[URBANTH-L]
citations for student work on immigrant-rich industries in the
U.S.
Angela C. Stuesse
astuesse at gmail.com
Tue Apr 14 21:11:18 EDT 2009
All,
I have received many responses to my request for
citations of publications on immigrant-rich
low-wage industries in the U.S. I circulated the
inquiry to this listserv and also to the National
Employment Law Project (NELP) Immigrant and
Nonstandard Workers listserv, and got lots of
great suggestions from both. Thanks to everyone
who contributed! Several folks asked me to
circulate the list to the group, so I've pasted
it below. It is not comprehensive or complete,
but it's a good start. Feel free to share with
others who might be interested or send me
additional things (off list) to add.
Angela Stuesse
astuesse at gmail.com
garment industry
car wash industry
farmwork / agriculture
restaurant
domestic / nanny / home healthcare
day laborers
construction
janitors / cleaning crews
(poultry/meatpacking) Note: I did not ask for
citations for the poultry/meatpacking industry
because it is my own area of work, but I have included it in the list below.
General Materials on Low-Wage Immigrant Work
I am a staff consultant for RefugeeWorks, which
is the United States Office of Refugee
Resettlement's training and technical assistance
arm for employment and self-sufficiency
activities. We specialize in providing training,
consulting and publishing services to the
national refugee employment network. Working in
partnership with service providers and employers
nationwide, we are committed to helping refugees
achieve economic self-sufficiency.
Many of our publications, workshops and
conferences cover issues mentioned in your query.
While we do not specifically serve an academic
audience, some of our contributing writers have
academic backgrounds in anthropology and in the social sciences.
RefugeeWorks' publications can be found here, at:
<http://www.refugeeworks.org/about/publications.html>http://www.refugeeworks.org/about/publications.html
--"Daniel Sturm" <mailto:DSturm at lirs.org>DSturm at lirs.org
Overwork and Overtime, 39 Ind. L. Rev. 51 (2005).
Developing a Course on the Rights of Low-Wage
Workers, 54 J. Legal Educ. 380 (2004).
Rudnyckyj, Daromir. 2004. "Technologies of
Servitude: Governmentality and Indonesian
Transnational Labor Migration." Anthropological Quarterly. 77(3): 407-434.
Barrett, James R., and David Roediger
1997 Inbetween Peoples: Race,
Nationality and the 'New Immigrant' Working
Class. Journal of American Ethnic History 16(3):3-45.
Break the Chains Alliance
2005 Employer Sanctions Concept
Paper. Pp. 3: The National Mobilization against Sweatshops.
De Genova, Nicholas P.
2002 Migrant "Illegality" and
Deportability in Everyday Life. Annual Review of Anthropology 2002(31):419-447.
Louie, Miriam Ching Yoon
2001 Sweatshop Warriors:
Immigrant Women Workers Take On the Global
Factory. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
Murphy, Arthur D., Colleen Blanchard, and Jennifer A. Hill, eds.
2001 Latino Workers in the
Contemporary South. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.
Garment Industry
Laura Hapke, Sweatshop: The History of an
American Idea (Rutgers University Press 2004).
This book provides background into exploitation
in the garment industry in the US. The book
highlights the presence of “sweatshops” in
America from historic times to the present.
Garment Workers Center, Building Worker Power in
the Garment Industry available at
http://www.garmentworkercenter.org/background.php
(last visited Jan 20, 2009) (note download unsuccessful)
FINDING THE SYNERGY BETWEEN LAW AND ORGANIZING:
EXPERIENCES FROM THE STREETS OF LOS ANGELES, Victor Narro
¡Sí Se Puede! Immigrant Workers and the
Transformation of the Los Angeles Labor and
Worker Center Movements, Victor Narro
IMPACTING NEXT WAVE ORGANIZING: CREATIVE CAMPAIGN
STRATEGIES OF THE LOS ANGELES WORKER CENTERS, Victor Narro
Exploiting the Joint Employer Doctrine: Providing
a Break for Sweatshop Workers, 34 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 291 (2003).
