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The Importance of Immigrant Workers on the U.S. Economy Essay

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Immigration is a contentious issue in the United States of America because it is a First World country, and the dream destination of immigrant workers desperate to earn a living. Immigration is a contentious issue when viewed from an economic perspective. The fear and apprehension of many Americans is rooted on an economic principle that resources are always limited. Therefore, an increase in population means that there are more people competing for the same limited resources.

However, there is a need to re-examine the issue further and determine the exact impact of immigrant workers on the U.S. economy. It is imperative to find out if immigrant workers strengthen or weaken the U.S. economy. With regards to these issues, the proponent of the study would test three hypotheses using information from the U.S. Bureau of Census, the U.S. Department of Labor and peer-reviewed sources.

There are contending views with regards to the presence of immigrant workers in the United States of America. There is therefore the need to look at the macroeconomic level and figure out the impact of immigrant workers in the lives of native-born Americans.

It is therefore imperative to cite a Harvard University study in 2004 that says, “immigration – both legal and illegal – reduced annual earnings for American-born men by 3.7 percent, or nearly $1,700 … for those without a high school degree, the effect was double that, with wages down 7.4 percent” (Quintanilla 1).

The said study underscored the fact that there are some native-born American citizens who are negatively affected by the presence of immigrant workers in this country.

Those who are affected were native-born Americans who do not have high school diplomas and do not possess specialized skills (Henderson 1). Aside from those who did not pursue higher education, possess special skills, there are other people groups that are affected by the influx of immigrant workers and they are African Americans and native-born Hispanics (Henderson1). The said research findings were able to demonstrate that not all Americans were negatively affected by the influx of immigrant workers.

There are economists who pointed out that American consumers benefit from low prices of goods because of the low wages paid to immigrants (Isidore 1). In addition, “lower-wage labor helps create more work for higher-skilled, higher-paid workers who are generally native born” (Isidore 1). These findings provide a counter-argument for those who oppose the presence of migrant workers.

Data used for this study was taken from the U.S. Bureau of Census. In 2005 the U.S. Bureau of Census conducted a survey that enabled this particular government agency to determine the number of illegal immigrants in the country. Another set of data was taken from the U.S. Department of Labor.

The said government agency was able to figure out how certain businesses benefited from the contribution of illegal immigrants due to their low wages. Aside from related government agencies, pertinent information was gathered from peer-reviewed sources.

There were three hypotheses that were formulated based on the research question. The three hypotheses were used as a guide for the investigation of the true impact of immigration to the U.S. economy. The three hypotheses were listed as follows:

• Hypothesis 1 : The presence of immigrant workers is problematic to the U.S. economy. As a result the economy is weakened such that there is significant loss of productivity. In addition, the immigrants compete for the limited jobs that are in the market.
• Hypothesis 2 : The presence of immigrant workers is a positive force and benefits the U.S. economy. Immigrants possess skills that could enhance the U.S. labor market.
• Hypothesis 3 : Illegal immigrants weaken the U.S. economy because they compete with limited jobs that are available in the market. As a result, many Americans could not find work.

The data gathered would be analyzed using a framework based on the three hypotheses. The proponent of the study would like to determine the impact of both legal and illegal immigrant workers in this country.

Hypothesis 1

The presence of immigrant workers is a bane to the U.S. economy. As a result the economy is weakened such that there is significant loss of productivity. In addition, the immigrants compete for the limited jobs that are in the market.

As the population increases, it is logical to expect that resources would be depleted. As a consequence the U.S. government established immigration laws that served as a means to regulate the number of immigrants that could pass through the country’s national borders.

It is understandable that the U.S. government should regulate the entry of immigrant workers but it is not easy to understand why there is a need to perpetuate the fear brought about by the presence of immigrant workers. Those who strongly oppose the influx of immigrant workers always point to their impact on the country’s economy.

Aside from the stringent measures designed to significantly curtail the entry of immigrant workers to this country, there were also tough laws that were designed to deport and forcibly remove undocumented aliens. The way some people treated immigrants was based on fear and not facts.

It has to be pointed out that there were numerous studies conducted to determine the impact of immigrant workers, and in those studies, it was revealed that immigrant workers did not only utilize available resources, they also contributed to the enhancement of American culture (Hall 1). At the same time their industriousness and ingenuity were one of the reasons why the United States became an economic superpower (Hall 1). There was therefore enough information to show that not all immigrant workers could weaken the U.S. economy.

It is also interesting to point out that the opinion regarding the negative impact of immigrant workers must be scrutinized even further. There is also the need to re-evaluate economic principles used to judge the advantage or disadvantages of the presence of immigrant workers in this country.

The insight gleaned from the study of pertinent information revealed that immigrant workers could help enhance the economy and some cultural aspects of the country. However, the proponent of the study could not ignore the data that says there are certain demographic groups that were negatively affected by the influx of immigrant workers.

These movements of immigrant workers were instrumental in reducing wage rates. It has something to do with the economic principle contained in the law of demand and supply. In other words the presence of surplus labor means that there would be intense competition for a particular position. If there are many qualified workers willing to accept a job offer with a reduced pay rate, then, the impact could translate to lower wages for all the workers in the said industry.

Hypothesis 2

The presence of immigrant workers is a positive force and benefits the U.S. economy. Immigrants possess skills that could enhance the U.S. labor market.

In order to appreciate the importance of immigrant workers, consider the contribution of the first wave of immigrants to the United States; they were the Italians, Irish, Scots and others who came from the European continent. According to one study that was specifically designed to understand the contribution of Italian immigrants, the researcher said, “These people were on the whole, peaceable and industrious, and improved the trades in which they engaged” (Hall 55).

Aside from the Italians, families of immigrant workers revolutionized different sectors of American society such as sports, film, food, telecommunications, Information Technology, engineering and many more (The Wall Street Journal 1).

One of the best examples is the contribution of Information Technology specialists working in Silicon Valley. Many of the brilliant minds in the IT industry came from Europe and Asia. One can just imagine the loss to the industry if these people were not given the chance to migrate to the United States.

It is still possible to have cutting-edge technology in this field but their contributions clearly spelled the difference in the creation of software and technology that radically altered the way people perceive Information Technology. It is impossible to measure the economic benefits through IT related technology and products that were produced in this country because of the contribution of foreign-born researchers and scientists.

The United States is a melting pot of culture. Imagine the type of food available to Americans if they did not allow Italians, French, Chinese and German immigrants to settle in this country. Due to the culinary influence of the various people groups that came from foreign lands, the United States gourmet experience was transformed to include food that were not part of the typical American diet. There is no way to measure the economic benefit of the various food products introduced by immigrant workers to this country.

The unfounded assumption that immigrant workers would negatively affect the U.S. labor market requires deeper analysis. According to one report, the decade between 1960 and 2000 was the time period when “working-age native born U.S. residents without a high school degree fell to 12% from 50% of the population” (The Wall Street Journal 1).

This data reveals that the U.S. population is highly literate compared to the past two centuries. As a consequence there are many native-born Americans who are highly qualified and would never agree to work for low-paying jobs.

The second major implication of this data is the fact that the U.S. economy would not thrive without immigrant workers because it needs people who can take care of menial jobs and other workload that does not require a college degree. There are certain industries that could only thrive if business owners could lower the cost of production. For example, orange juice products could remain competitive only if prices remain low.

Prices could only remain low if the firms managing orange orchards could tap a relatively cheap labor force. The only way to hire fruit pickers with low wages is to hire immigrant workers. There is no other practical way to hire immigrant workers than to tap a labor force that is close to the U.S. border. In other words it is practical to hire immigrant workers from Mexico. However, the idea of hiring workers from Mexico may not be acceptable to many Americans.

Regardless of the opinion of many Americans, the hiring of immigrant workers made sense in terms of lowering the cost of production. Aside from the existence of a cheap labor force available to employers, there are also immigrant workers that contribute knowledge and experience into various U.S. based industries. Some of the significant innovations in science and technology as well as knowledge in research and development could be traced to the contributions of immigrant workers.

It has bee made clear that overall the U.S. economy benefited from the influx of immigrant workers. However, it is also important to point out that uneducated Americans may suffer from competing forces.

Those who compete for low-paying jobs would be severely affected. Native-born Americans without a high school diploma may find it extremely difficult to work in the manufacturing and construction sector. However, it has to be reiterated that the number of Americans without a high school diploma continue to decrease on a yearly basis based on the research data (Wall Street Journal 1).

Hypothesis 3

Illegal immigrants weaken the U.S. economy because they compete with limited jobs that are available in the market. As a result, many Americans could not find work.

The issue with regards to the impact of immigrant workers must be clarified even further. There is a need to find out if dislike for immigrant workers is linked to illegal aliens and not the legitimate workers with working visas. It has to be acknowledged that the influx of illegal immigrants to this country reached alarming levels in the past few decades.

The influx of workers coming through the borders that separate the U.S. and Mexico for instance is due to the powerful economic incentive that pushes Mexicans to risk their lives in order to live in a land of opportunity.

The argument against illegal immigration was based on the following principle: “a surge of low-skilled immigrants should increase the supply of such workers, driving down wages at the expense of working-class Americans” (Henderson, 1).

The fear that illegal aliens would steal jobs away from native-born Americans was also based on the interpretation of the data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. In their March 2005 survey, there are at least “11.5 to 12 million illegal immigrants and of that number 6.2 million from Mexico and about 2.5 million come from the rest of Latin America” (Forbes, 1).

The significant number of illegal aliens must not be overlooked. However, there is another way to interpret the said data. According to one analyst, the US economy will collapse without immigrant workers (Quintanilla 1). In the said report, immigrant workers were crucial to the U.S. economy because “they do jobs most Americans wouldn’t take, for wages they wouldn’t want” (Quintanilla, 1).

There is a need for dishwashers, housecleaners, factory workers, messengers etc. A waste management facility would not thrive if there were only managers but no garbage collectors. Native-born Americans prefer white-collar jobs but the economy would fail without the help of gardeners, furniture movers, fruit pickers and other jobs that require low-wage workers (Quintanilla, 1).

It has to be pointed out that, “lower-wage labor helps create more work for higher-skilled, higher-paid workers who are generally native born” (Isidore 1). The following report from the U.S. Department of Labor strengthens this argument: “at least half of the nearly 2 million crop workers in the United States are illegal aliens … the cheap labor they provide is crucial to the $30 billion U.S. farm industry” (Parker 1).

It is impossible to imagine how major U.S. industries could be sustained without illegal immigrants. There is therefore the need to relax restrictions or legalize the status of illegal immigrants.

In another report, it was determined that, “the Hispanics alone represent 25% of workers in the meat and poultry industry; 24% of workers in the drywall and ceiling tile installation industry; and 24% of dishwashers in US restaurants (Grow 1). It could be argued, “some US industries have become so dependent on illegal labor that a wholesale expulsion would be crippling” (Grow 1).

Another argument that supports the lowering of restrictions is linked to the idea that the presence of illegal immigrants could be used to deter the relocation of businesses abroad. According to an analyst, “the easier it is to find cheap immigrant labor at home, the less likely that production will relocate offshore” (Cowen 1). It would create a ripple effect if US-based companies need not relocate their factories to China or Thailand.

There is a need to review laws concerning illegal migrants. Nevertheless, the New York Times reported a surprising development; the article says, “Mexican migration has sputtered to a trickle due to various factors such as improving economic conditions in Mexico, border crime and economic slowdowns, and immigrant crackdowns” (Cave 1).

If this trend continues native-born Americans would soon find out that the U.S. economy needs immigrant workers and there are certain industries that would benefit from lowering the standards for entry in order to legalize the status of illegal aliens.

Hypothesis 1 was proven to be false because the presence of immigrant workers was a positive force for the U.S. economy. The fear that immigrant workers would compete with available jobs was based on assumptions and not fact. In reality, immigrant workers simply took jobs that were unattractive to native-born Americans. At the same time, immigrant workers were instrumental in the creation of new jobs and the best example are the businesses that sprouted in Silicon Valley because of the contribution of IT specialists from Europe and Asia.

Hypothesis 2 was proven to be true because immigrant workers brought at least two positive things to the country. First, immigration brought talented and hardworking people who were instrumental in the creation of innovative products and solutions. Second, immigrant workers provided a cheap labor force for certain industries. Hypothesis 3 was proven false because the existence of a cheap labor force was critical in many industries.

There are certain industries that could not survive without the ability to hire low-wage workers. Native-born American must reconsider their position with regards to immigrant workers because they would never consider such low-paying jobs. They also want their food products to remain cheap. They want to pay for inexpensive landscaping, gardening and other services. It is not possible to maintain a certain lifestyle without the help of immigrant workers.

Cave, Damien, Better Lives for Mexicans Cut Allure of Going North . The New York Times, 2011. Web.

Cowen, Tyler. How Immigrants Create More Jobs . The New York Times, 2010. Web.

Forbes. Immigration’s Impact . Forbes, 2007. Web.

Grow, Brian. Embracing Illegals: Companies are getting hooked on the Buying Power of 11 Million Undocumented Immigrants. Bloomberg-Businessweek, 2005. Web.

Hall, Prescott. Immigration and Its Effects Upon the United States, New York: Adamant Media Corporation, 2005. Print.

Henderson, Nell. Effect of Immigration on Jobs, Wages is Difficult for Economists to Nail Down . Washington Post, 2006.

Isidore, Chris. Illegal Workers: Good for U.S. Economy . CNN Money, 2006. Web.

Parker, Serena. Immigrants: US Economic Savior or Social and Economic Burden. Voice of America, 2005. Web.

Quintanilla, Carl. The Economic Impact of Immigration: Do Illegal Workers Help or Hurt the Economy? MSNBC. 2006. Web.

The Wall Street Journal. Immigration Out of Sight: Ignoring Immigration Policy Does not Favors for the U.S. Economy . The Wall Street Journal. 2009. Web.

• Amnesty Program Pros and Cons
• Consequences of Illegal Immigrants on America’s Economy
• The IDEAL Immigration Policy Advocacy
• The Difficulties Children Face in a Foreign Linguistic Environment
• Myths About Immigration in the U.S.
• Globalisation, Immigration, Race and Ethnicity in Vancouver
• Refugees Detention in the U.S. and Australia
• Immigration and Discrimination in the Workplace
• Refugees And Ordinary Migrants
• Immigrants’ Adaptation
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, November 30). The Importance of Immigrant Workers on the U.S. Economy. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-importance-of-immigrant-workers-on-the-u-s-economy/

"The Importance of Immigrant Workers on the U.S. Economy." IvyPanda , 30 Nov. 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/the-importance-of-immigrant-workers-on-the-u-s-economy/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'The Importance of Immigrant Workers on the U.S. Economy'. 30 November.

IvyPanda . 2018. "The Importance of Immigrant Workers on the U.S. Economy." November 30, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-importance-of-immigrant-workers-on-the-u-s-economy/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Importance of Immigrant Workers on the U.S. Economy." November 30, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-importance-of-immigrant-workers-on-the-u-s-economy/.

Bibliography

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Human Migration — The Life of Migrant Workers during The Great Depression

The Life of Migrant Workers During The Great Depression

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Labour Migrants During the Pandemic: A Comparative Perspective

• Perspective
• Published: 19 October 2020
• Volume 63 , pages 885–900, ( 2020 )

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• Arjan de Haan 1  

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The COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying policies of confinement or lockdown have been amply demonstrated and are possibly reinforcing economic, social and gender inequalities. Because of the nature of the measures that governments took in response to the health crisis, migrants—including the millions of labour migrants in Indian cities—have been placed in a particularly vulnerable situation. This essay provides a comparative and historical perspective of the conditions of migrant workers, arguing that the disadvantages migrants face are entrenched in economic and social structures, unearthed in this pandemic, and that alongside immediate social protection measures, policies need to address the deep-rooted barriers that keep migrants vulnerable.

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1 Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying policies of confinement or lockdown have been amply demonstrated and are likely reinforcing inequalities. Economic inequalities are reinforced as the better-off are better able to protect themselves, either secure in their jobs, or by having the resources to support themselves during a downturn. Gender inequalities are reinforced as women tend to be in more vulnerable jobs and are exposed to health risks. Social and identity (race, caste, nationality) inequalities often intersect with socio-economic inequalities.

Because of the nature of the measures governments around the world took in response to the health crisis, mobile populations have been placed in particularly vulnerable situations. Across the world, refugees are amongst the most vulnerable, their living conditions make containing the virus extra challenging, and stigmatisation likely increases. Labour migrants, similarly, often have poor living and working conditions, are exposed to health risks at work, have no social security or insurance to fall back on, and are often stigmatised.

Labour migrants’ vulnerability manifested itself in extreme ways in India, when the government announced a lockdown, and big cities’ labour migrants found themselves in the void of having lost their job, sometimes their housing, and in large numbers of cases having lost their income, and therefore with no alternative but to return to their home villages. Their plight has been well described in the media, by civil society organizations filling the gaps government agencies should be playing, and the efforts of groups of researchers.

This essay provides a comparative perspective of the conditions of migrant workers. Footnote 1 I will summarise international experience—documented through investigative journalism and rapid research—that shows the vulnerability of migrants and gaps in policy frameworks globally. Further, it is important to understand how the conditions that migrants in India live in are not of recent origin, and the result of a structural condition of continued circulation between home villages that do not provide the necessary livelihoods and cities that need migrants but do not create the conditions for them to settle—they remain, as I slightly awkwardly called them in my publication on migrant workers in Calcutta ‘unsettled settlers’ (de Haan 1994 ).

This essay illustrates this with a comparison with other crises, including the economic crisis following 1929 where migrant workers disappeared like ‘snow for the sun’ (but without the health consequences migrants now are facing). I will argue that both research and theories, and policies have had a deep tendency to ignore and neglect the existence of this mobile population (de Haan 1999 ): both, for different reasons, have a deep sedentary bias. Academic studies have continued to see migration as a transitory phenomenon, often in line with what is seen as a classic process of industrialisation that England experienced. For policymakers, migration has remained largely invisible: data capture circulatory migration very poorly, rural development policies often have the aim to reduce migration, and—perhaps most important—many of the public policies tend to be residence-based.

This perspective is offered to contribute to consideration of policies, particularly post-pandemic. If indeed the neglect of migrants is of a systemic nature, policy reforms need to address the roots of these. It would require a rethink of the place migrants play in India’s society, to ensure data fully acknowledge the complex but sustained patterns of mobility that exist and to enquire how public policies need to be rebuilt on the basis of that reality.

2 Inequalities Magnified: A Global Perspective

As the COVOD-19 pandemic started to evolve, there was an initial impression that the virus was an ‘equaliser’. Originating in Wuhan, China, its global spread affected global travellers and heavily impacted relatively affluent areas in Europe and the USA. Unprecedented policy responses were put in place that brought the spread of the virus under control in most OECD countries, while it continued to expand globally, including in India. Footnote 2

But thoughts of the virus being the ‘great equaliser’, as the New York governor Cuomo, for example, called it, have rapidly dissipated. In the USA, ‘ [l]ong-standing systemic health and social inequities have put some members of racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk of getting COVID-19 or experiencing severe illness, regardless of age’ (CDC 2020 ). In Ontario, Canada, ‘[s]ocial determinants of health … such as gender, socio-economic position, race/ethnicity, occupation, Indigeneity, homelessness and incarceration, play an important role in risk of COVID-19 infection, particularly when they limit ability to maintain physical distancing’ (Public Health Ontario 2020 ). In Toronto, racialized people accounted for 83 per cent of COVID-19 cases, despite forming only 52 per cent of the population. Footnote 3 Geographically, while the pandemic initially spread in nations’ urban and well-connected centres, it has continued to spread to geographically more remote places and, particularly in developing countries, to areas with weak health sector capacities (and possibly also higher under-reporting).

