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Mexican labor in the United States
01 Jan 1970-
About: The article was published on 1970-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 102 citations till now.
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Dissertation•
21 Nov 2006
TL;DR: Noel et al. as discussed by the authors examined U.S. national identity in the first third of the twentieth century and argued that four strategies evolved for dealing with newcomers of Mexican descent: assimilation, pluralism, exclusion, and marginalization.
Abstract: Title of Document: “THE SWINGING DOOR”: U.S. NATIONAL IDENTITY AND THE MAKING OF THE MEXICAN GUESTWORKER, 1900 1935 Linda Carol Noel, Ph.D., History, 2006 Directed By: Professor Gary Gerstle Department of History This study examines U.S. national identity in the first third of the twentieth century. During this period, heated discussions ensued throughout the country regarding the extent to which the door of American society should be open to people of Mexican descent. Several major events brought this issue to the foreground: the proposed statehood of Arizona and New Mexico in the early twentieth century, the increase in Mexican immigration after World War I, and the repatriation of Mexican immigrants in the 1930s. The “Swinging Door” explores the competing perspectives regarding the inclusion or exclusion of people of Mexican descent embedded within each of these disputes. This dissertation argues that four strategies evolved for dealing with newcomers of Mexican descent: assimilation, pluralism, exclusion, and marginalization. Two strategies, assimilation and pluralism, permitted people of Mexican descent to belong to the nation so long as they either conformed to an Anglo American identity or proclaimed a Spanish American one rooted in a European heritage, whiteness, and a certain class standing. Exclusion denied entry into the U.S., or in the case of those already there, no role in society. Marginalization, which became the predominant strategy by the 1930s, allowed people of Mexican descent to remain physically within the country so long as they stayed only temporarily or agreed to accept a subordinate status as second-class Americans. The prevailing view changed depending on the economic and political power of people of Mexican descent, their desire to incorporate as Americans, and the demand for their labor or land by other Americans. One of the most significant findings of this project is that as the marginalization strategy gained adherents, the image of Mexican immigrants as temporary workers or “guestworkers” became the primary way in which Americans, Mexicans, and the immigrants themselves regarded the newcomers from Mexico. Despite the fact that this image was often false, the notion of Mexicans as only temporarily in the U.S. proved too seductive for the many divergent voices to resist as this image theoretically allowed Mexicans to enter the country and to provide their labor without threatening extant notions of American identity. “THE SWINGING DOOR”: U.S. NATIONAL IDENTITY AND THE MAKING OF THE MEXICAN GUESTWORKER, 1900 1935
25 citations
TL;DR: "In 1930, the majority of Hispanics were of Mexican descent and lived in the five Southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas."
Abstract: In 1930, the majority of Hispanics were of Mexican descent and lived in the five Southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. After World War II, the Latino migrant stream began to diversify and include large numbers of Caribbeans, and Central and South Americans who generally settled in the Eastern states and California. Hispanics of non-Mexican origin now account for 36 percent of the U.S. Hispanic population. Mexican immigration has continued, and large numbers of Mexican Americans live in regions far from the border states. The U.S. Hispanic population has increased from approximately one million in 1930, to approximately 32 million in 1997. County maps chronicle the changing distribution and numbers of Hispanics from 1850 to 1990.
24 citations
TL;DR: Migrant poverty resulted from the bureaucratization of Mexicans as a cheap source of labor for the Texas cotton industry from 1910 to 1930 as mentioned in this paper, and the welfare of Mexican migrants worsened as state managers integrated the recruitment and distribution of this labor force into the organizational structure of the Texas Cotton industry.
Abstract: Migrant poverty resulted from the bureaucratization of Mexicans as a cheap source of labor for the Texas cotton industry from 1910 to 1930. State and federal employment programs and policies designed to maintain an organized and efficient labor market bureaucratized the divisions of labor that segregated Mexicans in seasonal low-wage agricultural work. While the implementation of labor legislation solved the temporary labor needs of large-scale cotton farmers, it exacerbated the working and living conditions of Mexican migratory workers. The welfare of Mexican migrants worsened as state managers integrated the recruitment and distribution of this labor force into the organizational structure of the Texas cotton industry.
23 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that much of the terrain in American studies and in the humanities and social sciences more generally has been transformed in recent years by a fundamental reconsideration of the relationship between capitalism, the nation-state, and human migration spurred by the so-called transnational turn.
Abstract: is not an exaggeration to argue that much of the terrain in American studies and in the humanities and social sciences more generally has been transformed in recent years by a fundamental reconsideration of the relationship between capitalism, the nation-state, and human migration spurred by the so-called transnational turn. Born of the historical conjuncture of the global economic crisis of the early 1970s, the worldwide decline of Fordism and the gradual ascendance of neoliberal economic philosophy, and the movement of ever increasing numbers of economically displaced populations from less developed regions of the world to established metropoles and developing regions, a growing number of scholars and social critics have shifted their vantage points away from analyses that were formerly rooted largely or exclusively in single nation-states to new perspectives that are much more attentive to transnational social fields created through the ongoing interactions between the world system of nations, the expansions and contractions of global capitalism, and the movement of human populations. Although the linked notions of globalization and transnationalism have only recently come into wide usage as conceptual tools, a small number of perceptive social critics and scholars had begun to explore these phenomena much earlier. Indeed, as early as the first decades of the twentieth century, during the height of what might be termed the first era of intensive economic globalization, forward thinking social critics such as Randolph Bourne, as well as migration scholars such as William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, Paul Schuster Taylor, and a few others had begun to explore what they recognized to be systemic linkages between capitalist development, state policing of labor migration, and the emergence of an increasingly integrated global economic system. These important interpreters of the early twentieth century brought very different points of view to bear on the profound changes they saw unfolding around them. But together, Bournes ruminations on the possible emergence of a cosmopolitan "trans-national" America (1916), Thomas and Znaniecki s innovative exploration of the complex social and economic
23 citations
TL;DR: The Chicano minority, an immigrant people, stands at the center both of that history and of a process of imperial expansionism that originated in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and that continues today.
Abstract: Preamble In this article we show how the twentieth-century appearance of a Chicano minority population in the United States originated from the subordination of the nation of Mexico to U.S. economic and political interests. We argue that, far from being marginal to the course of modern U.S. history, the Chicano minority, an immigrant people, stands at the center both of that history and of a process of imperial expansionism that originated in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and that continues today.
19 citations