(Mis)managing Migration: Guestworkers’ Experiences with North American Labor Markets

There is nothing so permanent as a temporary worker, observers of guestworker programmes quip. Historically, however, guestworker programmes and the numbers of guestworkers entering North American labour markets have fluctuated significantly as changing federal positions, shifting labour markets, economics, and politics have impacted access and participation. Today managed migration is growing in North America. This mirrors the general growth of migration from poorer to richer countries, with more than 200 million people now living outside their natal countries. Faced with this phenomenon, managed migration enables nation-states to regulate those population movements; direct foreign nationals to specific, identified economic sectors that citizens are less likely to care about; match employers who claim labour shortages with highly motivated workers; and offer people from poorer countries higher earning potential abroad through temporary absence from their families and homelands. Characterised like this, managed migration sounds like the ideal alternative to unregulated, undocumented migration, which too often results in family separation, wage theft and other abuses, interior bordering and anti-immigrant sentiment, increased state expenditures for border patrol and immigration enforcement, and orphaned children when parents are deported. Unfortunately, as the contributors to this volume describe, managed migration does not always work on the ground as well as it does on paper.