The links between inequalities and the impact of COVID-19 run in both directions (Sachs 2020 ). Higher inequality tends to be associated with worse overall health conditions, increasing vulnerability to COVID-19 deaths. Inequalities can be associated with lower social cohesion and trust, and political polarisation, which can reduce governments’ capacities to adopt measures needed to address the pandemic. Inequalities in the world of work—often associated with social identity, as discussed by Deshpande and Ramachandran ( 2020 ) for India—enhance the vulnerability of large numbers of workers. Manual workers, and owners of small businesses, are more likely to lose jobs or working hours, and thus income, and often have limited social security. Informal sector workers and women disproportionally are particularly vulnerable (WIEGO 2020 ). Those staying in work without being able to distance are exposed to infections: front-line health workers, domestic workers (GlobalVoices 2020 ), workers in food industries, vendors, and in tourism (Dempster and Zimmer 2020 ), with social and gender disadvantages usually compounding labour market ones.

Labour migrants face a multitude of disadvantages during the pandemic, which in turn may contribute to spreading the pandemic. Footnote 4 First, the movement essential for their livelihoods in itself can pose a risk in terms of spread of infectious diseases, even if the initial COVID-19 spread did not primarily affect labour migrants. Footnote 5 Many were stranded as economic activities and travel shut down, and international labour migrants were hit by the restrictions government around the world put in place. Footnote 6 The restrictions in many cases have enhanced risks particularly for vulnerable groups including children (UNICEF 2020 ). There have been reports about mistreatment by smugglers (Rodriguez 2020 ). In the case of China, job loss as a result of the pandemic reinforced pre-existing inequalities along the household registration system (Che et al. 2020 ).

Second, the type of work migrants typically engage in, and their living conditions, makes them relatively vulnerable. The places migrants return to typically are under-served by health services. Absence of social protection measures makes it less easy for them to implement social distancing. As described by Choudhari ( 2020 ), mental health challenges may compound these disadvantages. Investigative journalism shows that migrant farm workers in Canada’s agricultural sector are vulnerable to, and unprotected against the consequences of the pandemic (CBC 2020 ; Financial Post 2020 ), with migration status potentially limiting access to health care (Doyle 2020 ).

Third, the pandemic can reinforce stigma, both in host locations and when migrants return (for fear of carriers of diseases), and surveillance (Castillo 2020 ). There are reports from across the word of new or intensified discriminatory treatment, Footnote 7 non-payment, for example, for domestic workers that stayed in their job (GlobalVoices 2020 ) and xenophobia (Douglas et al. 2020 ; IOM 2020b ) (Douglas et al. 2020 ), for example, in varying contexts of Gulf States (Migrants-rights.org 2020 ), Canada (Hennebry et al. 2020 ), India (Ramasubramanyam 2020 ; Bajoria 2020 ), vis-à-vis African students in China (BBC 2020 ), and in Pakistan directed at Shia minorities (Mirza 2020 ).

3 Labour Migrants in India

The vulnerability of labour migrants manifested itself in extreme ways in India, with disadvantages of work, identity and migratory status reinforcing each other. Footnote 8 Their plight has been well described in media, by civil society organizations and researchers like the Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN 2020a , b , c ). When the government announced the lockdown, labour migrants in cities found themselves in the void of having lost their job, sometimes their housing, and in large numbers of cases their income. Many of them had no alternative but to return to their home villages, Footnote 9 and as transport was cancelled as part of the lockdown, often on foot, exposed to hunger, and risks of infection, harassment, and poor conditions of forced quarantine. Migrant workers that stayed in cities often found working conditions worsen. Footnote 10 Many migrants who had returned feel forced to return to cities as they run out of savings (Patnaik 2020 ).

As far as I am aware, there are no reliable numbers of the labour migrants that moved back, though there are some estimates of how many people moved by train: estimates have varied between 5 and 40 million. In fact, numbers of internal migrants generally are uncertain (Srivastava and Sutradhar 2016 ; Srivastava 2020a ; GoI 2017 ), with the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act of 1979 remaining to a great extent a dysfunctional framework (Sivaram 2020 ). Estimates put total numbers of internal migrant workers at about 100 million (against a Census estimate of some 45 million inter- and intrastate migrant workers Footnote 11 ), mostly originating from poorer districts of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Rajasthan, etc., and a relatively small proportion of these workers being from Nepal and Bangladesh. In particular, estimates of, and knowledge about circular and seasonal migration have remained uncertain. Footnote 12 Female labour migration also is likely under-recorded (Shanthi 2006 ), adding significantly to the overall gaps in knowledge on migration. Moreover, academic studies commonly underestimate the role of labour mobility. Footnote 13 Theories and models of migration tend to neglect the complexity of patterns of mobility, again enhancing the gaps in knowledge about the extent and impact of population mobility, often particularly important with respect to more marginalised groups.

The lack of clear data appears to reflect, and possibly reinforces, the ambivalent treatment of migrants in official discourse (Deshingkar 2017 ). As in other countries, such as China during its years of miracle economic growth and institutionalised in its hukou system, and mirroring ambivalent views globally about the place of immigrant, migrants and labour mobility in particular have never been fully accepted as part of India’s policy. Urban policies demonstrate common apathy and often discrimination towards migrants. Footnote 14 Inter-state migrants are at risk of losing access to public social provisions, such as PDS, and even health care that are tied to permanent residence, and often do not have access to housing schemes in cities.

The apathy towards labour migration is often reflected in rural policies as well, with a common focus on reducing migration in development and anti-poverty programs (and in much international development policy). Footnote 15 NREGA’s objectives include reducing labour migration through the provision of locally available work in rural areas, similar to the earlier Maharashtra employment scheme (Datta 2019 : 39–40; Solinski 2012 ).

4 Mobility Neglected: An Historical Perspective

The stories of migrants moving back to their villages of origin have parallels in earlier crises. Like the COVID-19 pandemic, the bubonic plague in 1994 led to large-scale departure of migrants (though without them being stranded, as trains were made available), skilled and manual workers, from Surat, leading to a labour shortage when factories reopened.

Economic downturns have had similar impacts on migrant workers. In Calcutta’s jute industry, in 1931 following the 1929 economic crisis, many jobs were cut (de Haan 1994 ). As the British colonial Labour Commissioner R. N. Gilchrist ( 1932 ) wrote, workers moved back to the rural areas en masse, without signs of protest: they disappeared as ‘snow for the sun’. As during the 2020 pandemic, the timing and season of the return was significant, as the return happened during the month that workers usually would return for their annual visit to their homes (see further discussion below).

As in 2020, in 1931 the return of workers to their ‘native villages’ did not come as a surprise. In fact, it was a common occurrence, as patterns of migration were—and have continued to be—circular. Earlier long-distance migration streams, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—for example from parts of Bihar to Rangpur, Mymensingh and the Sunderbans in eastern Bengal, and Burma, for agricultural and other manual work, including for railway construction (Yang 1989 )—tended to be circular, as occupations were seasonal and temporary. This circular pattern continued to predominate for industrial labour: while industrial work such as in the jute industry was much more continuous, many of the workers continued to remain migrants, maintaining close links with their villages of origin.

This predominance of circular (rural-to-urban) migration has been subject to a range of interpretations that often defined the phenomenon as an exception. On the one hand, colonial authorities and factory management attributed the pattern to workers’ unwillingness to settle, and lack of commitment to modern industries, with high rates of labour turnover. They noted labour shortages, particularly during summer months, the time of harvest and or marriages. This was often highlighted as requiring informal middlemen (’sardars’) for recruitment of workers and a common system of replacement (‘badli’) workers. The personalistic and informal nature of recruitment was closely associated with a segmentation of migration streams, a pattern that has continued to define India’s labour market and migration. Footnote 16

Critical studies, on the other hand, including the work by Breman ( 1985 , 2019 ; see also his contribution to this volume) that have highlighted extreme exploitation in migrant work have argued that it was in the interest of capitalism to keep the workforce migratory, constituting a near-endless labour surplus (partly caused by the destruction of traditional artisanal production under colonialism), that employers and authorities did not invest in the living conditions that would allow workers and their families to settle, Footnote 17 and that informal and segmented recruitment helped keep costs of labour low. During strikes or lockouts, also, workers would often return home; many trade union organisers in the jute industry shared the concerns of the employers about the lack of commitment of the migrant worker to the industry and urban area. Footnote 18

Most of India’s migrant labourers have been men, and this too has been explained either by reference to workers traditional customs or preferences, or managers’ strategies and their lack of investment in living conditions surrounding factories. In my own view, single-factor explanations are insufficient to explain the diversity of migration patterns within one industry or area of destination, nor the historical trends towards a single male earner. Footnote 19

Explanations for this pattern of rural–urban migration, in my view, need to take into account the complexity of interaction between rural and urban societies, contrasting the ‘classic’ historical interpretation of the formation of an industrial and urban working class (de Haan and Rogaly 2002 ). Availability of seasonal work, of course, provides temporary opportunities outside villages that themselves provide insufficient employment. But even when work was more permanent, migrants have continued to maintain a link with their villages. Footnote 20

The importance of this continued pattern was clearly expressed in the words of the industrial workers in the jute industry I interviewed. ‘What to do? My house is there!’. Many said that they go when there was a ‘need’ or ‘work’: marriage, an emergency, taking care of the land, settling land disputes, education of the children, or simply visiting family was a key reason for going to the village, for 1 or 2 months per year, quite often longer and frequently beyond the allowed period of leave.

From the perspective of rural development, similarly, it is critical to take into account this continued interaction of rural and urban economic activity. Research on out-migration from Bihar Footnote 21 shows the long history of out-migration, as well as the fact that this has involved most socio-economic strata, including, for example, sons of larger landowners (as described by Das 1986 ). From a functionalist perspective, this continued out-migration, while caused by poverty in many parts of Bihar, also helped to maintain its socio-economic structure, with remittances supporting the structure of landownership. Unlike for international migrants—who typically have come from less poor areas in India—the income from rural–urban unskilled labour migration generally did not allow for significant investment in agricultural or other rural production, but functioned as a safety valve, economically as well as socially.

This rural–urban interaction has by and large remained outside the view of development strategies, possibly regarded as merely a transitional or exceptional phenomenon. It is not well reflected in census or surveys, which have underestimated degrees of labour migration and its importance for development in both urban and rural areas. Policies have remained by and large silent and in neglect of this reality, or indeed—as mentioned above—have aimed to reduce that mobility.

It is important to reiterate that this neglect impacts different groups of migrants differently and that it is migrants in the informal sector that are particularly affected. It appears that the neglect of migrants’ conditions—under the pandemic and long term—is mirrored in a neglect of the so-called informal sector. As much as circular migration has remained a feature of India’s modernising economy, the size of the informal sector has remained the same, and policies to address these ineffective or absent.

The long-standing neglect of migration has contributed to policy gaps that so clearly surfaced with the COVID-19 lockdown. International reporting has suggested that the extent of suffering for migrant workers seemed to be particularly extensive in India. The pattern of circular migration that has contributed to the sudden large-scale movement is not unique to India; for example, similar movements of annual return are witnessed during China’s New Year, and there have been reports from West African cities of young migrants moving back to their villages to support harvesting. What appears pronounced is the neglect and negligence by official policy and employers: while public health concerns of course directed a cessation of movement, there were no or very limited attempt to safeguard the travel of those tens of millions of workers.

5 Inclusive Policies

It is important to highlight the initiatives that supported migrant workers in India, including civil society efforts (such as SWAN mentioned above and SEWA as described in Homenet 2020 ), Self Help Group initiatives (IFAD 2020 ), and Central Government support measures. Footnote 22 Bihar’s Chief Minister offered to cover the costs of stranded migrant workers elsewhere in India. Odisha’s Chief Minister offered to bring back migrants that were stuck in different parts of the country during lockdown; the government set up dedicated hospitals and health centres and announced a package of income and employment support for returning workers (Mishra 2020 ; The Indian Express 2020 ).

Kerala that stood out for its proactive response to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic provided support to migrant workers that had lost employment (The Week 2020 ; The Economic Times 2020 ). It set up camps using, for example, schools and provided basic necessities and health-related information in various languages. Kerala’s response may have led to a relatively small proportion of migrant workers returning to their villages of origin (Nideesh 2020 ).

While these responses do play a role and have provided essential support to migrants, they are insufficient to address major inequalities and the risks associated with health and other shocks. The disadvantages migrants face—unearthed in this pandemic—are entrenched in economic and social structures. How can this be turned around? What policies are needed to address the deep-rooted barriers that keep migrants vulnerable? And does the current crisis provide an opportunity for such changes?

Critical, in my view, is the need to accept migration, and the specific patterns of migration and the contribution migrant workers make to local economies. Often, there is a greater—and important—concern for the well-being of migrants abroad, Footnote 23 and it is important that the vulnerability of internal migrants is equally recognised. With the benefit of hindsight, the way the Government was caught by surprise by the chaos caused by the lockdown—and the public health risks this may have caused—is part of a pattern of neglect of labour migration. Despite their essential function in the urban economy (and possible costs to the economy of labour shortages workers have left), seasonal and circular migrant workers do not have a fixed or accepted place in cities (Kundu 2009 ), with as mentioned many of their entitlements based in their villages of origin. Accounting for these migration patterns, and their impacts on household forms, in surveys (for example in the form of Kerala’s migration survey) and census is a critical first step.

A ‘regularisation’ of migrant workers ensures all citizens can access rights and entitlements independent of their current residence. Footnote 24 During the crisis, some countries and authorities limited the rights of migrants, Footnote 25 while others enhanced these. Bahrain declared an amnesty during 2020 for irregular workers in the country to get regularized without paying any fees or fines (Sorkar 2020 ). On the sending side, countries like Bangladesh that for many years have institutionalised support to international migrants—often supported by IOM—put in place schemes for returning workers including soft loans for training and starting economic activities (Sorkar 2020 ). The Philippines’ government in collaboration with non-state actors has been commended for its proactive role in repatriating, and welfare measures for migrants (albeit with significant gaps in implementation; Liao 2020 ).

Ensuring migrants have access to their right requires a range of reforms and new measures, most of which are not new. Footnote 26 Social protection measures need to become ‘portable’ (Srivastava 2020b ); subsidised food, for example, needs to be accessible independent of location. The ‘one nation one ration card’ initiative could be a critical step towards this goal, and there is a need and opportunity to apply existing technology to enable easier transfers of financial support (Shreedharan and Jose 2020 ). Where migrants move with families including children, education (CREATE 2008 ) and mid-day meals need to be accessible—similar to education initiatives under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the District Primary Education Programme (Majumder 2011 )—to them. Registration for welfare provisions needs to be simple.

Migrants should be able to avail the same political rights NRI’s have been given, to vote by ballot (Ghosh and Bandyopadhyay ( 2020 ); recent analysis by Gaikwand and Nellis ( 2020 ) shows low political participation by migrants, and hence a lower likelihood that politicians represent their interests. Health services—regular care as well as pandemic services—need to be accessible to migrants as much as local populations (Kusuma and Babu 2018 ; Nitika et al. 2014 ). Sustained advocacy for workers rights, such as by Aajeevika, SEWA, Footnote 27 and more recently new networks as mentioned above, as well as effective representation by trade unions is an essential element of ensuring migrants can realise their rights.

6 Conclusion

The marginalisation of migrant workers in India is deep-rooted, has a long historical background and continuity since the colonial period, and manifests itself in the absence of knowledge and data of how many migrant workers live and work outside their place of residence. Urban authorities and employers have continued to take the pattern of circular migration for granted, providing minimal facilities and security for its workers, reinforcing a lack of belonging and ability for migrants to settle with their families.

The unique shock that COVID-19 implied, but equally importantly the government’s response, lockdown and extremely limited support for the tens of millions of migrant workers, showed how deep this neglect is, and the potential costs for the migrants themselves but also the health system and the economy more broadly. Crises provide opportunities for ‘building back better’: in the case of migrant workers these consist of essential immediate social protection, but also, and likely much more challenging, addressing deep-rooted inequalities that keep workers in marginalized positions, and the invisibility of the migrants that once again were absorbed by their villages of origin.

This case of neglect of migrant workers during the pandemic in India was quite widely reported, at least during the early months of the pandemic. The rapid survey of sources on which this essay is built suggest that there has been much less reporting in other parts of the world; this may be a case of under-reporting, or an indication of particular and widespread vulnerability of migrants in India. Responses to shocks for international migrants have seen both new supportive measures, and further marginalisation and stigmatisation. It seems important to develop exploration of the varied responses and of the policies and advocacy that can address the deep-rooted disparities that migrant workers face.

The essay draws liberally on a range of sources, including investigative journalism and rapid research during the pandemic, peer-reviewed studies and my own earlier field research, and was written at a time that the daily numbers of infections in India are still increasing.

At the time of finishing the draft of this article, at the end of August 2020 the number of daily new cases in India had become larger than anywhere else in the world (Drèze 2020 ); the number of cases (and recorded deaths) relative to the population has remained well below the world’s average ( https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ ; accessed 30 August 2020).

Toronto Public Health data, between mid-May and mid-July, quoted in the Globe and Mail , July 30, 2020 .

See for overviews by the World Bank ( 2020b ), and guidance from the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner ( 2020 ). On the impact of refugees, see, for example, Dempster et al. ( 2020 ), ILO ( 2020a ).

There is some information about the extent to which the migrants’ exodus from Indian cities: a study by Aajeevika Bureau showed that none of the migrants that returned to Rajasthan in the first phase of lockdown in March were infected, and that there were cases of infections amongst migrants returning in May (SciDev.Net 2020 ).

IOM 2020a . Estimates in West Africa indicated that regional migration decreased by 50 per cent (IOM 2020c ).

OHCHR ( 2020 ); extreme conditions for African labour migrants in Saudi Arabia were reported by Brown and Zelalem ( 2020 ).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1glhO8wJrzLClRytfIzvV98wYqf7anS5s/view .

For Bihar, see, for example, Priyadarshini and Chaudhury ( 2020 ), in the edited volume on the migrant crisis by Ranabir Samaddar.

Sood and Nath ( 2020 ), Thomas and Jayaram ( 2020 ) and Mander and Verma ( 2020 ). Bailwal and Sah ( 2020 ) describe the conditions of some workers that stayed behind including increases in working hours, and the reasons for doing so (lack of work in home villages, outstanding payments from contractors).

https://censusindia.gov.in/2011census/d-series/d-3.html ; in total, the Census 2011 enumerated 456 million people as migrants, with 211 million of them (mostly women) having moved for marriage.

Deshingkar et al ( 2008 a). Similarly, estimates of remittances by internal migrants are uncertain (Export–Import Bank of India 2016 ).

For example, in Munshi and Rosenzweig ( 2009 , 2020 ); see Deshingkar ( 2017 ). I believe that expectations of rates of urbanisation and observations that rates remain low (e.g. World Bank 2015 , which refers to India’s ‘messy urbanization’) have typically neglected the importance of circular migration (see Lucci 2016 for discussion on similar gaps in Africa).

See Aggarwal et al. ( 2019 ); the index shows varying degrees of support for migration in India’s states.

In international debates, there has been a growth appreciation of international migration and remittances, but with a continuously strong policy strand that sees development as a way to reduce (international) migration; see Clemens ( 2020 ) for a rebuttal of that view, in a context of continued debate.

Described, for example, by Subramaniam ( 2018 ) for tea sellers in Mumbai.

See, for example, the collection by Samaddar ( 2016 ) for a set of recent studies on workers in Indian cities.

On continued constraints for union organisation caused by circular migration, see Ghosh and Bandyopadhyay ( 2020 ), Menon ( 2020 ).

The pattern of migration varied across regional and perhaps religious communities; but across communities, female migration did occur (de Haan 1994 ; Fernandes 1997 ; Sen 1992 ).

This has remained the case of international migrants as well, described, for example, for migrants from Punjan, and by Gardner ( 1995 ) for Sylhet, Bangladesh; see also Gardner and Osella ( 2003 ).

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See Srivastava ( 2020a : pp. 15–22), describing these as inadequate. The GoI (GoI 2017 ) working group describes a range of needed long-term measures. Following the crisis, the Central government increased support to MNREGA and food subsidies (the latter to 800 million people); The Wire (30 June 2020); Livelaw News Network ( 2020 ). In Rajasthan, the demand for work in MNREGA increased by some 20 per cent during April–July compared to the sae period in the previous year (Kumar 2020 ).

The international community too tend to prioritise attention to international migrants (and remittances), despite the much larger numbers of internal migrants (see, for example, World Bank 2020a or https://migrationdataportal.org/themes/migration-data-relevant-covid-19-pandemic that focuses on international migration while using the generic term migration).

The idea of regularisation during crisis was put forward by the UN (2020) and derives partly from efforts in Europe, Portugal and Italy in particular, providing, for example, health care to undocumented migrants, in fact implementing long-standing European commitments (Fanjul and Dempster ( 2020 ).

As widely described (e.g. Pierce and Bolter 2020 ), the US administration moved forward its policy reforms started in 2017 during the pandemic.

See, for example, Deshingkar et al ( 2008a ) for India; Leighton (undated) and UNHCR (undated) for international migrants, and Solomon and Sheldon ( 2018 ) on the Global Compact. See ILO ( 2020b ) for a discussion on social protection for migrants workers

See the description—based on a rapid survey—of the role (including advocacy) of membership-based organizations of care workers, home-based workers, etc., during the pandemic in WIEGO ( 2020 : 22); also Sinha ( 2020 ).

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de Haan, A. Labour Migrants During the Pandemic: A Comparative Perspective. Ind. J. Labour Econ. 63 , 885–900 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-020-00283-w

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Strengthening the Rights of Migrant Workers

Introduction.

Migrant workers relocate from their countries of origin to foreign countries for work purposes. Migrant workers either move for work purposes on a temporary or a permanent basis, depending on several factors. Migrant labour has grown to become a significant issue globally, but it remains largely misunderstood in ways more than one. The growth of migrant workers is increasing, especially in regions such as the United States, Canada, and European countries like Germany, England, Italy, and France. This growth of migrant workers in these developed countries has sparked heated debate, especially regarding wage suppression and the idea that foreign workers are stealing jobs from citizens. However, while those in disfavour of migrant workers continue to protest against their disruption of the labour industry and those in favour of hiring foreign workers continue with their practices, people often fail to put themselves in the shoes of migrant workers and their experiences. The perspective of migrant workers is often overlooked to the extent that migrant workers end up forgotten and left to struggle. This is a situation that has been highlighted here in Canada by Choudry & Smith (2016) in their research regarding the struggles of migrant and immigrant workers. Hence, it is important to assess some of the common struggles experienced by migrant workers in general and in Canada alongside some of the actions in place to cater to their needs and what more can be done to help these workers in various settings.

Struggles of migrant workers in Canada

Some of the common struggles experienced by migrant workers can be summed up into discrimination, exploitation, coercion, the lack of benefits, dangerous working conditions, cultural differences, education-related issues and access to residence, services and healthcare (Choudry & Thomas, 2013; Choudry & Henaway, 2012; Choudry & Smith, 2016). These issues vary depending on a variety of factors. For instance, Tyler & Marciniak (2013) highlight some of the issues experienced by undocumented immigrant workers regarding the lack of better welfare, exploitation, coercion, and access to services. Undocumented workers lack the proper documentation to keep them in the countries they move to. Their constant threat of deportation places them at a disadvantage, allowing employees and other institutions to take advantage of their predicament. On the other hand, documented workers also face significant struggles. Migrant workers are likely to be impacted by the cultural differences in the regions that they move to, alongside facing constant discrimination both at the workplace and outside work (Choudry & Smith, 2016). Sometimes migrant workers live in isolation, whether they are documented or not, because they feel unaccepted. These issues are aggravated, especially by aspects such as cultural differences, language barriers and the fact that these people have a hard time understanding how the system works in the regions where they work. For instance, handling leases and taxes are common issues that migrant workers have been struggling to grasp when they move to regions that operate differently from their native countries (Hudson et al., 2011).

As mentioned earlier, the struggles of migrant workers vary depending on a plethora of factors, such as the regions that they move to work. In Canada, the struggles of migrant workers can mainly be attributed to Canada’s new policy that mainly promotes temporary migration rather than the permanent migration of workers (Canadian Council for Refugees, 2021). Due to the enactment of this policy, migrant workers find themselves at a disadvantage when they come to work in Canada temporarily because they are stripped of certain rights and privileges alongside being awarded limited access to certain services and the denial of federally-funded settlement services (Choudry & Henaway, 2012; Chourdy & Smith, 2016). Furthermore, the vulnerability of these migrant workers is extended by the fact that there are no systems in place directed towards monitoring them and ensuring that their rights are protected (Canadian Council for Refugees, 2021; Foster & Luciano, 2020). Only a few provinces in Canada have enacted the relevant legislations that are directed towards protecting the rights of migrant workers.

Therefore, a lot of migrant workers in Canada have been in situations where they get economically exploited. For instance, migrant workers are often charged illegal recruitment fees, and some get subjected to wage theft (Choudry & Smith, 2016). The fact that these people have no systems to protect them also means that they remain dependent on their employers when they require access to services such as housing, healthcare and information regarding their basic rights. These issues mainly face migrant workers working in Canada temporarily because of their visa conditions (Canadian Council for Refugees, 2021). It has also been noted that certain migrant workers in Canada operating under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program find themselves falling victim to human trafficking. According to the Canadian Council for Refugees, several cases of exploitation and abuse of migrant workers have been reported, but little recourse has been offered to these workers. Furthermore, workers who report being abused and exploited often end up getting fired or deported (Choudry & Smith, 2016; Marsden et al., 2020). Thus, migrant workers are in a predicament regarding their rights as temporary residents in Canada. This issue is rampant mainly with low-skill and low-wage workers who have constantly found it harder to gain permanent residence than highly skilled employees who appear to be treated differently even if they are working temporarily (Canadian Council for Refugees, 2021). Low-skilled workers will also find it difficult to get permanent migration status as the only offer that they can receive is temporary migration, especially for marginalized groups.

Overall, it appears that the struggles faced by migrant workers point out to a change in Canada’s notion of immigration as a nation-building strategy and highlights a change in this premise towards the exploitation of low-skilled temporary migrants as the perfect source of cheap and disposable labour. The contributions that these migrant workers are making to the Canadian economy and society, regardless of the type of work they are doing, are being ignored, and change is necessary to safeguard the right of migrant workers, especially those working under the Temporary Foreign Worker Programs.

Approaches to strengthening the rights of migrant workers

With Canada Switching its focus on temporary rather than permanent migration for workers, this policy has created a loophole that has resulted in migrant workers being exploited without proper systems to protect their rights. The government of Canada has highlighted the rights that temporary foreign workers should be awarded while in the country. However, the biggest problem is the lack of proper systems to ensure that these rights are protected, especially when it comes to temporary migrant workers. These people are getting exploited and abused because of the loopholes surrounding the issues they face because of their visa status. According to the Canadian Council for Refugees, the best approach in protecting the rights of migrant workers is to dismantle or re-evaluate and rewrite the policy on temporary migration. The emphasis on temporary migration and not permanent migration is not a good policy when it comes to protecting the rights of migrant workers (Canadian Council for Refugees, 2021). The policy is doing a great job in terms of addressing the issue of temporary labour shortages, but it does not guarantee the safety of these temporary migrant workers. Considering that these people are only in the country temporarily, they cannot be awarded full rights similar to permanent residents, and this leaves them without the full protection of their rights and vulnerable to exploitation by employers willing to leverage their temporary employment status and half rights to their advantage.

Instead, in order to protect the rights of migrant workers, Canada should focus more on awarding migrant employees with permanent migrant status. This will require the re-orientation of the country’s immigration program and policies that will allow the country to focus on bringing in immigrants and refugees on a permanent status (Canadian Council for Refugees, 2021). However, suppose this cannot be done, especially considering the processes that need to take place before such changes can be enacted. In that case, there are other ways of improving the rights and safeguarding the wellbeing of temporary migrant employees. According to the Canadian Council for Refugees (2021), the first step is the ratification of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and their Family Members. For instance, providing temporary workers with expansions in their eligibility to settlement services is a good measure to prevent them from getting exploited. These workers should be fully informed of their rights once they reach the country, and effective recourse to justice should also be awarded instead of deporting temporary workers without proper investigations into their issues.

Overall, taking the necessary steps to safeguard the rights of immigrant workers will be a long process. However, taking small steps to ensure that these people are protected will be significant in ensuring that, in the end, the rights of migrant workers are protected, especially concerning temporary migrant workers. Furthermore, the best option will be to reduce the focus on temporary migration and switch to providing migrant workers with permanent migration status.

Canadian Council for Refugees. (2021).  Migrant Workers – the issues . Canadian Council for Refugees. Retrieved 15 December 2021, from https://ccrweb.ca/en/migrant-workers-issues.

Canadian Council for Refugees. (2021).  Protecting the rights of migrant workers in Canada . Canadian Council for Refugees. Retrieved 15 December 2021, from https://ccrweb.ca/en/protecting-rights-migrant-workers-canada.

Choudry, A., & Henaway, M. (2012). Agents of misfortune: Contextualizing migrant and immigrant workers’ struggles against temporary labour recruitment agencies.  Labour, Capital and Society/Travail, capital et société , 36-65.

Choudry, A., & Smith, A. A. (Eds.). (2016).  Unfree labour?: Struggles of migrant and immigrant workers in Canada . PM Press.

Choudry, A., & Thomas, M. (2013). Labour struggles for workplace justice: Migrant and immigrant worker organizing in Canada.  Journal Of Industrial Relations ,  55 (2), 212-226. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022185612473215

Foster, J., & Luciano, M. (2020).  In the Shadows: Living and Working Without Status in Alberta . Parkland Institute, University of Alberta.

Hudson, M., Radu, D., & Phillips, J. (2011). European migrant workers’ understanding and experience of the tax credits system.

Marsden, S., Tucker, E., & Vosko, L. (2020). Federal Enforcement of Migrant Workers’ Labour Rights in Canada: A Research Report.  SSRN Electronic Journal . https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3601870

Tyler, I., & Marciniak, K. (2013). Immigrant protest: an introduction.  Citizenship Studies ,  17 (2), 143-156. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2013.780728

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Article Contents

1. introduction, 2. a (reconstructed) legal insitutionalist view of labour markets, 3. migration and british labour markets from 1945 to the present, 4. conclusion.

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Determining the Impact of Migration on Labour Markets: The Mediating Role of Legal Institutions

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Manoj Dias-Abey, Determining the Impact of Migration on Labour Markets: The Mediating Role of Legal Institutions, Industrial Law Journal , Volume 50, Issue 4, December 2021, Pages 532–557, https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwab030

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Critics of migration often claim that migrant workers displace local workers from jobs and apply downward pressure on wages. This article begins from the premise that it is impossible to understand the impact of migrant workers on labour markets without considering the functioning of law. Drawing on a reconstructed version of legal institutionalism, one that attends to the structuring influences of capitalist political economy and racism, this article considers the mediating role played by labour market institutions, such as collective bargaining and the contract of employment. An analysis of the historiography of migration to the UK since 1945 shows that labour market institutions have played a key role in influencing the inflow of migrant workers as well as the method of their incorporation into the labour market. In turn, migrant workers have intensified dynamics in the labour market that legal institutions have helped create, such as labour market segmentation. Migrant workers have also impacted the legal institutions themselves, either by being crucial actors in the creation of new legal institutions or by shaping the operation of existing ones.

Those who argue for reduced migration often do so on the basis of its assumed negative effects on the labour market. These minatory critics regularly claim that migration displaces local workers from jobs and drives down their wages. 1 Mainstream economists have tried to intervene in these discussions by analysing labour market data to determine the aggregate effects of migration on employment and unemployment rates and the wages of local workers. While acknowledging that the precise employment outcomes of migration will depend on factors such as domestic economic conditions and the skill level of migrants, most studies have found that migration has very little impact on employment outcomes, and a negligible impact on wages, although it is slightly more pronounced among ‘low-skilled’ workers. 2 Invariably, these studies are constructed as small case studies in which economists compare labour market data from geographical areas of high and low migration (‘spatial correlation’), or across skill groups that have experienced more or less competition from migrants (‘skill-cell correlation’), and then statistically parse out the effects of other factors. 3 Individual case studies sometimes provide mixed results since they are beset by definitional issues, limited by the availability of data and plagued by methodological disagreements. However, large-scale literature reviews can provide a fairly reliable picture because they iron out wrinkles that are inherent in small case studies. The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), set up by the Labour government in 2007 to provide ‘transparent, independent and evidence-based advice to the government on migration issues’, has been asked to review the available economic evidence of migration on labour markets on three separate occasions. 4 MAC has concluded in 2012, 2014 and 2018 that the impact of migration on the labour market is small to non-existent. 5 What explains the findings of these surveys which confound simple economic logic about demand and supply? 6 Economists suggest that in the short term, whether migrants have a negative impact on jobs and wages depends on whether they have skills that substitute or complement those of existing workers. 7 In the longer term, economists point out that migrants add not only to labour supply, but also to labour demand. 8

While these studies provide a valuable perspective, labour lawyers should exercise some caution about simply accepting what mainstream economists tell about the relationships between migration and labour markets. For a start, these economic studies are based on assumptions about a prevailing state of equilibrium in labour markets, which is initially disturbed by migration but then eventually restored. Heterodox economists have long disputed that labour markets operate in this manner, instead emphasising their character as social institutions. Second, economists aim to predict the effects of migration by isolating the impact of migration from other factors using statistical tools such as regression analysis. However, these other factors, rather than clouding the issue, remain highly relevant—for example, how migration interacts with important components of labour markets, such as their labour laws, to produce particular effects, remains a critical question. Third, these studies treat migration as some sort of exogenous shock that needs to be analysed separately from the operation of labour markets themselves. In reality, migrants come looking for work in response to local labour market conditions. This means that migration is at the same time a factor that needs to be explained and also an explanatory factor in its own right. Fourth, economic studies provide only a snapshot on how migration has affected a specific splice of the labour market, while literature reviews provide an aggregate picture of the state of knowledge. What is urgently needed is an analysis of how specific labour markets affect migration, as well as an explanation of how migration impacts upon these labour markets.

Taking as an example the evolution of the British labour market in the period 1945 to the present, this article attempts to make visible the mechanisms by which migration and labour markets have interacted. I draw on a relatively new and inchoate theoretical framework, called legal institutionalism, to provide the theoretical scaffolding for this inquiry. 9 In the view of legal institutionalists, market dynamics are best studied by analysing the evolution of labour market institutions, such as the contract of employment and collective bargaining. Legal institutions are systems of rules inherited from the social environment and which shape the way that market actors behave. 10 In modern capitalist economies, legal institutions are made up primarily of legal norms supported by state-mandated enforcement apparatuses, but legal institutions also include cultural factors that shape the way that legal norms are given effect. If we foreground the role of legal institutions in our analysis of the historiography of migration to the UK since 1945, we can see that labour market institutions have mediated the relationship between migration and labour markets in several important ways. Since legal institutions are responsible for shaping the labour market, the need for migrant workers arises, in part, from their operation. Legal institutions also channel migrants seeking work into particular industries and jobs and determine their terms and conditions of employment. The entry of migrant workers in relatively large numbers—although never quite as high as in the frenzied imagination of migration’s critics—does impact upon labour markets despite economists’ assertations to the contrary. Migration deepens segmentation and can end up influencing the legal institutions themselves. In the following analysis, I use legal institutionalism as a methodological tool to study the relationship between migration and labour markets because it reveals the mediating function of law.

Before I proceed, the terms ‘migrant worker’ and ‘labour market’ require further explanation. Despite being in common usage, the meanings of these terms are not self-evident. Beginning with the concept of a labour market, it is clear that there are two main ways in which the labour market concept is deployed—a general labour market where employers and employees interact with each other and the price of labour is determined by competition (external labour market), and the firm-specific market where the price of labour is determined by administrative rules (internal labour market). 11 This article is mainly interested in the functioning of the external labour market, or more accurately, labour markets since markets can be simultaneously envisioned as sectoral, occupational, local, national and international depending on the actors in question. The term migrant worker —a decidedly contemporary term that I project back to study migration since the middle of the 20th century—is even slipperier. It usually refers to someone who is a national of one country but joins the labour market of another. 12 At the UK national level, a migrant worker has sometimes been defined as someone who is born overseas, while at other times, it is taken to refer to someone who is a national of another country. In either case, migrant workers comprise those who come in search of work but may also include those who enter under other streams—for example, family, study, or as asylum seekers—and eventually join the labour market. In this article, I mainly focus on labour migrants (that is, those who come in search of work), but will occasionally expand my analysis to include other categories of migrants. In some cases, I even include the progeny and descendants of migrants in my analysis because these are the terms in which the racialised debate is sometimes conducted. The inconsistency of meaning, together with the availability of data, make it difficult to accurately measure the number of migrant workers in the labour market at any point in time. While a range of statistical sources can be drawn upon—Long-Term International Migration and International Passenger Surveys, Migrant National Insurance Number Registrations, work permits issued etc.—individually, these sources only gesture at the overall picture.

This article proceeds in three main parts. In Section 2, I provide the key precepts of legal institutionalism and propose two important addendums that are necessary before it can be utilised to study the impacts of migration: situating legal institutions within broader trends in the capitalist political economy, and an account of how racism operates within institutions. Section 3 contains the substantive analysis of how legal institutions have mediated the relationship between migration and labour markets. I provide this history in two chronological periods (1945–80 and 1980–present) for reasons that will soon become clear. The focus of my discussion is how legal institutions have affected the flow and impact of migration, and how migration has in turn impacted upon the labour market and legal institutions. In the concluding section, I briefly summarise my main arguments.

