This book is about the mobility of labor across national borders—no matter whether it is legal or illegal, temporary or permanent, voluntary or forced, regional or global. Although sounds paradoxical, the book focuses on a very small segment of the global population. After all, even in this age of twenty-first century globalization, only about 3.3 percent of the world’s population live in a country they were not born in, compared with 2.3 percent in 1970.1 In the last 50 years, the number of worldwide migrants—both short-term and long-term—has increased by just 1 percent, while during the same period, the share of international trade—goods and services crossing national borders—in global output has more than doubled2; and the amount of foreign investment—capital moving across national borders—increased more than 30 times.3
Still not a single day goes by when passionate debate and controversy about immigration do not dominate global media. That people around the world are so concerned with mobility of people across national borders, while remaining greatly comfortable with a many-fold increase in the mobility of foreign goods and capital to their countries, discernibly suggests that they view importing goods or capital from abroad from economic perspectives, while considering the matter of accepting foreigners in their midst from non-economic perspectives. Numerous surveys in developed countries indicate that most people believe in economic globalization in everything but labor (Pritchett 2006; Dowlah 2016, 216–218).4
People in developed countries however have valid reasons to be concerned with cross-border labor mobility. In recent decades, about 70 percent of all immigrants across the world have migrated to developed countries, something that has already raised the share of international migrants in their populations from 9.6 percent in 1970 to 14 percent in 2017—in some of these countries the share has reached between 20 and 25 percent (UNDESA 2017). On top of that, there has also been a phenomenal rise in forced migration, sex trafficking, illegal migration, and political refugees in many of these countries (ILO 2017; WFF 2018; World Bank 2018b). At the same time, most international migrants originate from developing countries, and available literature suggests that usually those with a tertiary education and those that are more capable move abroad, often causing brain-drain, thus disserving their native economies while enriching host developed countries (Bhagwati 1979; Faini 2007; Nayyer 2008; Lucas 2005; Batista et al. 2007).
International migration, which has been almost synonymous with the mobility of labor across national borders for many centuries, thus raises many complex questions for labor itself, as well as for labor-sending and labor-receiving countries, and the world economy at large. To understand the ramifications and consequences of such a complex phenomenon, this book’s journey begins with the beginning of human mobility itself. Available literature suggests that human beings have been on the move since the time immemorial. They moved for desirable land, income, security, and so forth, and populated every corner of the earth about 10,000 years ago, and have propelled human civilizations and urbanizations throughout the centuries ever since (Manning 2013; Bogucki 1999; Cavalli-Sfroza et al. 1994; Olson 2003).
The mobility of humans across national borders however has been occurring only since the time when humans settled permanently, by occupying geographical territories, and organized themselves into nations or states. As the origin of rudimentary forms of nations or states can be traced to ancient civilizations, cross-border labor mobility must have been occurring for several thousand years now. Providing a credible account of the mobility of humans for all this time is obviously a daunting task. Following a brief sketch of global human migration since prehistoric times in Chapter 2, this study rather makes an effort to cover only the major epochs or episodes of such mobility that have left indelible marks in world history since the beginning of the early modern era.5
This book’s main focus is however on cross-border mobility of labor—workers crossing national borders to work and live in a foreign land, which is often called the third leg of economic globalization.6 In economic literature, human labor—the physical and mental services delivered by a natural person for the production of goods and services—is the most fundamental factor of production. Capital, which often controls labor, is nothing but a share of the fruits of labor that legitimately or illegitimately end up in the hands of entrepreneurs—the owners of capital. Capital is thus nothing but past labor.
Human labor is also very unique in the sense that while entrepreneurs—the owners of capital—can ship away their outputs to maximize profits or utility, in most cases workers must move along with their labor, because most of the labor, whether physical or mental, must be delivered in person (Sykes 1995). That in turn leads to another paradox of the contemporary world—due to aging populations and an unwillingness of the labor force to undertake dirty, dangerous, and degrading jobs, developed countries are in dire need of imported workers from poorer parts of the world, while at the same time knowing that most people cannot stand foreigners in their midst (Pritchett 2006; Llosa 2013; Schain 2008).
Both these tensions—the tension in respect to terms of labor, how to split the fruits of labor between the owners of labor and the owners of capital, and the tension pertaining to the terms of making workers (both natives and foreigners) deliver labor as free or unfree labor—have prevailed throughout history (Engarman 1976; Drescher 1987). As the drive for capital accumulation and economic growth squarely depended on such tensions, numerous experiments have been made throughout history to squeeze the workers’ share of profits and enlarge the share of those owning capital—often such drives led to a complete denial of workers’ freedom to negotiate terms of labor, or to sell labor to the highest bidder on their terms (Potts 1990; Patterson 1982).
Prevalence of Coerced Labor
As a result, not free labor, but coerced labor—labor delivered under force or duress, lacking free consent—had been extremely common throughout world history. In ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy, for example, there were more than 100,000 slaves—twice the number of the free adult population (Lord 2013; Fisher 2014). Even in 1772, out of the estimated 775 million people on earth, only 33 million, or just about 4 percent of the global population, had freedom (Drescher 1987, 17).7
The degree, magnitude, and longevity of coercion—the scale of commodification and dehumanization of workers for the purposes of production and creation of wealth—however varied throughout the ages (Patterson 1982; Davis 2006; Wright 2017). Some of the major forms of coerced labor that dominated world history up until the first half of the twentieth...