Migrant worker
A migrant worker is an individual who relocates, often temporarily, from their permanent residence to find employment, which can occur within their own country or across international borders. This phenomenon is particularly significant in agricultural sectors, where workers follow seasonal crop cycles across different regions. In the United States, the historical context of migrant labor dates back to the late 19th century, with particular visibility during the Great Depression when many displaced farmers sought opportunities in California. Most modern migrant agricultural workers in the U.S. are foreign-born, with a substantial percentage coming from Mexico, and many are classified as unauthorized workers without legal immigration status.
Internationally, migrant workers play a vital economic role by sending remittances back home while also contributing to the labor force in host countries. However, they frequently face challenging working conditions and human rights concerns, prompting global initiatives to protect their rights, such as the 1990 United Nations treaty aimed at safeguarding migrant workers and their families. As discussions around migration continue, the balance between economic contributions and the risks of exploitation remains a central theme in both policy-making and human rights advocacy.
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Migrant worker
A migrant worker is someone who travels outside his or her place of permanent residence to work for a period of time—from several weeks to several years—before returning home. Depending on the context, “migrant” may refer to traveling to a different part of the worker’s home country or traveling to another country. Migrant workers are of interest to scholars and policymakers because of their role in national and international economies and because of the human rights issues raised by their often difficult working conditions.
Overview
In the United States, migrant workers are generally migrant agricultural workers. They have been a feature of the economic landscape since the mid-to-late nineteenth century, when large companies began taking over from family farms as the largest agricultural producers in the United States. Migrant agricultural laborers follow the growing seasons of various crops, from fruits and vegetables to cotton and tobacco, which are grown in different regions of the country based on climate and require field labor at different times of year.
Migrant agricultural labor in the United States first came to widespread public attention during the Great Depression of the 1920s, when many US-born farmers in the Midwest lost their land and were forced to travel to California in search of farm work. In the early twenty-first century, most US agricultural labor was foreign-born, and migrant laborers were more often in the news in connection with immigration issues. According to the Department of Labor’s 2021–22 National Agricultural Workers Survey, 68 percent of surveyed agricultural workers were foreign-born, the overwhelming majority (61 percent) of them from Mexico; 79 percent of foreign-born crop workers had been in the United States for at least ten years. Nearly 60 percent of agricultural workers were identified as authorized to work in the US, and 38 percent were US citizens.
In the international context, migrant workers are defined as crossing international borders in search of work. Because of human-rights concerns about the condition of migrant workers, in 1990 the United Nations (UN) General Assembly passed the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. The treaty entered into force in 2003 after twenty UN member states—most of them from the developing world and not including the United States or any Western European countries—ratified it.
Internationally, most migrant workers travel from developing to developed countries in search of work. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), a UN agency, in the mid-2020s there were approximately 169 million migrant workers around the world. The ILO has identified these workers as important contributors to the economies of both their home countries (through the remittances they send back) and their host countries; however, they are also seen as being at particular risk for exploitation and human trafficking, making them a focus of both human rights and immigration debates.
Bibliography
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Martin, Philip, Manolo Abella, and Christiane Kuptsch. Managing Labor Migration in the Twenty-First Century. Yale UP, 2006.
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Rothenberg, Daniel. With These Hands: The Hidden World of Migrant Farmworkers Today. U of California P, 2000.
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“Towards a Fair Deal for Migrant Workers in the Global Economy.” International Labour Organisation, 26 Oct. 2005, www.ilo.org/resource/conference-paper/towards-fair-deal-migrant-workers-global-economy. Accessed 16 Jan. 2025.