“Rethinking the Masculinization of the Postwar Labor Migrant” – The mid-twentieth century’s unprecedented economic growth led to the emergence of a new category of mobile person: the “temporary” labor migrant, eventually known as the “guest worker.” And by the 1950s, from the Americas to Africa to Europe, this worker had acquired specific characteristics: a solo male, traveling alone, leaving any family members behind as insurance to both societies that he would eventually return. Scholars have reasoned that if the goal of labor-recruiting societies was to ensure migrants’ stay would be only temporary, those societies would naturally aim to leave male migrants’ wives and children somewhere else.
In this talk, Julie Weise examines archival sources from three continents to show that many who articulated both dominant gender ideologies and capitalist imperatives at mid-century found more reason to include women in temporary labor recruitment than to exclude them. Weise demonstrates contingency and provides alternative explanations for the masculinization of transborder recruitment programs that eventually occurred in the postwar years.
Julie M. Weise is an associate professor of history at the University of Oregon. She is the author of Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910 (UNC Press, 2015), which garnered an Organization of American Historians book award among others. The manuscript for her second book, “Guest Worker: Lives across Borders in an Age of Prosperity,” is under contract with UNC Press. Her research has been supported by Fulbright France, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the School for Advanced Research, the American Philosophical Society, and the Gerda Henkel Foundation among others. Her writing and commentary on immigration politics have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, National Public Radio, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Conversation, and other outlets.
12–1 p.m. Wednesday, Mar. 12 | 330 Hendricks Hall | 1408 University Street, Eugene