The Social Geography of Day Labor: Informal Responses to the Economic Downturn

Crotty, Sean M.

doi:10.1353/pcg.2014.0011

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Four years after the ordinance was enacted, the registration process is all but ignored by employers and laborers within the city limits (see Figure ). In 2012, there were exactly as many hiring sites and though the number of laborers at sites in the city site declined, the pattern matches changes at sites of similar types throughout the county during the Great Recession (Crotty ). It would be difficult to attribute any change in the size of sites to the legislation.…”

Section: Annihilation Of Space By Lawmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…In the SDMA, one‐third of all construction workers lost their jobs between 2008 and 2012. Many of these formerly full‐time employed construction workers began seeking work at area day‐labor hiring sites (Crotty ). Despite documented changes in the composition of the day‐labor workforce, the discursive link between day‐labor and illegal immigration remains basically unchanged in popular media.…”

Section: Neoliberal Governance and Day‐labormentioning

confidence: 99%

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Can the Informal Economy Be “Managed”?: Comparing Approaches and Effectiveness of Day‐Labor Management Policies in the San Diego Metropolitan Area

Crotty¹

2016

Growth and Change

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Day‐labor hiring sites are found in more than 120 municipalities across the U.S., there is limited research examining the specific drivers that generate direct interventions into the day‐labor market, nor is there any research examining the effectiveness of day‐labor management policies. In what follows, I draw on examples from the San Diego Metropolitan Area (SDMA) to address this gap in policy‐research. The findings demonstrate the pervasiveness of neoliberal ideology in day‐labor management, from policing strategies to social service provision. In each case examined, local governments only took direct action when they believed day‐labor activity threatened local commercial activity or when residents' fear of “illegal immigrant” day‐laborers made them question the state's ability to control space effectively. In each case, I also evaluate the effectiveness and cost of the management strategy. The results of this analysis clearly demonstrate that attempts to eliminate day‐labor activity are costly and expensive while efforts to formalize day‐labor cost less and have a higher success rate.

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Section: Annihilation Of Space By Lawmentioning

confidence: 78%

Section: Neoliberal Governance and Day‐labormentioning

confidence: 99%

Can the Informal Economy Be “Managed”?: Comparing Approaches and Effectiveness of Day‐Labor Management Policies in the San Diego Metropolitan Area

Crotty¹

2016

Growth and Change

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“…The SDMA exhibits a number of place-specific characteristics that produce substantial differences between day-labor spaces within the region. Day-laborers in the SDMA are considerably more diverse than what national-level survey data indicate (Crotty 2014(Crotty , 2015Valenzuela et al 2006). The U.S. military has a substantial presence in the region, and after completing their service, many veterans remain in the region.…”

Section: Strategic Visibility and The Geography Of Day-labor In The Sdmamentioning

confidence: 93%

“…He had a job doing high-rise welding and belonged to a union. In 2008, John became an early victim of the "Great Recession" when the job he was working was indefinitely put on hold because the developer ran out of money (Crotty 2014;Elsby, Hobjin, and Sahin 2010). John and his wife "hit a rough patch in their relationship" about the same time.…”

Section: Informal Regulation Of Deviant Behaviorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategic Visibility and the Production of Day-Labor Spaces: A Case Study from the San Diego Metropolitan Area

Crotty

2016

Urban Affairs Review

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In cities across the United States, groups of mostly men congregate in public and semipublic spaces in hopes of being hired for short-term work. The particular spaces where laborers congregate each day are crucial to their economic and social fortunes, yet to date, there is limited research examining the spatial organization of these sites. In this article, I draw on relational perspectives on the production of space and governmentality practices to examine day-labor hiring spaces in the San Diego Metropolitan Area. Drawing on more than seven years of mixed-methods research, I argue that laborers collectively employ strategic visibility: a set of spatial practices that reduces the potential for conflict and ensures laborers’ continued access to the particular spaces on which their survival depends. This analysis suggests that laborers’ site-selection and spatial practices are driven by pragmatic, economic concerns, rather than fear of interactions with policing agencies and/or anti-immigrant residents.

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“…The sites in Aurora and Lakewood had only one-third arriving more than 20 years ago. The shorter duration in Aurora may reflect its more diverse constitution, with more recent Central American arrivals and under-employed US born (mostly African-American) workers (see Crotty 2014).…”

Section: Day Labor Profilesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“No Place for Old Men”: Immigrant Duration, Wage Theft, and Economic Mobility among Day Laborers in Denver, Colorado

Galemba

Kuhn

2021

International Migration Review

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Day laborers are a highly vulnerable population, due to their contingent work arrangements, low socioeconomic position, and precarious immigration status. Earlier studies posited day labor as a temporary bridge for recent immigrants to achieve more stable employment, but recent studies have observed increasing duration of residence in the United States among foreign-born day laborers. This article draws on 170 qualitative interviews and a multi-venue, year-long street corner survey of 411 day laborers in the Denver metropolitan area to analyze how duration in the United States affects day laborers’ wages, work, and wage theft experiences. Compared to recent immigrants, foreign-born day laborers with longer duration in the United States, we found, worked fewer hours and had lower total earnings but also had higher hourly wages and lower exposure to wage theft. We draw on qualitative interviews to address whether this pattern represented weathering, negative selection, or greater discernment. Rather than upward or downward mobility, long duration immigrant day labors had more jagged incorporations experiences. Interviews suggest that day laborers draw on experience to mitigate the risk of wage theft but that the value of experience is undercut by the fierce competition of daily recruitment, ultimately highlighting the compounding vulnerabilities facing longer duration and older immigrant day laborers. The article highlights duration as an understudied precarity factor which can adversely impact the economic assimilation of long duration immigrants who persist in contingent markets like day labor.

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The Social Geography of Day Labor: Informal Responses to the Economic Downturn

Cited by 6 publications

References 27 publications

Can the Informal Economy Be “Managed”?: Comparing Approaches and Effectiveness of Day‐Labor Management Policies in the San Diego Metropolitan Area

Can the Informal Economy Be “Managed”?: Comparing Approaches and Effectiveness of Day‐Labor Management Policies in the San Diego Metropolitan Area

Strategic Visibility and the Production of Day-Labor Spaces: A Case Study from the San Diego Metropolitan Area

“No Place for Old Men”: Immigrant Duration, Wage Theft, and Economic Mobility among Day Laborers in Denver, Colorado

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