While some children spend their summers in camps or other recreational activities, many children of immigrants in Washington state spend them picking cherries and learning with(in) orchards. Children's experiences consist of multiple narratives demonstrating that children's lives are complicated, yet full of possibilities for teaching and…

Mexican immigrant farm-worker mothers' class, race, citizenship status, and jurisdictional status of their town in a Northern California community rendered them invisible. However, when the school board decided to close the elementary school the mothers mobilized. Drawing on these mothers' "'fototestimonios" we examine how they, as…

Chicanas and Mexican women share a history of colonialism that has (a) sustained oppressive constructions of gender roles and sexuality, (b) produced and reproduced them as racially inferior and as able to be silenced, conquered, and dominated physically and mentally, and (c) contributed to the exploitation of their labor. Given that colonialism…

Based on a collaborative ethnography with Lideres Campesinas, a state-wide farmworker women's organization in California, this essay explores how activists have created multi-issued organizing strategies grounded in family structures and a community-based social world. Building on Gloria Anzaldua's theory of nepantla, it illustrates how campesina…

Migration histories from residents of a rural Michoacan town were used to construct successive migrant cohorts for the period 1940-1978. Analysis indicates that prior to 1965, migration was limited primarily to male agricultural workers. Since 1965, increased numbers of women, children, and legal U.S. residents have made up the migrant population.…

This review addresses a growing concern regarding alcohol use in adult male Latino im/migrant laborers in the United States. The review draws from alcohol studies focusing on "Hispanic" populations, and from health behavior studies of Latino im/migrant laborers, research that includes alcohol use. Specifically, this review addresses (a) alcohol…

Examines the wetback migration, and legal migration from Mexico which have had a vigorous resurgence in the years following the termination of the bracero program in 1964: the migrants, their methods and the making of the structural forces promoting and sustaining this migration do not conform to commonly held beliefs. (Author/JM)

Immigration and domestic industrial policies have been powerful instruments in the creation of immigrant "niches" in labor markets. While Indians have clustered in the information technology industry, Mexicans have formed niches in low-skilled industries such as agriculture. A review of the relationship between immigration policy and the…

This report examines the occupational mobility of agricultural workers in two California labor markets and the effects of the Immigration Reform and Control Act and individual, job, and labor-market characteristics on such mobility. Interviews were conducted among a randomly selected sample of 162 households, which included 401 workers in southern…

This paper summarizes a 22-month ethnographic study of rural Shandon (California), a community that demonstrates the social and demographic changes resulting from agricultural intensification in rural California. Changes in the Shandon area's agricultural production have produced a demographic shift from the homogeneous Anglo-American farming and…

Since the late 1970s, California's rural poor (frequently immigrants and refugees) have been engaged in grassroots efforts to change the cultural and political landscapes of their communities. Told in the words of rural people, this book presents six stories of struggle and empowerment. In Yuba City, Latino and East Indian farmworkers felt that…

The relationships among community characteristics and community well-being were examined for all 366 rural California communities with a population of 1,000-2,000. High proportions of Latinos and new immigrants in a community population were positively related to unemployment, percent children, and employment in agriculture, and negatively related…

This paper examines the social and economic impacts of Mexican immigration on Fresno (California). Since the early 1980s, immigration to California has been dominated by illegal immigrants from rural Mexico seeking agricultural jobs in rural California. This rural migration impacts urban centers in agricultural regions; these impacts lag the…

Since the early 1950s, several programs have enticed thousands of rural Mexicans to migrate to California and the Northwest to be agricultural workers. The resultant demographic and cultural impacts have been immense. Hood River County (Oregon) schools are over 30 percent Hispanic. There is much ignorance and prejudice regarding the Hispanic…

SPECIALIZATION IN THE CROPS BEST ADAPTED TO THE LOCAL AREA IS SEEN AS A HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE SYSTEM OF AGRICULTURE, BUT BY CREATING THE NEED FOR LARGE NUMBERS OF WORKERS FOR SHORT PERIODS OF TIME, IT CAUSES UNEMPLOYMENT AND MIGRATION. A SURVEY OF FRUIT AND VEGETABLE WORKERS IN STANISLAUS COUNTY, CALIFORNIA IN 1962-63 REVEALS--(1) THEIR EARNINGS ARE…