Global Labor Migration: New Directions

by Eileen Boris (Editor), Heidi Gottfried (Editor), Julie Greene (Editor), Joo-Cheong Tham (Editor), Bridget Anderson (Contribution by)

Overview

Around the world, hundreds of millions of labor migrants endure exploitation, lack of basic rights, and institutionalized discrimination and marginalization. What dynamics and drivers have created a world in which such a huge—and rapidly growing—group toils as marginalized men and women, existing as a lower caste institutionally and juridically? In what ways did labor migrants shape their living and working conditions in the past, and what opportunities exist for them today?

Global Labor Migration presents new multidisciplinary, transregional perspectives on issues surrounding global labor migration. The essays go beyond disciplinary boundaries, with sociologists, ethnographers, legal scholars, and historians contributing research that extends comparison among and within world regions. Looking at migrant workers from the late nineteenth century to the present day, the contributors illustrate the need for broader perspectives that study labor migration over longer timeframes and from wider geographic areas. The result is a unique, much-needed collection that delves into one of the world’s most pressing issues, generates scholarly dialogue, and proposes cutting-edge research agendas and methods.

Contributors: Bridget Anderson, Rutvica Andrijasevic, Katie Bales, Jenny Chan, Penelope Ciancanelli, Felipe Barradas Correia Castro Bastos, Eileen Boris, Charlie Fanning, Judy Fudge, Jorge L. Giovannetti-Torres, Heidi Gottfried, Julie Greene, Justin Jackson, Radhika Natarajan, Pun Ngai, Bastiaan Nugteren, Nicola Piper, Jessica R. Pliley, Devi Sacchetto, Helen Sampson, Yael Schacher, Joo-Cheong Tham, and Matt Withers

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252086793
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	12/27/2022
Series:	Studies of World Migrations
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Eileen Boris is Hull Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Making the Woman Worker: Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 1919–2019. Heidi Gottfried is an associate professor of sociology at Wayne State University and author of Gender, Work and Economy: Unpacking the Global Economy. Julie Greene is a professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Founding Director of the Center for Global Migration Studies. She is the author of The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal. Joo-Cheong Tham is a professor at Melbourne Law School and author of Money and Politics: The Democracy We Can’t Afford.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Global Labor Migration  Eileen Boris, Heidi Gottfried, Julie Greene, and Joo-Cheong Tham

Part I. Colonial Authority and the Transimperial

1. “Politics of Protection and the Southeast-Asian ‘Coolie Trade’: Chinese Labor Migration and Trans-Imperial Connections in the British Straits Settlements and the Netherlands East Indies, 1870-1914”   Bastiaan Nugteren

2. “Militarized Mobility: The U.S. Army and Chinese Exclusion in America’s Empire at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century”  Justin F. Jackson

3. “Before the Windrush: Black British Colonial Labor in Cuba and the Dominican Republic”   Jorge L. Giovannetti-Torres

4. “Ethnicity, Migrant Labor and Anti-Colonialism: Historical Intersections in Mid-Twentieth century East Africa”    Felipe Barradas Correia Castro Bastos

Part II. Gender and Sexualities

5. “Sex Trafficking in the Motor City: The Construction of an International Deportation Infrastructure in Detroit, USA, 1924-1944"  Jessica R. Pliley

6. “Securitizing Migration: Finance and Household Reproduction”  Penelope Ciancanelli

7. “Saving Asian Marriages: Migration, Gender, and the Communal Politics of Welfare in 1970s Britain”   Radhika Natarajan

8. “Buy with 1-Click: Independent Contracting and Migrant Workers in China’s Last-Mile Delivery”   Jenny Chan

Part III. National and Transnational Regulation

9. “The Wedge of the Refugee as Worker: Litigation over Asylum Seeker Work Authorization in the United States, 1974-2021”  Yael Schacher

10. “Rethinking ‘Unfree’ Labor: The Immigration Industrial Complex”  Katie Bales

11. “Transnational Corporations and the Making of Global Labour Markets: The Case of Foxconn in China and Europe”  Rutvica Andrijasevic, Pun Ngai, and Devi Sacchetto

12. “‘Beyond Borders’: The Regulation of the Living and Working Conditions of International Seafarers”  Helen Sampson

Part IV. Global Governance

13. “Moving Workers: International Labour Organization Standards and the Regulation of Migration”  Eileen Boris

14. “From the ILO to Intergovernmentalism: “Surplus Population,” Discrimination, and the Genealogy of Global Migration Management”  Charlie Fanning

15. “Governing Global Labor Migration: Compacts and Contradictions”  Judy Fudge

16. “Decent Wages for Decent Work in Asia: Addressing the Temporality-Precarity Nexus in South-South Migration”  Matt Withers and Nicola Piper
Afterword: “Labor, Race and Temporality”   Bridget Anderson

Index

Editorial Reviews

This volume does exactly what the title promises: it puts labor and labor relations worldwide in the center and reveals the way employers, state, empires and supranational institutions shape migration patterns, then and now. The editors succeed in putting together a highly interesting collection of essays that talk to each other and open new venues, approaches and perspectives, while finding striking similarities between the continents. But this book also shows how migrants—despite ongoing exploitation and exclusion—find their own loopholes and chase their dreams. A must read for those interested in how the past structures current day trends, discussions, and daily practices from Beijing to Detroit.”—Leo Lucassen, Director of the International Institute of Social History

From the Publisher