Working Poor

by Griffith, David Craig; Kissam, Edward; Camposeco, Jeronimo

• ISBN13: 9781566392389
• ISBN10: 1566392381
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-03-01
• Publisher: Temple Univ Pr

Summary

Working Poor investigates the lives and working conditions of migrant farmworkers in seven regions of the United States. The community studies in this volume include descriptions and analyses of the low-income neighborhoods of Immokalee, Florida; Parlier, California; Weslaco, Texas; and Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, where growers and farm contractors put immigrants to work in fruit and vegetable harvests. The authors link farmworker communities that have winter growing seasons with summer labor supply demand regions in the northern United States, in particular south-western Michigan, New Jersey, and the Delmarva Peninsula of Maryland and Delaware.The authors investigate ethnic succession in the farm labor market and the ways individual farmworkers, farmworker families, and networks organize these migrations and attach themselves to farming operations by a variety of social relations. Framing the portraits of crowded households, the histories of networks, and the ethnic vignettes are three chapters placing the community studies into historical and theoretical perspectives. This broad framework underscores the importance of housing, transportation, networks, labor contracts, and ethnic relations in the organization of low-wage labor markets. Author note: David Griffith is Associate Scientist, Department of Anthropology at the Institute for Coastal and Marine Resources, East Carolina University. >P>Edward Kissam is Senior Research Associate at Pacific Management Research Associates.

Table of Contents

List of Tables
Preface
The Formation of Agricultural Labor in the United States	p. 3
Waves of Ethnicity: Immokalee, Florida	p. 29
Migrant Workers on the Delmarva Peninsula: Maryland Tomato and Delaware Potato and Mixed-Vegetable Farms	p. 70
Domestic Farmworkers in America's Heartland: Weslaco, Texas, and the Lower Rio Grande Valley	p. 89
Labor Demand in Southwestern Michigan: Last Bastion of the Family Farm	p. 123
Offshore Citizens as a Supply of Farm Labor: El Mani and Sabalos, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico	p. 151
A Labor Force in Transition: Farmworkers in the New Jersey Nursery Industry	p. 173
Northward out of Mexico: Migration Networks and Farm Labor Supply in Parlier, California	p. 190
Characteristics of the Farm Labor Market: A Comparative Summary	p. 243
The Poverty of Conventional Thought: Social Theory and the Working Poor	p. 270
Appendix: Methods, Sampling, and the Rationale for the Community Study Approach	p. 297
Notes	p. 305
References	p. 311
About the Authors	p. 325
Index	p. 329
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