Editor's Introduction

The history of labor migration dominates this issue, with a rich trio of articles exploring (respectively) 1930s California, early twentieth-century border policing, and xenophobia toward Indian migrants in Burma. Christopher Shaw examines the history of white Dust Bowl migrants—often referred to as “Okies”—in unionization efforts in California during the 1930s. Taking stock of a historiography that has stressed cultural factors among the migrants, such as racial prejudice or individualism, to explain the failure of unionism among them, Shaw instead argues for the importance of structural factors. A saturated labor market and the anti-union strategies of employers, he finds, were far more important.In a fascinating exploration of border policy in the early twentieth century, Erik Bernardino reminds us how profoundly sexual morals policing, class, and race were intertwined. Border agents seeking ways to control poor Mexican migrants deployed laws concerning sexual morality and the Likelihood of Public Charge (LPC) clause to entrap migrants in a cycle of vulnerability. The discourse on morality and criminality combined with the LPC clause and vagrancy laws to create a landscape of governance that marginalized and controlled Mexican migrants. In Bernardino's eloquent words, “Morals policing became the tool to achieve post-entry social control and a pliable, exploitable labor force.”Like Christopher Shaw, Leo Lucassen weighs the relative importance of cultural and structural factors, this time focusing on explaining riots against Indian labor migrants in Burma in the 1930s. Lucassen makes a strong case for examining the relationship between xenophobia and labor migration beyond the West. By considering the case of Burmese reactions to Muslim labor migrants, Lucassen demonstrates that a blend of socioeconomic (labor market) factors combined with essentialist cultural or religious issues to legitimize widespread violence and discrimination aimed at vulnerable Indian labor migrants.We are also delighted to present a stimulating roundtable debating the relationship between care work and capitalism. In “Up for Debate,” Premilla Nadasen draws on her new book Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism and calls on scholars of labor history to examine the degree to which the care industry has transcended the distinction between productive and reproductive labor and become a productive industry itself. Feminist and labor scholars have long recognized that care work is exacerbated by the defunding of social services such as education and health care. The closing of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally intensified the “crisis of care.” Yet during the pandemic many middle-class families weathered that crisis by relying more heavily on the profit-driven “care industry,” which, as Nadasen points out, has emerged as a key site for capitalist investment and profit accumulation since the 1970s. Pointing to the history of slavery as an institution that always sought profit in social reproduction, Nadasen asserts that this pattern has become a defining feature of contemporary capitalism. In robust responses, Tithi Bhattacharya and Jocelyn Olcott note the continued tensions between profit and care to argue that social reproduction remains a site for social transformation. LaKisha Michelle Simmons points out that the complexities of capitalism and care are most evident in the lives of Black children, who have often been forced to provide care both for others and for themselves. Joan Flores-Villalobos emphasizes the central role Black and Brown workers have played in the global development of the care industry, in both sustaining the colonial and financial networks critical to profitability and resisting the exploitation of their labor.Under the editorship of Vanessa May, the reviews section continues to provide a remarkable overview of important work published by labor scholars. Kim Phillips-Fein starts us off with a featured review of Matt Garcia's Eli and the Octopus: The CEO Who Tried to Reform One of the World's Most Notorious Corporations. She notes that the book provides an understanding of the changing shape of capitalism over the last several decades, as well as a cautionary tale about the limitations of social justice capitalism. Several other reviews likewise focus on capitalism, including two that consider the business of slavery, with Barbara Hahn on Sharon Ann Murphy's study of antebellum banking and the expansion of slavery; and Randy M. Browne on Nicholas Radburn's book on the expansion of the slave trade in the eighteenth century. Taken as a whole, the reviews range widely, to gender and sexuality (on Heather Berg's Porn Work), globalization (Nelson Lichtenstein on Paul Adler's No Globalization without Representation), a review of Christopher Phelps and Robin Vandome's edited anthology Marxism and America; and Kenyon Zimmer assessing Lorenzo Costaguta's study of late nineteenth-century socialism and race.Finally, we are pleased to feature, at the very beginning of this issue, the new poem “A Dream of Drunks Outsmarting Me” by acclaimed poet Martín Espada.