NAFTA and Cross-Border Labor Supply in San Diego, California














Should policies be developed within a national space or instead in a broader space, more in keeping with global production chains set up by transnational firms?

(This is a draft of the abstract I submitted about three years ago in response to a call for papers on migration. I was hoping for a free ticket to fly to Montreal, Canada.)

The paper explores how cross-border labor in San Diego, California, supplied by day laborers from Mexico corresponds to the agreements entered in the General Agreements in Trade and Services (GATS) complement the goals of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The GATS, a treaty of the World Trade Organization that entered into force in January 1995 as a result of the Uruguay Round of Negotiations recognizes labor supply providing services as crucial economic factor to production. The US, Canada and Mexico, stakeholders of the NAFTA, have been members of the WTO since January 1995 and signatories of the GATS.

Under the GATS are four modes of supply for the delivery of services in cross border trade. These are: a) Mode 1 or cross-border supply, where services are delivered within the territory of the member country from the territory of another member; 2) Mode 2 or consumption abroad where services are delivered outside of the territory of the member to a service consumer; 3) Mode 3 or commercial presence where services are delivered within the member through commercial presence of the of natural persons where services are delivered from another member country; and 4) Mode 4 or the presence of natural persons where services are delivered within the territory of the member with the supplier present as a worker.

Mode 4 which involves cross-border movement of natural person as migrant workers would be the focus of the paper. This paper attempts to situate Mexican nationals who cross the US-Mexican border through Baja, California in the Mode 4 category.

Employing ethnographic research methods, the paper focuses on primary informants who are in transit at San Diego, California. Primary informants will be migrant workers more popularly known as day laborers. Unstructured interviews with day laborers and participant observation techniques will be employed.

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