Foreign workers or guest workers are people who work in a country other than one of which they are a citizen. Some foreign workers use a guest worker program in a country with more preferred job prospects than in their home country. Guest workers are often either sent or invited to work outside their home country or have acquired a job before leaving their home country, whereas migrant workers often leave their home country without a specific job in prospect.
Tens of millions of people around the world operate as foreign workers. As of 2018, according to reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is an estimated 28 million foreign-born workers in the United States,[1] which draws most of its immigrants from Mexico, including 4 or 5 million undocumented workers. It is estimated[by whom?] that around 5 million foreign workers live in northwestern Europe, half a million in Japan, and around 5 million in Saudi Arabia. Between January and June in 2019, 2.4 million foreigners arrived to work in Russia.[2] A comparable number of dependents may accompany international workers.[3]
Some foreign workers migrate from former colonies to a former colonial metropole (France, for example).[4] Chain migration may operate in building guest-worker communities.[5]
- ^ "A Look at the Foreign-Born Labor Force in the US". www.pgpf.org. Retrieved 2020-11-19.
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"Russia's FSB Publishes Foreign Worker Statistics for First Time in 20 Years". The Moscow Times. 16 August 2019. Retrieved 18 July 2020.
The FSB border service data says that 2.4 million migrants have arrived in Russia for work between January and June 2019, according to a tally by the RBC news website.
- ^ http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.ed/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=westfall[permanent dead link]
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Taras, Raymond (30 June 2012). Xenophobia and Islamophobia in Europe. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (published 2012). p. 81. ISBN 9780748654895. Retrieved 18 July 2020.
The demographics of a number of European states - France, Britain, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, inter alia - have been profoundly shaped by their colonial past, in particular when migration from the periphery to the postcolonial metropole accelerated.
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Schrover, Marlou (20 November 2017). "Labour Migration". In Hofmeester, Karin; van der Linden, Marcel (eds.). Handbook Global History of Work. De Gruyter Reference. Oldenburg: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG (published 2017). p. 461. ISBN 9783110424584. Retrieved 18 July 2020.
Especially in the later period of the guest worker migration regime [in North Western Europe], migrants came via chain migration structures. Employers delegated recruitment to the workers who had been in their employment for a while, whom they trusted and whom they expected to help the new immigrants.