There is nothing natural about describing the contracting of work for pay as a market, although it follows a general pattern in which we tend to think about the economic arena as a series of interlocking markets in which products and inputs are exchanged for money. For critical scholars, the reality of class relations is often concealed by seeing market interactions as underpinned by consensual, contractual relations. Even if we agree on the cautious adoption of the labour market as a unit of analysis, this still raises some questions about how we should conceptualise how markets arise and function. Economists from competing schools of thought hold vastly different views on these questions. According to the neoclassical school, for example, the demand for labour is determined by its marginal productivity and the supply is dependent on marginal utility. 13 Here we are introduced to the ‘methodological individualism’ that characterises the mainstream of economics today, as well as a theory of utility maximisation as the motivating force in human action. Institutional economics provide much better place and time sensitive conceptualisations of markets. One of the key themes of the institutionalists is a rejection of the idea of the utility-maximising economic agent. 14 Instead, for institutionalists, market relationships need to be understood with reference to social structures and discourses. The gravamen of the institutionalist contribution is the idea that institutions —that is, systems of rules inherited from our social environment—shape the way that market participants act. 15 In the act of doing, market participants then reproduce institutions so that they continue to endure in social life. In this view, markets vary considerably across space and time and the best way to study markets is to examine the institutions that underpin them in a society and their transformation over a particular period.

Modern institutionalism has now grown into a complex area of inquiry incorporating rational choice, historical, discursive and organisational institutionalism. 16 In this article, I draw particularly on legal institutionalism, a relatively recent branch of institutionalism. 17 Legal institutionalists emphasise the social rules that undergird markets and are chiefly interested in those rules that are supported by the power and authority of the state. Legal institutionalists do not claim that other social rules, such as those embedded in customary or cultural practices, are immaterial, but simply that they are unlikely to play a comparable role to formal law, which constitutes, shapes and reproduces markets in advanced capitalist societies. For the legal institutionalists, the centrality of law to markets mean that markets have no prior existence to the law. 18 Since markets are underpinned by a range of institutions (eg, money, contract etc.), it is not always simple to identify the relevant legal institutions to study. Following the work of Simon Deakin and Frank Wilkinson, I take the contract of employment (which includes common law principles as well as statutory regulation that prescribe minimum contracting terms) and collective bargaining as the two key labour market institutions. 19 The final legal institution that plays a major role in my analysis is an institution that helps manage the entry of workers into the labour market: migration law. While Deakin and Wilkinson included the duty to work—which in the modern era finds expression in social security law—as a major legal institution regulating entry to the labour market, given the space constraints of this article, my main focus will be migration law. There are, of course, complex relationships to disentangle between migration law and the duty to work, and their respective roles in regulating entry into labour markets, but this remains a task for another day. 20

Before legal institutionalism can be usefully utilised to study how migration impacts labour markets, two correctives are necessary. It is helpful to think of these correctives as operating on a ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ level, respectively. Turning first to the micro-level corrective, legal institutionalism often expresses a single-minded focus on legal norms as guiding human action at the expense of cultural ones which might shape the way that legal norms are given effect in particular situations. This is evident in the conceptualisation of labour markets advanced by legal institutionalists that tends to overlook how racism functions as a constitutive feature of labour markets. 21 Tracing the operation of racism is not merely an exercise driven by current political vogues, but rather critical to understanding how ‘real’ labour markets operate, especially when the issue of migration is under consideration. How then to account for racism’s role in constituting and structuring labour markets? The starting point in this analysis is to recognise that the relevant category of analysis is racism, not race, since racism produces race. 22 Racism is ideological in nature, and as Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown have outlined, it uses biological and/or somatic characteristics to socially differentiate particular populations. 23 Of course, emphasising the ideological character of racism is not to downplay the deeply material effects of racism. As theorists of race and colonialism often point out, the ideological content of racism is deeply informed by the racial ordering system that developed during the colonial period, although its modern manifestations show constant evidence of mutation. 24 If we marry legal institutionalism with an account of racism as an ideology, we can begin to uncover the causal mechanisms at play. We can think of racism as a miasma that pervades all market institutions, and therefore, influences the way that market participants give effect to legal norms in practice. In turn, by operationalising legal norms in all sorts of racially discriminatory ways, racial ideology is reinscribed in legal institutions and kept alive more broadly in society.

The macro-level corrective seeks to situate the legal institutions more squarely in the functioning of contemporary capitalism. Given their methodological commitment to understanding capitalism in a situated way, legal institutionalists have correctly tended to avoid developing universal, teleological principles to describe the progression of markets. Instead, legal institutionalists have tended to draw on various theoretical tools from the biological world to explain the evolution of legal institutions in a gradual, contingent and path-dependent way. 25 However, as a prominent institutionalist has recently argued, institutionalism needs to operate alongside theory of capitalist development. 26 I situate labour market institutions more firmly within ‘accumulation regimes’, which the French régulation school of economics traditionally describe as ‘ social and economic patterns that enable [capital] accumulation to occur in the long term between two structural crises ’. 27 According to these writers, configurations of social relations such as institutions have a direct relationship to the economy by helping to give effect and stabilise particular accumulation regimes. This does not mean that legal institutions simply reflect the needs of capital; they express their own histories, logics, technologies and techniques. However, accumulation regimes have a structuring function on legal institutions, particularly in the labour market. This article analyses migration to the UK from 1945 to 2020, a period that encompasses two different accumulation regimes—the period roughly from 1945 to 1980 is characterised by a ‘Fordist’ accumulation regime and the period from 1980 to present is characterised by a ‘post-Fordist’ accumulation regime. 28

The impacts of migration on labour markets are deep and variegated, and there are many ways to set out the narrative of British regulation from 1945. The periodisation that I adopt below is chronological, delineated by major shifts in British political economy and legal change. Roughly speaking, the first period (1945–80) was when migration to the UK was high in response to labour market gaps created by a high-growth economy, low unemployment and the needs of British industry. This period ends with growing legal restrictions on migration due to a racist backlash at home. The second period (1980–present) begins at the point when Britain started to experiment with a series of radical reforms to address major economic problems that had developed in the preceding decades. While the first two decades of this period were marked by relatively low levels of migration, the inflow of people began to climb from 2000 onwards in response to changes in the labour market precipitated by the Thatcherite reforms and continued under New Labour. This period ends with the passage of a new immigration system designed to restrict ‘unskilled’ immigration.

Writing about Britain’s post-war economic performance, one commentator observed that ‘for a quarter of a century or so after the Second World War the British people enjoyed full employment, no major recessions and the fastest rate of economic growth ever experienced on a sustained basis, as well as its most egalitarian distribution’. 29 These outcomes were the result of what is sometimes called a ‘Fordist’ regime of accumulation, characterised by combination of industrial production through vertically integrated firms, mass consumption, class compromise and the Keynesian welfare state. 30 The government recognised that the longevity of these developments required that sufficient workers could be found to fulfil the requirement for production. 31 To achieve this end, the government used a variety of methods to recruit workers from Europe, including resettling Polish soldiers who had served under British command and recruiting displaced persons through contract labour programmes such as ‘Balt Cygnet’ and ‘Westward Ho!’. By 1950, the population of ‘aliens’ (those not from the British mainland or its overseas territories) almost doubled to 430,000 from 239,000 in 1939. 32 In addition, without direct government intervention, a steady stream of migrants continued to arrive from Ireland in the period following the war—a source of reserve labour in England since the industrial revolution—and by 1970, this group formed the largest minority in Britain (approximately one million). 33

Another large pool of migrant labour arrived from the former Commonwealth countries in the Indian sub-continent and Caribbean. The change that facilitated their arrival had little to do with deliberate government action. In the post-war period, the UK was grappling with its post-imperial future. Keen to demonstrate the ongoing relevance of the British Empire, the Labour government passed the British Nationality Act 1948 , which converted the status of all those who had formerly been subjects into ‘Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies’. These citizens, whether born in the UK or overseas in a British colony, had the right to enter and reside in the UK and enjoyed all political, civil and social rights upon arrival. The 1948 Act also recognised as mostly equal the citizenship of the newly independent Commonwealth countries (eg, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) and older independent states (eg, Canada and Australia). 34 The proximate cause of the 1948 Act was that several of Britain’s former colonies—Canada, Australia and South Africa—were taking legislative steps to craft independent national identities by defining citizenship in ways that would dilute the meaning of British subjecthood. 35 Although never intended as a piece of immigration legislation, the passage of the 1948 Act had the effect of allowing a relatively large influx of immigration from the Indian sub-continent and Caribbean. 36 Between 1948 and 1962, around 500,000 racialised people (referred to as ‘coloured immigrants’ in public discussions at the time) arrived in Britain. 37 While some employers, such as London Transport, British Rail and the National Health Service, worked actively to recruit workers from these regions, some elements of the state worked behind the scenes to hinder this movement rather than promote it. 38

While the government may have created a facilitative legal framework opening the British labour market to migrants, it is important to recognise that this migration was driven primarily by domestic labour market conditions in Britain. Labour shortages were a major concern in the post-war recovery, which the government estimated to be between 600,000 and 1.3 million in 1946. 39 This situation was further exacerbated by the large numbers of Britons leaving the UK for greener pastures in other countries—between 1946 and 1965, over 1.8 million people left the UK, a great proportion financially aided by post-war migration schemes. 40 In their influential study, Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack argued that it was not only the lack of workers that was the driving cause of migration in post-war Western Europe, but also the structure of national labour markets. 41 According to these authors, in circumstances of low unemployment, indigenous workers were able to graduate to better remunerated and stable jobs, leaving gaps in unskilled manual roles that were difficult to fill. During the period from 1945 to 1970, unemployment rates generally remained between 1% and 3%, only moving beyond this range in 1972, and then, only slowly. 42 Offering higher wages for these undesirable jobs was not seen as a viable response because employers feared a decrease in export competitiveness and the government was worried about inflation. 43 Hence, migrant workers provided an ideal solution. In fact, a migrant workforce may have helped contribute to the competitiveness of British industry during this period by keeping a lid on wage inflation, eliminating production bottlenecks, and allowing the implementation of new work processes such as shift work. 44 Lending support to this thesis, it is clear that many of the racialised workers that arrived in the period following the war occupied semi-skilled and unskilled roles in industries such as the textile industry and in foundry works, or worked as cleaners, porters and kitchen hands in the expanding services sectors. 45 Notable features of this work include low pay, shift work, asocial hours, disagreeable working environments and low levels of upward mobility. 46 In the low-paid services sector, migrant workers were joined by female workers, then entering the labour market in increasing numbers. 47

The legal institutions of the labour market at the time facilitated this mode of migrant labour incorporation. Up until 1963, employers could contract with workers with little statutory constraint, and after that with only minimal regulation in the areas of notice of termination, redundancy and equal pay. 48 Since migration was left up to market forces to determine, the arrival of migrant workers closely tracked economic conditions in Britain and employer preferences. 49 The prevalent system of collective bargaining also did nothing to ameliorate this differential access to the labour market and usually exacerbated it. In the post-war period leading up to the 1970s, collective bargaining consisted of a variety of overlapping agreements at the level of industry, company, and plant. 50 Generally speaking, industry-wide agreements between employer association and unions regulated rates of pay (which acted as minima in practice), while relatively informal plant-level agreements made between local shop stewards and managers regulated a whole host of matters such as incentive pay, overtime and work processes. 51 These negotiations took place in the absence of detailed legal regulation, although not entirely without legal support. 52 Due to the fact that racist ideas had a strong hold over the white working class during this period, informal plant-level agreements often disadvantaged racialised workers—for example, it was common for shop stewards to negotiate ‘colour quotas’, rules prioritising racialised workers for redundancy or allow shift work as long as it only affected migrant workers. 53 Even when shop stewards were not directly colluding with management to implement discriminatory arrangements, there was a general lack of awareness or failure to acknowledge the particular circumstances faced by racialised workers. 54 The way in which the two central labour market institutions functioned during this period demonstrates how interaction of cultural and legal norms manifested in discriminatory outcomes. On the contract of employment, employer prejudice determined who was offered work and on what terms. With regards to collective bargaining, racism among employers and union actors had very real effects in terms of excluding migrant workers from good jobs and promotion.

From the 1960s there was a noticeable hardening of public attitudes towards unskilled immigration from the Indian sub-continent and Caribbean. We can locate some of this shift in attitude within changing material conditions. Although far less severe than the economic deterioration that Britain was to experience in the 1970s, the 1960s were characterised by various economic malaises including stagnation, balance of payment issues and a return to mass unemployment. 55 Rising racial tensions, fomented by racist groups and opportunistic politicians, also played their part. 56 The Conservative government, later supported by Labour, responded by progressively passing legislation to restrict immigration from the New Commonwealth. The first piece of legislation, which was passed in 1962, guaranteed entry to those who held a passport issued by a dependency government (which excluded India and Jamaica, which were the source of most of the immigration) or those who could obtain a work voucher from the Ministry of Labour. Work vouchers were offered for those who had pre-arranged employment or skills/occupations considered to be in short supply. The immigration control had an immediate effect, reducing the number of racialised workers from 136,400 in 1961 to 57,046 in 1963. 57 Further restrictions on vouchers were introduced in 1965, and 1968, 1969 and 1971. 58 The 1971 legislation signalled a particularly stark break with the relatively liberal immigration regime of the prior period because it ended the right of Commonwealth citizens to enter the country unless they had a parent or grandparent born in the UK. The 1968 and 1971 legislation were introduced specifically to prevent—as it turned out unsuccessfully—settlement by South Asians who had been expelled from Kenya and Uganda respectively. 59 Work permits for semi-skilled and unskilled jobs were also no longer issued. 60 This signalled a move away from a system of free mobility to a contract labour system, which tied workers’ entry directly to labour market conditions.

One further development from this period ought to be mentioned. The 1970s also saw an increase in labour organising among racialised workers, particularly among female migrant workers. 61 The most prominent example was the 1976 strike at the Grunwick photo processing plant led by a group of determined South Asian women, which galvanised national support from workers and unions. 62 However, not all of the activism by migrant workers in this period fitted the general mould of action that we would usually associate with labour politics. There was also a surge in activism in the community, including among second-generation migrants. 63 This form of activism was to have important consequences for the way in which access to the labour market was regulated. Mobilisation by community organisations was crucial in the government passing the Race Discrimination Act 1965 and subsequently strengthening the legislative framework to cover discrimination in the private sphere (employment, housing and service provision). 64 In this instance, grassroots pressure coincided with the Labour Government’s stratagem to present racial equality legislation as the quid pro quo of immigration restriction. 65 Social movement pressure was also a significant factor in extending coverage to ‘indirect discrimination’ in 1976, an innovation introduced by the Sex Discrimination Act’s passage a year earlier. While racial discrimination legislation was to have disappointing results overall, 66 these legislative measures did have some effect in improving labour market access for racialised workers by allowing the norm of racial equality to radiate throughout society. 67 Equally importantly, some of the institutional innovations pioneered by the now-defunct Commission for Racial Equality, for example its strategy of initiating proactive investigations, have continued to influence the operation of the Equality and Human Rights Commission today. 68

B. 1980–Present

Margaret Thatcher’s election as Prime Minister on 4 May 1979 marked the beginning of a new era in Britain. The main elements of the Thatcherite political economy are by now well known. Chief among them was a decisive move towards monetarism in macroeconomic policy-making, 69 massive changes to the operation of the financial sector, 70 and public-sector reform. 71 Another key aspect of the Thatcherite agenda was reforming the labour market to conform with a particular vision of free exchange between employer and worker. Paul Davies and Mark Freedland argue that the government was driven by two related goals: ensuring that the labour market could operate flexibly and reducing the power of trade unions that were seen to impose collective restrictions. 72 The powers of trade unions were attacked by imposing procedural constraints on taking strike action (eg, introducing secret balloting requirements), placing severe restrictions on various forms of activity that enhanced the countervailing power of organised labour (eg, closed shop/union membership agreements, secondary action, picketing) and a retreat from various corporatist arrangements that accorded unions an important role in the nation’s economic policy-making process. These transformations were brought about not only by changes to labour law (reducing the scope of the trade union immunities from common law liability), but also by selective amendments to social welfare and criminal law. 73 Given dispensation by the government and reassured that the large numbers of workers joining the ranks of the unemployed would strengthen their bargaining position, private sector employers were quick to take advantage of the situation. They did so by restructuring their operations and by beating back union efforts to engage in collective bargaining. 74 In 1979, over 80% of the workforce had been covered by a collective agreement, after almost two decades of Conservative rule, that number had dropped to less than half of that figure. 75 These labour law changes marked the advent of employment relations based on ‘flexibility’, work intensification and decline in the standard model of employment, which some have described as a ‘post-Fordist’ regime of accumulation. 76

The impacts of this series of changes were profound, leading to a sudden spike in unemployment, which peaked at 13% in 1982 and remained higher than 6% until 1990. 77 These labour market transformations had an enormous impact on migrant workers, including those who had been born in the UK but were nevertheless racialised as outsiders. Deindustrialisation and privatisation led to the gradual disappearances of internal labour markets where workers could join a firm and hope to advance through seniority. 78 This process was also hastened by firms increasingly outsourcing or contracting out ‘core’ functions, and those employed in these new entities were often drawn from the external labour market. 79 While migrant workers did not generally benefit from the operation of internal labour markets due to their exclusion through plant-level agreements, the erosion of internal markets meant that competition increased in external labour markets that were now separated into a ‘core’ segment characterised by job security and mobility, and a ‘secondary’ segment typified by insecure and contingent work. 80 Competition for jobs in the secondary labour market had always been fierce under conditions of high unemployment, but the addition of workers previously employed in firms that relied upon stable models of employment relations, and those who found themselves newly unemployed, intensified competition. Survey data from the period show that migrant workers were disproportionately represented among the unemployed, which means that some of the competition in secondary labour markets was between different groups of migrant workers. 81

This is the context in which additional migration during the 1980s and 1990s needs to be understood. Migration under free movement from the European Economic Community (and European Union after 1993) did not have much of an effect given the entity’s small membership at that time and the similarity of economic conditions with the UK’s. 82 Accordingly, when the government passed the Immigration Act 1988 to ensure that workers from the EEC did not need permission to enter or remain in the UK, immigration did not increase significantly. One of the early actions of the Thatcher government in the field of immigration was to introduce the British Nationality Act 1981 , which finally sundered the concept of citizenship from the Commonwealth and linked it firmly to the British nation. While the legislation retained a quota for work permits from the Commonwealth, this was restricted to 5,000 per year. 83 Over the course of the decade, the number of work permits granted gradually crept up, and by 1996 there were roughly 20,000 work permits, but a significant portion of these went to workers in professional and managerial roles (approximately 70%). 84 Many of these work permits were granted to citizens of the USA and Japan, which were Britain’s major trading partners outside the European Community at the time. 85 It should be noted that non-labour flows of migration continued to rise during this period—for example, political turmoil in countries such as Sri Lanka and Somalia in the 1990s saw a sharp increase in those seeking asylum—and many of those who were ultimately granted refugee status joined the labour market. 86

The Blair government that assumed office in 1997 was committed to continuing significant parts of the agenda that characterised British political economy under the previous Conservative government. 87 Influenced by ‘Third Way’ thinking that emphasised the competitiveness of enterprises along with the equal opportunity and social inclusion of workers, but also never entirely constrained by this philosophy, the Labour government (self-described as ‘New Labour’) retained significant aspects of labour market regulation. 88 New Labour did make some impact and the broad outlines of the employment and labour law reforms that Labour went on to enact can be found in a 1998 White Paper titled ‘Fairness at Work’. 89 The White Paper promised several new rights for individuals, including a new minimum wage, a shorter qualifying period to bring an unfair dismissal claim, working time regulation and an extension of parental leave entitlements. In the case of working time and parental leave, the government was seeking to implement EU-level obligations. In the area of collective bargaining, Labour left intact the basic architecture of the previous government’s draconian anti-union legislation (ballots before strikes, and prohibition of mass/flying pickets and secondary action) but did introduce a new statutory procedure for ascertaining whether majority employee support existed for collective bargaining within a particular workplace. 90 The intention behind New Labour’s labour market regulation was to facilitate the continuation of the post-Fordist regime of accumulation.

These arrangements deepened labour market segmentation in a number of ways and migration became a solution for many of the problems generated by these developments. Flexible production through outsourcing, for example, increased the number of workers subject to the highly competitive secondary segment of the labour market. Equally, the new employment standards stabilised a set of status-based distinctions (agency work, part-time, fixed term etc.) which operated to stratify and fix into place a variety of distinctions in the labour market. 91 Along with other dynamics such as under-investment in training, increasing use of technology by employers and the general immobility of local labour due to social ties, this generated a need for migrant workers at both the ‘high skilled’ and ‘low skilled’ end of the labour market. 92 During the period of New Labour, employers were able to satisfy this demand through a variety of paths. New Labour’s general attitude towards migration was that it could be managed to deliver positive economic outcomes, which explains its relatively relaxed and open attitude towards labour migration. 93 The main avenue was through EU free movement, which since the accession of the ‘EU-8’ countries in 2004, and Bulgaria and Romania three years later (‘EU-2’ countries), has provided a steady stream of workers into low-skilled occupations in industries such as hospitality, transport & storage, manufacturing and agriculture. 94 Some booming sectors, such as construction, looking to benefit from weaker labour rights in some of the newly acceded states, imported workers under the EU’s posted worker regime. 95 Workers from non-EEA countries could also enter the country via a range of mechanisms including by obtaining a work permit, as Working Holiday Makers, under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme, Sector Based Schemes (2003–2008), or the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme (2002–08). 96 From 2008, a ‘Points-Based System’ (PBS) was introduced to replace a number of the routes of entry for non-EEA migrants. 97 Work permits, and the PBS that superseded it, provided workers for sectors such as IT, finance and education. 98 By the end of the decade, nationals from India, USA, China, Japan and Australia were generally the top users of this route. 99 It is important to note that unlike the migration from the former Commonwealth during the 1945–80, this second significant wave of migration—the overall migrant population nearly doubled between 2005 and 2017, rising from 5.3 million to 9.4 million— 100 occurred during a period of relatively high unemployment (between 2000 and 2016, unemployment stubbornly remained at close to five percent or above). 101 So, rather than labour shortages, the segmented labour markets produced by the Thatcherite reforms and continued by New Labour created the conditions for the entry of migrant workers during this period.

How did labour market institutions channel this new influx of workers into particular industries and jobs? The answer to this question is complicated and requires us to consider the operation of labour market institutions in which racism is an entrenched feature. Many of the highly skilled workers that entered during this period did so under EU free movement or work permits. These workers were motivated to choose particular jobs and remain in them either through high wages/good working conditions, tied visas, or a combination of the two. Time-bound, employer-tied visas mean that workers are less likely to challenge their employer because they fear they will be deported, which can produce servile employment relations in the labour market. 102 In contrast, low-skilled workers entering the UK under EU free movement (primarily from E-8 and EU-2 countries) were guided into particular jobs and kept there through labour market institutions in which racism was an embedded feature. Alana Lentin has pointed out that a new form of ‘xenoracism’, directed against Eastern Europeans, has taken root in Britain, meaning racism that is based on perceived cultural differences rather than simply being colour-coded. 103 Given the challenge of enforcing equality norms contained in anti-discrimination law at the point of recruitment, the contract of employment continued to provide employers with almost complete discretion in deciding which jobs to offer workers as well as their working conditions once employed. There is ample evidence that some employers prefer hiring migrant workers for low-wage jobs because they expect that these workers will have lower expectations around wages, temporal rhythms and the place of work; employers, of course, rarely explicitly stated this view, instead choosing to express their preferences in terms of statements about ‘superior work ethic’. 104

Once migrant workers have begun to work in the secondary segment through the sorting function of legal institutions, they can soon become entrenched within this segment. This is because of two dynamics within legal institutions concerning their operation in relation to migrants. The first dynamic relates to the way in which legal norms can interact to reinforce precarity for migrant workers. Take for example the protection against unfair dismissal, which is the primary means for workers to attain a measure of job security in the labour market. The Employment Rights Act 1996 requires that an employee has served a minimum of 2 years’ continuous service before accruing this right, which for some migrant workers presents a particular difficulty because of the operation of time-limited of visas or their employment in temporary roles with irregular hours. 105 Another example is the way in which the courts can deem contracts ‘illegal’, and therefore unenforceable when it comes to claiming employment rights, in circumstances where workers are ‘illegally’ working under s 34 of the Immigration Act 2016. 106 This population is estimated to be between 800,000 and 1.2 million in the UK; 107 a portion of these workers might have commenced work with the proper authorisation but lost it due to a variety of administrative reasons. The second dynamic relates to the way in which employment rights are enforced in Britain. A panoply of enforcement agencies (HRMC, HSE, GLAA, EAS) that are supposed to uphold employment standards have trouble fulfilling their mandates due to under resourcing, lack of coordination among agencies, and absence of specific strategies to target migrant workers. 108 This means that workers are required to enforce their own individual rights by bringing claims in the Employment Tribunal system, and individual enforcement of rights tends to be especially low among low-wage migrant workers. 109 The near absence collective bargaining in the industries in which migrant workers were employed means that unions, now predisposed to observe anti-racism norms, have not been able to ameliorate some of these effects. The segmentation of the labour market and the employment of migrants in the secondary segment has a self-reinforcing tendency. The gradual deterioration of working conditions leads local workers to eschew these jobs, and employers look to migrant workers as a substitute workforce, developing symbiotic relationships with labour contractors or migrant/ethnic networks to fill these positions. This dynamic is visible in a number of sectors, such as food processing, 110 hospitality 111 and social care. 112

Since the UK’s exit from the European Union, the government has implemented a new immigration system, which represents a radical break from free movement that characterised the previous regime. This system has been in place since 1 January 2021. At the heart of the system is an expansion of the Tier 2-visa route. Applicants must have a job offer by an approved sponsor that pays above the minimum salary level, which is the higher of £25,500 or a stipulated ‘going rate’ (or £20,480 in certain circumstances), a job at least at the intermediate skill level (RFQ3 or above), and English language skills. As Jonathan Portes has recently observed, the new immigration system represents a major liberalisation for non-EU migrants, since about half of all full-time jobs would now qualify someone for a Tier 2 visa. 113 The visa requirements in essence prevent so-called low-skilled migration, although sector-specific alternatives might be rolled out such as the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Pilot programme designed for the agricultural sector. Employers in the secondary segment employing low-wage and precarious workers are likely to be lose out by these changes, and there is already some evidence of this in sectors such as hospitality. 114

The above analysis reveals that legal institutions have played an important mediating role in the relationship between migration and labour markets since 1945, when sustained immigration to the UK began. The specific mediating role has shifted over time. During the Fordist period of accumulation, which saw an influx of migrant workers from the former Commonwealth countries, the legal institutions funnelled workers into semi and unskilled jobs in export-oriented manufacturing and the expanding services sector, ensuring that they remained there by hindering their promotion. Organising by migrants shaped the labour market by creating a legal institution that promoted equality norms. In the post-Fordist period of accumulation, major reforms to labour market institutions created a highly flexible but segmented labour market. The wave of migrants that arrived in the new millennium, particularly from E-8 and E-2 countries, was channelled into jobs at both the upper and lower ends of the labour market. The legal institutions operate to keep migrants initially placed in the secondary sector confined to it. As a corollary, given that the UK has decided to restrict the migration of ‘low-skilled’ and low-wage workers going forward, are we likely to see the predictions of anti-migrant fabulists about rising wages and plentiful jobs come true? It is unlikely. Rather, we can be fairly sure that as long as the legal institutions of the labour market remain unchanged, the dynamics described in this article will remain in place.

This article was presented at an online event organised by the ‘Work on Demand’ team in June 2021 and benefited greatly from the comments received from members of the audience. I also want to thank Bridget Anderson, Ruth Dukes, Paddy Ireland and the two anonymous reviewers who provided very helpful feedback on an earlier draft. All errors of fact and interpretation, of course, remain my own.

These arguments was often raised in the fractious debate leading up to the UK’s vote on membership of the European Union—see, eg, C. Cooper, ‘Boris Johnson Says “Uncontrolled” Immigration from EU Is Driving Down Wages and Putting Pressure on NHS’ The Independent (23 March 2016). https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-says-uncontrolled-immigration-eu-driving-down-wages-and-putting-pressure-nhs-a6948346.html (accessed 15 July 2021).

See, eg, S. Nickell and J. Saleheen, ‘The Impact of Immigration on Occupational Wages: Evidence from Britain’ (London: Bank of England, 2015). Staff Working Paper No. 574. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/working-paper/2015/the-impact-of-immigration-on-occupational-wages-evidence-from-britain.pdf?la=en&hash=16F94BC8B55F06967E1F36249E90ECE9B597BA9C ; S. Lemos and J. Portes, ‘New Labour? The Impact of Migration from Central and Eastern European Countries on the UK Labour Market’ (Bonn: Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (Institute for the Study of Labor), 2008) Discussion Paper Series IZA DP No. 3756. https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/3756/new-labour-the-impact-of-migration-from-central-and-eastern-european-countries-on-the-uk-labour-market ; C. Dustmann, F. Fabbri and I. Preston, ‘The Impact of Immigration on the British Labour Market’ (2005) 115 Economic Journal F324.

C. Devlin and others, ‘Impacts of Migration on UK Native Employment: An Analytical Review of the Evidence’ (London: Home Office and Department of Businesses Innovation & Skills, 2014) Occasional Paper 19. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/287287/occ109.pdf .

M. Ruhs, ‘“Independent Experts” and Immigration Policies in the UK: Lessons from the Migration Advisory Committee and the Migration Observatory’ in M. Ruhs, K. Tamas and J. Palme (eds), Bridging the Gaps: Linking Research to Public Debates and Policy-Making on Migration and Integration (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2019), at 72.

D. Metcalf (Chair), ‘Analysis of the Impacts of Migration’ (London: Migration Advisory Committee, 2012); D. Metcalf (Chair), ‘Migrants in Low-Skilled Work: The Growth of EU and Non-EU Labour in Low-Skilled Jobs and Its Impact on the UK’ (London: Migration Advisory Committee, 2014); A. Manning (Chair), ‘EEA Migration in the UK: Final Report’ (London: Migration Advisory Committee, 2018).

On the left, a crude reading of Marxism arrives at the same position—see, eg, A. Nagle, ‘The Left Case Against Open Borders’ (2018) II American Affairs . https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/11/the-left-case-against-open-borders/ . However, sophisticated and contextual analyses present a more complicated picture: see, eg, C. Czabla, ‘Reading Marx on Migration’ ( Legal Form , 30 July 2018). https://legalform.blog/2018/07/30/reading-marx-on-migration-chris-szabla/ .

M. Ruhs and C. Vargas-Silva, ‘The Labour Market Effects of Immigration’ (The Migration Observatory 2020) Briefing. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-labour-market-effects-of-immigration/ (accessed 29 April 2021).

J. Portes, What Do We Know and What Should We Do About Immigration? (London: Sage Publications, 2019), at 29.

See, eg, S. Deakin and F. Wilkinson, The Law of the Labour Market: Industrialization, Employment, and Legal Evolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); G. M. Hodgson, Conceptualizing Capitalism: Institutions, Evolution, Future (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015); S. Deakin and others, ‘Legal Institutionalism: Capitalism and the Constitutive Role of Law’ (2017) 45 Journal of Comparative Economics 188; K. Pistor, The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019). See Section 2 of this paper for further elaboration.

G. M. Hodgson, ‘What Are Institutions?’ (2006) 40 Journal of Economic Issues 1.

J. Howe, R. Johnstone and R. Mitchell, ‘Constituting and Regulating the Labour Market for Social and Economic Purposes’ in C. Arup and others (eds), Labour Law and Labour Market Regulation (Sydney: Federation Press, 2006).

See, eg, definition of ‘migrant worker’ in International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (adopted 18 December 1990, entered into force 1 July 2003) 2220 UNTS 3.

For a good discussion of the neoclassical theory on the demand for labour and supply of labour, see J. E. King, Labour Economics , 2nd edn (London: MacMillan, 1990), Chs 2 and 3.

See, eg, G. M. Hodgson, The Evolution of Institutional Economics (London: Routledge, 2004).

Hodgson, ‘What Are Institutions?’ (n.10).

J. L. Campbell and O. K. Pedersen, ‘Introduction’, The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

See above n.9.

Legal norms and enforcement mechanisms clearly play an important role in the functioning of labour markets, although there are varying conceptualisations of the role that law plays in regulating the exchange of labour power for money. In the neoclassical and Hayekian traditions, which are quick to condemn the market-distorting effects of law, there is still an acknowledgement that certain laws, primarily property and contract, play an important market-facilitative role: see A. Lang, ‘Market Anti-Naturalisms’ in J. Destautels-Stein and C. Tomlins (eds), Searching for Contemporary Legal Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Deakin and Wilkinson (n.9).

While the Duty to Work and migration law will work in tandem to control supply in labour markets, they are also often pitted against each other since migration is said, erroneously, to undermine domestic welfare systems: see, eg, P. Hansen, A Modern Migration Theory: An Alternative Economic Approach to Failed EU Policy (London: Agenda Publishing, 2021).

L. Tilley and R. Shilliam, ‘Raced Markets: An Introduction’ (2018) 23 New Political Economy 534.

On the social construction of race, see, eg, M. Omi and H. Winant, Racial Formation in the United States , 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2015).

R. Miles and M. Brown, Racism , 2nd edn (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). See also A. Sivanandan, ‘Race, Class and the State: The Black Experience in Britain’ 17 Race and Class 347.

S. Virdee, Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); R. Shilliam, Race and the Undeserving Poor: From Abolition to Brexit (Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing, 2018).

Hodgson sees the process of evolution through the lens of a redeemed social Darwinianism shorn of its racially legitimating applications: G. M. Hodgson, Economics and Evolution: Bringing Life Back into Economics , reprint edition (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996). Deakin and Wilkinson, influenced by systems theory, see legal evolution as only weakly linked with economic transformations: Deakin and Wilkinson (n.9).

W. Streeck, ‘Institutions in History: Bringing Capitalism Back in’ (Cologne: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, 2009). https://www.mpifg.de/pu/mpifg_dp/dp09-8.pdf .

R. Boyer and Y. Saillard, ‘A Summary of Régulation Theory’ in Robert Boyer and Yves Saillard (eds), Régulation Theory: The State of the Art (London: Routledge, 2002). For the text that is often seen as launching this perspective, see M. Aglietta, A Theory of Capitalist Regulation—The US Experience (London: Verso, 2015).

P. Thompson, ‘Disconnected Capitalism: Or Why Employers Can’t Keep Their Side of the Bargain’ (2003) 17 Work, Employment and Society 359; M. Vidal, ‘Postfordism as a Dysfunctional Accumulation Regime: A Comparative Analysis of the USA, the UK and Germany’ (2013) 27 Work, Employment and Society 451.

R. Middleton, The British Economy Since 1945 (London: MacMillan, 2000), 25. Cf. those who thought that the period following the Second World War was marred by a series of malaises including low rates of growth relative to comparable economies, balance of payment problems, and eclipsed imperial ambitions that acted as a drain on resources, including A. Shonfield, British Economic Policy Since the War (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1958).

See Thompson (n.28); Vidal (n.28).

C. Holmes, John Bull’s Island: Immigration & British Society, 1871–1971 (London: MacMillan, 1988), at 210.

Ibid., at 214.

Ibid., at 216.

For a discussion of the various statuses under the 1948 Act and their relation, see I. S. Patel, We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire (London: Verso, 2021), 56–58.

N. El-Enany, Bordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), Ch 3.

B. Anderson, Us and Them?: The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

El-Enany (n.35).

G. K. Bhambra and J. Holmwood, ‘Colonialism, Postcolonialism and the Liberal Welfare State’ (2018) 23 N ew Political Economy 574.

Patel (n.34), at 46.

Ibid., at 51.

S. Castles and G. Kosack, Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe , 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). While unemployment rates spiked in 1946–47, the Labour Government’s policies directed at achieving full employment succeeded, managing to reduce unemployment to under 2% of the insured labour force from 1948 onwards: K. O. Morgan, Labour in Power, 1945–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), at 183.

J. Denman and P. McDonald, ‘Unemployment Statistics from 1881 to the Present Day’ (London: Labour Market Statistics Group, Central Statistical Office, 1996) Special Feature Prepared by the Government Statistical Service.

For a good contextual discussion of these concerns, see A. Gamble, Britain in Decline: Economic Policy, Political Strategy, and the British State , 4th edn (London: MacMillan, 1994).

Castles and Kosack (n.41), at Ch IX.

Sivanandan (n.23); B. Hepple, Race, Jobs and the Law in Britain (London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 1968), at Ch 4; R. Ramdin, The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain (London: Verso, 2017), at 238–40.

Ramdin (n.45).

Ibid, 234–5.

R. Lewis, ‘The Historical Development of Labour Law’ (1976) 14 British Journal of Industrial Relations 1.

Sivanandan (n.23).

Lord Wedderburn, The Worker and the Law , 3rd edn (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986), at Ch 4.

Lord Donovan (Chairman), ‘Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations, 1965–1968. Report Presented to Parliament by Command of Her Majesty’ (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1968).

O. Kahn-Freund, ‘Labour Law’, Selected Writings (London: Stevens, 1978). For an insightful discussion of how Kahn-Freund conceptualised the role of the state, see R. Dukes, ‘Otto Kahn-Freund and Collective Laissez-Faire: An Edifice Without a Keystone’ (2009) 72 Modern Law Review 220.

J. Wrench, ‘Unequal Comrades: Trade Unions, Equal Opportunity and Racism’ (Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick, 1986) Policy Papers in Ethnic Relations 5; E. J. B. Rose and Others, ‘Colour & Citizenship: A Report on British Race Relations’ (London: Institute of Race Relations, 1969), at Ch 19; S. Virdee, ‘Racism and Resistance in British Trade Unions, 1948–79’ in P. Alexander and R. Halpern (eds), Racializing Class, Classifying Race: Labour and Difference in Britain, the USA and Africa (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2000).

Wrench (n.53).

J. Hughes, ‘The British Economy: Crisis and Structural Change’ (1963) 21 New Left Review .

R. Trust (1982) cited in R. Miles, Racism & Migrant Labour (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), at 163. Immigration policy was enacted through a mixture of legislative and administrative rule changes. For example, the entry of partners and dependents was often regulated through changes to administrative rules.

Patel (n.34).

J. Clarke and J. Salt, ‘Work Permits and Foreign Labour in the UK: A Statistical Review’ [2003] Labour Market Trends 563.

