Foreign workers or guest workers are people who work in a country other than one of which they are a citizen. Some foreign workers use a guest worker program in a country with more preferred job prospects than in their home country. Guest workers are often either sent or invited to work outside their home country or have acquired a job before leaving their home country, whereas migrant workers often leave their home country without a specific job in prospect.
Tens of millions of people around the world operate as foreign workers. As of 2018, according to reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there is an estimated 28 million foreign-born workers in the United States,[1] which draws most of its immigrants from Mexico, including 4 or 5 million undocumented workers. It is estimated[by whom?] that around 5 million foreign workers live in northwestern Europe, half a million in Japan, and around 5 million in Saudi Arabia. Between January and June in 2019, 2.4 million foreigners arrived to work in Russia.[2] A comparable number of dependents may accompany international workers.[3]
Some foreign workers migrate from former colonies to a former colonial metropole (France, for example).[4] Chain migration may operate in building guest-worker communities.[5]
The FSB border service data says that 2.4 million migrants have arrived in Russia for work between January and June 2019, according to a tally by the RBC news website.
The demographics of a number of European states - France, Britain, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, inter alia - have been profoundly shaped by their colonial past, in particular when migration from the periphery to the postcolonial metropole accelerated.
Especially in the later period of the guest worker migration regime [in North Western Europe], migrants came via chain migration structures. Employers delegated recruitment to the workers who had been in their employment for a while, whom they trusted and whom they expected to help the new immigrants.