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Political Battles at Home and in Brussels: Labor Migration and Asylum Policy in Established Countries of Immigration: France, the United Kingdom, and Germany

Georg Menz

in The Political Economy of Managed Migration: Nonstate Actors, Europeanization, and the Politics of Designing Migration Policies

The politics of migration in the three established countries of immigration, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, are scrutinized in this chapter, with particular emphasis being placed on an ... More

The politics of migration in the three established countries of immigration, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, are scrutinized in this chapter, with particular emphasis being placed on an analysis of employers, trade unions, and humanitarian NGOs in attempting to shape national and indirectly European migration policies. In addition, the effects of top-down Europeanization and national initiatives at shaping bottom-up Europeanization are explored. French migration policy has only recently rediscovered active labor recruitment due to relatively belated employer interest. In Germany, employers are most interested in highly skilled migrants both in the manufacturing and service sector, while in the UK, business calls for entry channels both for highly skilled and low-wage low-skill migration, preferably into the service sector. In all countries, NGOs struggle to make their voices heard, though French groups have been successful with direct action.Less

National Actors and European Solutions: The Contours of Conflict

Georg Menz

in The Political Economy of Managed Migration: Nonstate Actors, Europeanization, and the Politics of Designing Migration Policies

In this chapter, the politics of bottom-up and top-down Europeanization of migration policies are analyzed. The European Commission has been highly active over the course of the past 10 years, but ... More

In this chapter, the politics of bottom-up and top-down Europeanization of migration policies are analyzed. The European Commission has been highly active over the course of the past 10 years, but top-down initiatives encounter often fierce resistance and play out in a highly intergovernmental setting, permitting room for bottom-up strategies of agenda-setting, ensuring first mover advantages and reduced implementation and transaction costs. At the national level, employer associations, trade unions and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations all vie for the attention of governments, attempting to decisively shape the reformulation of European migration policies. National systems of political economy, varieties of capitalism, the relative size of components of the economy, and sectoral corporate strategies all influence employer interest positions in advocating liberalized labor recruitment policies. Organizational characteristics of these groups will condition the amount of influence they can hope to command.Less

The Role of Recruiters in Labor Migration

Manolo I. Abella

in International Migration: Prospects and Policies in a Global Market

Job brokering for profit has become an important institution in the market for foreign labour, especially where social networks are not yet established to facilitate migration or where states of ... More

Job brokering for profit has become an important institution in the market for foreign labour, especially where social networks are not yet established to facilitate migration or where states of employment and origin have not agreed on exclusive systems for recruiting labour. Job brokers or recruiters have successfully organized labour migration between many states, especially where few or no political or economic linkages have existed before. However, recruiting activities have been frequently characterized by fraudulent practices. Little evidence indicates that public authorities’ efforts to protect workers against such practices have been effective.Less

A Riotous Success: Guestworkers, “Illegal Immigrants,” and the Promise of Managed Migration

Cindy Hahamovitch

in No Man's Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor

This chapter reveals the intimate and early relationship between illegal immigration and authorized guestworker programs, a relationship that continues to this day. Guestworker programs had persisted ... More

This chapter reveals the intimate and early relationship between illegal immigration and authorized guestworker programs, a relationship that continues to this day. Guestworker programs had persisted in the postwar period because they appeared to offer a manageable alternative to unregulated migration. However, to the extent that this was managed migration, it was managed to benefit the nation's largest farm employers, not the farmworkers. Managed migration was a success from the growers' perspective, precisely because the Caribbean and Mexican guestworker programs kept wages low and labor plentiful. From the policy makers' perspective, the guestworker programs seemed like sensible and legitimate ways to keep the border open. Temporary worker contracts and guestworkers' deportability added a patina of legality to what was, in essence, a grower-dominated labor recruitment scheme.Less

Flexible and Accommodating: Successful Recruitment and Retention of Filipinos

JoAnna Poblete

in Islanders in the Empire: Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborers in Hawai'i

This chapter examines the labor recruitment and retention strategies developed by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association (HSPA) specifically for Filipino U.S. colonials. Learning from the mistakes ... More

This chapter examines the labor recruitment and retention strategies developed by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association (HSPA) specifically for Filipino U.S. colonials. Learning from the mistakes of Puerto Rican recruitment, the HSPA successfully attracted legally mobile Filipinos to Hawaiʻi through a variety of programs, such as predominantly male migration, free return passage after three years of work, family reunions, and the payment of transport for workers' wives and children to join them in Hawaiʻi. With access to and support for open colonial mobility, intra-colonial Filipino laborers willingly moved to work on sugar plantations in the islands. The chapter shows that the recruitment of Filipinos prevented what could have been grave labor shortages in local plantations. It explains how the HSPA's flexible programs gave Filipinos a range of mobility choices that Puerto Rican intra-colonials did not have.Less

Changing Communities, Changing Identities: Indians and the Colonial World

in Labor and Love in Guatemala: The Eve of Independence

The Indian tribute labor system in Guatemala gradually disintegrated in the eighteenth century. As elsewhere in Spanish America, this was a transition not only from draft labor to free labor but also ... More

