The adoption of a system of indentured and other low wage labour as a solution to the labour shortages encountered as a result of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery had several important ramifications. The most obvious was the fact that many planters, faced with a loss of their slaves and offered the possibility of acquiring labour from Asia or Africa, were not required to see their new workers as anything more than a different kind of slave, and often treated them accordingly. In many colonies, new labour recruits were entering a system in which the conditions and realities of slavery were deeply ingrained, and which were difficult to dismantle. For example, indentured workers were often housed in vacated slave quarters on plantations, and were under close scrutiny at all times. Just as the African slaves before them, indentured workers were often restricted to their plantations and severely punished for leaving the plantation without permission or for missing work for any reason. Because indentured workers often took the place of freed slaves, and because racist attitudes and Social Darwinism affected how these migrant groups were perceived, they were continually placed on the lowest rung of the social ladder, and were employed in those tasks that other workers felt beneath them. The exception to this trend was in those areas where immigrants entered other sectors, such as small-business, because of the presence of a resident manual labour force. Because these immigrants were not usually under indentured contracts, these entrepreneurs were free to establish their own businesses, and occupied a social position higher than that of their indentured countrymen elsewhere. Those regions where the chance for this type of employment existed after the fulfilment of indentured contracts, as was the case in Hawaii, for example, retained a much higher number of labourers than did other colonial areas, and were more popular destinations for migrants.

Although planters in South America and the Caribbean islands were required to maintain a hospital for ill workers, many planters evaded the law and the buildings were either less than hygienic or else were used for other purposes. The British Guiana Commission of 1871 noted that one estate took three years to build a hospital, which was then occupied by the manager as his residence. The building was only converted to medical purposes when the supply of workers to the plantation was withheld, but even then the structure did not contain any beds. Some planters, rather than deal with the problem and expense of ill workers, simply threw them off the plantations to “die of yaws and other diseases on the roads”. An African girl, who arrived ill at a plantation in Jamaica, was taken by the manager who assured the subagent that she would receive the best care. No doctor was called, however, and an investigation into the girl’s death indicated that she died of neglect.

It was not uncommon for those involved with the system to take advantage of uninformed Asians. One of the most notorious examples is the case of an unscrupulous boatman who landed a group of 160 Chinese labourers at a fork in the Río Colorado after obtaining his fee for their passage, telling them Mexicali was only a short distance away. Sixty-five kilometres of desert lay between the city and them, and every single individual perished in the attempt to cross the desert. A 200-meter desert peak near Baja California’s Crucero La Trinidad is named El Chinero in memory of the group and the desert itself was known for a time as El Desierto de los Chinos, ‘Desert of the Chinese’. Because workers had only limited contracts, they were generally denied the year or two “seasoning” period previously given to African slaves to adjust to their new work environments and work loads. As a result many workers were unprepared for the arduous work and long hours they were expected to undertake, and suffered psychologically as well as physically.

Workers who had been in the colonies for a longer period of time would sometimes take advantage of new arrivals to ameliorate their own low wages or debt through harassment or deception. Instead of reducing his debt by working a set term, an individual could very easily find his debt increasing and be compelled to enter into another work contract after the expiration of the first. In some areas, for example, the death of a worker meant that his debt was transferred to the other members of his work gang, and pay day could mean the allocation of only enough money to keep the workers alive. Wages and food rations could also be withheld for uncompleted tasks, illness, or absence for any reason. In 1871 there were fifteen estates in British Guiana that had withheld wages for three months or more. As well, the bonded worker usually had little recourse to the law if victimised, as many officials sympathised more with the planter than the “coolie”. In many cases the seclusion and autonomy of the plantations was such that harsher penalties were fairly common. One planter observed that “[e]very man is a magistrate on his own estate, you know, and therefore as long as the man is working for you, you have a right to do what you like with him – that is, short of killing”. Although racial antagonism against Indian labourers was often severe, it did not result in exclusionary government policies, as it did when it came to the economic threat posed by Indian entrepreneurs and businessmen. After the abolition of the indenture system, further immigration of Indians was prevented into most British Dominions, as well as into the United States, indicating the degree to which racial attitudes determined immigration policy.

Although un-indentured labourers in North America were not faced with the same kind of direct control or subjugation as those under indenture, government and popular opinion could be just as excluding. Denied the right to vote and limited in numbers by government laws, Asian populations were faced with constant hostility that could flare without warning into open violence. Most of the early violence took place in California. In 1871, for example, 21 Chinese people were either shot, hanged, or burned to death by a white mob in the city of Los Angeles. After the passage of the 1882 Exclusion Act, however, the most serious violence occurred outside California, including major anti-Chinese riots in Denver, Colorado, Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, and in Idaho. Depressed economic conditions in these regions due to the completion of the northern transcontinental railroads contributed to the unrest. An 1880 Denver newspaper reported: “[t]here has been considerable talk about town the past few days about running out the Chinese. The flock is increasing every week and they are not wanted.” Even after the repeal of the United States’ Chinese Exclusion Act during World War Two, only 150 immigrants were allowed into the country per year, and the number of immigrants allowed was not equalised with other sending countries until the 1960s.

Japanese individuals living in both Canada and the United States during the Second World War were suspected of being sympathetic to Japan, and were considered threatening enough to national security that the government forced them into internment camps, regardless of how long individuals had lived in North America, or even if they had been born there. Any property left behind, such as houses, furniture, cars, and fishing boats, were confiscated and later sold at auction, but little of the money ever reached the items’ former owners. Despite the hardships suffered in the camps, which were often placed in secluded areas, individuals managed to establish schools, adult education classes, and libraries, as well as a certain degree of self-government and medical services. After World War Two, Japanese were discouraged from returning to the West Coast, and were instead employed in the agricultural industry. Although they were not allowed to return to their own homes or farms, they were allowed to work for others, and were thus denied the profits had they been farmers in their own right, and were instead allocated the wages of any other migrant worker.

In many American and Caribbean colonies, the situation faced by the small numbers of women was often far worse than their male counterparts, even if they accompanied their husbands. Because of the often huge disparity in the numbers of men and women in the New World, women were faced with the possibility of sexual exploitation, whether married or not, both from planters and other whites, and from other workers. Many Chinese women in Canada, for example, were prostitutes who had arrived in the country before the institution of government taxes, and their situation was often little different from slavery, as they were offered by merchants to single Chinese males or to white men who considered them exotic. Because the laws in most colonies did not recognise any marriage contract but those made under Christian regulations, even married women could find themselves removed from their husbands. Many workers, knowing that their wives would be vulnerable in the colonies, chose to leave their wives at home rather than risk bringing them. Because the scarcity of women rendered them a commodity and status symbol in the colonies, men of lower social standing could have their wives taken from them by those of superior standing. Women, however, could take advantage of this fact and attach themselves to an individual of higher status and so avoid the more arduous tasks of field work in the “coolie lines”. As well, wages for women were generally lower than those for men.