There were strikes by female migrant workers in 1972 (Mansfield Hosiery Mills Ltd), 1974 (Imperial Typewriters) and 1976 (Grunwick)—see S. Anitha and R. Pearson, Striking Women: Struggles & Strategies of South Asian Women Workers From Grunwick to Gate Gourmet (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2018).

On Asian youth movements—see A. Ramamurthy, Black Star: Britain’s Asian Youth Movements (London: Pluto Press, 2013). On the IWA, see J. DeWitt, Indian Workers’ Associations in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). On CARD, see B. W. Heineman, Politics of the Powerless: Study of the Campaign against Racial Discrimination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972).

See Heineman (n.63).

El-Enany (n.35), at 106–7.

See, eg, J. Solomos, ‘From Equal Opportunity to Anti-Racism: Racial Inequality and the Limits of Reform’ (London: Birkbeck Public Policy Centre, Birkbeck College, 1989) Policy Papers in Ethnic Relations 17.

B. Hepple, ‘Have Twenty-Five Years of the Race Relations Acts in Britain Been a Failure?’ in B. Hepple and E. M. Szyszczak (eds), Discrimination: The Limits of Law (London: Mansell, 1992), 20.

C. O’Cinneide, ‘The Commission for Equality and Human Rights: A New Institution for New and Uncertain Times’ (2007) 36 Industrial Law Journal 141; B. Hepple, ‘The New Single Equality Act in Britain’ (2010) 5 Equal Rights Review 11.

N. Kaldor, ‘How Monetarism Failed’ (1985) May–June Challenge 4.

M. Moran, The Politics of the Financial Services Revolution: The USA, UK and Japan (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991), at Ch 3.

K. Albertson and P. Stepney, ‘1979 and All That: A 40-Year Reassessment of Margaret Thatcher’s Legacy on Her Own Terms’ (2020) 44 Cambridge Journal of Economics 319.

P. Davies and M. Freedland, Labour Legislation and Public Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), at Chs 9 and 10.

Ibid., at Ch 9.

K. D. Ewing, J. Hendy and C. Jones (eds), A Manifesto for Labour Law: Towards a Comprehensive Revision of Workers’ Rights (London: Institute of Employment Rights, 2016), at 4.

Thompson (n.28); Vidal (n.28).

Denman and McDonald (n.42).

J. Lovering, ‘A Perfunctory Sort of Post-Fordism: Economic Restructuring and Labour Market Segmentation in Britain in the 1980s’ (1990) 4 Work, Employment and Society 9.

P. Davies and M. Freedland, Towards a Flexible Labour Market: Labour Legislation and Regulation Since the 1990s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), at 11. See also H. Collins, ‘Independent Contractors and the Challenge of Vertical Disintegration to Employment Protection Laws’ (1990) 10 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 353.

For a good summary of the various theories of labour market dualism/segmentation, see J. Peck, Workplace: The Social Regulation of Labour Markets (New York: The Guilford Press, 1996), at Ch. 3 and S. Deakin, ‘Addressing Labour Market Segmentation: The Role of Labour Law’ (Governance and Tripartism Department, International Labour Office 2013) Working Paper 52.

C. Brown, Black and White: The Third PSI Survey (London: Heinemann, 1984).

‘International Migration: A Recent History—Office for National Statistics’ (15 January 2015). https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/articles/internationalmigrationarecenthistory/2015-01-15 (accessed 1 May 2021).

El-Enany (n.35), at 126. For the increased numbers, see J. Salt and V. Bauer, ‘Managing Foreign Labour Immigration to the UK: Government Policy and Outcomes Since 1945’ (London: UCL Migration Research Unit, 2020).

Clarke and Salt (n.60).

J. Salt and R. T. Kitching, ‘Labour Migration and the Work Permit System in the United Kingdom’ (1990) 28 International Migration 267.

P. W. Walsh, ‘Asylum and Refugee Resettlement in the UK’ (The Migration Observatory 2021) Briefing. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/ (accessed 1 May 2021).

See, eg, R. Heffernan, New Labour and Thatcherism: Political Change in Britain (London: Palgrave, 2001).

For a distillation of ‘Third Way’ thinking, see H. Collins, ‘Is There a Third Way in Labour Law?’ in J. Conaghan, R. M. Fischl and K. Klare (eds), Labour Law in an Era of Globalization: Transformative Practices & Possibilities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). For a discussion of the distance between the practice of New Labour and the ideology of Third Way, see S. Fredman, ‘The Ideology of New Labour Law’ in C. Barnard, S. Deakin and G. Morris (eds), The Future of Labour Law: Liber Amicorum Sir Bob Hepple (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2004).

‘Fairness at Work. Presented to Parliament by the President of the Board of Trade by Command of Her Majesty’ (1998) Cm 3968.

For extended analyses of New Labour’s reform to the legal institutions of the labour market, see T. Novitz and P. Skidmore, Fairness at Work (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2001); A. Bogg, The Democratic Aspects of Trade Union Recognition (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2004).

Deakin (n.80).

B. Anderson and M. Ruhs, ‘Migrant Workers: Who Needs Them? A Framework for the Analysis of Staff Shortages, Immigration, and Public Policy’ in M. Ruhs and B. Anderson (eds), Who Needs Migrant Workers? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

W. Sommerville, Immigration under New Labour (Bristol: Policy Press, 2007). For a sophisticated account of the economic, ideological and institutional factors leading to New Labour’s position on immigration, see E. Consterdine, Labour’s Immigration Policy: The Making of the Migration State (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

M. Fernández-Reino, ‘Migrants in the UK Labour Market: An Overview’ (The Migration Observatory 2021) Briefing. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-in-the-uk-labour-market-an-overview/ .

N. Lillie and I. Greer, ‘Industrial Relations, Migration, and Neoliberal Politics: The Case of the European Construction Sector’ (2007) 35 Politics & Society 551; C. Woolfson, ‘Labour Migration, Neoliberalism and Ethno-Politics in the New Europe: The Latvian Case’ (2009) 41 Antipode 952.

Salt and Bauer (n.83).

M. Zou, ‘Employer Demand for “Skilled” Migrant Workers: Regulating Admission under the United Kingdom’s Tier 2 (General) Visa’ in J. Howe and R. Owens (eds), Temporary Labour Migration in the Global Era: The Regulatory Challenges (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2016).

M. Sobolewska and R. Ford, Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), at 30.

Office of National Statistics, ‘Unemployment Rate (Aged 16 and Over, Seasonally Adjusted)’ ( Labour Market Statistics Time Series ). https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment/timeseries/mgsx/lms (accessed 19 May 2021).

B. Anderson, ‘Migration, Immigration Controls and the Fashioning of Precarious Workers’ (2010) 24 Work, Employment and Society 300.

A. Lentin, ‘Cameron’s Immigration Hierarchy: Indians Good, Eastern Europeans Bad’ The Guardian (18 February 2013). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/18/cameron-immigration-indians-good >.

Anderson and Ruhs (n.92).

ERA 1996, s 108(1).

For an insightful discussion of how the illegality doctrine in relation to employment claims is likely to be treated under a situation of statutory illegality, see A. Bogg, ‘Irregular Migrants and Fundamental Social Rights: The Case of Back-Pay under the English Law on Illegality’ in B. Ryan (ed), Migrant Labour and the Reshaping of Employment Law (Oxford: Hart Publishing, forthcoming).

P. Connor and J. S. Passel, ‘Europe’s Unauthorized Immigrant Population Peaks in 2016, Then Levels Off’ (Washington, DC: Pew Research Centre, 2019). https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/11/13/europes-unauthorised-immigrant-population-peaks-in-2016-then-levels-off/ .

D. Metcalf, United Kingdom Labour Market Enforcement Strategy 2018/19 (London: HM Government, 2018) Presented to Parliament pursuant to s 5 (1) of the Immigration Act 2016. https://www.webarchive.org.uk/access/resolve/20180522191539 or https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/705503/labour-market-enforcement-strategy-2018-2019-full-report.pdf (accessed 1 May 2021).

C. Barnard, ‘Enforcement of Employment Rights by Migrant Workers in the UK: The Case of EU-8 Nationals’ in Cathryn Costello and Mark Freedland (eds), Migrants at Work: Immigration and Vulnerability in Labour Law (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2014).

A. Geddes and S. Scott, ‘UK Food Businesses’ Reliance on Low-Wage Migrant Labour: A Case of Choice or Constraint’ in B. Anderson and M. Ruhs (eds), Who Needs Migrant Workers? Labour Shortages, Immigration, and Public Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

A. Batnitzky and L. McDowell, ‘The Emergence of an “Ethnic Economy”? The Spatial Relationships of Migrant Workers in London’s Health and Hospitality Sectors’ (2013) 36 Ethnic and Racial Studies 1997.

F. van Hooren, ‘Varieties of Migrant Care Work: Comparing Patterns of Migrant Labour in Social Care’ (2012) 22 Journal of European Social Policy 133.

J. Portes, ‘Immigration and the UK Economy After Brexit’ (Bonn: IZA Institute of Labor Economics, 2021) Discussion Paper Series.

D. Strauss, ‘Surge in Hiring as Hospitality Reopens Adds to Pressure on Labour Market’ [2021] Financial Times . https://www.ft.com/content/98c3a781-7661-41a7-b6a3-4ff9a0a10b9b .