Car Wash Industry
FINDING THE SYNERGY BETWEEN LAW AND ORGANIZING:
EXPERIENCES FROM THE STREETS OF LOS ANGELES, Victor Narro
The Los Angeles Car Wash Workers Organizing
Campaign: Building on the AFL-CIO Worker Center
Program, By Jon Hiatt, AFL-CIO General Counsel
¡Sí Se Puede! Immigrant Workers and the
Transformation of the Los Angeles Labor and
Worker Center Movements, Victor Narro
IMPACTING NEXT WAVE ORGANIZING: CREATIVE CAMPAIGN
STRATEGIES OF THE LOS ANGELES WORKER CENTERS, Victor Narro
Farmwork / Agriculture
2003 Charles D. Thompson Jr. and Melinda F.
Wiggins (eds.) (2002) The Human Cost of Food:
Farmworkers’ Lives, Labor, and Advocacy. Austin: University of Texas Press.
David Griffith, American Guestworkers
http://www.psupress.psu.edu/books/titles/0-271-02949-8.html
In general, I recommend everything by David
Griffith (the author of the item above):
Griffith et al., Working Poor (farmworkers)
<http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1141_reg_print.html>http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1141_reg_print.html
Wells, M. J. 1996. Strawberry Fields: Politics,
Class, and Work in California Agriculture. Ithaca
and London: Cornell University Press.
Ferriss, S., and R. Sandoval. 1997. The Fight in
the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers
Movement. San Diego, New York and London: Harcourt Brace & Company.
Restaurant / Hotel Workers
For information about restaurant and hotel
workers, consult the UNITE/HERE web site
at:
<http://www.unitehere.org/>http://www.unitehere.org/
There are lots of good resources there.
Report: Creating Luxury, Enduring Pain: How Hotel Work is Hurting Housekeepers
ROC-NY & the New York Restaurant Industry
Coalition, Behind the Kitchen Door: Pervasive
Inequality in the New York City’s Thriving
Restaurant Industry (2005), available at
http://www.rocny.org/documents/RocNY_final_compiled.pdf.
This report highlights labor and health
conditions in New York’s restaurants, as part of
ROC’s organizing strategy. Not on point to larger worker center project.
Press Release,
http://brenancenter.org/press_detail.asp?key=51&subkey=48671
(ROC recently pushed the NY City Council to
introduce a bill that would require the city to
review employment law violations when considering
whether to renew a restaurant operating lease).
Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, City of New
York, New York City Restaurant Owners Manual,
(2006), available at
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dca/downloads/pdf/NYC_restaurant_guide.pdf.The
“owners guide” that ROC developed, not funded and
distributed through the NY mayor’s office. Not on
point to the worker center research project.
2005. Rachel Adler “Oye compadre, the chef needs
a dishwasher: Yucatecan Men in the Dallas
Restaurant Economy.” Urban Anthropology.
2002. "Patron-Client Ties, Ethnic
Entrepreneurship and Transnational Migration: The
Case of Yucatecans in Dallas, Texas," Urban Anthropology 31: 129-161.
¡Sí Se Puede! Immigrant Workers and the
Transformation of the Los Angeles Labor and
Worker Center Movements, Victor Narro
IMPACTING NEXT WAVE ORGANIZING: CREATIVE CAMPAIGN
STRATEGIES OF THE LOS ANGELES WORKER CENTERS, Victor Narro
Pribilsky's "La Chulla Vida" has a small section on restaurant workers.
Dissertation by Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz, Department of
Anthropology, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2009.
Sen, Rinku, and with Fekkak Mamdouh
2008 The Accidental
American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age
of Globalization. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Domestic Workers
Mujeres Unidas y Activas, Day Labor Program
Women's Collective of La Raza Centro Legal.
DataCenter, Behind Closed Doors: Working
Conditions of California Household Workers
(2007), available at
http://datacenter.org/reports/behindcloseddoors.pdf
(last visited Jan 20, 2009).Cool overview of a
study done of domestic workers, includes great
statistics and general trends in the industry.
Domestic Workers United & Datacenter, Home Is
Where The Work Is: Inside New York’s Domestic
Work Industry (2006), available at
http://www.datacenter.org/reports/homeiswheretheworkis.pdf
(last visited Jan 20, 2009).Amazing overview of
the industry, surveys and statistics and great
overview of the industry, with specifics and the
Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.
