The New Helots

Originally published in 1987 and now reissued with a substantial introduction by Robin Cohen, this wide-ranging work of comparative and historical sociology argues that a major engine of capital’s growth lies in its ability to find successive cohorts of quasi-free workers to deploy in the farms, mines and factories of an expanding international division of labour. These workers, like the helots of ancient Greece, are found at the periphery of ‘regional political economies’ or in the form of modern migrants, sucked into the vortex of metropolitan service or manufacturing industry. The regions of Southern Africa; the USA and the circum-Caribbean; European and its colonial and southern hinterlands, are systematically compared – yielding original and, in some cases, uncomfortable analogies between countries previously thought to be wholly different in terms of their political structures and guiding values. The New Helots has been written with both an undergraduate and professional readership in mind. Students of history, sociology and economics as well as those interested in patterns of migration and ethnic relations will find it of interest.

How should international law approach the critical issue of movement of peoples in the 21st century? This book presents a radical reappraisal of this controversial problem. Challenging present-day ideas of restrictions on freedom of movement and the international structure that controls entry to states, it argues for a new blueprint for international migration policy that eliminates waste, aids both developing and developed societies and brings attendant benefits to voluntary migrants and involuntary refugees alike. In a world of increasing disorder, it is suggested that current policy only adds to international instability and threatens the interests of a functional global community.

In this book Robin Cohen shows how the preferences, interests and actions of the three major social actors in international migration policy - global capital, migrant labour and national politicians - intersect and often contradict each other. Cohen addresses these vital questions in a wide-ranging, lucid and accessible account of the historical origins and contemporary dynamics of global migration.