Product Information
How has Latino immigration transformed the South? In what ways is the presence of these newcomers complicating efforts to organize for workplace justice? Scratching Out a Living takes readers deep into Mississippi's chicken processing plants and communities, where large numbers of Latin American migrants were recruited in the mid-1990s to labor alongside an established African American workforce in some of the most dangerous and lowest-paid jobs in the country. As America's voracious appetite for chicken has grown, so has the industry's reliance on immigrant workers, whose structural position makes them particularly vulnerable to exploitation. Based on the author's six years of collaboration with a local workers' center, this book explores how Black, white, and new Latino Mississippians have lived and understood these transformations. Activist anthropologist Angela Stuesse argues that people's racial identifications and relationships to the poultry industry prove vital to their interpretations of the changes they are experiencing. Illuminating connections between the area's long history of racial inequality, the industry's growth and drive to lower labor costs, immigrants' contested place in contemporary social relations, and workers' prospects for political mobilization, Scratching Out a Living paints a compelling ethnographic portrait of neoliberal globalization and calls for organizing strategies that bring diverse working communities together in mutual construction of a more just future.Product Identifiers
PublisherUniversity of California Press
ISBN-139780520287211
eBay Product ID (ePID)220795218
Product Key Features
Number of Pages336 Pages
Publication NameScratching Out a Living: Latinos, Race, and Work in the Deep South
LanguageEnglish
SubjectSocial Sciences, Anthropology
Publication Year2016
TypeTextbook
Subject AreaSocial Work
AuthorAngela Stuesse
Dimensions
Item Height229 mm
Item Weight454 g
Additional Product Features
Country/Region of ManufactureUnited States
Title_AuthorAngela Stuesse
Series TitleCalifornia Series in Public Anthropology