Talk:Migrant worker

No longer a stub?
Maybe this needs to be expanded
 * WP:RFE--Acebrock 06:09, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I've added some more material. it could be expanded further, especially about migrant workers in China, but surely it is beyond stub size? --GwydionM 18:19, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm planning on adding additional material on migrant workers in China, as well as likely creating a full article - there's a lot of research deserving a full featured discussion on its own page. GavinCross (talk) 21:07, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

It seems to be inconsistent that the Foreign worker section contains both Legal Definition of Migrant Worker and Migrant Worker Organizers sections. It would seem to make sense to move the Migrant-worker-related stuff from the Foreign worker section to this Migrant worker section, and link to it from the Foreign worker section.
 * I agreeOsakadan 14:27, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Migrant worker seems to imply moving to survive, or to escape from poverty, whereas Foreign seems to merely mean "different nationality". So a university lecturer working overseas would be a "Foreign worker" rather than a "Migrant worker". LittleBen 14:18, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I moved the confusing text about the United Nations use of this term to the bottom and repeated the point that the term is used differently in the USA. I am making an attempt to reduce the finesse' and obfuscation of our illustreious politicians as they worm their way through immigration reform. --The Trucker 03:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Needs Fixing
Can we improve this page? I'd suggest merging "foreign worker" into this page and creating several sub-sections to describe different types of migrant workers (internal, foreign etc...), the changing definition of the term, etc... Wanzhen 09:30, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Clarified worldview
I've changed the article around to try to give it a structure that has potential to get the worldview straight. Because the term is used in such different ways in different countries the solution I've tried is to break it up by country.

I agree with the commenter above who suggested that foreign worker should be merged here. For most of the world they refer to the same concept - someone working in a country that isn't their home country. For those countries that have a distinction between the two terms we can easily explain in that country's section the circumstances in which each term should be used. 217.46.192.153 (talk) 15:11, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

This page needs more information that explains the migrant more in detail. As in what happend that long ago. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.86.137.111 (talk) 19:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Canada
deleted advertising from this section and will update with more detail. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.216.4.250 (talk) 04:29, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

What's the word for "someone who regularly works away from home" outside of US?
So how do you call "someone who regularly works away from home" outside of United States? Cause that situation is quite common in China as well, so there is a Chinese article on it, I have interwikied it to this article, but wish there is a better choice. --Voidvector (talk) 03:52, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Major Changes and Expansions
My colleague and I wish to propose major changes to this page. Firstly, we would like to change the title from "Migrant worker" to "Migrant Labor" which focuses more broadly on the general theme and phenomenon more so than just the narrow scope of the individual worker. In terms of content, we wish to add sections on the gender issues associated with migrant labor, the safety issues and protection of migrant laborers, national vs. transnational migration, and migration and its effects on care labor and the family. We would appreciate any input or further ideas. FaithSara (talk) 02:14, 1 April 2011 (UTC), DArquero (talk) 02:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The proposed additions, providing they are well organized and written, meet the usual critera such as WP:RELIABLE, and don't duplicate things that other articles say, may indeed improve this article. Certainly we could do with a denser, carefully chosen, and strategically placed set of WP:BTW internal links to relevant articles.  As for changing the article's name, I don't see the need.  Jim.henderson (talk) 21:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Migrant labor is a more general concept than migrant worker, and would be a better name for a revised article, as it can also encompass labor conditions, causes, etc.; is better linked to the relevant literature on this topic. Dpj363 (talk) 04:54, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Migration and sex work as a specific type of labor
I plan on creating a page titled Migration and Sex Work. I think having pages/subsections specifically concerning the different types of labor that migrants seek would be a good idea, especially because these labor forms have significant differences in how prevalent they are, where they occur, and the types of issues that arise. I plan on creating a page on sex work performed by migrant laborers in different international contexts as an example of the type of article that could be created. Sex work as a specific labor sector in the larger literature of migration is significant not only for its prevalence among female migrants, but for the intense reaction state governments have had and the debates that have appeared that make it quite different in some ways from other forms of labor. The literature has shown that there is something about commercial sex as a form of migrant labor that has influenced and spurred larger debates on immigration, human trafficking, and gender inequality that do not necessarily arise in the same way regarding other labor sectors. A growing population of female migrants who engage in sex work over other forms of labor, formal or informal, is extremely prevalent in many regions and nations of the world I believe an article that summarizes not only the characteristics of migrant sex work, but also explains the context and reactions for migrant sex work would fill in many of the missing gaps and subsections on Wikipedia. I would love to get people's feedback on such an article, including how to keep it focused on the migrant laborer aspect of the article. Lillyyu (talk) 03:53, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Women Migrant Workers
I want to revise the information on Women in the Nigerian state Migrant Workers prison that more fully describes the situations that women who leave their homelands for work abroad. Whereas this provides a good background into females involved in foreign markets, there is still much to be discussed and explored within the realm of migrant work. I want to provide more detail and more information on this topic, and also add a title of Women Care workers, as it is a more common position for these female care workers.Erinbb1 (talk) 06:01, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

