Labor Migrants

Introduction:
Labour emigration is not merely the business of states and governmental policies, but comes with a range of wider societal practices. This includes the production of – and contestation over – the ‘ideal migrant subject’. This paper examines the complex interplay of actors and practices involved in migrant subject-making processes paying close attention to the pre-employment temporary labour migration process step by step from screening, recruitment, pre-departure training up to employment-matching. It asks how prospective migrants are transformed into ‘ideal’ migrant subjects. This contribution primarily draws from data from the Philippines and India. It is argued that migrants actually become migrants before they ever leave their home country: Labour-sending states set the regulatory frameworks and co-produce ‘ideal migrant subjects’ from which other social actors draw or contest. In contrast to most studies on the governance of labour migration, the authors highlight the role of subject formation as an important element of modern migration management. To the scholarship that actually takes into account subjectivation processes, this paper adds material both on the labour-sending state as well as on non-state actors. The paper, moreover, draws out subject-making from previous studies where it is less central and more implicit.

Abstract
Using a unique panel data set from rural Mexico, we find strong evidence of a negative relationship between farm size and both productivity and technical efficiency: large farms not only have a lower value of output per hectare than small farms, they also produce further from the efficiency frontier. Our findings suggest that, in spite of the ongoing transformation of agricultural supply chains and economists’ recommendations for small farmers to exit crop production, there may be sustained advantages for smallholder farms. Our analysis offers new insights into inverse-farm size relationship, the productivity–efficiency relationship, and the use of stochastic frontier techniques.

Abstract:
Santiago Pérez studies the mobility and economic outcomes of European immigrants and their children in nineteenth-century Argentina, the second largest destination country during the Age of Mass Migration. He uses new data linking males across censuses and passenger lists of arrivals to Buenos Aires. First-generation immigrants experienced faster occupational upgrading than natives. Occupational mobility was substantial relative to Europe; immigrants holding unskilled occupations upon arrival experienced high rates of occupational upgrading. Second-generation immigrants outperformed the sons of natives in terms of literacy, occupational status and access to property, and experienced higher rates of intergenerational mobility out of unskilled occupations.