Between Support and Shame: The Impacts of Workplace Violations for Immigrant Families
ISBN: 978-1-78441-632-4, eISBN: 978-1-78441-631-7
Publication date: 31 March 2015
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines the conditions that lead to workplace violations for low-wage immigrant workers, and how family life shapes their decision to speak up. I also highlight how both employer abuse and the claimsmaking process can impact individuals and their families.
Methodology/approach
This research adopts a mixed-method approach that includes a survey of 453 low-wage workers seeking pro bono legal assistance and 115 follow-up interviews with claimants. I also conduct a five-year ethnography of both a monthly state workshop provided for injured workers and a pro bono legal aid clinic in a predominantly Latino agricultural community on the California central coast.
Findings
Beyond the material effects of lost income, the stress of fighting for justice can have negative emotional impacts that intersect with complex family dynamics. While families can be an important source of support and inspiration during this time, the burden of the breadwinner can also temper workers’ willingness to engage the labor standards enforcement system. Transnational obligations can further introduce a demobilizing dual frame of reference for workers who often hide their abuse from family members abroad who depend on them.
Research implications
Workplace abuse and the actual process of legal mobilization can have far-reaching effects on the families of low-wage immigrant workers, suggesting the need for a more holistic understanding of the claimsmaking experience.
Originality/value
This chapter tracks the challenges that workers face even once they have come forward to fight for their rights, and the multiple effects on families and children.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
The author acknowledges helpful discussion during the UC Wide Immigration Conference, We Asked for Workers and Families Came: Children, Youth, and Families In Migration (University of California-Los Angeles, 2/22/13), and feedback provided by Patricia Zavella and an anonymous reviewer. The author also acknowledges funding support from the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS), the UC Global Health Institute Center of Expertise in Migration and Health, the UC Center for New Racial Studies, the UC Santa Cruz Committee on Research (COR) Faculty Research Grant, and the UCSC Chicano/Latino Research Center.
Citation
Gleeson, S. (2015), "Between Support and Shame: The Impacts of Workplace Violations for Immigrant Families", Immigration and Work (Research in the Sociology of Work, Vol. 27), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 29-52. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0277-283320150000027010
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015 Emerald Group Publishing Limited