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Guestworkers and Exploitation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Robert Mayer
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Extract

Are guestworker programs exploitative? Egalitarian and neoclassical theories of exploitation agree that they always are. But these judgments are too indiscriminate. Privileged guests are the exception, and the exception points toward a more sensitive standard for identifying exploitation. This more sensitive standard, the sufficiency theory of exploitation, is used to analyze several guestworker programs. Even when guestworker programs are exploitative, it is argued that the unfairness should be tolerated if the exploitation is modest, not severe, and if the most likely nonexploitative alternative worsens the plight of the disadvantaged.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , Spring 2005 , pp. 311 - 334
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2005

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References

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23. The exploitable insufficiency is not always financial. Affluent people who are emotionally needy can be exploited by someone with less income. These vulnerable individuals make enough money but still lack sufficient well-being and so can be taken advantage of.

24. The proper benchmark is a person (1) just above the threshold of sufficiency and (2) for whom sufficiency is guaranteed. The latter circumstance is crucial and assumed in all of my examples. Someone at the level of sufficiency can still be exploited if that sufficiency is insecure. The nonexploitative standard is thus an individual who is guaranteed sufficiency if she rejects an offer made by another agent.

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37. After the Gastarbeiter program was terminated in 1973, Germany did not expel its large guest population. Assimilation and naturalization of these immigrants proceeded slowly, but many analysts offer a positive assessment of this subsequent chapter in the German guestworker story. Even without German citizenship, the Turkish guests won many of the rights enjoyed by ethnic Germans. See Soysal, Yasemin, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Jacobson, David, Rights across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1996)Google Scholar; and Joppke, Christian, “The Legal-Domestic Sources of Immigrant Rights: The United States, Germany, and the European Union,” Comparative Political Studies 34 (2001): 339–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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51. One might be justifiably pessimistic that the United States could avoid perpetrating these abuses again, in which case it ought not to establish a guestworker program. But Hahamovitch argues that the abuses were restricted during the first five years of the Bracero program: “Despite sporadic and sometimes serious mistreatment on American farms, this five-year period was one of the few times in the history of guestworker programs when foreign workers were treated somewhat like guests.” However, the abuses grew worse in later years. See Hahamovitch, , “Creating Perfect Immigrants,” p. 82.Google Scholar

52. As Vernon Briggs points out, an enforcement mechanism that relies on guestworker complaints to detect abuse will be ineffective because guestworkers often remain silent in order to avoid employer retaliation. See Briggs, , “Nonimmigrant Labor Policy,” p. 115.Google Scholar See also Holley, Michael, “Disadvantaged by Design: How the Law Inhibits Agricultural Guest Workers from Enforcing Their Rights,” Hofstra Labor Law Journal 18 (2001): 575–623.Google Scholar

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55. For excellent criticisms of the guestworker concept that emphasize the cost to domestic unskilled labor see Martin, Philip and Teitelbaum, Michael, “The Mirage of Mexican Guest Workers,” Foreign Affairs 80/6 (2001): 117–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, Becoming an American: Immigration and Immigrant Policy (Washington, D.C.: USCIR, 1997), pp. 109–110.Google Scholar

56. On the impact of guestworker programs on domestic unskilled labor see Chiswick, Barry, “The Impact of Immigration on the Level and Distribution of Economic Weil-Being,” in The Gateway: U.S. Immigration Issues and Policies, ed. Chiswick, Barry (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1982), p. 310Google Scholar; Simon, Julian, The Economic Consequences of Immigration (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 242, 266CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stalker, Peter, Workers without Frontiers: The Impact of Globalization on International Migration (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000), p. 87Google Scholar; and Chang, Howard, “Economic Analysis of Immigration Law,” in Migration Theory: Talking across Disciplines, ed. Brettell, Caroline and Hollifield, James (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 210.Google Scholar

57. On the cost to taxpayers if unskilled immigrants are quickly naturalized see Chang, , “Liberal Ideals and Political Feasibility,” pp. 466–467Google Scholar; Chang, , “Economic Analysis of Immigration Law,” p. 215Google Scholar; Chiswick, , “The Impact of Immigration on the Level and Distribution of Economic Well-Being,” p. 310Google Scholar; and Kershnar, Stephen, “Immigrants and Welfare,” Public Affairs Quarterly 16/1 (2002): 39–61.Google Scholar

58. Hahamovitch, , “Creating Perfect Immigrants,” p. 78.Google Scholar

59. Ibid., p. 76. Indeed, those with a cosmopolitan sensibility should be especially receptive to guestworker programs when they cannot enact their preferred policy of increased immigration. This is because temporary guests often become permanent residents. Once admitted, it is difficult for democratic states to expel these workers. Guestworkers, then, are often backdoor immigrants and future citizens or their legal equivalent. As the advocates of exclusion have come to recognize, “there is nothing more permanent than temporary workers.” See Martin, and Teitelbaum, , “The Miraee of Mexican Guest Workers.” p 131.Google Scholar