Black gold, brown labor: The legalization of indentured work through the transnational migration industry

My dissertation evaluates an international migration chain to explain the impact of the economic crisis upon the U.S. domestic labor market. My dissertation, entitled "Black Gold, Brown Labor: The Legalization of Indentured Work through the Transnational Migration Industry", asks how do employers meet labor demand during an economic downturn? Logically, with high rates of unemployment the excess of labor would enable employers to meet labor needs from within the domestic worker pool. However, despite the 2008 economic crisis there has been an increased recruitment of temporary foreign workers in post-Katrina New Orleans and across the gulf south oil industries. I find that a complex chain of business ties between U.S. oil industry contractors and Indian labor brokers sustains a supply of cheap and dependent temporary foreign workers. My findings indicate that a lawful market for migrants emerges during the economic crisis that enables exploitative labor conditions to be written into employment contracts.;This project complicates how labor markets are thought to work during economic downturns. The need for foreign labor is theorized as stemming from lack of particular skill sets within the domestic labor pool or demand for cheap labor during periods of economic growth. However, the emergence of complex labor recruitment chains even during an economic downturn identifies alternate ways in which labor markets operate. The greater dependence upon foreign labor during the economic crisis stems from the emergence of regulated global migrant markets. Employers gain access to a steady supply of cheap and dependent migrant workers through coercive recruitment practices.;My multi-site ethnography began with interviews of South Asian guest workers in New Orleans and followed the labor migration chain to employers across Louisiana and Texas and labor brokers in India. Data collection included in-depth interviews with 61 former guest workers, 15 employers in the U.S. oil industry, 21 labor brokers, and six Indian government officials. The two-year study also involved analysis of 51 labor trafficking court cases filed by guest workers against employers between the periods of 2008 to 2011.