This one is a bit more a coffee table book, so
mostly pictures and personal narratives, and less
analysis, but perhaps powerful for teaching:
Frank Cancian, Orange County Housecleaners.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2006
Chang, Grace
2000 Disposable
Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global
Economy. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. 2001. Doméstica: Immigrant
Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of
Affluence. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Day Laborers
<http://www.workersdefense.org/index.php?p=3&lang=en>http://www.workersdefense.org/index.php?p=3&lang=en
For day laborers, as I am sure you know, there
are a lot of interesting day laborer work centers
with web sites; one I think is particularly
useful is <http://www.daylaborchicago.com/>http://www.daylaborchicago.com/
A good film about day laborers is Los
Tabajadores: The
workers
<http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/theworkers/>http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/theworkers/
Kijune Kim & Eddie Taylor, Research Studies on
Day Laborers, University of Maryland Labor Law
Clinic (), available at
http://www.ndlon.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=8&Itemid=78.
Research about day laborers. Not on point to workers center research project.
Luna Yasui, Carherine Ruckelshaus, & Rebecca
Smith, Drafting Day Labor Legislation: A Guide
for Organizers and Advocates, National Employment
Law Project (2004), available at
http://www.ndlon.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=8&Itemid=78.
This is an overview of possible proposed
legislation to support day laborers. Includes all
aspects that such legislation should include. Not
applicable to workers’ centers projects, unless
specifically focused on day laborers.
National Day Labor Organizing Network, Building
Community: The Components of a Day Labor Worker
Center Model, available at
http://www.ndlon.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=8&Itemid=78.
Specific to day laborer, about industry issues
not worker center legal issues. Not on point to
worker center research project.
Abel Valenzuela, Jr., et al, On the Corner: Day
Labor in the United States (Jan 2006), available
at <http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/uicued/> (last
visited Jan 20, 2009). Excellent overview of the
daily lives of day laborers and the conditions
they face. Comprehensive survey of almost 3,000
day laborers at 264 different hiring sites.
Addresses the application of workers’ center
organizing to day-laborers, without specifics but
includes general recommendations.
Abel Valenzuela, Jr. and Edwin Melendez, Day
Labor in New York: Findings From the NYDL Survey
(Apr 2003), available at
<http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/issr/csup/pubs/papers/pdf/csup3_execsumm.pdf>
(last visited Jan 20, 2009). Same data
collection and summary about day laborers, but
with a focus on the New York market.
¡Sí Se Puede! Immigrant Workers and the
Transformation of the Los Angeles Labor and
Worker Center Movements, Victor Narro
IMPACTING NEXT WAVE ORGANIZING: CREATIVE CAMPAIGN
STRATEGIES OF THE LOS ANGELES WORKER CENTERS, Victor Narro
I like Leo Chavez's "Shadowed Lives" which is
mostly about day-laborers, though work isn't really the focus
Valenzuela, Jr. Abel, Nik Theodore, Edwin
Melendez, and Ana Luz Gonzalez. 2006. ³On the
Corner: Day Labor in the United States.²
Technical Report, UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty.
Gordon, Jennifer
2005 Suburban Sweatshops: The
Fight for Immigrant Rights. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Janitors / cleaning crews
Recommended by at least half a dozen
people: Janitors, Street Vendors and Activists by Christian Zlolniski
For information about immigrants and janitorial
work, the Justice for Janitors web site is a
treasure trove of videos, reports and other materials:
<http://www.seiu.org/division/property-services/justice-for-janitors/>http://www.seiu.org/division/property-services/justice-for-janitors/
The Houston affiliate is particularly useful:
<http://www.houstonjanitors.org/>http://www.houstonjanitors.org/
It includes a very nice collection of videos of workers telling their stories.
Report: Good Jobs. A New Indianapolis. Building a
Brighter Future for Our City’s Janitors
Poultry/meatpacking
Stuesse, Angela C.
2008 Globalization "Southern Style":
Transnational Migration, the Poultry Industry,
and Implications for Organizing Workers across
Difference, Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of
Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin.
2009 "Race, Migration, and Labor
Control: Neoliberal Challenges to Organizing
Mississippi's Poultry Workers," in Latino
Immigrants and the Transformation of the U.S.
South. Edited by M. Odem and E. Lacy. Pp.
91-111. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Marc Cooper's piece, ³The Heartland's Raw Deal:
How Meatpacking is Creating a New Immigrant
Underclass², from The Nation Feb 1997
Barrett, James R.
1987 Work and Community in the
Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers,
1894-1922. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Bell, June D.
2004 A "Less is More" Strategy
Clicks with Jury in Tyson Case. The National Law Journal 26(28):1.
Boyd, William
2001 Making Meat: Science,
Technology, and American Poultry Production.
Technology and Culture 42(October 2001):631-664.
