Immigrant Women Workers in the Neoliberal Age

Afterword

Afterword héctor r. cordero-guzmán The essays included in this volume make a unique contribution to our understanding of the current condition and position of immigrant women in the U.S. economy. The volume makes a number of significant contributions that set it apart from other works in the fields of gender, migration, and low-wage work. Essays in this volume seek to explain and situate the current status of immigrant women and work in larger global forces, state structures, and institutional mechanisms that set the context within which low-wage women operate and that constrain their access to better employment opportunities. The volume focuses on the specific experiences of women of color and sheds light on the relationship (or intersectionality) between gender, social class, and racial /ethnic/national origin dynamics. The essays focus on a number of case studies—including personal narratives, examinations of racial/ethnic/national origin based experiences, and organization-level analysis—to help us better understand the lived experiences of low-wage women. The material presented allows us to navigate from the macro-structures through meso-level institutions and organizations to individual experiences and outcomes. The volume argues that neoliberal globalization, flexibilization, and informality have transformed global production and the way labor is used and procured globally and locally. This has had a particular impact on working-class and low-wage immigrant women who need to continuously navigate through labor markets, jobs, and a range of earning opportunities in order to find support for their families. Production opportunities are increasingly mobile and diversified, and low-wage female labor has been central to the movement of production, to the diversified provision of goods and services, and to the provision of support for middleclass and more affluent families. 278 . CORDERO-GUZMÁN As Toro-Morn, Guevarra, and Flores-González articulate in the introduction, the book covers a vast terrain: from the context and structure of work and how work happens and is experienced; the emerging sectors of the informal economy and their increasingly intricate connection to the formal economy and the personal services sector; and the changing nature, character, and role of evolving ethnic enclaves in both providing opportunities for low-wage women but creating contests where exploitation, marginalization, and abuse become rampant and intolerable for the workers. The detailed case studies on street vending, home care, elder care, domestic work, and related low-wage sectors help us better understand labor situations, contexts, and experiences shared by large segments of the population but where the largely female labor is on the one hand essential and central to the lives of consumers but where the wages, working conditions, and benefits of these workers are ignored and their demands delegitimized and marginalized. Community-based organizations and nongovernmental organization–based strategies play a prominent role in the analysis of low-wage women and work. The volume covers a number of important examples where nonprofit groups, organizations, and service providers have developed a range of initiatives, campaigns , and programs aimed at addressing the challenges and conditions faced by low-wage and marginalized women in the U.S. labor market. Through leadership development, organizing, and public education campaigns, these organizations are able to bring together workers and advocates, articulate the needs and challenges of the workers, and develop forms of representation and resistance that build public support and improve conditions in the labor market for women workers. The volume has a number of concrete implications for research on and policies regarding low-wage women and work. Organizations and programs that incorporate grassroots female leadership are better able to understand concrete situations and women’s marginalization, and to develop effective program and advocacy strategies. Research on low-wage women and work needs to continue to focus on developing more case studies that add to the understudied areas in the fields of gender, immigration, labor markets and the economy, urban studies , and human rights. Funders and philanthropic organizations interested in improving the working and living conditions of low-wage women need to have research and information as they develop effective funding strategies and should continue to build networks between academics, practitioners, community-based organizations, and policy makers. ...