Employers deliberately mixed immigrant nationalities to prevent worker solidarity

Evidence

Employers of large immigrant forces learned to “balance nationalities,” in other words to take advantage of the diversity and tensions among the many peoples of southern and eastern Europe. By judiciously mixing many nationalities, the employer could keep them divided and incapable of concerted action in their own behalf. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 672

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Directly relevant to the reader’s solidarity question: industrialists manufactured division deliberately, so undifferentiated hostility was against employer interests — animus against immigrants as a class was not functional capital strategy.
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to cross-cultural signals of solidarity and division — the ‘balance nationalities’ mechanism shows how heterogeneity is weaponized rather than natured against newcomers.
• XREF: connects to: Employers select immigrant workers for assumed docility and vulnerability.; Three hundred seventy-six thousand immigrant steelworkers struck despite employers’ divide-and-rule tactics — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1347; Employers use wage differentials to reduce worker solidarity — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 882

Broader Connections

• Three hundred seventy-six thousand immigrant steelworkers struck despite employers’ divide-and-rule tactics #complicates (0.90) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1347
• Employers select immigrant workers for assumed docility and vulnerability. #qualifies (0.82)