Race, Gender and Contemporary International Labor Migration Regimes

Hardback

Race, Gender and Contemporary International Labor Migration Regimes

21st-Century Coolies?

9781789901993 Edward Elgar Publishing
Edited by Leticia Saucedo, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law, University of California, Davis School of Law and Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, Professor of Asian American Studies and Founding Director, Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies, University of California, Davis, US
Publication Date: 2022 ISBN: 978 1 78990 199 3 Extent: 236 pp
Migrant workers around the world are subject to exploitative labor practices that give employers extraordinary bargaining power. This book brings together researchers, practitioners, and advocates who explore the many ways that contracted migrant workers are rendered vulnerable in the workplace. In this book, the term ‘21st-century coolie’ is deployed as a heuristic device that foregrounds the deeply unequal structures shaping the transnational flows of short-term, migrant workers. The term ‘coolie’ harkens back to the labor arrangements of earlier centuries that involved conscripted labor, indentured servitude, and contract labor across national borders. Like those of past centuries, today’s ‘coolies’ are subject to legal constraints inside and outside the employment relationship that force them into subjugated positions within the workplace.

Copyright & permissions

Recommend to librarian

Your Details

Privacy Policy

Librarian Details

Download leaflet

Print page

More Information
Contributors
Contents
More Information
Migrant workers around the world are subject to exploitative labor practices that give employers extraordinary bargaining power. This book brings together researchers, practitioners, and advocates who explore the many ways that contracted migrant workers are rendered vulnerable in the workplace. In this book, the term ‘21st-century coolie’ is deployed as a heuristic device that foregrounds the deeply unequal structures shaping the transnational flows of short-term, migrant workers. The term ‘coolie’ harkens back to the labor arrangements of earlier centuries that involved conscripted labor, indentured servitude, and contract labor across national borders. Like those of past centuries, today’s ‘coolies’ are subject to legal constraints inside and outside the employment relationship that force them into subjugated positions within the workplace.

The chapters of this anthology situate contemporary global migration regimes in histories of colonization, uncover their racialized as well as gendered nature, and examine the role of nation-states in perpetuating conditions of extreme exploitation. The permeability, mutability, and durability of racial capitalism is revealed through an interdisciplinary and practice-oriented lens.

Law and social science students in graduate courses on migration, labor, employment, employment discrimination, and race and the law will gain a deeper understanding of the issues facing migrant workers today, as will students in humanities, performance studies, narrative studies, and communication studies.
Contributors
Contributors: Mercedes Cortez, Sujatha Fernandes, Shannon Gleeson, Kati Griffith, Efrén Sandoval Hernández, Rubén Hernández-León, Jennifer J. Lee, Suzy Lee,Maria Eugenia López, Mar Martinez, Rachel Micah-Jones, Lidia Muñoz Paniagua, Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, Leticia Saucedo, Roli Varma, Ken Wang
Contents
Contents:


PART I MIGRANT WORKERS, GLOBAL RACIAL
CAPITALISM AND UNFREEDOM
1 Introduction to Race, Gender and Contemporary
International Labor Migration Regimes 2
Robyn Magalit Rodriguez
2 The narrative of ethno-racial labor competition and
employee choice 21
Leticia Saucedo

PART II THE RETURN OF THE BRACERO
PROGRAM? H-VISA HOLDERS IN THE
UNITED STATES
3 Bringing back the Bracero Program: the migration
industry in the recruitment of H-2 visa workers 35
Rubén Hernández-León, Efrén Sandoval Hernández and
Lidia Muñoz Paniagua
4 Delegating discrimination in the temporary worker visa
programs 63
Jennifer J. Lee and Rachel Micah-Jones
5 Tech coolies: Indian scientists and engineers entering the
United States on H-1B visas 89
Roli Varma

PART III LEGAL AND ORGANIZING STRATEGIES FOR
U.S. IMMIGRANT AND MIGRANT WORKERS
6 Workers with temporary protected status: the value and
limits of delinking immigration and employment status 110
Shannon Gleeson and Kati Griffith
7 Garment worker organizing in Los Angeles 124
Mar Martinez and Mercedes Cortez
8 Emerging forms of organization for precarious migrant
workers 130
Ken Wang

PART IV DOMESTIC WORKERS AND THE POLITICS
OF REPRESENTATION
9 Domestic workers and storytelling advocacy: competing
visions of migrant worker organizing 152
Sujatha Fernandes
10 Aesthetics of precarity: racial performativity in the archive
of migrant domestic work 174
Maria Eugenia López

PART V THE COMPLEXITIES OF GLOBAL
PROCESSES FOR WORKERS
11 Sustaining inequality: the incorporation of migrant
remittances in the Philippine political economy 192
Suzy Lee

Index
eBook for individuals
978 1 78990 200 6
From £25.00
Click here for options
eBook for library purchase
978 1 78990 200 6
View sample chapter and check access on:
eBook options

Available for individuals to buy from these websites

Or recommend to your institution to acquire on Elgaronline
  • Buy as part of an eBook subject collection - flexible options available
  • Downloading and printing allowed
  • No limits on concurrent user access, ideal for course use
My Cart