Managed Migration and the Value of Labor

David Griffith博士（东卡罗莱纳大学）和Ricardo Contreras博士（东卡罗莱纳大学），以及合作者Elizabeth Juárez Cerdi博士（El Colegio de Michoacán）和Kerry Preibisch博士（圭尔夫大学），将对管理移民（客工）计划对派遣社区的影响进行研究。有管理的移民项目在全球范围内有所增加；因此，越来越多来自墨西哥和中美洲的外来工人有机会体验美国和加拿大的劳动力市场和工作制度。然而，与此同时，拉丁美洲的许多家庭正在努力维持以家庭生产为基础的传统生计，如渔业和农业，这是一种利用家庭劳动力的家庭经济活动，旨在维持和再生产家庭单位及其支持性文化传统和社会制度。在北美出售劳动力的工人和在传统环境中工作的工人共同出现，为工作、劳动价值和福祉的比较研究提供了一个难得的机会。与墨西哥和危地马拉的一个跨国团队合作，研究人员将调查移民的经历如何相互比较，以及与其家乡社区的其他人的经历，特别关注他们如何理解和重视劳动。研究人员的首要问题是，在西方劳动力市场出售劳动力的经历是否会影响基于文化的经济逻辑，即劳动力在国内的价值。这项研究将在四个社区进行，这些社区拥有一系列国内生产业务（手工业、农业和渔业），也向北美劳动力市场输送大量外来工人。研究人员将使用定性研究方法的组合来收集数据，包括：社区映射，几个时间阶段的访谈，焦点小组，样带行走，以及采用文化共识测试的文化领域分析，句子框架任务和堆分类任务。本研究的结果将有助于经济活动、文化和社会福利之间关系的社会科学理论化。鉴于当前的全球经济危机挑战了主流的经济逻辑，关注劳动附带的非货币价值是很重要的。了解不同类型的经济运作中的劳动力如何产生幸福、尊严和社会合法性，可以帮助北美和拉丁美洲的政策制定者促进对个人和社会有益的经济选择，并制定更有效的管理移民计划。资助这项研究也支持国际研究合作和教育。

Dr. David Griffith (East Carolina University) and Dr. Ricardo Contreras (East Carolina University), along with collaborators Dr. Elizabeth Juárez Cerdi (El Colegio de Michoacán) and Dr. Kerry Preibisch (University of Guelph), will undertake research on the sending community effects of managed migration (guestworker) programs. There has been a global increase in managed migration programs; therefore, increasing numbers of guestworkers from Mexico and Central America have had the opportunity to experience United States and Canadian labor markets and work regimes. At the same time, however, many families across Latin America are struggling to maintain traditional livelihoods, such as fishing and farming, based on domestic production -- household economic operations that draw on family labor and are oriented toward the maintenance and reproduction of the domestic unit and its supporting cultural traditions and social institutions. The co-occurrence of workers who sell their labor in North America and workers who work in traditional contexts provides an exceptional opportunity for a comparative study of work, labor values, and well-being.Working with a multinational team in Mexico and Guatemala, the researchers will investigate how the migrants' experiences compare to each other and to others in their home communities, with a particular focus on how they understand and value labor. The researchers' overarching question is whether the experience of selling labor in Western labor markets affects the culturally based economic logic of how labor is valued at home. The research will be carried out in four communities that have a range of domestic producer operations (artisanal, farming, and fishing) and also send large numbers of guestworkers to the North American labor markets. The researchers will gather data using a combination of qualitative research methods, including: community mappings, several time-staged phases of interviewing, focus groups, transect walks, and cultural domain analyses employing cultural consensus testing, sentence frame tasks, and pile-sorting tasks. Findings from this research will contribute to social scientific theorizing of the relation between economic activities, culture, and social well-being. The focus on nonmonetary values attached to labor is important in light of the current global economic crisis, which has challenged prevailing economic logic. Understanding how labor in different kinds of economic operations produce happiness, dignity, and social legitimacy can assist policy-makers across both North America and Latin America in promoting economic alternatives that have beneficial individual and social outcomes and in developing more effective managed migration programs. Funding this research also supports international research collaboration and education.