Guest Workers Research Articles

More Than Victims or Villains

This essay examines newspaper articles published in California’s Imperial Valley during the mid-twentieth century that reported stories of braceros (guest workers) and undocumented workers suffering accidents, engaging in intra-ethnic violence, falling prey to criminals, and drinking excessively. These news articles, which often cast Mexican migrants as (potentially) criminal, racialized braceros and their undocumented counterparts as outsiders and undeserving. Collectively, these news articles demonstrate that Mexican migrants experienced what Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois describe as a violence “continuum” that connects structural, everyday, and symbolic violence in overlapping and intersecting ways. The alcohol abuse and interpersonal violence so common among braceros and undocumented migrants cannot be separated from the structural and symbolic violence that these men confronted in the Imperial Valley. Migrant workers’ structural vulnerability—which placed them in harm’s way while they worked, during times of leisure, or along the migration route—was the cause, but also a byproduct, of the antisocial behavior that some men adopted to cope with their exploitation. Though scholars have long considered the conditions that I here categorize under structural, everyday, and symbolic violence, I argue that by employing the concept of a continuum of violence we can better account for the wide range of experiences that braceros and undocumented migrants encountered in the United States in the mid-twentieth century.

Lockdown-2020 and Livelihood of Migrant Women Workers in Jharkhand

The entire globe faces a very precarious situation during pandemic Covid-19. During national lockdown in India, it was hazardous for the migrant labourers and more unsafe for women migrant workers. They came across many livelihood challenges like: employment, nutrition, government support, societal security, health facility, etc. which were repeatedly underlined in numerous mass medianews. Therefore, to know the actual problems encountered by the women migrant returnees, this particular study was undertaken in Jharkhand state where most of women workers go on migration for earning. For the purpose, 41 women migrant returnees were randomly selected as respondents from 18 villages covering five blocks of the state. By the use of a survey schedule, data was collected in the arena of socio-economic outline, place of migration, reason of migration, sector of engagement, income, difficulties confronted and support need from government for livelihood enhancement which are pronounced in this study.

Media discourses on migrant contract workers and worker’s rights in German agriculture in times of the Covid-19-Pandemic

While concerns and debates about an increased presence of non-citizen guest workers in agriculture in Canada have only more recently begun to enter the public arena, this dissertation probes how migrant agricultural workers have occupied a longer and more complex place in Canadian history than most Canadians may approximate. It explores the historical precedents of seasonal farm labour in Canada through the lens of the interior or the personal on the one hand, through an oral history approach, and the external or the structural on the other, in dialogue with existing scholarship and through a critical assessment of the archive. Specifically, it considers the evolution of seasonal farm work in Manitoba and British Columbia, and traces the eventual rise of an “offshore” labour scheme as a dominant model for agriculture at a national scale. Taking 1974 as a point of departure for the study of circular farm labour migration between Mexico and Canada, the study revisits questions surrounding Canadian views of what constitutes the ideal or injurious migrant worker, to ask critical questions about how managed farm labour migration schemes evolved in Canadian history. In addition, the dissertation explores how Mexican farm workers’ migration to Canada since 1974 formed a part of a wider and extended world of Mexican migration, and seeks to record and celebrate Mexican contributions to modern Canadian agriculture in historical contexts involving diverse actors. In exploring the contexts that have driven Mexican out-migration and transnational integration, it bridges oral accounts with a broader history that sets Mexican northward migration in hemispheric context. It reads agricultural migration upon various planes, including corporeality, experience, identity, masculinity, legality, “contra-modernity,” and the management of mobilities.

