Using semistructured interviews and participant observation, this two-year pilot study of male Mexican migrants in Freehold, New Jersey, explored how day laborers perceive their struggles to support families despite escalating anti-immigrant legislation at virtually all levels of government. In particular, the author looks at efforts by Mexican…

The primary focus of this research is the impact of wages on the decision not to continue with an apprenticeship or traineeship. The approach taken is to model three wages relevant to apprentices and trainees: the wage during training; the expected wage in alternative employment; and, the expected wage on completion. The results of these models…

This is a story about industrial art. It is certainly not a story about smart studios and fashionable galleries, subtle techniques and aesthetic beauty. This is a story of sheet rock, nails, and low-grade lumber in the hands of unskilled teenage laborers. While this story boasts of no future museum pieces, it tells a heartwarming story of rare…

Contingent, non-standard or "casual" work is present in large numbers in virtually every sector of the United States economy. Staffing strategies that use subcontracted or contingent work--strategies that once characterized only some low-wage workers such as garment and agriculture--have now spread to virtually every area of industry, including…

The way that immigration is talked about in the public sphere has direct bearing on the ways that health, education, legal, and political institutions enact policies to deal with this phenomenon. Looking at the major media output on questions of access to higher education for undocumented immigrant youth in Massachusetts, this study shows the…

The greatest challenge we face in the next ten years is the challenge of making sure we have a qualified workforce able to meet the demands of living in a global economy. To do this we will need to expand the capacity of our workforce development and educational system to meet the training needs of business and industry. In order to assess the…

A comparative analysis of ocean fishing work organizations located in complex agricultural societies finds that laborers in fishing have relatively high power and rewards; three technical and environmental differences can account for authority differences; greater isolation of workplace demands for coordination, and physical risks in fishing.…

This article reports on predictors of condom use with casual female sex partners on the part of Latino migrant day laborers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Results come from a secondary analysis of data from a cross-sectional survey using convenience sampling to interview 290 sexually active adult, male, migrant Latino day laborers. Regression…

This research sterns from twelve months of ethnographic research with Haitian migrant women who reside in "Batey Sol", a former sugar-company labor camp located along the "Linea Noroeste" (northwest line) linking the Dominican Rebulic's border town of Dajabon with the urban center of Santiago. The multi-sited study considers…

This article is adapted from "Chew Heong v. United States: Chinese Exclusion and the Federal Courts", written by Lucy Salyer, associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, for inclusion in the Federal Judicial Center's project, "Federal Trials and Great Debates in United States History." In 1882, Congress…

A cartographic description of American worker protest from 1880 to 1981 highlights three changes in the geographical structure of worker protest: a cyclical-geographical realignment of worker protest, two regions susceptible to protest during the third cycle, and the geographical retreat of anti-strike traditions during the past century.…

High school seniors (n=474), high school freshmen (n=1,153), salespersons (n=374), sheet metal workers (n=148), sheet metal applicants (n=424), and carpenter applicants (n=279) were used to test the short-form Ball Aptitude Battery (BAB). The development of the short-form BAB indicates comparable results to the long-form BAB in terms of…

Fair trade is typically understood as an alternative market system that aims to right historically inequitable terms of trade between the geopolitical North and South and foster more direct producer/consumer linkages. We suggest that a more expansive application of the term "fair trade" to encompass agro-food initiatives within the North and South…

Children working in agriculture have always been a part of the rural culture and work ethos of the United States, especially on the Great Plains. Many teenagers still detassel corn or walk the beans in the summer months to earn spending money or money for college. But what about the children who work as migrant laborers in commercialized…

Studies have shown that members of the working class are often overworked, underpaid, overtaxed, and unhappy. They tend to be distrustful of new ideas and methods and to rely on their extended families to meet their needs for human contact. One way in which the working class person may have a chance to widen the character of his interactions with…