Temporary labor migration is the phenomenon of workers migrating on the basis of temporary work authorizations, which attach the legal status of workers to particular employers and/or particular positions of employment. Temporary labor migration schemes take on various forms: from bilateral and regional agreements for the exchange of labor between states, to changes in national legislation allowing employers easy and accelerated access to temporary migrant workers for varying time periods, to provisions in multilateral trade agreements such as Mode IV of the World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade in Services. While labor migration has been a recurring phenomenon in human history (Potts 1990; King 1996), what is new in the post‐1970 period of restructuring in the world capitalist economy is the increased use of temporary migrant labor by employers around the world and state facilitation of this shift.