A study on prevalence and pattern of tobacco uses and nicotine dependence among migrant labourers working in Pathanamthitta, Kerala

Background: According to domestic labour migrant report about 2.35 lakh migrant workers continue to arrive every year to Kerala and they are comparatively neglected group in the society and high level of smoking and other modes of tobacco consumption is seen in this population on general observation. Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the world and linked to 90% of oral cancer in South East Asia and cigarette smokers are 8.6 times higher risk for lung cancer than non-smokers. These are attributed to nicotine and several harmful carcinogens in tobacco products. Objectives were to study the prevalence and pattern of tobacco use among migrant labourers and to assess the associated risk factors among the study participants.Methods: A cross sectional study was done in a district, Pathanamthitta, Kerala among migrant labourers over a period of 2 months using WHO steps questionnaire for tobacco consumption and Fagerstrom test for nicotine dependence.Results: Majority of study participants belonged to age group of less than 25 years. 20.8% of the participants smoked nicotine products but only 1 participant had high dependence. The 75% of participants consumed smokeless tobacco products with 37% of those participants showing high dependence to the products.Conclusions: A field-based study will give an in depth understanding of problems of migrant population including their environment. It will also help in application of health planning and health education at community level.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Human Dignity: the Case of Migrant Labourers in India.

Being one of the badly affected nations by the novel coronavirus, the Indian government had rolled out a set of strategies to contain the transmission. While measures like the lockdown inflicted significant damage on many sections of society, the interstate migrant labourers’ plight across India was nothing less than disastrous. While the privileged sections of the society could afford the strict restrictions laid down by the state, the migrant labourers stuck in different parts of the country found themselves to be second class citizens. This research is an ethical discourse on the human dignity of migrant labourers in a welfare state during the pandemic context. Data gathered from reports on the subject matter in media licensed by the state were analysed under the theoretical lens of violation of human dignity. The outcome of the research involves a critical appraisal of the human dignity of the marginalised in a so-called modern welfare state.

Back for Good

Abstract This article suggests that legalization and amnesty programmes have not been able to reduce undocumented migration in Malaysia for two reasons. First, the programmes merely serve as a registration tool that provides foreign workers with short-term work permits and as a surveillance tool to keep track of foreign workers. Second, the temporary work permits granted are no substitute for a migrant-labour management policy in addressing the acute shortage of low-skilled workers. Despite the introduction of these programmes, undocumented migrants have continued to exist because employers prefer to hire undocumented workers in their ‘race to the bottom’ in terms of costs, and the workers are dependent on their employers and agents as the gatekeepers of their legal immigration status. In 2016 and 2019, the Malaysian government introduced two reforms to its legalization and amnesty programmes: it eliminated outsourcing of the process in the Rehiring Programme (2016) and barred repatriated migrants from re-entering the country under the Back for Good amnesty programme (2019). Though these reforms have partially addressed the limitations of the previous programmes, they have not addressed the root cause of migrant labourers working without proper documentation.

Cosmopolitanism and Urban Space in Doha, Qatar

This essay commences with an ethnographic sojourn through the Industrial Area, a peripheral zone of the urban landscape in Doha, Qatar that is densely inhabited by low wage migrant laborers. In this segregated urban enclave, I ascertain the openness to alterity and the interactions with difference that connect their experiences to the conceptual legacy of cosmopolitanism. Via a discussion of the segregated experiences of transnational migrants in Doha’s urban landscape, I then stake out a speculative argument for the connection between that segregation and the resulting cosmopolitan conditions. Together, these two assertions explore manifestations of cosmopolitan urbanism in non-Western and non-democratic cities. In the conclusion to this essay, I suggest that we might usefully disentangle our assessment of these cosmopolitan conditions from our sustained critiques of the global landscape of inequality, and turn my attention briefly to the western ethnocentricities that suffuse the analytic lens by which we gauge cosmopolitanism and the city.

