Braceros

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who is recruited from a foreign country to perform temporary labor, especially in agricultural fields, during peak seasons
2. An individual who migrates to another nation primarily for short-term work opportunities in sectors such as farming or construction
3. A laborer brought in from another country to work temporarily, often in agriculture or similar fields, due to labor shortages during critical times

Etymology: The Spanish word "bracero" literally means "one who works with the arms," built from "brazo," meaning "arm." That "brazo" descends from Latin "bracchium," the same root behind English "brace" and "bracelet," and in Spanish the noun was extended with the suffix "-ero," which names a person connected with the thing in question, so a "bracero" is someone whose labor is done by the arms. English borrowed the word from Spanish, where it had long meant simply "laborer" and only later came to describe the seasonal farmworkers recruited across the US-Mexico border. Because those workers were hired by the arm's-length work of field labor, the Spanish sense of the word narrowed from any laborer to a specific guest worker, and English adopted that narrower sense.