US History Section
I deleted a significant portion of the US section and just wrote in a disclaimer. I did this because I do not know how to include those official looking boxes that caution against a poorly written section.

The portion about slavery was misinformed, and I genuinely think, had a hint of unreconstructed revisionism. It referred to the concentration of slavey in the South as a "myth." There are further problems without how immigrant and migrant works are described as being "brought in." This implies coordination, some kind of agency, when the truth was that these movements occurred mostly as the result of many independent decisions by the migrants themselves, not a policy of bringing people in. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.77.196.31 (talk) 00:16, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Also a problem was the claim that migration began after slavery. This was not true in the North (the country is founded on migration), nor is it true in the South where large scale migrations was NOT common after slavery. Furthermore, that section of the article referred to the "importation" of labor from abroad. This is both a strange way to describe human migration, and completely misunderstands American immigration policy. I sadly do not have citations to back this up. The citations in the original article were rather obscure, and I believe misrepresented. I do not, however, want people to get the wrong idea. Better to leave some things out than spread misinformation.

My attempts to change this article just lead to it reverting.


 * Please remember to sign with four tildes. Anyway I got rid of some of the above, but further consideration led me to the suspicion that my effort was wasted and the whole subsection is just a skimpy, haphazard and poorly sourced attempt at what History of immigration to the United States does much better. This in turn inspired a feeling that it ought to be reduced to, at most, a small paragraph without header and a MAIN template to direct the reader to that article. Anybody agree? Disagree? Jim.henderson (talk) 22:59, 27 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Slavery was never migrant labor. At best, I could imagine this article hosting a link to the US slavery article, or a few sentences comparing migrant labor to slavery, supported by reliable sources. Binksternet (talk) 04:38, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

A US section needs to be added. There were many different laws authorizing, deauthorizing, deporting, and whatnot of migrant workers in the US in the last century and a half. But the history is now missing from the article, as are any links to other wiki pages. 174.62.68.53 (talk) 15:37, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Expatriate
Under this proposal expatriate would merge into this article and also into immigration

In English, the term "expatriate" (as a noun) does not have a clear distinction from that of "migrant". While the lead of expatriate does note that "In common usage, the term is often used in the context of professionals or skilled workers sent abroad by their companies", this is essentially a loosely defined subset of migrant worker. Thus these articles discuss different aspects of the same topic.

The articles Immigration and migrant worker discusses the topic more comprehensively and it is not clear that the reader gains any benefit for being given a different article if they search for expatriate. Presently, expatriate reads as fork of migrant worker with a focus on modern business practices. Migrant worker would benefit from incorporating some this content.

It does not seem likely that the particular subtopic of human migration that "expatriate" covers can be satisfactorily distinguished from the scope of these other articles, and, as such, a separate article is not justified. LukeSurlt c 16:26, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

