Description
Today, countries like the United States that recruit “guest workers” have substantially more power than those those like Mexico whose citizens seek work abroad. My manuscript, “Guest Worker: Lives across Borders in an Age of Prosperity, 1919-75” closely examines programs that moved workers from Mexico to the United States, Spain to France, and Malawi to South Africa, and finds that migrants’ home countries and colonies actually held the most cards at the programs’ inception. This workshop chapter then documents how and why they lost their leverage. Between 1954-60, Operation Wetback in the United States, a new campaign to deport “foreign Africans” from South Africa, and a French crackdown on unregulated Spanish labor migration demonstrated recruiting countries’ newfound willingness to eject migrants even when their labor was needed. This occurred just as migrants’ own societies, once wary of allowing their workers to leave, became hooked on remittances. Those societies thus emerged with greatly diminished power to negotiate better wages and conditions for their migrant citizens.
About the Speaker
Julie M. Weise is Associate Professor of History at the University of Oregon. Her first book, Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910 (UNC Press, 2015), garnered awards from the Organization of American Historians and the Working Class Studies Association. Her current manuscript is under contract with UNC Press. Her research has been supported by Fulbright France, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the School for Advanced Research among others. Her article coauthored with German historian Christoph Rass in The American Historical Review, about the transatlantic intellectual roots of the Bracero Program, won an award from the Latin American Studies Association. Together with colleagues in Europe and Malawi, she created http://matchona.org, the first online repository of oral history interviews with Malawians on the move in twentieth century southern Africa. Her writing and commentary on immigration have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, National Public Radio, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Zocalo among other outlets.
Respondent
Alberto Wilson
About the Labor History Seminar Series
The Labor History Seminar provides a forum for works in progress that explore the history of working class people, communities, and culture; class and state policy; unions and popular political movements; and other related topics.
Register
This event is free, but all participants must register in advance. Space is limited, so please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend.
Register and Request Paper