Latino populations are currently the fastest growing in the nation and Latinos comprise by far the largest percentage of new immigrants to the southern states. Latino Workers in the Contemporary South describes issues these immigrants and refugees face, particularly regarding work, and also offers accounts of the impact of Latinos on their employers and communities at large. Though its discussions span a variety of regions, the book focuses, in particular, on areas of Georgia and Florida where booming Hispanic populations have had considerable influence in recent years. It documents the different ways in which Latino immigrants in today's South have adapted to the ambiguous and frequently inaccessible territory of the South's notorious "good-ole-boy" network to navigate the world of work. Contributors to the volume discuss legal and illegal migration, the problem of accurately tracking immigration, gender-specific issues, and language barriers, as well as adaptations made by immigrants in the face of hardships. Essays highlight specific areas that provide work opportunities to immigrants, such as the poultry industry of North Georgia, the carpet industry of Dalton, Georgia, and the onshore oil industry of southern Louisiana. The contributors also discuss the changing cultures of areas with large Hispanic populations and the mixture of hospitality and hostility encountered by these new southerners. Latino Workers in the Contemporary South offers a great deal of new information about Latino immigrants and the changing face of the South.

The Latino population in the South has more than doubled over the past decade. The mass migration of Latin Americans to the U.S. South has led to profound changes in the social, economic, and cultural life of the region and inaugurated a new era in southern history. This multidisciplinary collection of essays, written by U.S. and Mexican scholars, explores these transformations in rural, urban, and suburban areas of the South. Using a range of different methodologies and approaches, the contributors present in-depth analyses of how immigration from Mexico and Central and South America is changing the South and how immigrants are adapting to the southern context. Among the book’s central themes are the social and economic impact of immigration, the resulting shifts in regional culture, new racial dynamics, immigrant incorporation and place-making, and diverse southern responses to Latino newcomers. Various chapters explore ethnic and racial tensions among poultry workers in rural Mississippi and forestry workers in Alabama; the “Mexicanization” of the urban landscape in Dalton, Georgia; the costs and benefits of Latino labor in North Carolina; the challenges of living in transnational families; immigrant religious practice and community building in metropolitan Atlanta; and the creation of Latino spaces in rural and urban South Carolina and Georgia.

"What does globalization look like in the rural South? Scratching Out a Living takes readers deep into Mississippi's chicken processing communities and workplaces, where large numbers of Latin American migrants began arriving 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. Based on six years of collaboration with a local workers' center, activist anthropologist Angela Stuesse explores how Black, white, and new Latino residents have experienced and understood these transformations. Illuminating connections between the area's long history of racial inequality, the poultry industry's growth, immigrants' contested place in contemporary social relations, and workers' prospects for political mobilization, Scratching Out a Living calls for organizing strategies that bring diverse working communities together in mutual construction of a more just future"--Provided by publisher.

"Until recently, most research on Latina/os in the U.S. has ignored historical and contemporary dynamics in Latin America, just as scholars of Latin America have generally stopped their studies at the border. This volume roots Los Angeles in the larger arena of globalization, exploring the demographic changes that have transformed the Latino presence in LA from primarily Mexican-origin to one that now includes peoples from throughout the hemisphere. Bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, it combines historical perspectives with analyses of power and inequality to consider how Latina/os are responding to exclusionary immigration, labor, and schooling practices and actively creating communities. Book jacket."--BOOK JACKET.

“How does one put into words the rage that workers feel when supervisors threaten to replace them with workers who will not go to the bathroom in the course of a fourteen-hour day of hard labor, even if it means wetting themselves on the line?”—From the Preface In this gutsy, eye-opening examination of the lives of workers in the New South, Vanesa Ribas, working alongside mostly Latino/a and native-born African American laborers for sixteen months, takes us inside the contemporary American slaughterhouse. Ribas, a native Spanish speaker, occupies an insider/outsider status there, enabling her to capture vividly the oppressive exploitation experienced by her fellow workers. She showcases the particular vulnerabilities faced by immigrant workers—a constant looming threat of deportation, reluctance to seek medical attention, and family separation—as she also illuminates how workers find connection and moments of pleasure during their grueling shifts. Bringing to the fore the words, ideas, and struggles of the workers themselves, On The Line underlines how deep racial tensions permeate the factory, as an overwhelmingly minority workforce is subject to white dominance. Compulsively readable, this extraordinary ethnography makes a powerful case for greater labor protection, especially for our nation’s most vulnerable workers.

In 1937, Mexican workers were among the strikers and supporters beaten, arrested, and murdered by Chicago policemen in the now infamous Republic Steel Mill Strike. Using this event as a springboard, Zaragosa Vargas embarks on the first full-scale history of the Mexican-American labor movement in twentieth-century America. Absorbing and meticulously researched, Labor Rights Are Civil Rightspaints a multifaceted portrait of the complexities and contours of the Mexican American struggle for equality from the 1930s to the postwar era. Drawing on extensive archival research, Vargas focuses on the large Mexican American communities in Texas, Colorado, and California. As he explains, the Great Depression heightened the struggles of Spanish speaking blue-collar workers, and employers began to define citizenship to exclude Mexicans from political rights and erect barriers to resistance. Mexican Americans faced hostility and repatriation. The mounting strife resulted in strikes by Mexican fruit and vegetable farmers. This collective action, combined with involvement in the Communist party, led Mexican workers to unionize. Vargas carefully illustrates how union mobilization in agriculture, tobacco, garment, and other industries became an important vehicle for achieving Mexican American labor and civil rights. He details how interracial unionism proved successful in cross-border alliances, in fighting discriminatory hiring practices, in building local unions, in mobilizing against fascism and in fighting brutal racism. No longer willing to accept their inferior status, a rising Mexican American grassroots movement would utilize direct action to achieve equality.

United Association for Labor Education Best Book Award The American Dream of reaching success through sheer sweat and determination rings false for countless members of the working classes. This volume shows that many of the difficulties facing workers today have deep roots in the history of the exploitation of labor in the South. Contributors make the case that the problems that have long beset southern labor, including the legacy of slavery, low wages, lack of collective bargaining rights, and repression of organized unions, have become the problems of workers across the country. Spanning nearly all of U.S. history, the essays in this collection range from West Virginia to Florida to Texas. They examine vagrancy laws in the early republic, inmate labor at state penitentiaries, mine workers and union membership, and strikes and the often-violent strikebreaking that followed. They also look at pesticide exposure among farmworkers, labor activism during the civil rights movement, and foreign-owned auto factories in the rural South. They distinguish between different struggles experienced by women and men, as well as by African American, Latino, and white workers. The broad chronological sweep and comprehensive nature of Reconsidering Southern Labor History set this volume apart from any other collection on the topic in the past forty years. Presenting the latest trends in the study of the working-class South by a new generation of scholars, this volume is a surprising revelation of the historical forces behind the labor inequalities inherent today. Contributors: David M. Anderson | Deborah Beckel | Thomas Brown | Dana M. Caldemeyer | Adam Carson | Theresa Case | Erin L. Conlin | Brett J. Derbes | Maria Angela Diaz | Alan Draper | Matthew Hild | Joseph E. Hower | T.R.C. Hutton | Stuart MacKay | Andrew C. McKevitt | Keri Leigh Merritt | Bethany Moreton | Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan | Michael Sistrom | Joseph M. Thompson | Linda Tvrdy