Boyd, William, and Michael Watts
1997 Agro-Industrial
Just-In-Time: The Chicken Industry and Postwar
American Capitalism. In Globalising Food:
Agrarian Questions and Global Restructuring. D.
Goodman and M. Watts, eds. Pp. 192-225. London: Routledge.
Chatterley, Cedric N., Alicia J. Rouverol, and with Stephen A. Cole
2000 I Was Content and Not
Content: The Story of Linda Lord and the Closing
of Penobscot Poultry. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Cook, Christopher D.
1999 Fowl Trouble: In the
Nation's Poultry Plants, Brutality to Worker as
Well as to Bird. Harper's Magazine 299(1791):78-79.
Fink, Deborah
1998 Cutting into the Meatpacking
Line: Workers and Change in the Rural Midwest.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Fink, Leon
2003 The Maya of Morganton: Work
and Community in the Nuevo New South. Durham:
University of North Carolina Press.
Grabowski, Anita
2003 La Pollera: Latin American
Poultry Workers in Morton, Mississippi. Institute
of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin.
Griffith, David
1995 Hay Trabajo: Poultry
Processing, Rural Industrialization, and
Latinization of Low-Wage Labor. In Any Way You
Cut It: Meat Processing and Small-Town America.
D.D. Stull, M.J. Broadway, and D. Griffith, eds.
Pp. 129-151. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Griffith, David C.
1993 Jones's Minimal: Low-Wage
Labor in the United States. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Helton, Laura E., and Angela C. Stuesse
n.d. Race, Low-wage Legacies
and the Politics of Poultry
Processing: Intersections of Contemporary
Immigration and African American Labor Histories
in Central Mississippi. Southern Labor Studies
Conference, Moving Workers: Migration and the South, Birmingham, Alabama, 2004.
Human Rights Watch. 2004. Blood, Sweat, and Fear:
Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants.
Kandell, William
2006 Meat-Processing Firms
Attract Hispanic Workers to Rural America. Amber
Waves June:Located at
<http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/June06/pdf/MeatProcessingFeatureJune06.pdf>http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/June06/pdf/MeatProcessingFeatureJune06.pdf
(Last accessed 9/19/2006).
Occupational Safety and Health Association
2004 Guidelines for Poultry
Processing: Ergonomics for the Prevention of
Musculoskeletal Disorders. Located at:
<<http://www.osha.gov/ergonomics/guidelines/poultryprocessing/index.html%3e>http://www.osha.gov/ergonomics/guidelines/poultryprocessing/index.html>,
last accessed 4/23/2008: U.S. Department of Labor.
Sampson, Kristin, and Carole Morrison
2007 US Poultry in the Global
Economy: Impacts on Women, Livelihoods, and the
Environment. Pp. 6. Washington, DC: Center of Concern.
Schlosser, Eric
2001 Fast Food Nation: The Dark
Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Sinclair, Upton
1906 The Jungle. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company.
Striffler, Steve
2002 Inside a Poultry Processing
Plant: An Ethnographic Portrait. Labor History 43(3).
2005 Chicken: The Dangerous
Transformation of America's Favorite Food. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Stull, Donald D, Michael J. Broadway, and David Griffith, eds.
1995 Any Way You Cut It: Meat
Processing and Small-Town America. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Stull, Donald D, Eric Schlosser, and Michael J. Broadway, eds.
2003 Slaughterhouse Blues: The
Meat and Poultry Industry in North America: Wadsworth Publishing.
U.S. Department of Labor
2000 Year 2000 Poultry Processing Compliance Report.
United Food and Commercial Workers
2002 A Voice for Working America:
Injury and Injustice-America's Poultry Industry.
Located at:
<http://www.ufcw.org/home/internal.cfm?subsection_id=710&internal_id=710>http://www.ufcw.org/home/internal.cfm?subsection_id=710&internal_id=710
(Last accessed 10/13/2002).
Construction
No one sent me any citations on immigrant workers
in the construction industry. I know the
Workers’ Defense Project in Austin, Texas is
producing a report, but it is not yet available
as of 4/2009.
(<http://www.workersdefense.org/index.php?p=24&lang=en>http://www.workersdefense.org/index.php?p=24&lang=en)
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Angela C. Stuesse, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Scholar
Institute for Research on Labor and Employment
University of California, Los Angeles
astuesse at gmail.com / astuesse at irle.ucla.edu
512-779-9560
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