Programme

While European countries in the post-WWII-years were occupied with getting rid of “surplus population” (Andersen 2019, 62-80), these efforts were already from the 1960s gradually replaced with the opposite endeavour, namely importing labour for the now expanding economies in Western and Northern Europe, where in several countries guest worker programs where implemented. The labour import strategy of European countries coincided with the reorganizing of state brokered labour export in the Philippines, which already had experiences with sending workers abroad, not least to the former colonial power the US. (Show less)

In 1942, Mexico and United States established a binational agreement that regulated the mobility of Mexican workers to United States who became known as “braceros”. The guest worker programs legalized the import of migrants as a temporary measure due to the exceptionality of war, but the agreement was renewed until 1964 following strong pressure from US growers, and despite the opposition of US unions and parts of Mexican society. In 1955, workers from various European and Mediterranean countries (i.e. Portugal, Italy, Greece, Turkey) began to move to West Germany to be employed in industries as so-called gastarbeiter. (Show less)

During the validity of the Bracero Program (1942-1964), clause 23 of the employment contract allowed the association of Mexican workers who mainly performed agricultural work in the United States on a temporary basis. However, there were moments and spaces in which the pretense of organizing was a reason for dismissal and sanctions against the workers. (Show less)

Today in the United States, critics of guestworker programs liken them to legalized slavery or indentured servitude, models of labor recruitment premised on the denial of basic freedoms to immigrant workers. They typically cite the Bracero Program (1942-1964), the largest in North American history, as the precedent. Recruited to harvest crops in the western USA, some two million Mexican peasants experienced wage theft, racism, inhumane housing, and family separation. This dominant historiographical narrative, now commonplace among US–based scholars, echoes critiques propagated by the program’s critics in the 1950s. One also hears this narrative of exploitation and trauma in Mexico. Activists there charge that Mexican authorities imposed a 10% savings plan on all braceros, the majority of whom never recovered these compulsory wage deductions. The claims prove false, as policymakers terminated the plan in 1947. Yet, in both the US and Mexico, one now hears federal congressional officials echoing these charges, demanding reparations, and leading ex-braceros or their descendants to perceive former guestworkers as victims of state-sanctioned fraud and exploitation. (Show less)