Crimes of Fashion

Ramírez, Catherine S.

doi:10.1215/15366936-2.2.1

Cited by 47 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…He remembers living for months in a farm labor camp with five other single men, stuffed into small rooms "like chickens." 31 Ramírez draws this lesson from his experiences: "What I see in the people who are coming from Mexico right now [is that] they have nowhere to stay, nowhere to eat, nowhere to take a shower. .…”

Section: Workers' Immigration Narratives Union Power and Counter-hementioning

confidence: 99%

“…As long as I have a place to live, these people will also have a place to live if they come with me, because we know what it means to suffer while you're on the road." 32 Ramírez has made it his custom to invite undocumented immigrants he meets to come stay with him and his family in their home, which is a small, prefabricated house in a trailer park on the edges of the city of Pasco, near the Tyson plant. Beyond such acts of interpersonal good will, these experiences have also motivated Ramírez to engage in union activism and public policy advocacy.…”

Section: Workers' Immigration Narratives Union Power and Counter-hementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this capacity, Ramírez was involved in regional coordination between Teamsters Local 556, the United Farm Workers, churches, and immigrants' rights groups. 33 By now it should be clear how many points of fruitful contact there are between workers' interpretations of their immigration experiences and the union' s discourse of opposition against Tyson. In light of these apparent connections, it would seem that were the union to devote serious effort to cultivating a discourse of immigrant rights among its members, the likely result would be mutually invigorating commitments of the workers both to challenging management at the plant and to advocating for immigrants politically.…”

Section: Workers' Immigration Narratives Union Power and Counter-hementioning

confidence: 99%

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Hegemony and Hamburger: Migration Narratives and Democratic Unionism among Mexican Meatpackers in the U.S. West

Apostolidis

2005

Political Research Quarterly

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This essay considers how the narrated experiences of immigrant workers in the United States could help promote organized labor’s participation in a transnational movement to democratize globalization processes. I draw on interviews with immigrant meatpackers working for the Tyson Corporation, who since the late 1990s have mounted an impressive and unusual effort to democratize their workplace and union as well as to improve worker safety and dignity. Although the union has elaborated an effective discourse concerning injustice in the workplace and the need for action to remedy these problems, it has not developed any comparable interpretation of workers’ migration experiences. Workers’ migration narratives often reinforce the liberal assumptions guiding the union’s campaigns as well as the U.S. labor movement in general. They occasionally intimate, however, how migration processes can aid in the formation of counter-hegemonic subjectivities, developing these workers’ practical orientations toward resisting mistreatment both individually and in solidarity with others. Thus, creating more institutionalized spaces for workers to communicate about their migration experiences not only could help unions achieve their organizational goals—it also could help shift the political orientation of the labor movement toward a more transnational, social-democratic approach to regulating immigration and capitalist production alike.

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Section: Workers' Immigration Narratives Union Power and Counter-hementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Workers' Immigration Narratives Union Power and Counter-hementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Workers' Immigration Narratives Union Power and Counter-hementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation