Labor Immigration (WORKIM)

Beyond some special cases (such as Malaya and Southern Africa), there are no systematic data for colonially induced labor immigration. We had to make rather crude estimations based on colony-specific sources:

• 0 = no indicators for colonially induced labor immigration / not applicable
• 1 = low level of colonially induced labor immigration
• 2 = high level of colonially induced labor immigration (high figures, big groups; also cases in which some functional groups completely consisted of foreign laborers)

‘Colonially induced’ means that work immigration has not been only tolerated but encouraged by means such as opening markets/creating new economic units, recruitment/deployment from abroad, providing permits / licenses for agencies etc., independently of permanent settlement in colony has been envisaged or not. Therefore, the migration of individual Lebanese traders to Africa or Chinese traders to Southeast Asia do not fall under ‘colonially induced’, the immigration of Chinese and Indian laborers in to tin mining areas of British-Malaya do.

For 42 cases (51%) in our sample we did not find any evidence for colonially induced labor immigration. In 20 colonies, some work immigration took place; 15 of these cases are in Africa, two at the Persian Gulf, three in Southern Asia (Indonesia, India, Vietnam). Areas with a high influx of work immigrants (21 cases) typically had strong mining activities and/or numerous plantations, in some cases, colonial governments deemed the local population as not willing or capable of certain economic activities. Among these are Cambodia, Laos (French-Indochina); the British colonies of Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Myanmar; Fiji and Vanuatu in the Pacific; the oil producing Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait; in Africa 11 cases linked to colonial administration or infrastructure construction, or to plantation or mining work (Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Congo Rep, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Senegal, Uganda, South Africa, Zimbabwe).

The statistical analysis shows that, as expected, colonially induced labor immigration took place in colonies which were longer under colonial rule (COLYEARS), which had a significant plantation economy, a high degree of trade concentration and a strong impact of missionary activities (see 'Descriptive Statistics'). It also relates to colonial instrumentalization of ethnolinguistic and/or religious cleavages (ETHNFUNC). There is no statistically significant correlation with the colonizing country (British vs. French) or the region (sub-Saharan Africa vs. Asia/North Africa).