Language, immigration and labor successfully brings together macro and micro levels of discourse analysis to investigate labor migrants' everyday responses to policies and discourses of powerful groups (both states and individuals). Based on ethnographic research with Mexican and Central American day laborers and their employers in Southern Arizona, this book explores, through the prisms of various disciplines, the ways in which immigrant workers negotiate identities in their interactions with employers, other laborers, and volunteers at the Day Laborer Center (DLC) in Saguaro City.
The book is neatly organized into six chapters. The first chapter introduces the topic and methodology as well as elaborating on the social and political context of language contact in the informal economy. The second chapter outlines the formation of ideologies pertinent to illegal immigration, citizenship, and language at three levels: national, state, and local. The chapter unfolds across two sections: a critical discussion of immigrant policies that construe undocumented immigrants as criminals and a discussion of the concept of cultural citizenship that enables Latino/a workers to counter criminalizing and illegalizing discourses. While institutional actions and dominant discourses (laws, policies, as well as popular discourses of illegality) try to define undocumented immigrants as existing outside the national imaginary, minority groups reassert their right to participation in American society. The prevailing language ideology in the US classifies minority languages as a threat to the nation's unity and thus links immigrants' low language skills with their inability to participate in society. Immigrant workers respond to the alienating discourses around their linguistic distinctiveness by highlighting their legitimate participation in a democratic society and family life. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of linguistic capital, chapter 3 explores how day laborers perceive the value of speaking English and how the value of having this quality may change over time. In contrast to attitudes to Mexicans that are widespread in the US, day laborers are found to be willing to learn English and they thrive as a result of improving and using their language skills.
In chapter 4, DuBord tries to understand employers' hiring practices and finds out that employers use rapport techniques and linguistic accommodation to facilitate hiring. Nevertheless, these techniques do not threaten employers' powerful positions. Furthermore, occasionally Latino/a employers exploit their linguistic affinity to change the terms of negotiation in their favor and thus pay less for the job. Throughout the hiring process of day laborers at the DLC, all employers are found to enjoy an irregular amount of power over workers because of the clandestine nature of these interviews. Focusing on a subset of these interviews, namely the drive-through interviews, chapter 5 elaborates on the ways in which day laborers express their positive attributes as good workers. Day laborers' attempts to portray themselves as good workers relate to various qualities such as masculinity, physical strength, and knowledge of English and eventually lead to their desirability as potential employees. In the final chapter, DuBord concludes that identity formation is multiplex and multidirectional and therefore individuals constantly challenge and negotiate the boundaries of socially constructed categories. Consequently, this book presents a neatly organized analysis of dominant discourses regarding Latino/a workers and links this with immigrants' lived experiences.
