Abstract
In this second lecture Shire draws on global historical research to show how the creation and maintenance of an industrial labor force was rooted in forms of indentured migrant labor, recruited and transported by profit-taking intermediaries. The historical record, and a global perspective, challenges the association made between the emergence of “free” wage labor and direct employment with the rise of industrial capitalism. These historical insights into the origins of modern labor markets are important for two reasons. First, debt is shown to play a central role in understanding how migration creates vulnerabilities, becomes a source of profit, and is used as a mechanism of control. Second, where intermediaries are in play, labor power is not exchanged by those who embody it; rather, labor power is being sold. International conventions from the interwar period in part recognized the key role of private intermediaries in the commodification and control of migrant labor, with solutions rooted in establishing a monopoly for public labor exchanges. This course was reversed in the 1990s, when the ILO nullified previous conventions and enacted a new one legitimating private fee-charging employment services. The lecture examines how private intermediaries have become dominant actors again in cross-border labor markets, the multiplicity of forms now taken by cross-border intermediation, and the struggles to protect workers who “use the services” of intermediaries. While most studies of regulatory efforts have been situated on destination countries and enterprise-level interventions, recent research on intermediaries in the Asia Pacific and cross-border labor subcontracting in the European Union points to the regulatory agency of sending states and the importance of licensing and monitoring commercial labor businesses for improving labor protections.
