[URBANTH-L]NEW BOOK: Janitors, Street Vendors, and Activists

[L Guevarra]

Dear Urbanth-L: 


The University of California Press  is pleased to announce the publication of:

Janitors, Street Vendors, and Activists: The Lives of Mexican Immigrants in Silicon Valley

Christian Zlolniski is Assistant Professor in Anthropology and in the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington. 

http://go.ucpress.edu/Zlolniski


"This is a well-written and accessible ethnography of Mexican immigrants in Silicon Valley, the working poor who live in the shadow of affluence. Zlolniski presents a nuanced analysis of the thin line between formal and informal work, how families strategize and cope with the myriad challenges wrought by poverty, and the structural limitations to human agency."-Patricia Zavella, author of _Women's Work and Chicano Families: Cannery Workers of the Santa Clara Valley_



This highly accessible, engagingly written book exposes the underbelly of California's Silicon Valley, the most successful high-technology region in the world, in a vivid ethnographic study of Mexican immigrants employed in Silicon Valley's low-wage jobs. Christian Zlolniski's on-the-ground investigation demonstrates how global forces have incorporated these workers as an integral part of the economy through subcontracting and other flexible labor practices and explores how these labor practices have in turn affected working conditions and workers' daily lives. In Zlolniski's analysis, these immigrants do not emerge merely as victims of a harsh economy; despite the obstacles they face, they are transforming labor and community politics, infusing new blood into labor unions, and challenging exclusionary notions of civic and political membership. 

Full information about the book, including the table of contents, is available online: http://go.ucpress.edu/Zlolniski