ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which control over migrant laborers is effected principally through the state and employers and how, on the other hand, migrant workers organize to resist the pressure upon them. The incidence of infections and parasitic diseases as well as diseases of the respiratory and digestive systems are 200 to 500 per cent higher among migrant workers than among the population at large. Despite the force of the repression, it is difficult to explain why the collapse of organized black trade unionism on the mines was quite so complete for quite so long after the unsuccessful strike of 1946. The industrial awakening of the miners from their long slumber was seen in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In this chapter an attempt has been made to convey some of the experiential quality of being a migrant worker, whether in the fields of North America or the mines of South Africa.
