Labor market trends are often examined in light of their economic significance. However, little attention has been devoted to the relationship between economic trends and their potential impact on religion. Focusing on the consequences of economic restructuring, I argue that labor market variables have consequences for rates of religious adherence. Specifically, I examine an industry which well exemplifies the consequences of restructuring in the Midwestern United States, the meat processing industry. As a result of restructuring, many processors have relocated to rural communities in the Midwest, which lack a sufficient native labor supply to meet the employment needs of the packing plants, which have characteristically high rate of turnover. Consequently, packing plants have recruited and rely heavily on Hispanic immigrant labor to sustain operations. As Hispanic immigrants migrate to rural Midwestern counties, they bring their religion with them, over time increasing the share of Catholic adherents in their destination communities.

"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.

Many rural communities attract meat, poultry and fish processing plants owned by transnational corporations. They often bring social disorder in their wake (incoming workers). This work offers anthropological, geographical, sociological, journalist and industrial perspectives on the issue.

Whether valorized as the heartland or derided as flyover country, the Midwest became instantly notorious when COVID-19 infections skyrocketed among workers in meatpacking plants—and Americans feared for their meat supply. But the Midwest is not simply the place where animals are fed corn and then butchered. Native midwesterner Kristy Nabhan-Warren spent years interviewing Iowans who work in the meatpacking industry, both native-born residents and recent migrants from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In Meatpacking America, she digs deep below the stereotype and reveals the grit and grace of a heartland that is a major global hub of migration and food production—and also, it turns out, of religion. Across the flatlands, Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims share space every day as worshippers, employees, and employers. On the bloody floors of meatpacking plants, in bustling places of worship, and in modest family homes, longtime and newly arrived Iowans spoke to Nabhan-Warren about their passion for religious faith and desire to work hard for their families. Their stories expose how faith-based aspirations for mutual understanding blend uneasily with rampant economic exploitation and racial biases. Still, these new and old midwesterners say that a mutual language of faith and morals brings them together more than any of them would have ever expected.

Rural areas have been hit hard by economic restructuring. Traditionally male jobs with good pay and benefits (such as in manufacturing) have declined dramatically, only to be replaced with low-paying service-oriented jobs&—jobs that do not offer benefits or wages sufficient to raise a family. Concurrently, rural areas have experienced changes in family life, namely an increase in women&’s labor force participation, a decline in married-couple families, and a rise in cohabitation and single-parent families. How have rural families coped with these social and economic changes? Economic Restructuring and Family Well-Being in Rural America documents the intertwined changes in employment and family and explores the outcomes for family well-being in rural America. Here a multidisciplinary group of scholars examines the impacts of economic restructuring on rural Americans and provides policy recommendations for addressing the challenges they face. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Cynthia D. Anderson, Guangqing Chi, Alisha Coleman-Jensen, Katherine Jewsbury Conger, Nicole D. Forry, Deborah Roempke Graefe, Steven Michael Grice, Andrew Hahn, Debra Henderson, Eric B. Jensen, Leif Jensen, Marlene Lee, Daniel T. Lichter, Elaine McCrate, Diane K. McLaughlin, Margaret K. Nelson, Domenico Parisi, Liliokanaio Peaslee, Jed Pressgrove, Jennifer Sherman, Anastasia Snyder, Susan K. Walker, and Chih-Yuan Weng.

This book provides a wide-ranging review of existing writing and research on rural social services and explores some of the distinctive features of rural contexts and rural problems.