guest worker
18
3.5
- noun
- /ɡɛst ˈwɜrkər/
- The government launched a new guest worker program to attract skilled labor from abroad.
- guest worker program
- million guest workers
Examples
-
But if you have a guest worker program, then you're by definition bringing people here who want to be productive members of the economy.
-
Throughout the past decade, there have been various efforts to reform or even abolish existing guest worker programs.
Academic text (2004) -
One way to find answers to these questions is to study existing guest worker programs.
Academic text (2004) -
The case of "guest workers" in Europe demonstrates the point.
Academic text (2008) -
What is clear, however, is the need to study existing guest worker programs before we adopt any further expansion plans.
Academic text (2004) -
In fact, the United States has been experimenting with guest worker programs for more than half a century.
Academic text (2004) -
The host European governments understood these migrants to be temporary guest workers, as did many of the migrants themselves.
Academic text (2009) -
The panacea that Congress offers for immigration anarchy is more guest workers, skilled and unskilled.
Academic text (2000) -
The mass immigration of Muslims to Europe was an unintended consequence of post-World War II guest-worker programs.
Academic text (2005) -
But by 1973, Germany was employing 2.6 million guest workers, including about 600,000 Turks and 500,000 Yugoslavs.
Academic text (2001)
Synonyms
20
3.3
A person who moves to another place to do temporary work, often on farms
13
2.8
A person who does a job for only a short time
1
6.4
A person from another country who has permission to work there for a short time
Antonyms
How Permanent
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound easily suggests a worker who is a guest — i.e., someone working temporarily or invited rather than permanently — so a B1 learner who knows 'guest' and 'worker' will likely grasp the general idea of a temporary/visiting worker. However, the term carries conventionalized socio-legal nuances (temporary foreign labour / immigration context) that are not fully predictable from the parts, so full meaning may require prior exposure.
Etymology
The noun guest worker comes from the image of a guest who is welcome only for a short stay and a worker who does a job while visiting. One popular idea is that countries invited foreign workers as 'guests' to fill short-term jobs, so the phrase now means 'a person allowed to work temporarily in a foreign country'.