Racial geographies and the challenges of day labor formalization: a case study from San Diego County

Abstract

Recent debates surrounding immigration in the United States have brought renewed attention to day laborers. In their search for employment, day laborers temporarily occupy public and quasi-public spaces. The visibility of day labor and the appearance of day labor hiring sites raise new questions about public space and its ‘proper’ use. The establishment of a new day labor hiring site often creates a locational conflict. Creating formal spaces for day labor congregation is the current ‘best-solution’ for controlling day labor and eliminating community conflict that often surrounds informal day labor hiring sites. Drawing on an ethnographic research project at a formal day workers’ center in San Diego County, the paper shows how the effectiveness of formalization efforts is highly dependent on the particular geographies of day labor in a neighborhood. Our overall argument is that racial categories and processes of racialization that are part of the geographies of day labor impact the effectiveness of formal day labor sites. Moreover, it is argued that processes of racialization often work to promote conflict and/or cooperation among day laborers themselves and between day laborers and employers.

Keywords:

• day labor
• labor geography
• community conflict
• race

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of this paper for their thoughtful comments. They would also like to thank Harry Johnson from San Diego State University for making the map of mid-city San Diego used in the paper.

Notes

1. This would be considered a medium-size hiring site according to the typology established by Valenzuela et al. 2006.

2. Throughout the paper, we refer to Day Labor Workers’ Centers as either workers’ center or formal hiring site. Workers’ Center is the vernacular used most commonly by researchers and academics and refers specifically to formal centers that also provide some form of social services. We use the term ‘formal hiring site’ in addition to workers’ center to help illustrate the legal geography of day labor and differentiate between formal and informal spaces of day labor.

3. Before laborers can seek work at the center, they are required to register and then sign-in on a daily basis. Employers are not required to register, although they are asked to provide contact information and a description of the job for which they are hiring on a voluntary basis. A staff member acts as an intermediary between laborers and employers (mostly translating), but all hiring decisions ultimately rest with the employer.

4. Urban geographer Larry Ford argues that San Diego neighborhoods are best understood as lifestyle zones. As such, each lifestyle zone is understood by the local San Diegan population to embody certain cultural values, which make that lifestyle zone distinct and different from other neighborhoods that may share similar physical or economic characteristics (Ford 2005).

5. From this point on, race and ethnicity will be treated as simply racial difference. This melding is not meant to discount the importance of ethnicity for day laborers; however, the language we use reflects the way that racial and ethnic difference is discussed and dealt with at the Pacific Beach Workers’ Center. We use the terms ‘African American’, ‘Hispanic’, ‘white’ in our discussions of race at the workers’ center. We do not alter the racial language used by the laborers themselves. As such, some of the language used by the laborers is rough and not politically correct, which is a reflection of the reality of day labor work.

6. Our argument regarding employers’ stereotypes about Hispanic day laborers is based on a number of observations during our fieldwork. While most employers were reticent to discuss their basis for hiring or not hiring Hispanic laborers, their beliefs were often evidenced by their body language and conversations while hiring laborers. A pointed example of the stereotype regarding Hispanic laborers’ citizenship status was the occasion in which one of us (who is a mid-20s white male) was offered a job, rather than any of the Hispanic laborers available because the employer “didn't want to hire any wetbacks” (Fieldnotes 2 February 2006). For a wider discussion of stereotypes and Hispanic immigrants, see Pulido (2007).