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  • Seasoning LaborContemporary South Asian Migrations and the Racialization of Immigrant Workers
  • SaunJuhi Verma (bio)

U.S. Employer: We need experienced workers, a seasoned labor force; workers who don't complain for every little thing. Those who know how to do the job and can handle a challenge. This ain't for the faint hearted.

Indian Labor Broker: A migrant that knows when to shut up, knows how to put up, is accustomed to this kind of work—that is the migrant we send abroad. No tamasha [spectacle], a seasoned worker as they say—that is what the employer really wants.

[Transcript from my research study of the India–Middle East–U.S. migration pathway for oil industry construction workers. The employer, located in the United States, and Indian labor broker were interviewed independently about their process for choosing ideal guest workers.]1

Labor cost is important, but seasoned workers are more essential. As the excerpt illuminates, there is a consensus between employers and labor brokers within the migrant recruitment network. Soliciting skilled workers at minimal wages is the baseline; however, the ideal laborer is one who does not challenge the working conditions or protest as a collective. The viewpoints are not an anomaly within my larger study of the India-Southwest Asia North Africa-United States–United States migrant recruitment pathway that uses the guest worker program to feed [End Page 31] into the oil construction industry.2 Employers desire foreign workers who are accustomed to the hazardous work sites of industrial construction; in particular, they specifically solicit migrants who do not have a history of labor organizing within SWANA. In response, labor brokerage firms brand themselves as offering migrant workers who are deferential. Within business transactions, employers and brokers use the terminology of seasoned as code for workers who embody a variety of qualities that lend to them being acculturated to dangerous working conditions without engaging in dissent. However, the manner in which South Asian workers are marketed as compliant is to be noted. Often, labor brokers conflate the category of South Asian with docility; the aim is to position themselves as the only provider of seasoned workers. The language as well as the practice of recruiting for seasoned labor offers compelling insights into contemporary patterns of racialization in global migrant markets.

Understanding the connections between race and labor markets is the focus of my broader study; the findings stem from a multicountry ethnography of migrant recruitment that is situated within a larger historical process. While the public image of the South Asian American community remains as model minorities, presumed to be primarily upwardly mobile professionals, the global reality of the population is quite to the contrary. A significant majority of the community numbering more than a billion are laborers within the informal economy of South Asia as well as occupy low-wage jobs within global markets. Embedded within these processes is a long history of outward migration into the oil economies of SWANA. From the historic colonial routes initiated by British occupation of South Asia to the emergence of energy markets within the countries of SWANA, migrants have been recruited to build industries by contributing their labor to construction projects. Within the last decade, these South Asian migrants, with experience in the SWANA oil industry, have been actively solicited as guest workers into the energy sector of the United States. The growth of hydraulic fracturing has opened new territory for oil extraction; capitalizing on the potential market are numerous stakeholders who have invested in industrial construction projects across the southwestern United States. The solicitation of South Asian construction workers is not coincidental.

Employer preference for overseas recruitment as opposed to hiring migrants from Central and South America is in part established through the racialized branding practices of global brokerage firms. In attempting to distinguish themselves within the Asian migrant market, Indian labor brokers promote narratives of their workers as the ideal labor force for foreign recruitment. In particular, brokerage firms' marketing strategies [End Page 32] involve framing Indian migrants as inherently passive, disciplined, and, most important, unfettered by volatile working conditions. Such a racialized image of the Indian labor force is highly sought after by American employers...

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