Exploited: Migrant Labour in the New Global Economy

by Toby Shelley

From cleaning to construction, from agriculture to domestic work, every day migrant labourers are exploited and enslaved. Extra hours are squeezed out of Polish food packers, and trafficked African children are used for forced labour. Low wages are used to drive down prices from the oil industry to airport services.

In this book, Toby Shelley shows that current unprecedented flows of migrant workers are a direct result of economic liberalization...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1842778528
• ISBN13: 9781842778524
• Release Date: September 2007
• Publisher: Zed Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.4" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Neither villians nor victims

Toby Shelley is a journalist for the Financial Times, a British paper not exactly known as an outlet of progressive views. Yet Shelley constructs his case on contemporary immigration in Marxist terms as a struggle between labor and capital. His loyalty clearly lies with workers, trade unions, and immigrants, and he reserves his harshest criticism for the employers who systematically abuse them. Shelley's brief treatise is thoroughly researched and forcefully articulated. While it focuses mostly on the case of immigration in the UK, his arguments apply to other wealthy Northern countries including the USA. He contends that we in rich destination countries should stop trying to paint immigrants either as a menace to society or as victims. At the same time, however, he uses ample evidence to demonstrate that (1) employers in many different sectors of the economy have an abiding incentive to hire immigrants over local workers, and (2) immigrants are much more prone to be exploited by their bosses than are local workers. "EXPLOITED" makes a compelling argument for shifting the focus of the immigration debate away from one-sided enforcement of immigration laws and toward the safeguarding of workers' rights. This book shows the folly of those who demonize undocumented immigrants as illegals but turn a blind eye to our own countries' employers who continue to chew these workers up and spit them out--in blatant violation of the rules on immigration, workplace safety, minimum wage, and even basic human rights.