A recent National Public Radio news story of a hunger and labor strike at an immigration detention center in New Jersey reminded audiences of how past labor history remains central to our country today. Detainees have been required to work—clean, mop, wash dishes, among other tasks—to keep the detention center running. In May of this year, as a direct response to being served spoiled food, in some cases with worms on their plates, detainees planned a hunger strike. Lack of food meant lack of energy, and therefore no work could be done.

While news coverage of this incident is a recent development, the story of unfree workers is nothing new. The essays and reflections in this timely edited collection prompt us to recognize the central role of unfree labor in the making of the United States. The coeditors assembled a cohort of skilled historians who examined unfree labor—in its various manifestations—and its role in shaping the US Southwest. While labor historiography has predominantly attracted labor historians, this volume deserves attention from scholars of both labor and business history, given its focus on major themes such as the role of commodities (sugar, cotton, among others), ideas about gender and sexuality and their influence on labor conditions, as well as class and race. These past histories are instructive for all scholars interested in the United States.

The coeditors nicely deconstructed and summarized scholarly debates on the topic of unfree labor moving beyond chattel slavery. Presenting a compelling reason as to the practical and useful nature of the concept of “unfree labor,” the chapters assembled remind us of the continuation of mechanisms to keep people in a state of unfreedom despite the legal abolishment of bondage. The volume sheds light on these oft-forgotten histories without diminishing the problem of modern-day slavery (i.e., human trafficking on an international scale). Scholars will find the coeditors’ definition of “unfree labor” useful as it builds and expands upon a 1930 convention organized by the International Labour Organization, which defines forced labor as “all work or service which is exacted under menace or any penalty for its non-performance and for which the worker concerned does not offer himself [or herself] voluntarily”; the coeditors acknowledge that “military inscription and prison labor” also need to be included in any historical evaluation of such unfree work (p. 4). Recognizing the often grey area and shifting boundaries between various kinds of involuntary or forced labor as well as recognizing how often the “labor contract” worked to facilitate forms of unfree labor contrary to its traditional understanding as a mechanism for worker autonomy, the authors break new ground in the way in which forms of labor lived experiences have been interpreted.

As each chapter makes clear, unfree labor formed part of the US market economy. Whether it worked as a way to immobilize/mobilize workers via deportation or importation, restrict their wages and/or shape the way in which society viewed them based on gendered assumptions which affected their working conditions, or by the use of prisoners for economic gain, the region’s economic sectors benefitted from such labor. A case in point is Jermaine Thibodeaux’s essay on convict leasing; it reminds us of the long history of the role of the state in disciplining, controlling, and benefiting from labor, particularly that of the labor of people of color. It provokes questions about labor exploitation and the carceral system, the contradictory nature of modernization relying on old forms of labor control, and what can be described as a type of “racialized form of capitalism” (p. 135).

Historians of rural America interested in both employer and laborer relations will also find the book of interest as it helps to debunk the oft-portrayed idyllic picture of farm labor. Yolanda Chavez Leyva, for example, deconstructs the myth of the “agricultural ladder” for El Paso’s lower valley in which conditions were substandard for all farm workers, including those identified as White. Further, workers of Mexican origin, despite finding themselves in dire conditions, went on strike during one of the country’s toughest times. Organizing strikes during the Great Depression, ethnic Mexicans risked deportation as local US border patrol agents often collaborated with local farmers depending on labor needs. A running theme in the anthology and one that emerges quite clear from Chavez Leyva’s essay is the role of the border in shaping labor experiences in the expansive US Southwest. The border continues to shape the various forms of labor and forms of labor control, just as much as it shapes forms of labor activism and the economy.

The volume closes with a beautifully written reflection that serves as a powerful reminder of how the past remains enmeshed in old and new ways today. The volume’s histories including the abovementioned as well as those on World War I and progressive-era imperatives driven by anxieties over sex and gender, unfree work in the music world, and in other sectors featured in the book, reveal the consequences of labor coercion and its lasting influence on US socioeconomic and political systems. In the volume’s final essay, former ambassador Luis C. de Baca reminds us of the tragic but resilient lived experience of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca—a conquistador-turned-captive—whose circumstances changed quickly as he became prisoner of both the natural environment and local indigenous peoples while at the same time witnessing his own people exploit indigenous labor. Cabeza de Vaca’s deep reflections published in what became known as one of the earliest texts on the Americas, La Relación (1555), reflected his ideas about freedom, justice, discovery, and despair. It was a lens into the past, shining light on what social scientists describe as “wage theft,” forced labor, and the market demands on imported/deported labor. The essay serves as an exclamation point to the multiple chapters that touch on various aspects of what has been a long history of unfree labor in this country.