Newcomers In Workplace: Immigrants and the Restructing of the U.S. Economy

by Louise Lamphere

Overview

Newcomers in the Workplace documents and dramatizes the changing face of the American workplace, transformed in the 1980s by immigrant workers in all sectors. This collection of excellent ethnographies captures the stench of meatpacking plants, the clatter of sewing machines, the sweat of construction sites, and the strain of management-employee relations in hotels and grocery stores as immigrant workers carve out crucial roles in a struggling economy.

Case studies focus on three geographical regions—Philadelphia, Miami, and Garden City, Kansas—where the active workforce includes increasing numbers of Cubans, Haitians, Koreans, Puerto Ricans, Laotians, Vietnamese, and other new immigrants. The portraits show these newcomers reaching across ethnic boundaries in their determination to retain individualism and to insure their economic survival.


In the series Labor and Social Change, edited by Paula Rayman and Carmen Sirianni.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439901489
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	02/08/2011
Series:	Labor And Social Change
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Louise Lamphere teaches in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1. Introduction – Louise Lamphere, Guillermo Grenier, and Alex Stepick

Part I: Garden City
2. Beef Stew: Cattle, Immigrants, and Established Residents in a Kansas Beefpacking Town – Michael Broadway
3. Knock 'Em Dead: Work on the Killfloor of a Modern Beefpacking Plant – Donald D. Stull
4. Guys in White Hats: Short-Term Participant Observation among Beef-Processing Workers and Managers – Ken C. Erickson
5. The Effects of Packinghouse Work on Southeast Asian Refugee Families – Janet E. Benson Part II: Miami
6. Miami: Capital of Latin America – Alex Stepick
7. Brothers in Wood – Alex Stepick and Guillermo Grenier, with Steve Morris and Debbie Draznin
8. Grounding the Saturn Plant: Failed Restructuring in a Miami Apparel Plant – Guillermo Grenier and Alex Stepick, with Aline LaBorwit
9. The View from the Back of the House: Restaurants and Hotels in Miami – Alex Stepick and Guillermo Grenier, with Hafidh A. Hafidh, Sue Chaffee, and Debbie Draznin

Part III: Philadelphia
10. Polishing the Rustbelt: Immigrants Enter a Restructuring Philadelphia – Judith Goode
11. Facing Job Loss: Changing Relationships in a Multicultural urban Factor – Carole Cohen
12. Encounters Over the Counter: Bosses, Workers, and Customers on a Changing Shopping Strip – Judith Goode
13. Poverty and Politics: Practice and Ideology among Small Business Owners in an Urban Enterprise Zone – Cynthia Carter Ninivaggi

Contributors' Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

Through close analysis of the changing workplace in three U.S. communities, these informative academic essays chart the variety of work experience for new immigrants. Rural Garden City, Kans., has become a center for the low-wage meat-packing industry; Donald Stull describes the physical toll taken by such dangerous labor, and Janet Benson tells how Southeast Asian refugees support the industry by tolerating substandard living conditions. Unlike Garden City workers, those in Miami don't cross ethnic lines outside the workplace, according to Stepick; Stepick and Grenier explain how Latin, Anglo, African American and Haitian construction workers respond differently to management safety requests and how Haitians in the tourist industry are exploited more than Latinos. In Philadelphia, Judith Goode shows how Korean store owners hire local workers as community ``buffers''; Cynthia Carter Ninivaggi observes that an urban enterprise zone project did little to reduce poverty. Lamphere teaches anthropology at the University of New Mexico; Stepick and Grenier teach in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Florida International University. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Feb.)\

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"Through close analysis of the changing workplace in three U.S. communities, these informative academic essays chart the variety of work experience for new immigrants."
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher