IELTS JOURNAL 13 Exercise 5: Finding and understanding Read the following passage and then choose the best answer. Circle A, B, C or D.
Time limit: 3 minutes Migrant Labour Migrant workers, those workers who move repeatedly in search of economic
opportunity, typically perform society’s temporary jobs. The migrant’s low-paid work
includes ‘stooped labour’ like cultivating crops, menial services such as cleaning public
rest rooms, ‘sweatshops’ work such as making apparel, and assembly-line factory work
like putting together computer parts. Migrant workers are often pivotal for economic
growth.
Until the twentieth century, most migrant labour was internal. For example,
generations of former slaves from the southern parts of the United States annually
followed the crops north. Recently, however, most migrant labour in Europe and
America has been external – that is, workers from other countries.
Migrant workers rarely understand the customs and language of their host societies
and are frequently ill-housed, malnourished, underpaid, and denial basic legal rights.
Their children fall behind in school and are then apt to be put to work in violation of
child labour laws. Poor sanitation, unsafe drinking water and overcrowded living
conditions make migrant labourers especially susceptible to contagious diseases. In the
1980s and 1990s, their tuberculosis and hepatitis rates far exceeded national norms.
AIDS also spread rapidly. In short, the lives of migrant workers tend to be less
comfortable and shorter than those of non-migrants.
International economics determines where external migrants go. In the 1940s, when
railroad workers and farmhands went off to fight in World War II, the United States
reached an agreement with Mexico to provide millions of temporary Mexican
migrants. In the postwar period, ‘guest workers’ from southern Europe, Turkey and
North Africa helped rebuild north-western Europe. In the 1970s and 1980s, the oil
reach monarchs of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait flew Asians in to build their new cities.