Hand on the Spigot: The Implications of the Global Spread of Temporary Migrant Labor Programs

• In Event: Labor and Labor Movements Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Roundtable 2: Migration, Dispossession, and Transnational Labor Regimes

Abstract

Against a backdrop of anti-immigrant sentiment and a political wave pushing for the implementation of stricter, even draconian, immigration controls, governments around the world are initiating and even expanding programs to bring in migrant workers on a temporary basis. The proliferation of temporary migrant labor programs (TMLPs) suggests the emergence of new regime of global migration governance: a regime organized around the principle of instrumental temporariness, where people allowed to enter only as workers, to fulfill a specific economic function on a contingent basis. To get the measure of this trend and its policy implications, I conducted a global review of temporary migrant worker programs, compiling a database of over 500 existing programs around the world and completing a content analysis of the policy design. I find that TMLPs share core features that equip governments to use migration policy as part of more muscular state intervention in the economy. I find that TMLPs provide the state with policy tools to shape how firms and industries incorporate labor into their production systems and how they build in and value worker contributions. This essay concludes with an examination of the social costs of the growing use of TMLPs, with particular attention to the role of skill in production and its relationship to economic justice.

Author

• Natasha N. Iskander, New York University