Scratching Out a Living

How has Latino immigration transformed the South? In what ways is the presence of these newcomers complicating efforts to organize for workplace justice? <I>Scratching Out a Living</I> takes readers deep into Mississippi&rsquo;s chicken processing plants and communities, where large numbers of Latin American migrants were recruited 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. As America&rsquo;s voracious appetite for chicken has grown, so has the industry&rsquo;s reliance on immigrant workers, whose structural position makes them particularly vulnerable to exploitation.<BR /><BR /> Based on the author&rsquo;s six years of collaboration with a local workers&rsquo; center, this book explores how Black, white, and new Latino Mississippians have lived and understood these transformations. Activist anthropologist Angela Stuesse argues that people&rsquo;s racial identifications and relationships to the poultry industry prove vital to their interpretations of the changes they are experiencing. Illuminating connections between the area&rsquo;s long history of racial inequality, the industry&rsquo;s growth and drive to lower labor costs, immigrants&rsquo; contested place in contemporary social relations, and workers&rsquo; prospects for political mobilization, <I>Scratching Out a Living</I> paints a compelling ethnographic portrait of neoliberal globalization and calls for organizing strategies that bring diverse working communities together in mutual construction of a more just future.