Migrant Labor State: American Political Development Between Globalization and Protectionism

Migrant Labor State offers a new interpretation of globalization by showing how political conflict over foreign labor built the institutions that govern cross-border labor mobility in the United States. While most accounts explain globalization through expanding trade or examine the political backlash to immigration that follows economic integration, in this book Gabrielle E. Clark argues that globalization itself was constructed through struggles over temporary labor migration since the dawn of federal immigration control.

  Drawing on extensive archival research, original quantitative data, and legal analysis, Clark traces the development of the American migrant labor state from Chinese exclusion and the Bracero Program to contemporary H-2, H-1B, J, L, OPT, and other visa categories. Along the way, she shows how conflicts over foreign labor moved from Congress to administrative agencies and ultimately to the federal courts, which transformed each branch of government into a central institution of American globalization. By bringing together theories of globalization, immigration, labor, law, and American political development, this book offers a new account of the political and legal construction of globalization while explaining the historical origins of contemporary conflicts over foreign workers and globalization.