To clarify the proposal: much of the content of expatriate should be merged into migrant worker, with some other content possibly going to immigration or other subtopics thereof. Expatriate itself should be treated like migrant (possibly redirecting to that disambig). --LukeSurlt c 16:59, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * No expats include retirees who never naturalize and are not workers. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 23:02, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Expats can be those who retire abroad. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 23:03, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose merge: The Migrant Worker article is already long enough. Perhaps we could add a small section which briefly mentions expatriates and links to the 'Main article' on that topic? And, to be quite blunt about it, they are two different things: migrant workers are often poor and exploited, whereas expats are relatively rich and sometimes exploitative. Also, I agree with the Emir and Richard that expats include retirees who are not workers. If anything, we should be merging the articles Foreign worker and Migrant worker. Cheers - Meticulo (talk) 16:23, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I've withdrawn this. I still hold that "expatriate" is a problematic article, and we need to either specifically define what it means or dissolve it into other articles. At the moment it is a slightly arbitrary sub-section of migration-related content. Might be a question of taking expatriate to AfD, but I don't have the stomach for that right now. --LukeSurlt c 16:57, 5 February 2017 (UTC
 * I agree that the "expatriate" article is a mess. I'm going to have a crack at improving it, condensing its human resource management section and attempting to sharpen the definition. --Meticulo (talk) 00:36, 7 February 2017 (UTC)


 * yes There is no meaningful difference between these groups of people except class.
 * semantic differences could work for a paper definition, but the way these terms are used is clearly based on class/country-of-origin. Bart Terpstra (talk) 16:28, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

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Merge from Foreign worker
It seems to me that those terms are synonymous. I did a quick lit check for that, and I couldn't find any work that clearly distinguishes those terms. On the contrary, may use both interchangeably (ex. ). Further, from : "A variety of terms is used around the world for peoples grouped under the generic label, migrant worker: immigrant, guest worker, migrant worker, seasonal worker, illegal worker, undocumented worker, denizen, native-born second generation, foreign worker, colonial worker, postcolonial migrant, economic refugee, refugee, contract laborer, foreigner, foreign labor, and foreigner fellow citizen" (it also lists immigrant worker, then my snippet view ends). I know that our lead of this article implies a difference ("A "migrant worker" is a person who either migrates within their home country or outside it to pursue work such as seasonal work. Migrant workers usually do not have an intention to stay permanently in the country or region in which they work.") but this is uncited OR. From our article, International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families states that "the term "migrant worker" refers to a person who is engaged or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a State of which he or she is not a national." While some narrow definitions of the term migrant worker may focus on seasonality, this is clearly not a standard case. Migrant worker seems to be a generic term used for, well, citizens of country A living and working in country B. As for related terminology: Pinging editors who participated in the related merge discussion above, where I see at least one other person proposed a merge for foreign and migrant worker articles. . PS. If we can reach consensus on that, I'll also propose a category merger for Category:Migrant workers and Category:Foreign workers. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:43, 6 March 2018 (UTC)
 * immigrant redirects to immigration (ok)
 * guest worker redirects to foreign worker
 * immigrant worker redirects to foreign worker
 * seasonal worker redirects to Seasonal industry (stub). This should redirect here, probably.
 * Support merge: I agree, the terms seem close enough to justify a merge. Minor nuances in meaning between "migrant worker" and "foreign worker", if there are any, could be explained within the merged article, perhaps in an "etymology" section. Thanks for pinging me . - Meticulo (talk) 23:56, 7 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Migrant worker and Foreign worker have different connotations, I disagree with the proposal to merge the two. Xtinex 619 (talk) 18:36, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment: I have moved the preceding comment from Xtinex from the top of this talk page to here. Unfortunately, I found the comment only after merging the contents of "Foreign worker" into "Migrant worker". I was about to close the discussion and turn the former page into a redirect, but won't do so for the moment. Meticulo (talk) 11:58, 17 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Perhaps change them to "domestic migrant worker" and "foreign migrant worker"? The experience of someone who routinely travels for work within their own culture is different from people who travel work for in the modern globalized labor force. For example in India there are lots of people migrant workers from rural areas who travel to urban centers to work in construction, then travel back to the rural area with money. Those people have a much different experience than migrant workers who travel to the Middle East to do construction. A big part of that difference is distinguishing the work and experience when they remain in their own community and culture versus the work and experience they have in a foreign culture. There are many such examples around the world. Perhaps in the sub-articles, like "migrant work in (regional location), we should merge the concept under that regional heading.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  14:00, 17 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Oppose merger this is clearly not the case. Foreign workers are a form of migrant worker, but migrant workers also exist without being foreigners. Workers without permanent residency permits in the place where they work are not qualified to live there without work, and thus are migrants instead of residents. There are vast numbers of migrant workers who are not foreigners all over the world. If your search couldn't find a difference between the two terms, then you seem to have only looked at results pertaining to countries without a domestic migrating population of workers. Migrant workers. There are 300 million migrant workers in China, all of whom are Chinese citizens.; I would surmise that these migrants would form the bulk of all migrant workers, being more than those of foreign workers in population. -- 70.51.201.106 (talk) 04:35, 18 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment seasonal workers are not migrant workers, no matter how you look at it. Seasonal workers work in seasonal industries. This is clearly unrelated to migration. Migrants may fill some of the jobs, but that is not always the case. Clearly, many seasonal workers are non-migrating, and live through the off season of thin times as they may, such as by collecting unemployment ; Thinking "season worker" means "migrant worker" is a very bad idea. -- 70.51.201.106 (talk) 04:39, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

