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Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants
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Product Description
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #106825 in Books
- Published on: 2009-06-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 272 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780807042304
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this incisive investigation of the global political and economic forces creating migration, journalist and former labor organizer Bacon offers a detailed examination of the trends transforming, for example, Mexican farmers into California farm workers. Bacon condemns efforts to criminalize illegal immigrants, noting that Congress's immigration proposals and debates take place outside any discussion of its own trade policies that displace workers and create migration in the first place. The whole process that creates migrants is scarcely considered in the U.S. immigration debate, argues Bacon, who posits that displacement and migration are two perennially necessary ingredients of capitalist growth. According to the author, the same system... produces migration needs and uses that labor while the vulnerable undocumented or guest-worker status keeps that labor controllable and cheap. Readers disinclined to consider economic rights as human rights may balk at the general direction, but Bacon's timely analysis is as cool and competent as his labor advocacy is unapologetic. In mapping the political economy of migration, with an unwavering eye on the rights and dignity of working people, Bacon offers an invaluable corrective to America's hobbled discourse on immigration and a spur to genuine, creative action. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
The persistence in calling undocumented workers “illegal” signifies the political forces that mean to demonize workers who are not U.S. citizens. But it also aptly describes the gross lack of legal rights for these workers and their families. Bacon, an award-winning photojournalist, labor organizer, and immigrant-rights activist, follows the lives of undocumented workers at the Westin Suite Hotel in California and a Smithfield meatpacking plant in North Carolina, who travel back and forth from Mexico to the U.S. He examines the economic and social forces in both countries that lure workers to a market where they can earn higher wages but are vulnerable to exploitation. Bacon goes on to analyze guest-worker programs and other developments meant to balance the needs of U.S. employers and workers. He ties together interviews, personal histories, and political analysis to provide a vivid image of what life is like for workers with little rights or protections in an increasingly globalized economy. A fascinating look at trade and immigration policies and the people directly affected by them. --Vanessa Bush
Review
—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
—Publishers Weekly, starred review "From the Hawaiian sugar plant organizing drives of the 1930s to the 2007 miners’ strike in the Sonoran Desert, Bacon chronicles the struggles and lives of Mexican, Guatemalan, Filipino, Indian and Salvadoran workers . . . [and] unabashedly writes as an advocate. The result is refreshing."
—Gary Delgado, ColorLines "David Bacon’s book . . . demonstrates that there is hope, and we can win something better, today, not just for immigrants, but for all working people!"
—Dolores Huerta, cofounder of United Farm Workers "A fascinating look at trade and immigration policies and the people directly affected by them."
—Booklist
Customer Reviews
What an eyeopener
This is a must read for anyone feeling pinched by a job loss in the US or who is boiling mad about illegal immigration to the US. This book goes a long way toward developing a context and the reasons for the mass migrations of labor throughout societies. If you are not mad at the US government and the Corporations who own it- you soon will be!
A necessary and powerful work
David Bacon has been fighting for the rights of working people for decades. This book is a monument to a life well spent. Bacon goes through the issues around immigration in a highly readable way. The impact of NAFTA and Neoliberalism. The dangers and hardships faced by economic refugees, documented or not. The exploitative conditions that employers force economic refugees to work under. Bacon is very good on the history of guest worker programs and how they oppress its participants. His book is a great mix of hard facts and analysis plus heart wrenching stories from the front lines. I fear that anti-immigrant sentiment may turn even uglier as the economy weakens. We desperately need the information that Bacon provides to counter the bigotry and ignorance in our work places and among our friends and family.
Illegal People = (more) profits
I cannot agree more with the author about revealing the fact that illegals are needed by both the government and corporate America to minimized cost to any service/product in this country. Both slaves and illegals have been making possible the American dream for the original invaders of this land. And they will continue to...
Those who shout "illegals go home" profit the most. Lou Dobbs and others like him should read this book and shot their mouths once and for all. This book also, should be read by all those occupying a possition at any of the three branches of government in the US. And army and police personnel too. Maybe every American should...
