Synopses & Reviews
Americas economy increasingly depends on immigrant workers, but the study of immigration and work has somehow surprisingly disappeared from the scholarly eye. Here, to fill that gap, is
Skills of the Unskilled, a beautifully written, convincingly argued book that explains how and why the skills developed and brought by immigrants possessing little schooling nonetheless provide the backbone on which so many industries and occupations rest. An essential volume to be appreciated by scholars and students of immigration alike.”Roger Waldinger, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
This vividly written book changes the way we think about skilled and unskilled, the meaning of human capital, and the importance of things we do not normally measure for understanding immigrants, their mobility, and their impacts at home and abroad. It is a must-read for anyone interested in migration policy or research.”J. Edward Taylor, University of California, Davis
[PRAISE PAGE]
Creatively conceived, rigorously executed, and critical for anyone interested in the dynamics of labor migration. Will replace the fallacy of the doomed unskilled labor migrant with a nuanced view of the complex ways in which job skills are acquired through lifelong learning and deployed on both sides of the USMexico migrant circuit.”Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, author of Paradise Transplanted: Migration and the Making of California Gardens
Skills of the Unskilled challenges stale thinking about migrants and their work by showing how they not only survive but also develop the skills to thrive.”David FitzGerald, coauthor of Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas
Skills of the Unskilled is novel, revealing, and transformative. This meticulous, skillful, and profoundly social examination of the intersection of jobs, skills, and knowledge will transform the way we see immigrant jobs and how we talk about unskilled labor. It will recast our images of immigrant workers in multiple consequential ways.”Cecilia Menjívar, author of Enduring Violence: Ladina Womens Lives in Guatemala
Synopsis
Most labor and migration studies classify migrants with limited formal education or credentials as unskilled.” Despite the value of migrants' work experiences and the substantial technical and interpersonal skills developed throughout their lives, the labor-market contributions of these migrants are often overlooked and their mobility pathways poorly understood. Skills of the Unskilled” reports the findings of a five-year study that draws on research including interviews with 320 Mexican migrants and return migrants in North Carolina and Guanajuato, Mexico. The authors uncover these migrants lifelong human capital and identify mobility pathways associated with the acquisition and transfer of skills across the migratory circuit, including reskilling, occupational mobility, job jumping, and entrepreneurship.
Synopsis
How the Other Half Works solves the riddle of America's contemporary immigration puzzle: why an increasingly high-tech society has use for so many immigrants who lack the basic skills that today's economy seems to demand. In clear and engaging style, Waldinger and Lichter isolate the key factors that explain the presence of unskilled immigrants in our midst. Focusing on Los Angeles, the capital of today's immigrant America, this hard-hitting book elucidates the other side of the new economy, showing that hiring is finding not so much "one's own kind" but rather the "right kind" to fit the demeaning, but indispensable, jobs many American workers disdain.
Synopsis
"In this masterpiece of field research into the social processes that structure America's economy, Waldinger and Lichter unveil the most original and powerful theory ever advanced to explain how 'unskilled' immigrants have come to work at remarkably high rates while inner city blacks continue to languish. Like Wilson's
When Work Disappears and Massey and Denton's
American Apartheid,
How the Other Half Works will set the stage for a new era of poverty research. In its focus on Los Angeles as the quintessential suburban metropolis and as an exemplar of multi-ethnic America, it may also one day be seen as the founding text in a new LA School of Urban Sociology."and#151;Mitchell Duneier, author of
Sidewalk and
Slim's Table"How the Other Half Works is unreservedly one of the most important works on immigration and its relation to the social nature of work in contemporary America. Addressing several of the most vexing 'race' and labor issues of our time, it offers original and persuasive answers that challenge the prevailing wisdom of economists. Grounded in the best tradition of empirical sociology, the work is richly documented, vigorously argued, and clearly presented. With this landmark study, Roger Waldinger (working in tandem with co-author Michael Lichter) confirms his stature as the nation's leading sociologist of immigration."and#151;Orlando Patterson, author of The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America's "Racial" Crisis
"Based on detailed interviews with a sample of employers of low-wage labor in six Los Angeles industries, Waldinger and Lichter provide a vivid and informative account of social dynamics at the bottom of the labor market. The book builds and extends prior theories of immigration and labor and makes a compelling case for why a sociological standpoint is indispensable for the analysis of these processes."and#151;Alejandro Portes, co-author of Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America
"Waldinger and Lichter offer a lucid and penetrating look at the micro-social structure of hiring, firing, and earning in the modern, post-industrial economy. This book should be required reading for people who glibly use the term 'free market.'"and#151;Douglas S. Massey, Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
Synopsis
Immigration is remaking the United States. In New York, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, and Chicago, the multiethnic society of tomorrow is already in place. Yet today's urban centers appear unlikely to provide newcomers with the same opportunities their predecessors found at the turn of the last century. Using the latest sources of information, this hard-hitting volume of original essays looks at the nexus between urban realities and immigrant destinies in these American cities.
