Tag: labor

Ruth Milkman: Immigrants, Precarity, and Low-Wage Labor Organizing

This talk will offer an overview of the relationship between the growth of low-wage immigration to the United States since the 1970s and the restructuring of the nation’s labor market in the same period. The central claim is that migration patterns have been shaped by, and at the same time helped to shape, broader political-economic trends. More specifically, the large influx of low-wage immigration to the U.S. in the late twentieth century is linked to the dismantling of the highly regulated (and highly unionized) form of capitalism that characterized the United States during the New Deal era. As U.S. employers increasingly turned to new business strategies in the 1970s, seeking to externalize market risk through various forms of subcontracting, and to undermine the power of organized labor, low-wage precarious work expanded dramatically. Many U.S. born workers shunned the newly degraded jobs that proliferated at the bottom of the labor market, and employers turned instead to immigrant workers, both authorized and unauthorized, with the assumption that they would be more docile than the U.S.-born. To the surprise of most observers, however, many immigrant workers — including the unauthorized — became actively engaged in organizing efforts aiming to improve their pay and conditions.

Ruth-Milkman

Ruth Milkman
Professor of Sociology, Graduate Center

Ruth Milkman is a sociologist of labor and labor movements who has written on a variety of topics involving work and organized labor in the United States, past and present.  She has written extensively about low-wage immigrant workers in the U.S., analyzing their employment conditions as well as the dynamics of immigrant labor organizing.  She helped lead a multi-city team that produced a widely publicized 2009 study documenting the prevalence of wage theft and violations of other workplace laws in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.  She also recently co-authored a study of California’s paid family leave program, focusing on its impact on employers and workers.  After 21 years as a sociology professor at UCLA, where she directed the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment from 2001 to 2008, she returned to New York City in 2010.  She is currently a Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and at the Joseph F. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, where she also serves as Academic Director.

CANCELLED Race, Affect, and Belonging in Labor Migration: The Cases of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Marshallese Migrants

We apologize for the inconvenience, but this event has been cancelled at this time.

This panel explores the intersections of race, affect, and power in the study of labor migration in the United States. Using a range of interdisciplinary approaches, participants tackle this issue drawing on their own research on racial myths, constructions of masculinity and gender, the political economy of agriculture, immigration policies, debates about homesickness, and feelings of belonging to show how each worked toward the racialization of labor migrants.

Presentations

Structuring National Belonging: Immigrant Psychosis, Psychiatry, and Remaking National Belonging by Deborah Cohen, Associate Professor of History, University of Missouri-St. Louis. Author of Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Post-War United States and Mexico (University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
Padres Incumplidos: Post-War Puerto Rican Masculinity, International Labor Migration, and the Comparative Construction of Latino Identities in Rural Michigan by Eileen Findlay, Associate Professor of History, American University. Author of “We Are Left Without a Father Here”: Masculinity, Domesticity, and Post-War Migration in Puerto Rico (Duke University Press, 2014).
Mexican and Puerto Rican Labor Migrants, Citizenship, and Affective Bonds by Lilia Fernández, Associate Professor of History, Ohio State University. Author of Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
Pa’lla Fuera: Race, Estrangement, and Discipline in the Formation of Puerto Rican Migrant Farm Labor by Ismael García Colón, Associate Professor of Anthropology, College of Staten Island, and Fellow at the Advanced Research Collaborative, CUNY Graduate Center.
“We Are Here Because You Were There”: Race, Labor, and War in the Natural State by Emily Mitchell-Eaton, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Geography, Syracuse University.
Discussant: Don Mitchell, Distinguished Professor of Geography, Syracuse University. Author of They Saved the Crops: Labor, Landscape, and the Struggle over Industrial Farming in Bracero-Era (University of Georgia Press, 2012).

Download a PDF flyer for the event: Race, Affect, and Belonging in Labor Migration: The Cases of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Marshallese Migrants

Behemoth: Giant Factories and Discourses of Modernity

Drawing from a variety of sources, from travel accounts and literature to paintings and photographs, Freeman presented preliminary findings to the Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC) on Thursday, October 9th. Rather than focusing on the singularity of modern Chinese factories, Freeman began with what might be called a genealogy of the gigantic factory, tracing it from its origins in 18th century Britain, through the United States and the Soviet Union in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to the far-flung multinational producers of today’s electronics and consumer goods.

Controversy surrounding some of East Asia’ largest factories has risen in recent years, particularly on the heels of rioting and attempted suicides in plants operated by Foxconn in the Chinese cities of Chengdu and Taiyuan. Joshua Freeman, Distinguished Professor of History at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center, was inspired to take a deeper look at the cultural significance these “behemoths” hold around the world.

Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry
Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry, 1932-33

Drawing from a variety of sources, from travel accounts and literature to paintings and photographs, Freeman presented preliminary findings to the Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC) on Thursday, October 9th. Rather than focusing on the singularity of modern Chinese factories, Freeman began with what might be called a genealogy of the gigantic factory, tracing it from its origins in 18th century Britain, through the United States and the Soviet Union in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to the far-flung multinational producers of today’s electronics and consumer goods. To some observers a symbol of progress and national pride, and to others, a symbol of the satanic consequence of hubris, these edifices and the lives of those who operated their machinery have long presented questions and ambiguities.

Freeman’s project begins with simple questions which might bear much more complex answers: Why do we build such big factories in the first place? When and why have state authorities chosen either to concentrate workers in such numbers, or to disperse them into smaller, separate manufactories? How and why have these factories become poles for public discourse?

A brief historical overview reveals a familiar trajectory in Europe and the United States. Industrialists and state supporters saw that larger factories could increase production and profits exponentially. Leftists and conservatives alike often found a certain wonder in these industrial organisms; Freeman reminds us of the photo-journalist Margaret Bourke-White, who once claimed, “The beauty of industry lies in its truth and simplicity.” Some hoped these sites could produce a modern, rational, and even utopian lifestyle among its workers.

Homestead LOC 10140
Homestead Steel Works, Homestead, Pa. (Library of Congress)

Yet there seemed to be a limit to these “Promethean” enterprises: workers, when concentrated in such numbers, would chafe under deteriorating conditions. Gigantic factories had become unwieldy and costly, and eventually attempts were made to disperse manufacturing to more manageable suburban areas.

The recent resurgence of gigantic factories in East Asia cannot be explained by a simple “catching up” of “developing” world powers. Like the 19th century nationalists of Britain and Germany, modern governments continue to take pride in building massive projects like dams and bridges. Yet many of today’s largest factories do not evoke the same sort of pride they once might have. Freeman wonders whether this might be a consequence of the goods they produce: from Reebok shoes to iPads, these small products, mostly financed by multinational corporations and sold in foreign markets, are a far cry from the train cars and bridge girders of Pittsburgh’s heyday.

It seems that two overarching dimensions of these factories are at play: size, and location. Freeman’s ongoing work hopes to shed light on deeper layers of these dimensions. One observer noted that size can take many forms: number of workers, number and size of machines, and size of the finished products, for example. Location, too, will introduce enticing complications – to what extent can these “behemoths,” having spread around the world over the past three centuries, be linked together in a way that deepens our understanding of their role in social change and public discourse?

Reflection on “How to Pick Apples: Colonialism and Citizenship in the Formation of Puerto Rican Migrant Farm Labor”

In a presentation at The Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC) on Thursday, October 2nd, professor Ismael García Colón shared with the audience the first results of his ongoing research…

A fascinating collection of interviews, documents, and reports on rural workers from Puerto Rico in the United States, “How to Pick Apples: Colonialism and Citizenship in the Formation of Puerto Rican Migrant Farm Labor” is part of a book project on the experiences of Puerto Rican farmworkers in the United States. In a presentation at The Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC) on Thursday, October 2nd, professor Ismael García Colón shared with the audience the first results of his ongoing research.

Instead of looking at Puerto Rican farmers only from the perspective of transnationalism and migration policies, García Colón considers the group as part of the history of U.S. farm labor. The contrast between Puerto Ricans (as U.S. citizens) and guest workers from countries such as Jamaica and Mexico (frequently holding H-2 visas) raises questions of labor policies, state-formation, and practices of citizenship.

Professor García Colón focused on the lives of Puerto Rican apple pickers in the 1960s and 1970s, but the evidences presented suggest that some fundamental questions can be extended to Puerto Rican rural workers in the United States, in general. How conflicting classifications of nationalism, and citizenship impacts labor relations? What are the rights and working conditions of U.S citizens and guest workers, and in what category Puerto Ricans fit (in theory and in practice)? How Puerto Rican and U.S. governmental policies relate to everyday forms of labor relation? And what role nationalism plays in such dynamic?

The presentation began with the narrative of a New England apple grower who fired a group of Puerto Rican workers who complained about working conditions, wages, and working benefits. García Colón suggests that the episode is part of “a series of escalating events that accelerated the demise of Puerto Rico’s farm labor program.” He goes back to the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952, which reaffirmed to Puerto Rican U.S citizenship, a status granted in 1917 as a result of the Spanish-American War.

The brief history of U.S. migratory policy towards Puerto Ricans is the first step to understand how U.S. colonialism (the author uses, here, Eric Wolf’s concept of structural power) shaped Puerto Rican migration. It is interesting to notice that the author reinforced the application of the term “migration,” instead of “immigration,” during the presentation. García Colón claims that transnationalism is not enough to understand how Puerto Ricans participated of U.S. legal and political structures. It is necessary to smoke out the limits of citizenship, and how apple growers and other workers perceived this group.

