Janitors, Street Vendors, and Activists
Janitors, Street Vendors, and Activists

Author: Christian Zlolniski

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 0520246411

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This 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. The author 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. 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.

Made in Baja
Made in Baja

Author: Christian Zlolniski

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2019-09-03

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0520300629

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Much of the produce that Americans eat is grown in the Mexican state of Baja California, the site of a multibillion-dollar export agricultural boom that has generated jobs and purportedly reduced poverty and labor migration to the United States. But how has this growth affected those living in Baja? Based on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork, Made in Baja examines the unforeseen consequences for residents in the region of San Quintín. The ramifications include the tripling of the region’s population, mushrooming precarious colonia communities lacking basic infrastructure and services, and turbulent struggles for labor, civic, and political rights. Anthropologist Christian Zlolniski reveals the outcomes of growers structuring the industry around an insatiable demand for fresh fruits and vegetables. He also investigates the ecological damage—"watercide”—and the social side effects of exploiting natural resources for agricultural production. Weaving together stories from both farmworkers and growers, Made in Baja provides an eye-opening look at the dynamic economy developing south of the border.

Immigrants Under Threat
Immigrants Under Threat

Author: Greg Prieto

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1479823929

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Everyday life as an immigrant in a deportation nation is fraught with risk, but everywhere immigrants confront repression and dispossession, they also manifest resistance in ways big and small. Immigrants Under Threat shifts the conversation from what has been done to Mexican immigrants to what they do in response. From private strategies of avoidance, to public displays of protest, immigrant resistance is animated by the massive demographic shifts that started in 1965 and an immigration enforcement regime whose unprecedented scope and intensity has made daily life increasingly perilous. Immigrants Under Threat focuses on the way the material needs of everyday life both enable and constrain participation in immigrant resistance movements.

Dissent and Cultural Resistance in Asia’s Cities
Dissent and Cultural Resistance in Asia’s Cities

Author: Melissa Butcher

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-03-23

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1134007957

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This book documents urban experiences of dissent and emergent resistance against disjunctive global and local capital, technology and labour flows that converge and intersect in some of Asia’s fastest growing cities. Rather than constructing occupants of the city as simply passive victims of globalisation or urbanisation, it presents ways in which people are using everyday strategies embedded in cultural practice to challenge dominant socio-economic and political forces impacting on urban space. Taking the city as a site of contestation and a stage where social conflicts are played out, the book highlights the connections between urban power and dissent; the nature and impact of resistance; how the spatiality and built environment of the city generates conflict and, conversely, how protagonists use the cityscape to stage their everyday and public dissent. The contributors explore the conditions, strategies, and outcomes of such dissent and forms of cultural resistance, and explore the following themes: the impact of urban development, gentrification and ghetto-isation; urban counter narratives and the re-imagining of city spaces; the role of grassroots activism and social movements; cultural resistance in the creation of neighbourhoods and communities; the impact of gender, class and the politics of identity on forms of dissent; the formation of transgressive spaces.

Kids at Work
Kids at Work

Author: Emir Estrada

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2019-07-16

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1479828270

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Winner, 2020 Outstanding Scholarly Contribution Award, given by the Children and Youth Section of the American Sociological Association Winner, 2020 Early-Career Book Award from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education How Latinx kids and their undocumented parents struggle in the informal street food economy Street food markets have become wildly popular in Los Angeles—and behind the scenes, Latinx children have been instrumental in making these small informal businesses grow. In Kids at Work, Emir Estrada shines a light on the surprising labor of these young workers, providing the first ethnography on the participation of Latinx children in street vending. Drawing on dozens of interviews with children and their undocumented parents, as well as three years spent on the streets shadowing families at work, Estrada brings attention to the unique set of hardships Latinx youth experience in this occupation. She also highlights how these hardships can serve to cement family bonds, develop empathy towards parents, encourage hard work, and support children—and their parents—in their efforts to make a living together in the United States. Kids at Work provides a compassionate, up-close portrait of Latinx children, detailing the complexities and nuances of family relations when children help generate income for the household as they peddle the streets of LA alongside their immigrant parents.

