The role of working-class Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Silicon Valley's high technology revolution has been obscured by imposed silences, erasures, and a fixation on the relatively few who have become wealthy from the electronics boom. In this article we consider the thousands of Asians/Pacific Islanders who make Silicon Valley possible by producing the hardware that runs the machinery upon which this modern-day empire was built. In particular, we address the health hazards experienced by those involved in home-based piecework. In addition, we consider a range of industry practices that produce and reinforce oppression among these workers. The low profile of working-class AAPI workers in Silicon Valley enables industry to withhold occupational and environmental safety improvements, repress efforts to organize unions, and maintain oppressive workplace cultures. Finally, we examine oppositional strategies among AAPI laborers to make themselves seen and heard on the shopfloor and in the community.
Hospitals across the U.S. are quietly removing severely injured and chronically ill migrants to other nations. It is a reality that exists in practice but not in policy and is experienced by hundreds, potentially thousands, of low-income uninsured migrants. There is no formal accounting or regulation of this practice and federal immigration authorities remain silent regarding this practice despite the fact that alien removals, or deportations, are solely within their jurisdiction. Focusing on a case study, this paper analyzes migrant narratives embedded within news media accounts and legal analyses of medical deportations to address how this controversial practice is rationalized by health care providers. In these accounts, a racialized narrative of migrants as public burdens was clearly evident. This paper argues that such narratives have the power to transform actions legally defined as illegal—such as medical deportations—into a reasonable practice. In this way, social “cost” is racialized into individual debt, allowing for seemingly extraordinary disciplinary actions that are contrary to normative policy and ethics.
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