Abstract
By the early twentieth century the United States and all colonial powers of Europe, previously having patronized migration of coerced labor for several centuries, took decisive measures to restrict immigration. The pendulum however swung back after the WWII when temporary migrant workers were imported once again to meet the growing labor demand for post-war reconstruction. This chapter covers four such large-scale instances of temporary cross-border mobility of labor: the deployment of forced African labor by European powers during the World Wars; the guestworker programs adopted by the United States and European countries in the aftermath of the WWII; and the imports of migrant labor by the oil-exporting Gulf Region beginning from the 1970s. In all these cases, the processes involved in cross-border labor mobility were more humane than previous phases of slavery and indentured servitude. However, one of these programs that still survives today—the so-called Kafala system in the Gulf Region—to a significant extent conforms the characteristics associated with what the United Nations describes as ‘forced labor’ and ‘human trafficking.’
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Notes
- 1.
The Gulf Region comprises of six Middle Eastern countries—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In the 1980s, yet another destination for temporary migrant labor emerged with the rise of newly industrialized economies (NIEs) in East Asia—Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. These NIEs also attracted thousands of migrant laborers from neighboring countries, but the inflow was not as robust as examples covered in this chapter.
- 2.
In 1928, France and Britain were the leading colonial powers, while Belgium and Portugal were the third and fourth largest. Of the approximately 23.5 million square kilometers of Africa under European control, Great Britain held about 40 percent, followed by France (34 percent), and Belgium and Portugal, each with about 10 percent. By 1928, Germany also came to control a sizeable segment of Africa—about 2.7 million square kilometers in South West Africa, East Africa, Cameron, and Togo. Germany however lost much of its control over African land after the WWI. For further details see Shillington (2005) and Pakenham (1991).
- 3.
Historically, Africa had bountiful reserves of minerals. Even in the late 1970s, South Africa commanded 59 percent of world’s gold, 55 percent of the world’s platinum, 46 percent of the world’s vanadium, 30 percent of world’s chrome ore production, in addition to significant shares in antimony, manganese, diamonds, uranium, and asbestos (Potts 1990, 116–117).
- 4.
France also imported 49,000 workers from Indochina, 175,000 workers from Algeria, 51,000 workers from Tunisia, and 34,000 workers from Morocco. At the end of the WWI, most of these workers returned home. In 1919, there were only 10,000 workers from the Maghreb region in France (Potts 1990, 144–145).
- 5.
The discussion in this section, as mentioned earlier, is largely based on Potts (1990, 130–154). The author maintains that there was virtually no difference between forced labor and wage labor under colonial rules as the wages and rights of workers could be denied for any breaches on the part of workers. The deployment of African laborers was not enforced in a violent manner, but the realities of colonial rule, the lack of employment opportunities, and other such vulnerabilities forced black Africans to accept dangerous and physically exhausting work.
- 6.
The European continent has historically been divided into four geographical regions: (a) Eastern and Central Europe—comprising Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Republic of Moldova, Romania, the Russian Federation, Slovakia, and Ukraine; (b) Northern Europe—comprising the Channel Islands, Denmark, Estonia, the Faeroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Northern Ireland; (c) Southern Europe—comprising Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Gibraltar, Greece, Holy See, Italy, Malta, Montenegro, Portugal, San Marino, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; and (d) Western Europe—comprising of Austria, Belgium, France, West Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Monaco, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.
- 7.
The United Kingdom also imported about a million migrants from ex-colonial countries like India and Pakistan in order to close its labor deficit in the early to mid 1950s (Dudu 2018).
- 8.
- 9.
Derived from the Spanish word ‘bracero,’ the term in a pejorative sense means ‘manual laborer’ or ‘one who works using his arms.’ Unlike Northwestern European countries, where guestworkers were employed in wide-ranging sectors—from agriculture to industry, from construction to commerce—the braceros were almost totally employed in farms.
- 10.
Because of the open-door immigration policies for North American countries in the 1920s over 900,000 Canadians also migrated to the United States (Allerfeldt 2010).
- 11.
Some estimates suggest that average farmworker earnings in California rose 41 percent, from $0.85 an hour in 1950 to $1.20 in 1960, while average factory worker earnings rose 63 percent, from $1.60 to $2.60 during the same period (Martin 2003).
- 12.
Also, during the renewal process of the Bracero Program in 1948, the US government designated farmers as the only employers of braceros, although the original Bracero Agreement had both the employers and the US government as employers.
- 13.
These figures should be read with caution—many braceros entered the United States several times, and many illegal immigrants were apprehended multiple times.
- 14.
The GCC—a regional political and economic union of the Gulf Region excluding Iraq—was established in 1981 with six member countries—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
- 15.
Maghreb countries include the western Arab states of Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia; and the Mashrek countries include the eastern Arab states of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria.
- 16.
Human trafficking encompasses the recruitment, transportation, and exploitation of men and women as well as children for obtaining coerced labor for the purposes of sexual exploitation or manual labor. Illegal migration is different from human trafficking. Illegal immigration or the smuggling of migrants occurs when a person is procured for financial or other material benefit and trafficked illegally into a country in which that person is not a national or a permanent resident. For further details see the United Nations Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (2000).
- 17.
As mentioned earlier, the situation with respect to the sexual abuse of female migrants has become critical because almost all are employed as domestic servants, positioning them firmly outside of the scope of labor laws in the Gulf States on the grounds that domestic services do not constitute a market activity. But the number of female migrants has been growing rapidly in all Gulf States. In 2017, for example, female workers represented 88 percent of all migrant workers in the UAE, 58 percent in Kuwait, and 42 percent in Qatar. For gretaer details see Dowlah (2019).
- 18.
- 19.
The ILO Forced Labor Convention (1930) defines forced labor as when a person has not offered themself voluntarily for work, and if the work is performed under coercion applied by an employer or a third party during the recruitment process or during work, and if the employer prevents them from leaving the job. The UN definition of human trafficking has been given earlier.
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Dowlah, C. (2020). Temporary Cross-Border Labor Mobility Since World War I. In: Cross-Border Labor Mobility . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36506-6_7
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