Immigrant Women Workers in the Neoliberal Age
Immigrant Women Workers in the Neoliberal Age

Author: Nilda Flores-Gonzalez

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2013-07-01

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0252094824

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To date, most research on immigrant women and labor forces has focused on the participation of immigrant women on formal labor markets. In this study, contributors focus on informal economies such as health care, domestic work, street vending, and the garment industry, where displaced and undocumented women are more likely to work. Because such informal labor markets are unregulated, many of these workers face abusive working conditions that are not reported for fear of job loss or deportation. In examining the complex dynamics of how immigrant women navigate political and economic uncertainties, this collection highlights the important role of citizenship status in defining immigrant women's opportunities, wages, and labor conditions. Contributors are Pallavi Banerjee, Grace Chang, Margaret M. Chin, Jennifer Jihye Chun, Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán, Emir Estrada, Lucy Fisher, Nilda Flores-González, Ruth Gomberg-Munoz, Anna Romina Guevarra, Shobha Hamal Gurung, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, María de la Luz Ibarra, Miliann Kang, George Lipsitz, Lolita Andrada Lledo, Lorena Muñoz, Bandana Purkayastha, Mary Romero, Young Shin, Michelle Téllez, and Maura Toro-Morn.

Labour History in the Semi-periphery
Labour History in the Semi-periphery

Author: Leda Papastefanaki

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-11-23

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 3110620529

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This collective volume aims at studying a variety of labour history themes in Southern Europe, and investigating the transformations of labour and labour relations that these areas underwent in the 19th and the 20th centuries. The subjects studied include industrial labour relations in Southern Europe; labour on the sea and in the shipyards of the Mediterranean; small enterprises and small land ownership in relation to labour; formal and informal labour; the tendency towards independent work and the role of culture; forms of labour management (from paternalistic policies to the provision of welfare capitalism); the importance of the institutional framework and the wider political context; and women’s labour and gender relations.

Fanon & Education
Fanon & Education

Author: George Jerry Sefa Dei

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9781433106415

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"Fanon and Education: Thinking Through Pedagogical Possibilities challenges conventional education to go beyond the formal procedures of schooling to engage in the making of multiple meanings of our world. Understanding education requires a holistic approach that extends beyond contemporary classrooms. Education must also be inclusive, addressing questions of difference, diversity, and power, as conceptualized through the lens of class, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexuality, religion, language, and indigeneity. These issues are thought of in the context of Fanon's oeuvre, to articulate a social theory and progressive educational politics that can help us understand difference as political, as well as, dominant schooling, as a form of internalized oppression, that works differently on myriad bodies. Fanon and Education will have a broad appeal to readers who want to engage Fanon's ideas in the schooling and educational politics of change and transformation. It should be read by all students, teachers, educational practitioners, community activists and researchers. This book will have a particular appeal for educators in teacher training colleges, as well as for graduate instruction in university departments of education, social work, and sociology." --Book Jacket.

"We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now"

Author: Annelise Orleck

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2018-02-27

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0807081787

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The story of low-wage workers rising up around the world to demand respect and a living wage. Tracing a new labor movement sparked and sustained by low-wage workers from across the globe, “We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now” is an urgent, illuminating look at globalization as seen through the eyes of workers-activists: small farmers, fast-food servers, retail workers, hotel housekeepers, home-healthcare aides, airport workers, and adjunct professors who are fighting for respect, safety, and a living wage. With original photographs by Liz Cooke and drawing on interviews with activists in many US cities and countries around the world, including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Mexico, South Africa, and the Philippines, it features stories of resistance and rebellion, as well as reflections on hope and change as it rises from the bottom up.

The Cultural Value of Work
The Cultural Value of Work

Author: David Griffith

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-07-28

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1009118498

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Traditional wage labor has experienced a significant decline in industrialized countries over the past few decades. The spread of temporary work, the proliferation of subcontracting arrangements, the use of artificial intelligence (AI), the shipment of manufacturing jobs overseas, and the employment of foreign contract workers are among the key factors driving this decline. The result is a rise of labor insecurity and fragmentation among increasingly diverse forms of flexible labor arrangements. This book examines this important transformation by considering the impact of foreign contract labor on temporary migrant workers in their places of employment and home communities. It assesses work as a source of value in capitalist, reproductive, domestic, and cultural economics, and argues for a new, work-centric field of economics. Rich in examples, it is a sophisticated anthropological appreciation of the many forms that work can take and what these forms mean for the creation of value in people's lives.