Joshua Freeman: “Behemoth – Giant Factories and Discourses of Modernity”

The ARC Research Praxis Seminar Series Presents Joshua Freeman: “Behemoth – Giant Factories and Discourses of Modernity”

The ARC Research Praxis Seminar Series Presents

Joshua Freeman
Behemoth – Giant Factories and Discourses of Modernity

Thursday, October 2, 2014
4:00pm – 6:00pm
ARC Conference Room
Room 5318
The Graduate Center, CUNY

Joshua-Freeman

Joshua Freeman
Distinguished Professor of History, Queens College and the Graduate Center

Joshua B. Freeman’s books include American Empire, 1945-2000: The Rise of a Global Power, the Democratic Revolution at Home; Working-Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II; and In Transit: The Transport Workers Union in New York City, 1933-1966. He is currently working on a transnational history of very large factories and their cultural significance. He has received the Philip Taft Labor History Book Award, the New York Society Library Book Prize, the John Commerford Labor Education Award, and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He received a Ph.D. in History from Rutgers University in 1983.

Ismael Garcia-Colon: “How to Pick Apples – Colonialism, Race, and Citizenship in the Formation of the Puerto Rican Migrant Farm Labor Force in the United States”

The ARC Research Praxis Seminar Series Presents Ismael Garcia-Colon: “How to Pick Apples – Colonialism, Race, and Citizenship in the Formation of the Puerto Rican Migrant Farm Labor Force in the United States”

The ARC Research Praxis Seminar Series Presents

Ismael Garcia-Colon
How to Pick Apples – Colonialism, Race, and Citizenship in the Formation of the Puerto Rican Migrant Farm Labor Force in the United States

Thursday, October 2, 2014
4:00pm – 6:00pm
ARC Conference Room
Room 5318
The Graduate Center, CUNY

Ismael-Garcia-Colon

Ismael García-Colón
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Sociology, and Social Work, College of Staten Island

Ismael García Colón is a historical and political anthropologist with interests in political economy, migration, and Caribbean, Latin American and Latina/o studies. García Colón is the author of Land Reform in Puerto Rico: Modernizing the Colonial State, 1941-1969 (University Press of Florida, 2009). His publications have also appeared in Latin American Perspectives, CENTRO Journal, and Latino Studies. His research explores how development policies formed and transformed modern subjectivities in Puerto Rico during the mid-twentieth century. He is currently writing a book on the Puerto Rican experience in U.S. farm labor and its relation to the formation of the colonial state in Puerto Rico, the political economy of agriculture, and the discourses and practices of deportation and citizenship.

Storytelling as Resistance

From chapter 5 of her upcoming book, Dr. Fernandes’ talk centers around the increasing use of storytelling as a campaign strategy for social movements. As she explains, “stories are constructed in ways that promote reconciliation, provide a therapeutic release for the teller, and win sympathy in media circles, among politicians, and the broader public.” In precise details, Fernandes weaves through the ways in which storytelling was invoked in organizing meetings, public hearings and in press conferences throughout the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights campaign. A much watered down bill was passed in 2010 guaranteeing the same basic rights as other workers. Despite its modest legislative success, Fernandes is concerned that the involvement of funders, coaches and advocacy groups in framing of the stories to win legislators over represents a retrenchment from the kind of (more confrontational?) organizing work needed to change the conditions for immigrant workers.

Many interesting points were raised during the Q&A: How effective is storytelling when much of the legislative negotiations tend to happen behind close doors between powerful stakeholders? How does the actual labor process of domestic work, where emotions play a significant role in the employer-employee dynamic, complicate campaign strategies? More broadly, is storytelling part of a larger cultural pattern in American society that valorizes the presentation of the “self” (e.g. reality TV shows, facebook, instagram, selfies)? If we agree on this point, then isn’t storytelling a manifestation of the liberal, and by extension, the neoliberal trope that the “self” must be worked on? This is particularly salient in the framing of victimization in individual stories to win over legislators and the public, as if to suggest only in extreme individual hardships can we make claims for social change.

Still, concerns were also raised over the use of the “American Dream” narrative in stories and public outreach. The idea that these domestic workers work hard and play by the rules and thus deserve basic human dignity effectively appeals to a broader sentiment, but, it also creates a distinction between “good” and “bad” immigrants, sectioning off a certain group to be the undeserving. Indeed, this contradiction speaks to Fernandes’ claim that perhaps storytelling represents the narrowing of space for which social movement work can operate, where the moral high ground is fought over individual troubles and injustices

Not all hope is lost though. The domestic workers campaign effectively brought these private troubles at home/work into the public consciousness. This is particularly relevant to my own research on undocumented Chinese restaurant workers who share some similar working conditions – small family-owned businesses, labor exploitation, abusive treatment, low wages and having to live in the shadows. I share in Fernandes’ interest in thinking through how political subjectivity is formed and in critically analyzing organizing strategies, even when they have progressive intentions. In the end, my take away message is that we should continue to be critical of the ways in which neoliberal thought can mutate and reappear, while keenly aware that we don’t operate in conditions of our own choosing.