Abstract
Scholars have argued that the rise of supply chain capitalism, and a corresponding growth in private power, has created a ‘race to the bottom’ in which public regulators lower labor compliance requirements in order to compete on global markets. While the dynamics of the race to the bottom are difficult to alter, public regulators in developing states may be able to find ways to overcome them. Furthermore, and surprisingly, an emergent body of research suggests that these opportunities may come from partnerships with private regulatory organizations. In order to examine the dynamics of the race to the bottom, and the possibilities for public regulators to overcome them, this dissertation studies practices of worker recruitment and hiring within the U.S. temporary worker visa program designated for the agricultural industry, the H-2A visa. The H-2A visa is a heavily-privatized structure. That is, there is virtually no public oversight of the H-2A worker hiring process, making it ideal to study the regulation of labor supply chains. In recent years, the countries where migrant workers originate are developing new ways to intervene in temporary migrant labor programs, attempting to redistribute the benefits of temporary labor migration, which primarily accrue to employers, towards labor migrants themselves, as well as the states and communities from which they originate. One of the most common strategies is regulation by managing the migrant labor stream themselves, on behalf of employers. In the modern era, such opportunities frequently come from new partnerships, including opportunities from worker-led organizations and advocacy groups, as well as the receiving countries themselves. This dissertation explores strategies of market participation by sending states, tracing their origins and assessing their effectiveness. I attempt to answer two key questions: What is the temporary migrant labor supply chain, and how is it governed? And, how do developing country governments regulate temporary migrant labor supply chains, and how has their control over these supply chains shifted over time?
This dissertation, traces the contested role of sending states in the regulation of labor supply chains, using a study of the H-2A program as one site of that contestation. It also tries to determine the agency that they exercise from that position, and how it is either amplified or curtailed by the other actors that influence (or seek to influence) the migrant labor supply chain. These other actors include private recruitment and logistics agencies, Global North countries, other Global South countries, national and transnational worker-led organizations (including NGOs and unions), other advocacy groups, agricultural employers in the Global North, and the retailers to whom employers sell their products. Throughout my analysis of the labor supply chain, I utilize analytical tools and frameworks – specifically, those developed within the Global Value Chains, or GVC, literature – that were originally developed to analyze commodities. I focus my study on Mexico, employing two shadow case comparisons which I weave throughout the narrative of my empirical chapters: Jamaica, the oldest H-2A sending state, and Guatemala, one of the newest (and fastest increasing) sending states.
I show that developing countries do regulate labor supply chains in two ways: First, they create new, entrepreneurial initiatives, including innovative partnerships, which provide them with opportunities to intervene in the H-2A program, and in particular to advocate for H-2A applicants and workers that find themselves in abusive or exploitative situations. Second, they welcome opportunities created by other actors, and often use them as ‘openings’ through which they gain abilities to surveil (i.e. collect information on H-2A applications, recruitment, and processing) and influence the H-2A program. Nevertheless, I find that sending states engage in these two kinds of regulation through their attempts to participate in labor migration markets as market actors. As a result, they often end up reinforcing the fundamental structure of the temporary labor migration markets that render them ‘regulation takers’ in the first place.
