Contracting Freedom

This book represents the first scholarly attempt to examine the broad geographical dimensions of the World War II U.S. contract farm labor programs together and in sweeping detail. It views these labor programs relationally and in tandem to reveal how they were co-constituted and mutually understood across time and multiple places, producing a liberal consensus during this period that lives on today. By examining debates among government officials, labor leaders, civil rights activists, and agribusinessemployers, it explores how the contractual consent and freedom of 1940s guestworker programs legitimated and extended U.S. racial and imperial domination abroad in the post-World War II period. More broadly, Contracting Freedom pursues the argument that liberalism, as a normative political idea and practice in the modern world, cannot be divorced from empire. In comparing the labor programs across geographic regions, it demonstrates that a global shift in the ideology of liberalism nurtured race and empire both before and after World War II, as numerous states sought to expand control over laborers through anti-imperial and race-neutral measures--