Strangers at the Gates tells the real story of immigrants' prospects for success today and delineates the conditions that will hinder or aid the newest Americans in their quest to get ahead.
This book stresses the crucial importance of understanding that immigration today is fundamentally urban and the equally important fact that immigrants are now flocking to places where low-skilled workers--regardless of ethnic background--are in particular trouble. These two themes are at the heart of this book, which also covers a range of provocative topics, often with surprising findings. Among the essayists, Nelson Lim enters the controversy over whether and how immigrants affect the employment prospects for African Americans; Mark Ellis investigates whether low immigrant wages depress other workers' salaries; William A.V. Clark contends that immigrants seem to be experiencing downward mobility; and Min Zhou asserts that trends among second-generation immigrants are decidedly more optimistic.
These well-integrated and well-organized essays sit squarely at the intersection of sociology and economics, and along the way they point out both the strengths and the weaknesses of these two disciplines in understanding immigration. Providing a theoretically and empirically comprehensive overview of the economic fate of immigrants in major American cities, this book will make a major contribution to debates over immigration and the American future.
Synopsis
"As an admirable successor to
Ethnic Los Angeles, this work examines the challenges confronting immigrant workers in urban areas.
Strangers at the Gates should be of great interest to scholars and non-scholars interested in contemporary immigration and the American future."and#151;Richard Alba, author of
Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America"Strangers at the Gates brings new evidence and theorizing to central issues in the sociology of immigrant and ethnic life. An excellent educational resource, informing readers, while simultaneously training them how to carry out sophisticated, comparative social science research, this well-written work will be required reading in immigration, stratification, ethnicity, race relations, urban studies, social geography, social policy, intro to sociology, and demography."and#151;Steve Gold, co-author of Ethnic Economies
"Strangers at the Gates is another powerful tour d' horizon by Waldinger and his associates. This is a richly textured look at one of immigration's most important topics: how immigrants respond to and remake once again America's urban low-wage labor markets in the 'capitals of immigrant America.' Among the book's thought-provoking findings is a newfound--if tentative--'optimism' about the prospects of the second generation."and#151;Demetri Papdemetriou, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
"Strangers at the Gates is a penetrating, timely analysis of the economic successes and problems of today's immigrants and of the native-born Americans with whom they coexist and compete. This wide-ranging and lively contribution to the newly reinvented field of economic sociology will appeal to researchers, students, policymakers, and the general public."and#151;Herbert Gans, author of Making Sense of America: Sociological Analyses and Essays
About the Author
Jacqueline Maria Hagan is Robert G. Parr Distinguished Term Professor of Sociology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interests include international migration, labor markets, gender, religion, and human rights. She is author of
Deciding to Be Legal and
Migration Miracle.
Rubén Hernández-León is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of California, Los Angeles, and Director of the UCLA Center for Mexican Studies. He is the author of Metropolitan Migrants: The Migration of Urban Mexicans to the United States (UC Press) and the coeditor of New Destinations: Mexican Immigration in the United States.
Jean-Luc Demonsant is Assistant Professor of Economics at the Toulouse School of Economics. He employs a mixed-methods approach to the study of migration, focusing on migration and remittances, and social status and schooling choices among migrant families.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Terms used in this book
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: What Empoyers Want
Chapter 3: Doing the Job: Skills and the Social Organization of Work
Chapter 4: The Language of Work
Chapter 5: Network, Bureaucracy, Exclusion
Chapter 6: Ethnic Networks and Social Closure
Chapter 7: Bringing the Boss Back In: Selection and Hiring Decisions
Chapter 8: Whom Employers Want
Chapter 9: Us and them
Chapter 10: Diversity and Conflict
Chapter 11: Black/Immigrant Competition
Chapter 12: How the other half works
Appendix: the Local and economic context
The six industries
Conclusions