Prácticas de masculinidad de los jornaleros migrantes desde la narrativa de las mujeres: discriminación, trabajo, paternidad y pareja

The article focused on women's narratives, from their role as partners and daughters accompanying male migrant day laborers engaged in sugarcane cutting. The objective was to explore masculinity practices concerning discrimination, work, partnership, and paternity; during their stay in the migrant shelter in Colima, Mexico. The method was qualitative. The data collection techniques were: focused interview based on an interview script and participant observation in the migrant shelter through the systematic recording of the field diary. The participants were seven women between 20 and 35 years of age. For the data analysis, we elaborated the following categories: characterization of the context and the migrant day laborers, discrimination, work, partnership, and paternity. The results show discrimination that migrant day laborers are subject to by the host community since they belong to indigenous, migrant, and impoverished peoples. In addition, they point out how social structures construct masculinity practices involving the malleability of their bodies to adjust to social norms of gender, race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status, being regarded as "destined" to strenuous physical labor and resistant to long working hours, which is related to the fact that they are perceived as absent figures such as partners and fathers in the family dynamics.

A Study on Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sectors of Indian Economy

COVID-19 emerged in China in December. The World Health Organization declares this virus as Global Disaster in March. The coronavirus has affected the social, economic, political dimensions of the nations globally. In this study, the authors consider the impact of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) on the different activities of primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors of the Indian Economy and various policies and reforms have been taken by the government. The secondary data is collected to put down this literature. Each sector of the economy faces chaos due to coronavirus. Migrant workers or laborers go to their state in the lockdown, a ban on materials, electronics imported from china, supply chain disruption, disturbance in the cash flow are some of the majors' reasons that lead to the uncertainty in different sectors. A fund issued by the Government can be utilized effectively to give benefits to employees, workers, farmers, organizations, and industries.

Corona Pandemic: Fear and Challenges in Gujrat, Pakistan

The biggest health disaster of the 21st century hit the world in Nov-2019 in the Hubei Province of China. The present study focused on the role of socio-cultural practices in the COVID-19 spread. Further geographical mobility discussed as a reason for the spread. It is a qualitative study based on observations, key informants interviews, and desk research. The study revealed three main elements that bring Coronavirus to Gujrat, return of migrant laborers, and pilgrimages, especially from Iran and Saudi Arabia. The paper highlights the role of law enforcement agencies in the implementation of government policies to control the Corona spread. The role of religious institutions carries a significant value as paper research shows how people used the Mosques to get spiritual strength. The study founds that local socio-cultural practices became a major factor behind the high number of Corona cases in Gujrat. Cultural practices and facetious attitudes play a supporting role to spread COVID19 in Gujrat.

Food coping strategies among migrant labourers on cocoa farms in southern Ghana

Food coping strategies among migrant labourers on cocoa farms in southern Ghana

The Day of Portugal and Portuguese Heritage, Social Exclusion, and Imagined Mobilities: Legacies of Racialized Migrant Industrial Labor in Contemporary New England

Commemorations and monument dedications have been part of Portuguese-speaking migrant place-making and as responses to social exclusion in New England since these arrivals settled in and built industrial and agricultural worker communities beginning in the late nineteenth century. The racialization of migrant laborer identities imposed by discourse and law and supported by scientific studies relying upon genetic data, assisted politicians and elites during the second Industrial Revolution to limit the civic and labor organization rights of workers. This study examines the complex history of Portuguese worker strategies to confront their civic, social, and racial assimilability through civic associations that organized migrant participation in U.S. national celebrations (Fourth of July, Pilgrim ceremonies, war veterans’ memorials) and migrant community commemorations (including Portuguese heritage days and monument dedications like Dighton Rock). Contemporary Day of Portugal celebrations and other heritage dedications that shape social participation in multi-cultural democracy are examined in light of the legacies of white nationalist strategies advocating for Portuguese social mobility. The study examines how some of the ritual elements of today’s celebrations yet promote discourses of racialized laborer hierarchies.