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Vongai S. Ruzungunde Department of English and Comparative Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Fort Hare University, Alice, South Africa Sindiso Zhou Department of English and Comparative Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Fort Hare University, Alice, South Africa Ruzungunde, V.S. & Zhou, S., 2021, ‘Attitudes towards migrant workers in South Africa: A critical discourse analysis’, 2(0), a36. 15 Apr. 2021; 08 Oct. 2021; 10 Dec. 2021 © 2021. The Author(s). Licensee: AOSIS. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The influx of migrants from neighbouring countries has contributed to diversity in South Africa. This has caused on-going clashes between local residents and migrants. This article explores the role of discourse towards enabling a cohesive society. There has been much focus on migrants working in South Africa over the 2020 December festive season as many faced challenges in travelling to their respective countries because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This limelight exposed the underlying discrimination towards migrants in South Africa remain regardless of the South African progressive Constitution that values and respects individuals as well as protecting them from discrimination. This article adopts threat theory and uses critical discourse analysis to highlight the existing and continued discrimination towards migrant workers. The article exposes the causes of social inequalities, which can assist the government in decision-making towards reducing the inequality gap in service delivery. Public viewer comments on the news updates on migrants’ travel that were posted on the national news websites over the 2020 festive season were analysed. Critical Discourse analysis (CDA) was employed as a method of analysis in this article. The article intends to add to the existing body of knowledge and to also inform local government towards canvasing agenda that incorporate all human rights and enable a cohesive society by considering the role of discourse as an enabler of the problems experienced in societies. The results show that discourse contributes to negative attitudes, hate speech, discrimination and stereotyping towards migrants in South Africa. migrant workers; critical discourse analysis; diversity; attitudes; labour migration. South Africa (SA) is often referred to as a rainbow nation because of its diverse nature. Diversity in SA can be witnessed through the different ethnic groups and different official languages that the nation has embraced. In South Africa, four major ethnic groups, namely the Sesotho-Setswana, the Nguni (which consists of Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele and Swazi), the Venda and the Shangaan-Tsonga group, make up the majority of the Black population (South Africa’s Diverse Culture Artistic and Linguistic Heritage ). The South African population also comprises the white population with the majority (60%) being Afrikaans speaking and the remaining 40% being English speakers (South Africa’s Diverse Culture Artistic and Linguistic Heritage ). The South African population also comprises mixed-races, who have a mixed lineage. There are 11 official languages in South Africa namely English, Afrikaans, Ndebele, Sepedi or Northern Sotho, Xhosa, Venda, Tswana, Zulu, Southern Sotho, Swazi or Siswati and Tsonga (South Africa’s Diverse Culture Artistic and Linguistic Heritage ). To compound the diversity challenge, SA has embraced different nationalities within its boundaries as evidenced by the migration of many individuals mostly from the neighbouring countries such as Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and so on, in pursuit of better opportunities for economic advancement (ILO Report ). According to Mukumbang, Ambe and Adebiyi ( ), an estimated 2 million foreign-born migrants of working age (15–64) were living in SA in 2017, representing 5.3% of the South African labour force, and to date, the foreign-born migrant population in SA is estimated to be around 4.2 million (Garba ). For this article, focus is on the diverse nature of SA in relation to migrants. South Africa is an attractive destination for people escaping their home countries in the pursuit of a more dignifying and humane survival because of its commitment towards upholding human rights and the rights of foreign migrants. The South African economy is one of the most advanced economies in Africa and it has made a notable contribution with regard to the influx of migrants from other countries. The extraordinary flow of migrants into SA has put the South African government in a challenging position with regard to its stand to comply with its pledge towards upholding human rights, whilst at the same time delivering its promise to uplift the socioeconomic welfare of its citizens. The South African government is also faced with challenges in trying to balance delivery of its promises towards its own citizens as the nation still fights in reducing socio-economic gaps created through apartheid, such as racial discrimination (Garba ). Regardless of the political will and efforts by the government to accommodate migrants in SA, the increasing economic and financial hardships in the country have led to the government implementing and often adjusting laws that impact negatively on the lives of foreign-born migrants in multiple ways (Mukumbang et al. ). The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable development of the International Labour Organisation (ILO ) acknowledges the positive impact of migrants towards inclusive growth and sustainable development and also places focus on achieving decent work as one of its goals. The objectives to be achieved under the decent work goals include: (1) empowering migrants and societies to realise full inclusion and social cohesion, (2) minimise the adverse drivers and structural factors that compel people to leave their country of origin and (3) facilitate fair and ethical recruitment and safeguard conditions that ensure decent work. Of significance to the ILO’s decent work and fair migration agendas is also the target 8:8 ‘protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrants and those in precarious employment’. A report by the World Bank ( ) revealed that migrants had a positive impact on jobs and wages in SA. The report highlighted that migrants are highly entrepreneurial, with most being self-employed, which carries a positive effect on the economy as their entrepreneurship, if successful, also provides multiplier effects in the South African economy. According to the World Bank Report ( ), migrants and locals can hold jobs that complement each other instead of competing. By exploring the role of discourse in enabling negative attitudes, this study intends to contribute towards local governance by highlighting the role discourse can play in administration and policy implementation towards changing the current narrative. The government needs to highlight the job opportunities that exist and discredit myths and participate in discourse and policymaking that mirrors a more complex reality than the ‘theft of local jobs’ by migrants and refugees. The social and economic inequalities that exist within the SA economy coupled with issues such as institutionalised racial discrimination pose challenges for foreign migrants as the local citizens’ frustrations can be channelled towards them regardless of the government’s efforts to uphold human rights for both locals and foreigners (Mukumbang et al. ). Economic frustration, joblessness and competition over scarce resources are foundations often used to create a setting that can give rise to anti-migrant sentiments and attitudes. Many South African workers seem to consider foreign co-workers to be responsible for low wages and poor working conditions as supported by many managers’ claims that foreigners are willing to work hard at low costs (Di Paola ; The New Humanitarian ). In some cases, South African nationals often ascribe the economic frustrations, joblessness and the competition over scarce resources in SA as the foreign migrants’ responsibility (The New Humanitarian ). This breeds negative sentiments towards foreign migrants from the South African nationals. As such, foreign migrants may be subject to prejudice, discrimination and unfair experiences regardless of the South African government’s efforts to uphold human rights across all levels (Garba ). Many studies have focused on assessing attitudes towards migrants in SA through different dimensions including focusing on the four dimensions of attitudes towards foreigners based on social tolerance, interpersonal trust, employment preference and attitudes towards migrants. Some of these findings (Cozien ; Garba ; Schippers ) revealed intolerance from South Africans towards foreigners, growing levels of distrust amongst South Africans towards foreigners. Conversely, some findings also revealed the shift in the mindset of some South Africans from previously held mentality that employment preference is to be awarded to South African citizens over foreigners as more individuals are becoming either neutral or dismissive about the awarding of preference. Some of the studies (Masuku ) also revealed that South Africans were fostering positive attitudes towards migration although the greatest portion of respondents agreed that foreigners are to be allowed into SA on the condition that certain criteria are met. Evident in all the studies, are the negative attitudes held towards migrants. Whilst many studies have been conducted on attitudes towards migrants, studies that focus on the role of discourse in perpetuating these attitudes are rare. This article addresses the identified gap by exploring the role of discourse in the continuous enactment of negative attitudes and how it can be used to enable social cohesion. As a result of the lockdown restrictions implemented following the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak in early 2020, the December 2020 holidays were met with commotion as people travelled to their respective homes after a long time without spending time with their loved ones and families. The easing of these restrictions to accommodate travel brought much limelight on migrants as they travelled to their respective homes (places of origin) for the festive season and the border posts were abnormally congested. The discussions around the congestion and suffering experienced during this period brought to light subtle issues that still exist in terms of migrants and local citizens’ relations. This article contributes to the existing body of knowledge in local governance in understanding the role of discourse in the continued tensions in relations with and sentiments towards migrant workers by South African nationals. The article also carries a significant contribution for local government administration as it focuses on exposing some of the root causes of social inequalities, which can aid the government in making more informed decisions in the fight to narrow the inequality gap in service delivery across all spheres. Migrant: ]n umbrella term, not defined under International law, reflecting the common lay understanding of a person who moves away from his or her place of usual residence, whether within a country or across an international border, temporarily or permanently, for a variety of reasons. (International Organization for Migration :132) Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was employed as a method of analysis in this article. The CDA approach has its base on language and text being influencers of how values and perceptions are enacted and reproduced in people (Van Dijk ). The CDA approach concentrates on analysing the veiled structural connections of supremacy, discrimination, power and control as revealed in language (Van Dijk ). It preserves the outlooks that society contributes significantly in the way language, text and communication are moulded, designed and understood and how these impact values, ethics, morals, views and perceptions of different concepts. The CDA approach intends to make discourse more noticeable and translucent within societies as it is regarded as a blurred object of power. Lexical analysis, one of Fairclough’s ( ) methods of analysis was used to analyse public viewers’ comments on the news headlines that were broadcasted focusing on migrant travel during the festive season of December 2020. Fairclough’s ( ) model for CDA consists of three processes, which are inter-related and linked to three inter-related dimensions of CDA, namely the object of analysis, the process on which the object is produced and the socio-historical conditions, which govern the processes. In lexical analysis, text is analysed with focus on description, processing is also analysed with focus on interpretation and lastly there is also social analysis focusing on explanation. This approach enables focus to be placed on the signifiers that make up the text, the specific linguistic selections. This approach acknowledges that the choice of text or utterances is tied to the conditions of possibility of that utterance. Texts are instantiations of socially regulated discourses and the processes of production and reception are socially constrained. The news articles used in this paper were obtained online on one of the main and official websites of the public broadcaster, South African Broadcasting Corporation News, which provides news from within and across the world to the South African nation. Focus was on the news articles that were published during the festive season mainly between 23 and 27 December 2020 when the issues at the different border posts in particular, the Beitbridge border post. In this regard, the sampling was purposive. The news website and its official Facebook page are public platforms, which allow for viewers to publicly express themselves on any issue published on the page. It allows for some validity in analysing as actual views can be observed from the interactions amongst viewers and viewer comments on the platform. The migration of people from southern African countries into SA dates back to the 1800s (Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in SA ). It can be noticed that the migration of Black migrants has been a part of the South African urban and rural areas for over a century (Peberdy ). Foreign migrants have lived in SA as contract workers, documented and undocumented migrants, contributing to the construction of the South African economy into one of the strongest in the region (Mukumbang et al. ). Most migrants have functioned as circular migrants retaining homes and families in their countries of citizenship, with others having established other family ties in SA too (Peberdy ). Labour migration is one of the main influencers of migration into SA. The industrial development in SA and its strong economic position in the continent are the magnets attracting high volumes of migration for both skilled and unskilled labour migrants from within the region and across the globe, in pursuit of work opportunities in the mining, manufacturing and agricultural industries (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Global Trends ). South Africa is also considered to be the easy mediator and stepping stone for migration to Europe and America, hence most foreign migrants will opt to relocate to SA first en route to countries abroad. According to a report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Global Trends ( ), over 4 million migrants (excluding irregular migrants) were recorded in Southern Africa in the year 2013, with SA holding the largest number of migrants (2.4 million including 1.5 million from Zimbabwe) within its borders. According to the African Centre for Migration and Society ( ), a legal migrant who possesses the same qualifications, age, gender and belonging to the same ‘population group’ and residing in the same place as a South African citizen, has a higher prospect of being employed than a South African. As such, within most communities in SA where migrants reside and work, the conception held is that foreigners deprive South Africans of employment and other business opportunities and therefore pose a strain on the limited social services and amenities (Masuku ). These conceptions held in turn constitute the main drivers of xenophobia and other related experiences of foreign migrants in SA (Choane, Shulika & Mthombeni ; The New Humanitarian ). Some of the benefits awarded to foreign migrants include the right to study, work (where certain skills are required), access to medical services within SA. These benefits may have contributed to the influx of migrants into the Republic of South Africa. The large number of entries into the republic make it difficult for the government to regularise the national asylum system (Mukumbang et al. ). Other challenges such as administrative inefficiency and corruption added on to the mounting pressures in trying to deal with the volume of migrants, results in backlogs in processing and adjudication of documents, leaving some to stay without documentation or be forced to search for survival as undocumented migrants (Masuku ). Many migrants in SA find themselves undocumented and residing illegally as they flee their countries in pursuit of better living conditions in SA. As a result of the large numbers of migrants entering SA, the government finds it difficult to match up the long queues and filing in paperwork for the documentation of all migrants (Mukumbang et al. ). Out of desperation, most find themselves looking for employment without proper documentation. According to Di Paola ( ), it has become a norm amongst employers that foreign migrants work hard for less and as such they become vulnerable to exploitation and abuse working below the minimum wage out of desperation. This can also be evidenced in the domestic worker industry. A report by the ILO ( ) showed that many of the domestic workers in SA homes were migrants and mostly undocumented migrants, which increases their exposure to exploitation, abuse and poor working conditions. Many migrant workers are found in low and semi-skilled positions, which are often physically demanding and involve dangerous working conditions in terms of non-respect of minimum wages, withholding of wages, illegal deduction of fees and costs from migrant workers’ wages, excessive working hours, insufficient lunch breaks, daily, weekly and holidays’ rest periods, no payment of overtime and annual leave, withholding of passports and other identity documents, unjustified demands to carry out tasks other than those specified in the contract and unjustified terminations (ILO ). The social support structure for migrants in SA is relatively weak as compared with the native nationals (Business Insider South Africa ). The inequalities in social support structures were further revealed in the addressing of COVID-19 pandemic containment measures. Different economic and hunger alleviation measures were implemented in an effort to address some of the socio-economic hardship that the COVID-19 pandemic has left on the nation. Most foreign migrants were not included in the relief grants offered by the government yet they are also affected. Most of these businesses are owned by asylum-seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants (Mukumbang et al. ). Although their operations are equally affected by the COVID-19 crisis, they are not considered for the Business Relief Fund as they are automatically excluded based on the qualification criteria, which emphasises that businesses must be 100% South African owned, with at least 70% of employees being South Africans and also recipients must be tax compliant (Mukumbang et al. ). According to Business Insider South Africa ( ), some migrants employed in the formal sector and who were paying the necessary taxes before lockdown measures were imposed, did not receive their UIF (Unemployment Insurance Fund) payments whilst the South African workers received their UIF, with the argument being that the system used by the UIF to process payments does not recognise foreign passport numbers. The migration process has a bearing on both the native and the migrant population. According to Schippers ( ), the effects of the migration process can be seen in the different views and attitudes held by the native population towards the migrants and these can be negative or positive. Negative attitudes towards foreigners have been nurtured across the world where the rise of xenophobia directed towards migrants has been one of the more unambiguous displays (Carter ; Schippers ). According to Adam and Moodley ( ), 62 individuals (41 migrants from around Africa and 21 SA nationals mistaken for foreigners) were killed by mob groups across SA. May 2008 marked significant anti-migrant violence in SA according to the (2008) as cited by Schippers ( ). Violence against foreigners continued in SA as evidenced by the 2013 occurrence in the Zamdela Township in Sasolburg (Adam & Moodley ). There were protests initiated after residents displayed their dissatisfaction with regard to a proposed merger between two municipalities by looting foreign-owned shops. As cited by Schippers ( ), the (2008) contended that the violence enacted on foreigners in SA was a response to the perceptions held by the South African nationals that foreigners take away their job opportunities. A report by the International Organization for Migration ( ) on the 2008 xenophobic attacks stated that the use of violence against foreigners was a means used by South African citizens to reduce their competition for resources by sending foreigners away from their country. A recent example of attacks against foreigners was witnessed in July 2020 when SA truck drivers protested against the employment of foreign nationals, shutting down roads and setting trucks on fire resulting in fatalities in the process (SABC News 07 July ). The reason South Africans foster xenophobic and negative sentiments towards foreigners has gathered much attention since the violence in 2008. Integrated threat theory proposed by Stephan and Stephan ( ) has its basis on explaining the aspects of alleged threat that can result in prejudice between social groups. This theory is applicable to any social group that may feel susceptible to mistreatment in one way or the other by another group in the same space. The integrated threat theory deals with perceived threat not actual threat (Stephan & Stephan ). Perceived threat involves any threat that the members of a group can assume or believe that they can encounter from the other group (the threat) regardless of the existence or non-existence of those threats. An example relevant to this article would be the feeling held by local South African citizens that migrants from other countries take their jobs, as evidenced by the attack on foreign truck drivers in July 2020 (SABC News 07 July ). These perceptions held against the group perceived as a threat can result in prejudice amongst groups, which is often manifested in stereotypes and negative attitudes held towards migrants in this case. The Integrated Threat Theory envisages that undesirable pre-set verdicts about another group can result in prejudice and this prediction is based on research that established links between higher levels of prejudice towards a stereotyped group and the beliefs held in negatively rated stereotypical traits (Stephan, Ybarra & Morrison ). News on migrant travel made headlines over the 2020 festive season. Much news revolved around the challenges faced at the main border posts, as travellers found themselves stranded in long queues, congestion at the borders and roads leading to the borders. Much focus was on the Beitbridge border post which is one of the main border posts that link SA with other countries and is used for economic travel purposes and leisure for Zimbabwean residents and those travelling to Malawi, Zambia and Democratic Republic of Congo. The headlines trending on the news included ‘Calls for intervention at the Beitbridge border as several die in congestion’ (SABC News 26 December ), ‘Cross border travel: Thousands stuck at Beitbridge waiting to cross into SA’ (SABC News 06 January 2021), ‘Truck drivers frustrated as they remain stuck at the border’ (SABC News 25 December ), ‘Four truck drivers have died at Beitbridge Border post’ (eNCA news 24 December 2020). On the different news headlines posted on Facebook on South African Broadcast News pages and videos of the proceedings at the border post, viewers would express their views with regard to the situation in the comments section. It is these comments that were analysed for this article employing Richardson’s ( ) different methods of analysing newspapers as applicable. Richardson ( ) proposed different ways of analysing text that vary from syntax, modality and transitivity analysis (these place emphasis on sentences and the construction of propositions in sentence structuring), lexical analysis (analyses words with emphasis on the structuring of propositions) (see ).  Viewer comments on migrants situation in South Africa. Analysis of public viewer comments on the news headlines Negative-other representation and positive-other representation. The hate against my foreign brothers is real, death could have been avoided by all means. Some of your comments are unnecessary. I know some are bad, but we can’t paint all with the same brush. I have met good foreign people. (SABC News 2020a ) The given statement was a comment by one of the viewers after observing most of the comments made by others in respect of the situation faced by migrants at the border post. This comment suggests that most of the comments carry negative attitudes towards migrants hence saying ‘the hate against my foreign brothers is real’. Acknowledging that ‘some are bad’ presupposes the negative-other representation is true as it suggests that migrants are associated with doing bad and ‘we can’t paint them all with the same brush’ presupposes that although they are associated with bad, but if room is given, a few good can be picked from ‘them’, which refers back to uniformity and stereotyping. The given statement also demonstrates foregrounding, which focuses on making conclusions of a person based on what has been put on the foreground: They were supposed to stay in their own country, when we said they overpopulated our South Africa they said something about hatred! We don’t care! (SABC News 2020b ) Van Dijk’s ideological square concept as explained by Richardson ( 2007 ) can be observed in the given statement. Positive self-representation and negative-other representation are characteristics of the ideological square. Outsiders are represented in a negative way whereas insiders are portrayed in positive way. The given statement shows emphasis on negative characteristics towards migrants as sentiments are echoed, which show that migrants are overpopulating SA and if ‘they’ stay in ‘their countries’ then SA would not be overpopulated. in addition, the use of words such as ‘they’ ‘our’ ‘we’ highlights how migrants are associated with a certain social status or group, which is different from the one for South Africans as they refer themselves as ‘we’ and migrants as ‘them’. According to Blommaert (2005) in Richardson ( 2007 ), the use of such terminology signals intended social meanings. Foregrounding ‘They deserve what they are facing’ (SABC News 2020c ) Foregrounding can also be observed in this statement. Migrants are viewed in negative light and as such, there is no empathy towards the situation that they are facing and conclusions and judgements are made in negative view. This highlights the social values held by some with regard to migrants. Naming and referencing Perhaps they will learn to remain in their own countries and build conducive environment to strengthen African economy. (SABC News 2020a ) The naming and referencing using terms such as ‘they’ ‘their’ highlights that migrants are viewed in uniformity and suggests a stereotype associated with migrants. The statement also presupposes that the migrants deserve the suffering experienced at the border and this will make them to stay in their own country and focus instead on developing their home country instead of thinking about returning to SA, which signals some relief for South African citizens. ‘Fact is people are dying at the border and it’s sad. We all deserve to live’ (SABC News 2020c ) the referencing used in this sentence suggests oneness. It echoes the sentiments of one who understands that whether migrant or non-migrant, ‘we’ all deserve to be treated fairly and with dignity and no one should suffer because of their nationality: Lesson learnt, stay in your own country to avoid such. (SABC News 2020a ) This comment was made by one individual following the news that many were dying at the border because of congestion, excessive heat and no sanitation and resources. It can be observed from the comment that the statement carries negative attitudes towards migrants as the viewer who made the comment strongly believes that the migrants dying at the border are learning their lesson by undergoing the unsettling conditions faced at the border during the festive season, which will make them aware that they should not come into SA. The statement presupposes that the migrants deserve what they are experiencing and maybe by going through it they will learn to stay in their countries and not return to SA. There was unrest on the comment section as it also became a war zone with some migrants responding and fighting back on some of the comments. In response to the given statement, one viewer commented ‘We are not going anywhere. Death is everywhere’ the statement in the response ‘we’ suggests that the respondent is a migrant as they responded in counter attack to a comment that suggested that migrants should return to their home countries. ‘We can’t continue to take care of foreigners. We are also tired and have enough problems. They must not come back’ ‘Why can’t they boost their own economy instead of painting other people’s houses when yours is a mess’ (SABC News 2020c ) to which others responded asking if they had physically taken care of a foreigner. This statement and counter statements presupposes that local South African citizens view migrants as burdening their economy in line with some literature (Garba 2020 ; Masuku 2020 ), which highlights that local citizens negatively assume that migrants are responsible for unemployment and shortage of resources in SA. Some migrants commented on the Facebook platform that they were paying taxes and boosting the economy of SA and other local South African citizens responded back saying they should boost their economy instead. Multimodal analysis On the SABC news webpage on the Facebook platform, there is also an option to react with an emoji-image to any news posted. These images range from faces showing happiness, laughing face, a like button, angry face (a person chooses to react with the image that best describes his or her feelings to the post). With regard to the news posted about the challenges encountered by migrants in travel, there are a number of viewers who reacted with a laughing image to the post. According to Kress and Van Leeuwen ( 2001 )’s analysis of images under the Multimodal Critical Discourse analysis (MCDA), discourse can also be communicated through images, which are often by passed in our everyday lives but carry messages (Dicks 2019 ). As can be observed in this case, a person reacting with a laughing image to a story portraying suffering can be interpreted as having no remorse and in this case, hints on elements of hate existing towards migrants. Some of the migrant travellers who were interviewed by the SABC News, 26 December 2020d expressed their frustrations regarding the economic situation in their home country and emphasised that they would rather endure the long queues and congestion as they pursue better living conditions. In news broadcasted by the NewzRoom Afrika, 06 January 2021, the footage revealed people in long queues, other sitting down showing signs of fatigue and others sweating. A few who were interviewed expressed their concerns with the lack of adherence to social distancing or any of the measures implemented to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Others raised frustrations regarding the lack of more personnel to assist at the border posts as the government knew that people would be travelling. The SABC News ( 2020d ) had an interview with the parliamentary portfolio committee on 25 December 2020. The representative highlighted that the committee had taken measures to make the situation better, such as the local municipality to provide sanitation and water at the border points and the Department of Home affairs also increased personnel at customs