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ABSTRACT
This article analyses the skills and competence acquisition of migration entrepreneurs in the H-2 visa programme, a U.S. temporary worker scheme. This programme, which nowadays largely recruits Mexicans, is managed by a migration industry of labour contracting agencies, recruiters, document processors, and transporters. This article focuses on recruiters, in charge of selecting workers, and document processors, responsible for completing visa application forms. Hailing mostly from the rural working class, recruiters derive expertise from membership in the social world of the migrant. The competences of document processors closely track their belonging in the urban middle class, reflecting experiences of formal education which prepare them to deal with the bureaucratic interface of the programme. These migration entrepreneurs also acquire skills by cooperating and competing with colleagues, migrants, contracting firms, employers, advocates, and government officials – interactions that expose them the risks and benefits of a more expansive role in the brokerage apparatus.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 These numbers represent an approval rate of 89.3 per cent. A U.S. fiscal year goes from 1 October of the previous calendar year (2017) to 30 September of the year of reference (2018).
2 Some states temporarily absorb this migration industry, turning it a branch of the government, only to reprivatize it later on (see Siracusa and Acacio Citation2004).
3 Employers often pass on to workers the cost of recruitment, recouping from them the fees paid to brokers and to government agencies (see Silvey and Parreñas Citation2019).
4 Recruiters do not constitute a homogeneous category; some are, in fact, women of varied social class backgrounds (see Griffith Citation2015).
5 Even though H-2 workers are allowed to bring families using an H-4 visa, recruiters rarely inform migrants of this opportunity. Occasionally, employers consent to workers laboring in year-round supervisory positions to bring in families with the H-4 visa.
6 These variations reflect the diverse paths of H-2 worker recruitment (Muñoz Citation2016).
7 Some recruiters and document processors ask workers to sign a paper stating that they have not been charged any fees in Mexico.
8 Some employers have workers pay the cost of recruitment (e.g. visa processing, transportation) upfront as a way to make them stay for the duration of the contract and then reimburse them at the end.
9 These brokers have larger operations, allowing for an internal division of labour with part of the staff undertaking recruitment and part remaining as document processors.
10 Some recruiters try to expand upstream by becoming document processors and capturing the fees associated with completing forms. This creates tensions between these two types brokers, given that this course of action displaces document processors with whom recruiters collaborate.
11 Conducting fieldwork in Monterrey, I encountered workers who had laboured in the United States with an H-2 visa for more than 20 years.
12 These recruitment strategies have led some communities of origin to specialise in sending H-2 temporary workers abroad.
13 Workers are also consumers of brokerage and mobility services (Harney Citation1979). Seizing on this notion, advocacy organisations have launched websites where workers can evaluate brokers. See Contratados.org, by the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante.
14 To be sure, improved recruitment conditions do not necessarily translate into good workplace conditions in the United States.
15 On the imaginaries recruiters and employers construct of the ideal worker, see Shubin, Findlay, and McCollum (Citation2014) and Hellio (Citation2013).
16 Some document processors explained that they do not have any contact with employers.
17 During the interview, consular officials check various data sets to verify that the applicant has not crossed into the United States or worked in the country without authorisation. This information can be used by U.S. authorities to deny the visa.
18 This interaction was observed by a member of the research team (see Muñoz Citation2016).
19 As per my interviews with recruiters and migrant women in Monterrey, this appears to be done informally. Women are processed as H-2A visas workers to labour in agriculture but, in reality, they are brought with groups of men to cook and clean at dormitories and camps.
20 Some H-2 candidates from traditional sending states in Mexico have conducted prior undocumented sojourns to the United States but hide these experiences from intermediaries. If these unauthorised stays are flagged by consular authorities and the visa is denied, the broker loses time and money, while scrambling to replace the workers whose applications were turned down.
21 Migrant advocates fight these practices and have established agreements with large contracting agencies so that these workers are not excluded from future calls (Hernández-León and Sandoval Hernández Citation2017).