On Mathematical Modelling of the Indian Human Hair Industry in the Post-COVID-19 Era

An attempt to model the human hair industry in the post-COVID-19 pandemic situation using mathematical modelling has been the goal of this article. Here we introduce a novel mathematical modelling using a system of ordinary differential equations to model the human hair industry as well as the human hair waste management and related job opportunities. The growth of human hair in the months of nationwide total lockdown has been taken into account and graphs have been plotted to analyze the effect of Lockdown in this model. The alternative employment opportunities that can be created for collecting excessive hair in the post-pandemic period has been discussed. A probable useful mathematical model and mechanism to utilize the migrant labours who became jobless due to the pandemic situation and the corresponding inevitable lockdown situation resulting out of that crisis has been discussed in this paper. We discussed the stability analysis of the proposed model and obtained the criteria for an optimal profit of the said model. Graphs have also been plotted to analyze the impact of the control parameter on the optimal profit.

Mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic in India: an in-depth exploration of challenges and opportunities for three vulnerable population groups

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic is certain to have an unprecedented impact on the global population, but marginalized and vulnerable groups in low-income countries (LICs) are predicted to carry the largest burden. This study focuses on the implications of COVID-19-related measures on three population groups in India, including (1) migrant laborers (of which a majority come from Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), as well as Other Backward Classes (OBCs)), (2) children from low-income families and, (3) refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs).Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a sequential mixed-method research design. A desk-based study of a selection of government reports was undertaken on the COVID-19-related mitigation measures. The desk study was followed by in-depth interviews with purposively recruited high-ranking experts in specific sectors of policy implementation and service delivery across the country.FindingsThe outcomes of this study shed light on (1) the most urgent needs that need to be addressed per population group, (2) the variety of state-level responses as well as best practices observed to deal with mitigation issues and (3) opportunities for quick relief as well as more long-term solutions.Practical implicationsThe COVID-19 pandemic has not only reduced people's means of maintaining a livelihood but has simultaneously revealed some of India's long-standing problems with infrastructure and resource distribution in a range of sectors, including nutrition and health, education, etc. There is an urgent need to construct effective pathways to trace and respond to those people who are desolate, and to learn from – and support – good practices at the grassroot level.Originality/valueThe current study contributes to the discussion on how inclusive public health might be reached.

Advantage and Disadvantage of Foreign Migrant Fishermen in Small-Scale Fisheries toward Rural Coastal Areas

Abstract This research aims to explore the advantage and disadvantage of hiring foreign migrant laborers by small-scale fisheries (SSFs) toward rural coastal areas. The targeted groups are migrant fishermen coming from Indonesia who work onboard Taiwan’s fishing boats within Nanfangao area. First of all, we outline the importance of SSFs, particularly in developing countries. Many SSFs are characterized by self-governing mechanisms that have significant conservation value. This study is not only an exploratory research to find out and discover the range and scope of issues and concepts, but also is an explanatory research to explain how or why things are used to predict, which is carried out to investigate in a timely manner a phenomenon, that has not been studied before, or has not been well explained previously. As a result, this study indicates that the future research needs to demand priority and generate operational definitions for building a better-researched model. JEL classification numbers: F16, F60, H13. Keywords: Foreign Migrant Labor, Small-Scale Fisheries, Rural Coastal Areas.

Advantage and Disadvantage of Foreign Migrant Fishermen in Small-Scale Fisheries toward Rural Coastal Areas

Abstract This research aims to explore the advantage and disadvantage of hiring foreign migrant laborers by small-scale fisheries (SSFs) toward rural coastal areas. The targeted groups are migrant fishermen coming from Indonesia who work onboard Taiwan’s fishing boats within Nanfangao area. First of all, we outline the importance of SSFs, particularly in developing countries. Many SSFs are characterized by self-governing mechanisms that have significant conservation value. This study is not only an exploratory research to find out and discover the range and scope of issues and concepts, but also is an explanatory research to explain how or why things are used to predict, which is carried out to investigate in a timely manner a phenomenon, that has not been studied before, or has not been well explained previously. As a result, this study indicates that the future research needs to demand priority and generate operational definitions for building a better-researched model. JEL classification numbers: F16, F60, H13. Keywords: Foreign Migrant Labor, Small-Scale Fisheries, Rural Coastal Areas.