and also proposals for a one stop shop implementation in the 2021 calendar. The views of political leaders on the issues around migrants in SA were also sought to enhance a wide base of information. In an online IOL News ( 2020 ) article with the headline ‘Xenophobic South Africans can’t champion #BlackLivesMatter-Malema’ Julius Malema the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) political party expressed his concerns over some South Africans’ support of the #BlackLivesmatter global movement whilst remaining silent on the attack of foreigners: Whilst you kill Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Nigerians and Somalians here in South Africa and you call them “makwerekwere” and all sorts of names, today you are holding a placard saying #BlackLivesmatter? You supported the killing of your fellow brothers and sisters, … that is narrow nationalism. (IOL News 2020 ) The given statement made by the EFF leader reveals some of the negative actions of local South African citizens towards migrants. In the statement, the EFF leader is clearly against the attacks and discrimination towards foreign nationals by local South African citizens. ‘We are one family. Borders were imposed on us’ in this statement, it can be observed that the political leader is advocating for oneness and unity. With their influence, political leaders can play a major role to advocate for change in perceptions and hate towards foreign nationals. The results reveal that discourse does contribute to the continued evidence of negative attitudes manifested in hate speech, discrimination and stereotyping in many individuals towards migrants in SA. The echoing of these sentiments on a public platform can be leeway to the reproduction, reinforcement of such attitudes to others through these open platforms. The results show that many of South Africans believe that their economy is being weighed down by foreigners and if they were to return to their countries, then things would be better for them. These findings confirm with the works of Mukumbang et al. ( 2020 ) and Schippers ( 2015 ). Major themes emerging from the results through discourse were negative attitudes and stereotyping. Negative attitudes Based on the comments from the comment section of the news report on Facebook, it was observed that many individuals felt that the migrants deserved the harsh conditions that they were facing at their border posts as a result of congestion and long queues at the border posts. Others felt that the borders were supposed to be opened for the migrants to go to their countries, and then closed and not be opened to to allow them to return back, which would be a relief to the citizens of South Africa Stereotyping Stereotyping was echoed in most comments as migrants were grouped into a certain class different from that of local citizens in their address. Migrants were stereotyped as poor and a threat to locals’ jobs. The negative attitude towards migrants can be observed in the hate speech, the negative-other representations and discrimination. However, there were others who showed respect for humanity regardless of nationality, who sympathised with the situation experienced at the border and felt that no human being deserved to experience such challenges and frustrations. These comments that showed empathy were met with negative reproach in some aspects. Other individuals expressed their awareness of socioeconomic realities by highlighting how much migrants contributed towards the socioeconomic development of the nation hence the need to unite and stand as one. They also emphasised on how migrants also benefit the economy and hence are not taking from the economy. Some of the comments between migrants and SA native nationals resembled a war zone as harsh words were exchanged and this revealed the differences that still exist between the two groups, echoing the views of Garba ( 2020 ) and Masuku ( 2020 ). Negative attitudes and hate towards migrants are still evident in SA and discourse plays a role in their continued existence. Although the government has amended their policies to promote locals first through affirmative action and employment equity acts, beliefs are still held amongst individuals that migrants are the reason behind unemployment and scarcity of resources in SA. There is need for the government and policymakers to raise awareness with regard to such issues through their policy implementations and work policies on the clear criteria that result in employment of migrants in the absence of local qualified personnel. Awareness should also be raised about human rights and the rights to humanity, which everyone should understand and respect. As discourse plays a role in the enactment or reproduction of these attitudes, using the platforms that the majority familiarise with to raise this awareness on oneness, unity and respect for humanity can be one way to dispel negative perceptions and attitudes held in the minds of people one step at a time. This will in turn allow for a smooth flow in implementation of local government policies and benefit from the diverse opportunities presented by locals and migrants, as issues are addressed in a holistic manner. Acknowledgements Competing interests. The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. Authors’ contributions V.S.R. contributed towards the conceptualisation of the article, research methodology, formal analysis and the writing of the original draft S.Z. contributed towards the conceptualisation, supervision and writing-review and editing of the article. Funding information This article did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. Data availability The data will be available on the link provided from the journal publishers. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. Adam, H. & Moodley, K., 2013, Imagined liberation: Xenophobia, citizenship and identity in South Africa, Germany and Canada , SUN PRESS, Stellenbosch. 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Journal of Local Government Research and Innovation    |    ISSN: 2709-7412 (PRINT)    |    ISSN: 2788-919X (ONLINE) ISSN: 2788-919X Skip Global Navigation Jump to section navigation Near Eastern and Judaic Studies BRANDEIS HOME Historical Overview Office of the President Office of the Provost Administration Distinguished Faculty Notable Alumni Working at Brandeis Commencement Offices A-Z Majors and Minors School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis International Business School Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Heller School for Social Policy and Management Rabb School of Continuing Studies Rabb School: Graduate Professional Studies Summer School Faculty Guide Justice Brandeis Semester Academic Calendar Library and Technology Services Undergraduate Admissions Online Programs Financial Aid Rose Art Museum Theater Department Productions Brandeis Concert Series Creative Arts Award Brandeis Tickets Women's Studies Research Center Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts Arts@Brandeis Calendar BrandeisNOW Campus Calendar Brandeis Magazine Office of Communications For Journalists Centers and Institutes Opportunities for Undergraduate Students Recent Awards Opportunities for Graduate Students Opportunities for Faculty Administration and Support Division of Student Affairs Academic Services Student Accessibility Support International Students and Scholars Office Graduate Student Affairs The Feminist Sexual Ethics Project Academic Programs Antiquity and Slavery Slave Lullabies Slavery in the U.S. Contemporary Slavery Sexual Assault, Race, and Difference Jewish Sexual Ethics Christian Sexual Ethics Muslim Sexual Ethics News and Events Conferences Domestic and Migrant Workers Millions of people around the world are on the move, trying to adapt to life in countries not their own. In some cases this movement is voluntary, as people search for better life opportunities, education, or work. In many more cases, however, the migration is forced, as people flee poverty, civil unrest, and war, or as they search for employment that will simply allow them to survive. A migrant worker is a person engaged in a remunerated activity in a country of which he or she is not a national. A domestic worker is defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as “a wage-earner working in a private household, under whatever method and period of remuneration, who may be employed by one or by several employers who receive no pecuniary gain from this work.” Domestic workers are usually occupied as housekeepers, nannies, cooks, drivers, gardeners, and other personal servants. Some domestic and migrant workers labor under slave-like conditions. In the last decade there has been an increase in a form of modern-day slavery that is practiced in the “developed” or “first” world: the exploitation of foreign migrant domestic workers. Domestic workers who are taken to other countries by diplomats and corporate executives are among the most abused and vulnerable migrant workers. Although not bought as slaves, fundamental human rights of migrants are frequently violated or ignored. The exploitation can range from wage and hour violations to physical and sexual abuse. In many cases employers have withheld legal documents of migrant workers, thereby restricting their mobility. Domestic workers such as these are not covered by labor protection legislation; that fact combined with language and cultural barriers makes them easy targets for exploitation. The Break the Chain Campaign (formerly the Campaign for Migrant Domestic Workers Rights), an organization that publicizes the plight of these workers in the United States, reports that most domestic workers are poor women from developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America who enter the United States on temporary visas. Once paperwork is filed for their visas, international institutions and embassies take a “hands-off” approach to the plight of these domestic workers. Prohibitions International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. Adopted by General Assembly resolution 45/158 of 18 December 1990. Related Sites International Resource Centre on the Human Rights of Migrants (CIDEHUM)   The Global Campaign for Ratification of the Convention on Rights of Migrants International Labour Organization End Slavery Now Content by Mini Singh Research Analyst, FSE Content in Arabic by Raja El Habti Research Assistant, FSE Top of page Collection Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives Migrant workers, photographer: dorothea lange. Imperial Valley, California, February and March 1937 Resettlement Administration, Lot 345 Dorothea Lange was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1895 and studied photography in New York City before the First World War. In 1919, she moved to San Francisco, where she earned her living as a portrait photographer for more than a decade. During the Depression's early years Lange's interest in social issues grew and she began to photograph the city's dispossessed. A 1934 exhibition of these photographs introduced her to Paul Taylor, an associate professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, and in February 1935 the couple together documented migrant farm workers in Nipomo and the Imperial Valley for the California State Emergency Relief Administration. Copies of the reports Lange and Taylor produced reached Roy Stryker, who offered Lange a job with the Resettlement Administration in August 1935. 1 Unlike the agency's other photographers, Lange did not move to Washington but used her Berkeley home as a base of operations. 2 She and Taylor were married that winter. Lange returned to the Imperial Valley in early 1937 for the Resettlement Administration. The valley was in a state of crisis, and on February 16 Lange reported on the situation to Stryker: I was forced to switch from Nipomo to the Imperial Valley because of the conditions there. They have always been notoriously bad as you know and what goes on in the Imperial is beyond belief. The Imperial Valley has a social structure all its own and partly because of its isolation in the state those in control get away with it. But this year's freeze practically wiped out the crop and what it didn't kill is delayed--in the meanwhile, because of the warm, no rain climate and possibilities for work the region is swamped with homeless moving families. The relief association offices are open day and night 24 hours. The people continue to pour in and there is no way to stop them and no work when they get there. 3 As many as six thousand migrants arrived in California from the Midwest every month, driven by unemployment, drought, and the loss of farm tenancy. In An American Exodus , which he co-authored with Lange, Taylor wrote that the Okies and Arkies had "been scattered like the shavings from a clean-cutting plane." Many drifted to the Imperial Valley after the completion of Boulder (Hoover) Dam in 1936, which guaranteed the valley a supply of water for irrigation. But the migrants, who competed with Mexicans and other immigrants for work, were offered "not land, but jobs on the land." 4 The land was held by relatively few owners. In 1935 one-third of the farm acreage in the six hundred square miles of the Imperial Valley consisted of operations in excess of five hundred acres; seventy-four individuals and companies controlled much of the cropland. 5 In his biography of Lange, Milton Meltzer includes a marvelous account of Lange's trip. He reports that shortages of funds had led Stryker to lay off the photographer in October 1936. After two months of anxiety for them both, Stryker was able to rehire Lange in late January 1937; the photographer and her friend Ron Partridge set out for the valley the day after Stryker approved the trip. Long, exhausting days of photography were followed by overnight stays in rickety tourist courts paid for by Lange's four-dollar-per-diem maintenance allowance. Partridge has described how Lange worked: She would walk through the field and talk to people, asking simple questions--what are you picking? . . . How long have you been here? When do you eat lunch? . . . I'd like to photograph you, she'd say, and by now it would be "Sure, why not," and they would pose a little, but she would sort of ignore it, walk around until they forgot us and were back at work. 6 In the file, Lange's ninety-seven Imperial Valley photographs from 1937 are integrated with more than one hundred other images of California migrants she made that year. Some of her Imperial Valley photographs document conditions: the makeshift camps on the banks of irrigation ditches, the use of irrigation water for cooking and washing, the crowds at the relief offices, and, when work was available, the stoop labor. Her photography was not limited to Okies and Arkies for she also photographed the camps occupied by Mexican laborers, a Japanese-owned farm, and Filipinos picking lettuce. The most poignant and moving photographs from Lange's trip convey a mood rather than describing circumstances or activities: the man hunkered at the edge of the field, the mother and child in the tent opening, and the trio of men, one of whom casts a defiant glance at the photographers. The photographs are character studies that render the textures of skin and clothing with an artist's eye and depict posture, gesture, and gaze with an ethnologist's. But their subjects are anonymous and the pictures become genre studies: "the pea picker" or the "jobless man on relief." Lange's photographs were intended to bolster support for the establishment of migrant camps in the area by the Resettlement Administration. On 12 March, five days after she returned home, Lange wrote Stryker that her "negatives are loaded with ammunition." She added that the situation was "no longer a publicity campaign for migratory agricultural labor camps" but rather "a major migration of people and a rotten mess." 7 Much of Lange's correspondence with Stryker during this period concerns the distribution of prints of these photographs. She saw an immediate need for pictures by the agencies endeavoring to help the migrants and received permission to supply prints to the head of the state emergency relief office in the Imperial Valley and to the Resettlement Administration's regional office. 8 She also wanted to supply photographs to a variety of other organizations and, between 1937 and 1940 the pictures were used in a report to the U.S. Senate, in An American Exodus , for a Works Progress Administration exhibit in San Francisco, and by a number of newspapers and periodicals. 9 Both Stryker and Lange were keen to place a story about migrants in Life magazine, but disagreements about who would edit and submit material to the magazine muddled the process. In December 1936, Stryker found himself in a debate with his boss about whether the agency or the photographer should submit the story, and whether the agency should approve the final text and layout. 10 The same issue also emerges in the correspondence between Lange and Stryker. On 16 February 1937, as she set out for the valley, Lange wrote that she had contacted Life about the story and that she wanted to send them "some of this new Imperial stuff to choose from, if they decide to run the series." 11 Stryker replied that "LIFE is terribly interested in a migrant lay-out, but we are holding everything up now, awaiting the new migrant stuff you can send us." 12 Ten days later, Lange asked, "Do you want me to do this story for Life, or shall I send on the material with factual captions, place, date, etc. -- for assemblage elsewhere." 13 In the end Lange herself compiled the story, informing Stryker that she would limit the pictures to ones made in California and explaining that this would make "a more pointed story" than a series of pictures from across the nation. 14 Lange submitted twenty-five pictures on the theme of human erosion, but Stryker had separately sent Life the set of pictures from the Senate report, instructing them not to use any photographs until the report had been published. 15 Only one of Lange's photographs of migrants ultimately appeared in Life . At the end of a six-page spread on the Dust Bowl in the issue dated 21 June 1937, following an optimistic look at new farming practices designed to reduce erosion, the magazine displayed a striking full-page close-up of the man with the defiant glance, cropped from the center of the four-by-five-inch negative. Lange was not credited, although the agency was. Life did not present the unidentified man as a victim of human erosion but called him a "new pioneer" seeking a new life in California. According to Life , his "courageous philosophy" led him to say, "I heerd about this here irrigation. . . . I figured that in a place where some people can make a good livin' I can make me a livin'." 16 In a 1964 interview conducted by Richard Doud, Lange discounted the contemporary impact of the Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration photographs, forgetting for a moment the fact that her own pictures had influenced public opinion and government policy. Life 's use of her Imperial Valley photograph may have contributed to her bleak assessment that "during the years [the section] was being formed, it was not a [public relations] success." Recalling Stryker's encounters with major magazines, she asked, "Did Roy ever tell you of the many, many trips he made to New York, with pictures under his arm, trying to peddle them to periodicals and to publications, and didn't make it . . . ? That's a little bit humiliating, and embarrassing to him." 17 The picture magazines were reluctant to use the Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration photographs, Lange speculated, because of the media's emphasis on current events. The photographs "got mixed up with news," Lange told Doud, adding, "This was a state and a condition we were describing, and had no appeal." But she concluded that the judgment of history has established the importance of the photographs. "But time of course is a very great editor, and a great publicist," Lange said. "Time has given those things the value." 18 1 Copies of the reports are in Lots 897 and 898, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. 2 Much of the information in this text is from Karin Becker Ohrn, Dorothea Lange and the Documentary Tradition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 38-49; Milton Meltzer, Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1978), 126-29; and Dorothea Lange interview by Richard Doud, 22 May 1964, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 3 Lange to Stryker, 16 February 1937, Stryker Collection. 4 Paul S. Taylor and Dorothea Lange, An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1939; rev. ed., New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975), 145, 148. 5 Federal Writers' Project, California: A Guide to the Golden State (New York: Hastings House, 1939), 639-40. 6 Meltzer, Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life , 163-70. 7 Lange to Stryker, 12 March 1937, Stryker Collection. 8 Lange to Stryker, 12 March 1937, Stryker Collection. 9 Meltzer, Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life , 166-69. Clippings from serials may be found in the Supplementary Reference files and agency scrapbooks, FSA-OWI Written Records. Not all of the clippings offer full bibliographic citations. Lange's 1937 Imperial Valley pictures were used in the following newspapers, journals, and magazines: St. Louis Post Dispatch Sunday Magazine , 17 April 1938, 4; Current History , April 1939, 33; Social Work , April 1939; St. Louis Post Dispatch Sunday Magazine , 28 January 1940; Country Gentleman , February 1940, 9; and Democratic Digest , June-July 1940, 46. 10 Stryker to Lange, 2 December 1936, Stryker Collection. 11 Lange to Stryker, 16 February 1937, Stryker Collection. 12 Stryker to Lange, 9 March 1937, Stryker Collection. 13 Lange to Stryker, 19 March 1937, Stryker Collection. 14 Lange to Stryker, 23 March 1937, Stryker Collection. 15 Meltzer, Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life , 164-65. 16 "The U.S. Dust Bowl," Life , 21 June 1937, 60-65. 17 Dorothea Lange interview by Richard Doud, 22 May 1964, Archives of American Art. 18 Lange interview by Doud, 22 May 1964, Archives of American Art. Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025 The former president and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies. Donald J. Trump intends to bring independent regulatory agencies under direct presidential control. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times Supported by Share full article By Jonathan Swan Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman Published July 17, 2023 Updated July 18, 2023 Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands. Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control. Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him. Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control. He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon. He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.” We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber?  Log in . Want all of The Times?  Subscribe . Advertisement 342 IMAGES Migrant Workers Migrant workers in Canada Read «Migrant Workers» Essay Sample for Free at SupremeEssays.com (PDF) Migrant labour after apartheid 📌 Essay Sample on Global Trends of Migrant Workers 📚 Essay Sample on Culture Amongst Migrant Workers VIDEO Dubai Is Everything Wrong With The World Trump's "Migrant League of Fighters" Proposal Sparks Backlash Restrict or Reform? Russia's migrant workers feel the pain Millions of workers are unemployed #engrocorporation #sadamvlog COMMENTS Migrant Workers: Challenges and Seeking Opportunities Migrant workers play a vital yet often overlooked role in our global economy. These individuals leave their homes and families behind in search of better opportunities, often taking on low-wage jobs in foreign countries to support themselves and their loved ones. In this essay, we will explore the challenges and opportunities that migrant ... The Importance of Immigrant Workers on the U.S. Economy Essay Conclusion. Hypothesis 1 was proven to be false because the presence of immigrant workers was a positive force for the U.S. economy. The fear that immigrant workers would compete with available jobs was based on assumptions and not fact. In reality, immigrant workers simply took jobs that were unattractive to native-born Americans. The Migrant Experience A complex set of interacting forces both economic and ecological brought the migrant workers documented in this ethnographic collection to California. Following World War I, a recession led to a drop in the market price of farm crops and caused Great Plains farmers to increase their productivity through mechanization and the cultivation of more land. This increase in farming activity required ... Essay On Migrant Workers Essay On Migrant Workers. Migrant workers are people who leave their hometowns to live and work in other cities or countries. Everyday, there are people moving from one place to another, it may because of wanting to change a working environment, to break away from unemployment, or to find new opportunities for self-development. People may say ... The Life of Migrant Workers during The Great Depression: [Essay Example As a result, wages throughout the nation fell during the Depression. Migrant workers in California who had been making 35 cents per hour in 1928 made only 14 cents per hour in 1933. Sugar beet workers in Colorado saw their wages decrease from $27 an acre in 1930 to $12.37 an acre three years later. In Texas, migrant families during the ... Bracero Program: Crossing the Border to a New Life by History Day Awa The Mexican farm workers who stayed in the United States became "known as migrant workers because they followed the harvest from one area of the country to another" (Cesar Chavez). ... reprints from historical and current publications, original essays, commentary and interpretation, and expressions of personal opinion, many of which have been ... Migrant Workers Essay Examples Migrant Workers Essays. Bridging the Healthcare Gap for the Population of Migrant Workers in Northwest Ohio. Introduction The local health department has postulated that within five years, the population of migrants moving into Northwest Ohio has grown considerably. However, this population, inclusive of undocumented and illegal workers, faces ... Labour Migrants During the Pandemic: A Comparative Perspective This essay provides a comparative and historical perspective of the conditions of migrant workers, arguing that the disadvantages migrants face are entrenched in economic and social structures, unearthed in this pandemic, and that alongside immediate social protection measures, policies need to address the deep-rooted barriers that keep ... PDF Impact of Migration on Economic and Social Development migrant and native workers, and fiscal costs associated with provision of social services to the migrants. This paper also summarizes incipient discussions on the impacts of migration on climate change, democratic values, demographics, national identity, and security. In conclusion, the paper highlights a few policy Argumentative Essay On Migrant Workers 529 Words. 3 Pages. Open Document. Migrant workers are willing to do the jobs that local workers don't want to do and they value their jobs very much. Despite the huge marches in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, many immigrants skipped the boycott either for fear of losing their jobs or because they simply could not afford to lose even a ... PDF Conclusions on a fair deal for migrant workers in a global economy ILC 2004 Resolution nd Conclusions on Migrant Workers /3 loss of critically skilled workers in many developing countries is nonetheless an increasing issue of concern. This involves the loss of scarce national economic resources that have been invested in education and training. There is a need for further studies and analyses of the Migrant Workers Essay Migrant Workers Essay. The displacement of people and jobs is a negative consequence of globalization. In the cases of migrant workers, the conditions in their home countries are so poor that they think that their lives would be better if they moved to a different country to work. This often includes leaving their families and friends behind. Full article: 'They think you belong to them': migrant workers 2. Theorising labour exploitation and quality of life. Although a myriad of conceptualisations and approaches have been generated around the notion of exploitation over the last two centuries (Yoshihara and Veneziani Citation 2018), it is possible to isolate two main predominant perspectives: the Marxist theory of value, which conceives exploitation as omnipresent (Crocker Citation 1972 ... Strengthening the Rights of Migrant Workers Introduction. Migrant workers relocate from their countries of origin to foreign countries for work purposes. Migrant workers either move for work purposes on a temporary or a permanent basis, depending on several factors. Migrant labour has grown to become a significant issue globally, but it remains largely misunderstood in ways more than one. Determining the Impact of Migration on Labour Markets: The Mediating The term migrant worker—a decidedly contemporary term that I project back to study migration since the middle of the 20th century—is ... CONCLUSION. The above analysis reveals that legal institutions have played an important mediating role in the relationship between migration and labour markets since 1945, when sustained immigration to the ... Migrant Dreams Sociological Theory Introduction In this essay, I intend to examine the experiences of migrant workers as shown in the documentary Migrant Dreams (2016) through the different epistemological approaches of classical sociological theorists such as Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max Weber. Immigration As A Migrant Worker Essay 2294 Words. 10 Pages. Open Document. The Oxford English dictionary describes immigration as "the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle or reside there, or to take-up employment as a migrant worker". It was in the mid-twentieth ... (PDF) Attitudes towards migrant workers in South Africa: A critical and Adebiyi (2020), an estimated 2 million foreign-born migrants of working age (15-64) were. living in SA in 2017, repr esenting 5.3 % of the South African labour force, and to date, the ... Migrant Farm Workers Essay In the late 1900's there were over 500,000 migrant farm workers working for only $1.19 or less.Migrant farm workers in the late 1900's were treated unfairly, They had slept in homes that looked like horse stables.They were being severely underpaid,then came along someone who cared for them Cesar Chavez he dedicated his life to help the workers learn to use their voice and fight for what they ... Attitudes towards migrant workers in South Africa: A critical discourse Results and conclusion: The article intends to add to the existing body of knowledge and to also inform local government towards canvasing agenda that incorporate all human rights and enable a cohesive society by considering the role of discourse as an enabler of the problems experienced in societies. ... Many migrant workers are found in low ... Domestic & Migrant Workers Domestic workers who are taken to other countries by diplomats and corporate executives are among the most abused and vulnerable migrant workers. Although not bought as slaves, fundamental human rights of migrants are frequently violated or ignored. The exploitation can range from wage and hour violations to physical and sexual abuse. Migrant Workers A migrant agricultural worker in Holtville. LC-USF34T01-16113-E Ditch bank housing for Mexican field workers. LC-USF34T01-16292-E Migratory Mexican field worker's home on the edge of a frozen pea field. LC-USF34T01-16425-C. Much of Lange's correspondence with Stryker during this period concerns the distribution of prints of these photographs. Immigration Is Great for Jobs, Actually A few decades ago many economists, myself included, believed that immigrants with low levels of formal education were in effect competing with native-born workers who also lacked degrees. Migrant Workers Essay 882 Words. 4 Pages. Open Document. Migrant workers are people who leave their hometowns to live and work in other cities or countries. Everyday, there are people moving from one place to another, it may because of wanting to change a working condition, to break away from unemployment, or to find new opportunities for self-development. Someone ... Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025 Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of ... assignment essay homework paper phd report resume review speech thesis