Temporary Cross-Border Labor Mobility Since World War I

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.’