Migrant worker
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A migrant worker is somebody who works in more than one physical location, often working at seasonal jobs and then moving on to new seasonal jobs.
The term is most commonly used to describe low-wage temporary workers performing manual labor in the agriculture field. Today in Europe and the United States these are often illegal immigrants. In the past, starting at the end of the American Civil War, hobos were the migrant workers who performed much of this work, using freight railroads as their means of transportation to new jobs. During the Great Depression, so-called Okies who fled the dust bowl were a significant source of temporary farm labor.
However, the term migrant worker could just as easily refer to any person who works at seasonal jobs and moves around from one job to another. Although, the term is not as often used to describe those who work in those higher-wage fields, possibly because the term "migrant worker" has a stigma attached to it because of its extensive use to describe low-wage farm laborers and illegal immigrants. Examples of professions which could be called migrant workers, some of them quite lucrative, include: Electricians in the construction industry (slang term: "narrowbacks"); other construction workers who travel from one construction job to another, often in different cities; wildland firefighters in the western United States; temporary/roving consulting work; and possibly even interstate truck drivers.
The "United Nations Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families", which has not been ratified by many nations including Japan, the United States, and Germany, has redefined the term from its traditional meaning to mean essentially the same thing as foreign worker: a "person who is to be engaged, is engaged or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a State of which he or she is not a national".
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