UC Merced

“Long Live the Arab Worker: A Transnational History of Labor and Empire in the Yemeni Diaspora,” examines how Yemeni workers and activists in their struggle to live and make a living highlighted the connections between local challenges in the diaspora with global politics of empire. By foregrounding experiences of Yemeni diasporic communities throughout the 20th century, this project interrogates the intersections of labor and empire while also highlighting the complicated, multifaceted, and often messy realities within histories of activism and community organizing. It analyzes how labor and labor activism in the diaspora became an ideological arena in which politics of empire were obscured, accommodated, exposed, and challenged.

In 1839, the establishment of the British Protectorate in Aden and the presence of the British East India Company in Yemen consolidated the colonial, political, and economic connections that would draw Yemeni labor and immigrants to Britain and later the United States. The ceaseless desire for cheap labor in both countries would lead to continued labor migration from Yemen throughout the 20th century. Classified as British subjects, some of the first Yemeni migrant workers were recruited from the ports of Aden to work on British ships. While some remained in the shipping industry as sailors, many eventually settled in cities in England and found work in the steel industry. By the 1960s and 1970s, more significant numbers of Yemenis immigrated to the United States and toiled in California’s fields as farm workers as well as auto workers in Detroit’s booming auto industry. Both British and U.S. imperialism in Yemen and the Middle East not only enforced labor migration, but continuously shaped the experiences of Yemeni workers and families in the diaspora.

Through an exploration of archival sources and original oral histories, this project tells the stories of these workers who provided labor throughout the “diaspora of empire.” Kobena Mercer theorized the “diaspora of empire” as a “reminder and a remainder of the nation’s historical past.” I borrow from Nadine Naber’s development of diaspora of empire which emphasizes how because of contemporary U.S. neocolonial and imperial formations, Arab diasporas cannot be understood simply within a postcolonial timeline in which people reside in the countries that formerly colonized them. Rather, diaspora of empire refers to the “moment in which empire and its subjects exist in a transnational and contemporaneous frame.” In other words, diaspora of empire points to the ongoing impacts of both formal and informal empire. This research explores how Yemeni workers and activists through their labor and activism experienced and resisted politics of empire in the diaspora throughout the 20th century. By unpacking these stories, we can come closer to understanding the current precarities facing Yemeni diasporic communities today.