3.0 Female Migrant Worker
In the next week, I will be adding a section under Female Migrant Worker. 3.3 will be information regarding the informal economy. Xtinex 619 (talk) 01:14, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Migrant workers as theorists
This recently added section uses too much humanities jargon, in my opinion, for a general readership. See MOS:JARGON. Also, item 8 at WP:NOTGUIDE: "Academic language. Texts should be written for everyday readers, not just for academics". I will add a Template:Confusing to the section. Please,, would you consider rewriting it so that it has more chance of being understood by readers without a humanities or social science degree. Thank you. Meticulo (talk) 23:19, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at University of Utah supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2013 Spring term. Further details are available on the course page.

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Kafala System
I would like to expand on information provided on the Kafala System under the section entitled "Middle East." The Kafala System is presented in this article as being a "sponsorship" system for migrants, which is correct, but there is missing information on the harmful impacts that this system has made on migrants from South Asia. I would like to add 1-2 sentences on how the Kafala system limits guest workers to arduous labor, leading to higher suicide rates amongst migrants compared to Qatari citizens. This information is validated by “Expat/Expert Camps: Redefining ‘Labour’ within Gulf Migration," written by Neha Vora. This source is reliable since Vora spent time as a migrant worker in Qatar as an academic, holding a Birdseye view on the different classes of migrant work. I hope that this edit is welcomed by the editor(s) of this Wikipedia page, and if anyone has any comments on this information that I propose to add, please let me know on this Talk Page or my Talk Page.SlothGurl12 (talk) 04:09, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Qatar Labor Migrants Section
Hello, my name is Grey Ingrassia; I am a student at Chapman University planning to edit this Wikipedia article as part of the Wikipedia student ambassador program. I believe this article could use some clarification; I will add a section on Qatar to provide a space for more specificity regarding migrant issues in the country. The section will begin with demographic statistics of migrants in the country, including information about the increase from newer sending communities to Qatar and broader statistics about the impact of labor migration in the country and Qatar's specific labor-migration policies. I then plan to detail the particular abuses faced by migrant workers in Qatar due to the four stages of Qatari labor migration: recruitment, deployment, employment, and return. The section will end with information related to FIFA and the 2022 world cup and how it has drawn international attention to labor migration in the nation. The information will be backed up first by the book, The Effect of the Global Economic Imbalance on Migrant Workers and Economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council, written by Olga Marzovilla. The book contains reliable information as it shows the historical mark that migrant workers have made on the Global Economy of the Gulf and statistics on the impact non-citizen labor workers have made in both the public and private sectors compared to citizens. I will also refer to the article, "Leveraging the World Cup: Mega Sporting Events, Human Rights Risk, and Worker Welfare Reform in Qatar," by Sarath K. Ganji, published in the Journal on Migration and Human Security. Ganji leads a non-profit research venture which investigates malign financing in global sports and has worked as a strategy consultant at Guidehose's National Security practice and as a US Fullbright Scholar. Overall, I plan to add a smaller section on Qatar, most likely 10-12 sentences on the abovementioned topics. I hope these edits are seen as welcome additions to the article, and if any other editors have any comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to comment on this talk page or my personal talk page. Gingrassia (talk) 04:09, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Migration in World History
— Assignment last updated by Gingrassia (talk) 06:40, 9 May 2023 (UTC)