The Manufacturing of Job Displacement - by Laura López-Sanders (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Using rich ethnographic detail, the book illustrates how employers manipulate the labor market using race, gender, class, and legal status, to make labor conditions precarious. The book urges a thorough analysis of the historically prevailing intersecting categories of difference and vulnerability to understand labor market inequality in the 21st century"--

Book Synopsis

The employer-driven push to systematically replace Black workers with unauthorized immigrants

In The Manufacturing of Job Displacement, Laura López-Sanders argues that the walls of American businesses hide a system of illegal practices and behaviors that lead to racial inequality in the labor market. Drawing on extensive research in South Carolina manufacturing facilities, nearly 300 interviews, and her own experience working at both the "bottom" of the labor market (e.g., cleaning toilets and on assembly-line jobs) and in mid-level supervisory positions, López-Sanders provides a behind-the-scenes accounting of daily factory life.

She uncovers preferential hiring practices that fly in the face of civil rights legislation barring employment discrimination, including orchestrated actions of employers to systematically replace Black workers with Hispanic unauthorized immigrants. López-Sanders argues against the predominant view that worker displacement occurs primarily because of hiring biases or social networks. Instead, she shows that employers intervene strategically, relying on subcontractors, agencies, and intermediaries to shift the race and gender in an organization. They also use vulnerable and tractable immigrant labor to impose and justify untenable standards that drive native-born workers out of their jobs and create vacancies to be filled by additional immigrant workers. The Manufacturing of Job Displacement sheds new light on a classic question about ethnic succession and segmentation in the labor market and reorients the ongoing debates about the economic impact of immigration.

Review Quotes

"The Manufacturing of Job Displacement is the book we've been waiting for. Long-simmering debates about the effect of immigrants on workers have been informed by views of the phenomenon from 35,000 feet. López-Sanders gives the ground-floor view we need. In rich ethnographic detail, she shows how the dynamics of race, immigrant legal status, and power swirl together in the orchestration of a workplace enclave. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the lived experience of immigration and labor in all its complexity."-- "Tomás R. Jiménez, author of States of Belonging: Immigration Policies, Attitudes, and Inclusion"

"The Manufacturing of Job Displacement is ethnography at its best. Carefully detailed observations of racial displacement and meticulous analysis combine to produce this theoretically and conceptually groundbreaking volume. It is an immensely valuable contribution to understanding multiple displacements today. Highly, highly recommended!"-- "Cecilia Menjívar, author of Fragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America"

"A deeply researched and insightful book, López-Sanders' unparalleled access allowed her to carefully document and analyze a process that researchers rarely observe in real-time. This must-read book helps us move beyond tired debates about the costs of immigration for native-born workers and toward an assessment of the costs of racialized organizations and racial capitalism for low-wage workers."-- "Cybelle Fox, author of Three Worlds of Relief: Race, Immigration, and the American Welfare State from the Progressive Era to the New Deal"

"In this astonishing book, López-Sanders describes how a factory systematically displaced their mostly African American long-time workers with new Latino immigrants, many of them undocumented. This deliberate policy uses temporary agencies to exploit the vulnerabilities of immigrant workers, and allows the company to save money and avoid workers who might challenge supervisors. Beautifully written, this book is a sophisticated and brilliant contribution to our understandings of labor dynamics in an age of immigration and corporate greed."-- "Mary C. Waters, co-author of Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age"

About the Author

Laura López-Sanders is the Stephen Robert Assistant Professor of Sociology at Brown University.