to South Texas as their explicit model. The Epilogue examines the continued resonance and importance of this model of labor relations as it has moved beyond the agricultural realm and into service and industrial employment.

This chapter looks at how major Japanese management and employment practices—seniority pay and promotion, track hiring, and household benefits—work against women's upward mobility and reify sex segregation in Japanese companies. It compares the salaries and benefits of men and women in similar age groups in the five companies, while explaining the current Japanese employment system, which is based on seniority pay, track hiring, and household benefits, and is highly gender biased. Within the career-track system, firms can hire women as career-track, contract, or temporary workers. The current system legitimizes women's cheap labor and provides low motivation for upward mobility. The chapter also discusses how such a gender-divisive hiring and pay structure has generated tensions among women workers and how it has contributed to their low aspirations.

This chapter illustrates how advocates of the open shop argued that elimination of unions would enable southern industrialists to realize the benefits of a large and growing supply of cheap labor. An employer, however, could not simply walk out into the street and find men to operate cranes, lathes, or rammers. Much of the local labor force lacked the necessary knowledge and would have to be trained before the theoretical benefits of more up-to-date methods could be realized. Efficient operation of a modern foundry, machine shop, or steel plant required a large number of semiskilled operatives who could be trained quickly and would work twelve hours each day. Some companies continued to rely upon the market to supply them with the workers they needed and to use threats of dismissal and other forms of coercion to force workers to behave as they wanted.

This chapter looks at the observations of ethnographic studies that undocumented workers from Mexico are highly regarded. Indeed, Mexican undocumented workers have an advantage over migrant workers from other countries because many Americans are already used to thinking of Mexicans as an ideal cheap as well as reliable labor force. However, not everyone holds this view. Some native-born Americans vilify Mexican undocumented workers as criminals because they are “illegal,” and even those who admire their work ethnic may express the racist opinion that Mexican migrants are suitable only for manual labor and low-status jobs. At the same time, people who have a favorable and less stereotyped opinion of Mexican workers can be ambivalent about the perceived willingness of those workers to work hard without complaining.

This chapter shows how cheap labor, rich soil, and a favorable climate gave Central America great potential for becoming a producer of cotton; however, without modern insecticides, yields were too low to make the crop commercially viable. With the discovery of DDT and related compounds, the most important barrier to Central American cotton production was removed. After World War II, the growing demand for cotton in the world market and the availability of fertilizers, herbicides, and modern agricultural equipment were some of the other factors that boosted Central America's potential as a cotton producer. Private market conditions were favorable for Central American cotton, but government intervention was crucial in turning a possibility into a reality. With the guidance and financial support of the World Bank, governments built paved roads through the middle of the zones where the potential for growing cotton was greatest, and governments subsidized cotton by providing cheap credit to growers.