Managed Migration and the Value of Labor
Grant
Overview
abstract
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Managed migration has been expanding around the world, bringing more so-called guestworkers from a wider variety of social, cultural, national, and gendered backgrounds into capitalist wage labor relationships in Canada, the United States, the European Union, Australia, and other developed regions. The growing use of managed migration derives largely from their reliability and flexibility, conforming to ?flexible? labor regimes that draw on single, productive workers and separate productive from reproductive labor as much as possible. By contrast, many managed migrants come from areas where people are struggling to hang onto or develop new livelihoods according to the principles of domestic production?economic operations, that is, based on household and family units, drawing on family labor, and oriented toward the maintenance and reproduction of the domestic unit and its supporting cultural traditions and social institutions. These conditions create the opportunity to compare how people involved in different kinds of economic logics?from extreme forms of the wage labor relationship to domestic production arenas where productive and reproductive labor are deployed simultaneously?value their labor, including the roles the value of labor plays in producing positive individual and social outcomes. Working with a multinational team in Mexico, Guatemala, Canada, and the United States, we intend to investigate how managed migrants? experiences compare to each other and to others in their home communities in terms of how they value labor. Areas of particular interest to us are the roles that the value of labor plays in producing happiness, dignity, and social legitimacy.
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