Labor’s Morality: Migration, Sex Work, and Contracts in the California Borderlands
Erik Bernardino, Bates College
Focusing on the Imperial-Mexicali borderlands vice and agricultural economies—the two main economic drivers of the region—I teases out how from the movement of Mexican bodies across the borderlands was predicated on employers use of a racialized language of morality that sought to limit workers, sexual and agricultural, movements. I end by demonstrating that the convergence of contract labor and sexual commerce industries facilitated by men like Liera and other US-based employers laid the groundwork for later efforts to control migrant workers in the mid-1920s.
“The Latest Form of Cheap Labor:” Green Card Commuters and the Slow Termination of the Bracero Program
Nahomi Esquivel, University of Chicago
This work is a socio-legal and labor history of Mexican “Green Card Commuters,” -- workers who were admitted to the US for permanent residence but maintained their homes in Mexico opting to regularly cross the border to their place of work. It examines how growers and immigration officials insured themselves against the termination of Public Law 78 by expanding the ranks of the Commuter Program with former braceros. By examining changes in administrative law and local labor markets, this paper introduces an expansive interpretation of the Bracero Program’s demise and the reconfiguration of the agricultural political economy.
Respondent: Adam Goodman, University of Illinois Chicago
Registration
This event is free, but all participants must register in advance and space is limited. Please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend.
About the Borderlands and Latino/a Studies Seminar
This seminar provides a forum for works-in-progress that explore topics in Latino/a and Borderlands studies.
The seminar’s coordinators are María Eugenia López-García (University of Illinois at Chicago), Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez (University of Illinois at Chicago), and Emiliano Aguilar (University of Notre Dame). The seminar’s co-sponsors are Indiana University’s Latino Studies Program, Northwestern University’s Program in Latina and Latino Studies, The Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the Center for Latino Research at DePaul University, the Katz Center for Mexican Studies at the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago Latin American and Latino Studies Program.