On April 3, the phenomenon of international labor brokers will be explored during a one-day conference at UC Santa Cruz. The conference, "Bodies, Brokers and Borders: Labor Market Intermediaries and Transnational Migration," is free and open to the public.
Conference organizer Steve McKay, assistant professor of sociology at UC Santa Cruz, said the topic of international labor brokers is particularly relevant in the global economy but also under-researched. Labor brokering ranges from the "high-end," such as high-tech engineers from south Asia for Silicon Valley and nurses from the Philippines to, notoriously, brokers who traffic in undocumented day laborers in the nation's largest cities or in forced labor in other countries.
The conference will examine both and also address "innovative responses to the rise of such transnational brokering, such as the rise of community-based workers centers across the U.S.," McKay said.
Participating are internationally renowned experts and researchers in the field from across the U.S. and overseas as well. They will explore how international labor brokers work, whether alternatives exist, and what the rise of brokering means for workers, industries and the future of labor markets.
- What: "Bodies, Brokers and Borders: Labor Market Intermediaries and Transnational Migration"
- When: 8:45 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Saturday, April 3
- Where: Room 105, Oakes College, UC Santa Cruz
- Information: (831) 459-5655 or http://ihr.ucsc.edu/archives/bodies-brokers-borders
The conference is sponsored by the UC Santa Cruz Center for Labor Studies with funding from the Miguel Contreras Fund for Labor Studies of the University of California. Additional support from the UC Santa Cruz Center for Global, Internationa, and Regional Studies, with co-sponsorship by the UC Santa Cruz Division of Humanities and the vice chancellor for research.