War, Work, and Want

Description

An expansive history of how an economic shock a half century ago created a world that is addicted to mass migration.

The oil shock of 1973 changed everything. It brought the golden age of American and European economic growth to an end; it destabilized Middle Eastern politics; and it set in train processes that led to over one hundred million unexpected—and unwanted—immigrants.

In War, Work, and Want, Randall Hansen asks why, against all expectations, global migration tripled after 1970. The answer, he argues, lies in how the OPEC Oil crisis transformed the global economy, Middle Eastern geopolitics and, as a consequence, international migration. The quadrupling of oil prices and attendant inflation destroyed economic growth in the West while flooding the Middle East with oil money. American and European consumers, their wealth drained, rebuilt their standard of living on the back of cheap labor—and cheap migrants. The Middle East enjoyed the benefits of a historic wealth transfer, but oil became a poisoned chalice leading to political instability, revolution, and war, all of which resulted in tens of millions of refugees. The economic, and migratory, consequences of the OPEC oil crisis transformed the contours of domestic politics around the world. They fueled the growth of nationalist-populist parties that built their brands on blaming immigrants for collapsing standards of living, willfully ignoring the fact that mass immigration was the effect, not the cause, of that collapse.

In showing how war (the main driver of refugee flows), work (labor migrants), and want (the desire for ever cheaper products made by migrants) led to the massive upsurge in global migration after 1973, this book will reshape our understanding of the past half-century of global history.

About the author:

Randall Hansen is Canada Research Chair in Global Migration at the University of Toronto. He works on immigration and citizenship, demography and population policy and the effects of war on civilians. He is the author or Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany and Japan (2020, first edition on Germany 2009), Disobeying Hitler: German Resistance after Operation Valkyrie (Oxford, 2014), Sterilized by the State: Eugenics, Race and the Population Scare in 20th Century North America (with Desmond King, 2014), and Citizenship and Immigration in Post-War Britain (Oxford, 2000).

Reviews

"Randall Hansen has written a panoramic and passionate book that casts global political and economic history after 1973 in a new light. Alongside a deft and richly informed argument about the destabilizing consequences of wars and shifts in government policies as well as recurrent hostility toward immigrant newcomers, he never loses sight of the impact on successive generations who labored for low wages in the globalized economy. His book has the hallmarks of a classic." - Peter Gatrell, University Of Manchester, And Author Of The Unsettling Of Europe: How Migration Reshaped A Continent

"The depth of my disagreement with Hansen's conclusions about immigration is matched only by my admiration for his intellectual curiosity and the rigor of his historical scholarship. This book is a page turner." - David Goodhart, Author Of Head Hand Heart: The Struggle For Dignity And Status In The 21st Century

"In this magnificent book, Randall Hansen shows how one event, the 1973 oil crisis, has changed the world. In the West, it sent capitalism into a low-wage spiral that made life cheaper for the middle classes, but on the backs of exploited migrant workers at home and abroad. In the Middle East, the sudden oil riches produced war, instability, and refugees far beyond the region, with no end in sight. That history is events explained by other events, has never been more powerfully demonstrated." - Christian Joppke, University Of Bern, And Author Of Neoliberal Nationalism: Immigration And The Rise Of The Populist Right 

Table of contents

Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Prussians and Jews: The Six-Day War and Its Aftermath
Chapter 3: The Great Revaluation: OPEC
Chapter 4: Black Gold: Wealth and Immigration in the Middle East
Chapter 5: Oil in Oil-Poor States: Egypt
Chapter 6: Oil's Curses: Iran and Iraq
Chapter 7: Drunk on Oil and Gas: The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
Chapter 8: No Blood for Oil: Iraq, 1990
Chapter 9: The Taliban, 9/11, and the Second Iraq War
Chapter 10: The Arab Nightmare: Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Global Displacement in the 2010s
Chapter 11: ISIL and the European Refugee Crisis
Chapter 12: Expensive Oil, Cheap Goods
Chapter 13: The Assault on Working-Class Wages
Chapter 14: Where We Shop
Chapter 15: What We Eat I: The Rise and Fall of Meatpacking Unions
Chapter 16: What We Eat II: Immigration and the Meatpacking Industry
Chapter 17: What We Eat III: Fish, Fruit, and Vegetables
Chapter 18: Where We Live I: Migrants in the US Construction Business
Chapter 19: Where We Live II: Building Europe
Chapter 20: Where We Live III: Asia
Chapter 21: How We Live: Keeping our Houses, Raising our Children
Chapter 22: What We Wear
Conclusion: Back to the Future: Inflation, the Global Economy, and Migration in the 2020s
Notes
Index