The Indian tribute labor system in Guatemala gradually disintegrated in the eighteenth century. As elsewhere in Spanish America, this was a transition not only from draft labor to free labor but also from state-mediated labor procurement to private arrangement. That is, labor recruitment by colonial administration and by native community governments gave way to informal contracting between workers and employers themselves. This chapter examines these changes, comparing them to findings on Mexico and adding a new consideration of ethnic identities, gender, and family structures. It shows that the transition from tribute labor to individual arrangements increasingly drew entire families, as well as women and children alone, into migratory wage work. Women's work was central in the shift to free labor and in the lengthening duration of Indian migrants' sojourns in the Hispanic world.Less

Letters Home: The Failure of Puerto Rican Recruitment

JoAnna Poblete

in Islanders in the Empire: Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborers in Hawai'i

This chapter examines the ground-level experiences of early Puerto Rican colonial migrants to Hawaiʻi, including the labor recruitment process and daily circumstances, as well as reactions to these ... More

This chapter examines the ground-level experiences of early Puerto Rican colonial migrants to Hawaiʻi, including the labor recruitment process and daily circumstances, as well as reactions to these policies. It describes how independent labor companies used promises of higher wages and better living conditions to entice legally mobile Puerto Ricans to leave for Hawaiʻi and fill the vast labor needs of the islands. The chapter begins with a discussion of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association's recruitment process for Puerto Rican laborers, along with the Puerto Ricans' intra-colonial journey to Hawaiʻi. It then considers the conditions that Puerto Ricans found upon their arrival in Hawaiʻi and how the islands' plantation management worked hard to positively portray life on sugar plantations to maintain access to laborers. It also explores the Puerto Rican government's protests against Hawaiʻi's recruitment policies and the conflicts among the U.S. imperial bureaucracy over the issue of recruitment.Less

Aurora colonialis: German Imperialism and the Modernity of Slavery

in The Intestines of the State: Youth, Violence, and Belated Histories in the Cameroon Grassfields

This chapter examines the impact of German imperialism on slavery in the Cameroon Grassfields. It suggests that the German presence in the Grassfields not only increased the taking of slaves under ... More

This chapter examines the impact of German imperialism on slavery in the Cameroon Grassfields. It suggests that the German presence in the Grassfields not only increased the taking of slaves under the guise of labor recruitment but also seriously destabilized the region. The chapter also contends that the cannibal witchcraft discourse doubles the violence and uncertainty of life in postcolonial Cameroon. It argues that the silences imposed by the extreme violence and political polarization of the Grassfields have given rise not only to veiled discourses and oral practices of remembering which link the past to a doubled and fractured present, but also to a nondiscursive phenomenon that equally addresses the experiences of both the slave trade and forced labor.Less

Struggle and Resistance: 1885–1945

Jonathan Y. Okamura

in From Race to Ethnicity: Interpreting Japanese American Experiences in Hawaii

This chapter explores themes of collective struggle and resistance and relate them to several major historical processes and events in which Japanese were involved during the period 1885–1945. These ... More

This chapter explores themes of collective struggle and resistance and relate them to several major historical processes and events in which Japanese were involved during the period 1885–1945. These processes include labor recruitment and immigration, plantation labor and life, and labor organizing. The chapter also situates Japanese American history within the larger political, economic, and cultural contexts of the anti-Japanese movement that sought to oppress and marginalize Japanese Americans after they became the largest ethnic group in Hawaiʻi and began to move off the plantations in hopes of advancing themselves economically. It shows how race undermined Japanese American resistance as it continued to be the paramount structural principle regulating social relations in Hawaiʻi.Less

Obreros in the Peach State: The Growth of Georgia's Working-Class Mexican Immigrant Communities from a Transnational Perspective

Michael K. Bess

in Life and Labor in the New New South

This chapter studies the development of Mexican working-class communities in Georgia from a transnational perspective. Job opportunities and economic crisis combined with social networks to produce ... More

This chapter studies the development of Mexican working-class communities in Georgia from a transnational perspective. Job opportunities and economic crisis combined with social networks to produce dynamic flows of people and information that tied Mexican states such as Guerrero, Veracruz, and Oaxaca to the U.S. Southeast. Beginning in 1970 as Georgia's economy grew, Mexican immigrant workers became an important source of labor for carpeting mills, poultry plants, and farms. The 1982 Mexican credit crisis, the collapse of Houston's oil economy, the 1994 peso devaluation, and the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta played major roles in contributing to the emergence of Georgia's Mexican working class community in the late twentieth century.Less

The Human Resource

Judith A. Bennett

in Natives and Exotics: World War II and Environment in the Southern Pacific

This chapter describes the extent of the labors rendered by the Pacific islanders for the war effort. Local laborers reduced expenditure for transport, training, upkeep, and pensions. Though colonial ... More

This chapter describes the extent of the labors rendered by the Pacific islanders for the war effort. Local laborers reduced expenditure for transport, training, upkeep, and pensions. Though colonial governments understood the military's need for labor, this did not constrain their long view of sustaining the islands' populations—many just recovering from considerable loss to introduced diseases in the previous 80 to 150 years. Thus, they sometimes competed with the military for directing labor though usually retaining responsibility for them. Several administrations perforce became recruiters, a role in peacetime that most eschewed. How labor was recruited and utilized varied, and was most contested in the operational area. How the parties involved viewed this also varied. Unlike other local resources exploited by the Allies, the human resources were less predictable and attached their own meaning to their experiences. That meaning remains diverse, but not immutable.Less