Empalmado y Contratado: The Valorisation and Coexistence of Labour Mobility and Immobilisation in the Experience of Mexican ‘Braceros’, 1940s–1960s

This contribution is linked to these most recent studies, as it primarily investigates the ways in which mobility and immobility coexisted during the lifetime of the Bracero Program. This article considers immobilisation of workers to be a constituent of the process of mobilisation, since the two aspects coexist and enable each other’s existence. Secondly, this article identifies the various means of valorisation applied to workers across the space spanning Mexico and the south-western United States by the actors involved in the Bracero Program. In particular, this chapter considers the ways in which mobility and immobility were intertwined within a labour mobility regime understood as a means of capture, management, coercion, and valorisation of workers’ (im)mobility. By analysing the means and strategies of valorising workers, it aims to situate Mexican peasants within the greater labour mobility regime extending beyond the specific function of the Bracero Program. Through the use of primary sources collected in the presidential archive of the Mexican Archivo General de la Nación and the oral histories published in the Bracero History Archive,15 this chapter lends a voice to the program’s protagonists – former braceros, growers, unions, institutional representatives, and others – while also introducing a novel perspective that analyses and highlights the coexistence of the means of valorising mobility and immobilisation along with workers’ desires that together constitute the labour mobility regime encompassing Mexico and the United States.