A Comparison of LUCC Detection Algorithms in a Mesoamerican Lowland Tropical Forest

Land use and land cover changes occur throughout the world, but none is more concerning than tropical deforestation, much of it for agricultural purposes. Rural-rural frontier migrant farmers such as those colonizing the Sierra del Lacandón National Park in Petén, Guatemala act as a primary direct agent in this land cover conversion. This paper seeks to compare three different algorithms for monitoring changes in forested land cover, making use of freely available remotely sensed Landsat images from two years, 1991 and 2000. In the intervening 9 years, some forested land was converted to cropped, pasture, or fallow land, while other areas experienced no change. This paper contains a detailed description of the methods employed for three different change detection techniques, producing a total of five land change maps: multidate principal components analysis (PCA), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI ) image differencing, and brightness greenness wetness (BGW) image differencing. Of the five land change maps produced, the Greenness component of the BGW transformation had the highest overall accuracy, at 86%, and is conservative in detecting change. The amount of change detected by this algorithm represents approximately 300 km2 of forest loss, or 11.9% of the area examined.

Counting the Invisible Working Hands in India

This paper enquires into the problem faced by migrant labors in the informal sector in India. It argues for the registration and tracking of migrants, particularly interstate migrants, as they constitute a significant proportion of the labour force. The mobility of labor is the natural mechanism for infusing inclusive and faster growth across the globe, and tracking the poor migrants would lead to investment in human and social capital, paving the way for integrating poverty alleviation policies and development strategies for overall better outcomes.

Improving Irrigation Water Use Efficiency of Robusta Coffee (Coffea canephora) Production in Lam Dong Province, Vietnam

Recent prolonged dry periods and lack of irrigation water have severely affected the productivity of coffee farms in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. This paper analyzes the efficiency of irrigation water use for Robusta coffee (Coffea canephora) in the Lam Dong province. A Cobb–Douglas production function was used to determine coffee productivity’s response to the application of irrigation water and other production factors using data collected from 194 farmers, while the technical efficiency (TE) and irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE) were analyzed using a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. The correlation of different factors to IWUE was determined using the Tobit model. The production function analysis using Cobb–Douglas shows that the volume of irrigation water, amount of working capital, labor, and farm size significantly influence coffee productivity. Indigenous farmers are more efficient in utilizing irrigation water than migrant farmers. The Tobit result indicates that farmers’ experience, education level, the distance of farm to water sources, security of access to water sources, extension contact, and credit access significantly affect IWUE. The study findings further suggest that mitigating water shortages in coffee farms require subregional and national policy support such as better access to credit and extension services, training, land management, and household-level efforts to improve farming practices through the application of appropriate technologies and traditional knowledge.

ZNACZENIE IMIGRANTÓW DLA GOSPODARKI REPUBLIKI FEDERALNEJ NIEMIEC

The question of foreigners in Germany, and primarily – the problem of a decreasing number of Germans in Germany – are hardly to be solved in the nearest future. They are rooted in the 1960s, when the so-called ‘Gastarbeiters’ (guest workers) were invited to come to Germany. It is they who contributed to that the country enjoyed a real economic boom. Still, the influx of foreign workforce resulted in a change in the social and religious structures of the state, bringing consequences that are clearly visible today – 25% of the inhabitants of the FRG are of foreign origin, which naturally must lead to asking questions about naturalization and who can be considered German. Endeavouring to maintain the economic potential of the FRG, at least on an unchanged level, the government must secure a continuous inflow of workforce, which is expected to yield positive economic impulses. This process is connected with an influx of immigrants who – to a considerable extent – become a burden to the system of social welfare of the state. However, in many cases, return on investment in immigrants comes after 5-10 years, even if only in the form of self-financing thanks to additional revenues form VAT (individual consumption) and social insurance contributions. Still, a condition behind beneficial impacting of foreign workforce on economy is a relatively quick integration of immigrants in the labor market.