Scholars and public opinion alike mostly present human movement with a view to its destination or encountered borders. Societies of arrival, racialisation, denial of citizenship, remittances, deportation facilities, fences, control devices and militarisation are just some of the terms speaking the grammar of the final outcome of a migration. This may stem from a conceptualisation of mobility as a linear trajectory connecting two fixed points, with the space in between perceived primarily as a zone of obstacles or interruptions. Even in studies focused on communities of departure, the methodology often remains anchored in this perspective, as migrants are presumed to have definitively left their home behind. Present-day narratives of people crowded in migrants’ shelters located in areas other than their intended destination or point of departure – with all the associated dramatic consequences in terms of human rights and dignity – preserve this angle of a journey’s end. I propose that this prevailing ‘approach of destination’ requires a complementary perspective, adopting the view of those left behind: the unfulfilled needs, valorisation of both mobility and immobility and disenchantment of desires form the lens through which we can examine mobility and immobility as part of a comprehensive labour regime.
Walking from one’s place of residence – be it in a remote village, an urban centre or the countryside – marks the initial form of spatial mobility for workers. In the first place, this movement is often prompted by desire, necessity or chance opportunity. Importantly, however, such a departure should not be understood merely through the analytical framework of ‘cause of migration’ but rather as the generative moment of a broader mobility process and a form of social ferment that produces unforeseen outcomes. Within this ferment, people are set in motion and begin to aspire towards a better life, temporary employment, a safe place or new experiences – even in cases where they may ultimately be prevented from realising these goals.
Once propelled by need or desire, individuals require resources, among which knowledge and money are the most common. Even within state-managed labour programmes such as the so-called guest worker schemes established across various regions of the world during the 20th century, applicants often incurred debt simply by leaving their homes to reach selection centres located in their own country, compelled to cover travel and basic expenses. They met these costs by using personal and family savings or, more frequently, by going into debt despite having no guarantee of employment. Indebtedness often exacerbated economic vulnerability, particularly when such people were rejected from the programme and subsequently had to finance their return journey without having earned any wages.[i] In other words, the aspiration to temporary employment alone could potentially lead to indebtedness.
Health matters can also prevent the desired mobility of aspiring workers. This issue reflects both the role of government agencies in excluding those who do not meet defined and formal requirements, and the definition of the ideal type of temporary worker. For instance, in the case of the US–Mexican Guest Worker Program from the 1940s to the 1960s, applicants were peasants but could not be ‘decadent’; their hands should be calloused but not damaged by the harshness of the countryside; they were expected to be poor but not destitute; experienced but lacking technical qualifications; and unemployed but willing to return to Mexico after a temporary contract. It was a fine line they had to walk, and many were already rejected in the application phase. These individuals were part of the labour programme because the Mexican local administrations, at least in rural areas, could pinpoint them to verify their eligibility. They travelled to be recruited, submitted their applications for certificates and underwent health examinations in their states of residence; they were scrutinised, inspected, socially registered. Many took on debt to reach the selection centres, especially those living in remote rural areas. This process is part of the general regime of mobility, which evidently also represents a regime of immobility for people excluded by their physical characteristics or ineligibility.
Even if selected, aspiring transnational temporary workers often have to navigate and endure the time and space between selection centres and recruiting centres, and then their sites of work. The wait in such centres is akin to a black hole of uncertainty and timelessness into which workers are plunged: They do not know how long they will have to wait before being employed, and exist in suspense, unfamiliar with the place and often the language. They do not know what conditions they will be working in, or whether they will be able save some money after their long journey. Waiting times before being recruited may last months, even within the framework of labour programmes. Furthermore, access to employment may be commodified, with bribes, fees and/or unpaid labour required just to enter the selection process.
Ultimately, every step of such a journey turns into a site of value extraction. In addition to contractual conditions and the regulation of workplace permanence, labour mobility is a process that extends throughout their entire careers, since mobile workers are already productive before their arrival and remain so after their return. Immobilisation – whether through forced waiting, administrative opacity or physical confinement – is a central component of this regime. It sustains surplus labour pools, fuels local informal economies and reshapes workers’ expectations. Every moment of this social process generates value by compelling individuals to perform auxiliary labour, accept lower standards or incur debt.
Ultimately, beyond the actual temporary work, labour mobility is a social process, and like most social processes, it is historically built on some form of movement. The regime of im/mobility was built on a fluid space in which both contracted workers and applicants had to navigate a time of unknowns. Importantly, it was also constructed in part by those who did not obtain the necessary documentation to access selection processes and by those who ended up not being recruited. At the same time, the validity of this regime of immobility extended well beyond the existence of the desired employment, since debt incurred along the way prolonged many applicants’ connection to the process even in situations of immobility in their country of return.
Claudia Bernardi is an associate professor of ‘History of the Americas’ at the University of Perugia, board member of the Italian Society for Labour History-SISLav and coordinator of SISLav research group ‘Free and Unfree labor’. She is finalising her second monograph titled The Use of Coercion: Questioning Dependency and Autonomy of Mexican Contract Workers in the Im/mobility
[i] Bernardi, C. & Pizzolato, N. (Forthcoming) ‘Logics of Debt: Rethinking Im/Mobility and Coercion in the Context of the Programa Bracero, 1942–1964’, in Schiel, J. & Heinsen, J. (eds.) Coercion at Work: Situating Labour History after the Global Turn. London: UCL Press.
Claudia Bernardi is an associate professor of ‘History of the Americas’ at the University of Perugia, board member of the Italian Society for Labour History-SISLav and coordinator of SISLav research group ‘Free and Unfree labor’. She is finalising her second monograph titled The Use of Coercion: Questioning Dependency and Autonomy of Mexican Contract Workers in the Im/mobility Regime.
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