First, the Philippines is a major BPO-voice provider for US firms and that is hardly a lousy job. To answer your question, third world countries have a large agricultural segment in its industry and a large percentage of the population springs from that. They provide the local food produce, or they migrate to the cities to seek their fortunes there. A lot of them become domestic helps (my brother’s family has 5, including 2 drivers,) others become regular salaried blue collars, a lot putter about scavenging and doing odd jobs, some become criminals.
Relevant *Scandinavia and the World *comic; the Poles seem to take a lot of abuse in Europe.
Also other Central Europeans, I suppose.
Is there still a big but temporary Iranian work force in Japan? It was pretty big when I lived in Japan in the early 1990’s. I still have my Kilim rug I bought in Tokyo…
The same thing here. The Canadian word for American beer is similar, but number 1 not number 2.
Excuse me, I gotta take a Schlitz.
Perhaps that was more of a phenomenon associated with Tokyo? I’ve never lived in Tokyo, but been there many times, and yes, a long time ago there used to be a lot of conspicuous Iranians on the streets. I don’t know if they ever joined the “work force” though, did they? I really have no idea but mostly I saw them selling things on the street so I don’t consider that ‘doing a job that others don’t want to do’, rather they created their own niche. 
Even 15 years ago there were some Iranians doing the same thing here in kansai, but I haven’t seen them for a long time. I think the law caught up with them (selling on the street without a license).
Officially, caste discrimination in India is illegal. Unofficially, both Hindus, and converts-from-Hinduism (i.e. nearly all of India’s >160 million muslims, > 20 million Sikhs, and even Indian Christians) practice some form of casteism or another. In my (fairly) limited understanding of this caste business, the untouchables are a very large subset of the Sudras. They do the truly filthiest jobs – they work as night soil lifters , scavengers, rag pickers, leather workers and the Doms (i.e. “funeral directors” at Hindu crematories). Wealth is no saving grace from this social stigma – in the holy Hindu city of Varanasi, where pilgrims come to die, and their relatives come to perform their final rites, the wealthiest man is a the Dom-raja: an untouchable by caste, who will take the greatest care to ensure that even his shadow will not cross a Brahmin’s path, least it pollute the latter and bring bad karma on both of them. He will also control the supply firewood for the funerary pyres, without which a funeral would be incomplete and the eternal salvation unattainable to the believers. Thus you have the peculiar case of a man who is both reviled and respected by the same people at the same time! Oddly enough, even among the untouchables, there is caste discrimination…
As for menial jobs like farm workers, cooks, dishwashers etc., they seem to be restricted to the castes who have not been assigned to any task connected to bodily excretions, human or otherwise. For example, no untouchable will be employed as a cook / chef / maid in a practicing Hindu’s house. Nor will one be employed as a farm worker (that appears to be a distinct caste in itself).
Most of the links are from a recent TV program on casteism in India. Some may be in Hindi, but even with the language barrier, most of the visuals speak for themselves. If someone has a better set of links, or a link to the English version of this program, please post.