Racializing Latino Labor

Offering significant insight into how white employers racialize and manage undocumented Latino workers in labor-intensive industries, this book shows how employer beliefs about Latino laborers as hardworking, compliant, and suited for intensive labor shape workplace practices and reinforce racial stratification. By centering white employers, the book shifts attention toward those who benefit from undocumented labor and reproduce unequal workplace conditions. Racializing Latino Labor focuses on how white employers hold immense power to reinforce racial hierarchies in labor-intensive work and regularly rely on racial ideologies, narratives, and stereotypes in employment practices. Juan L. Salinas shows how white employers praise Latino immigrants for their work ethic while viewing them suitable for physically demanding and subordinate labor, preferring white workers for management positions. These narratives normalize workplace hierarchies and practices to maximize profitability like overlooking false identification and denying overtime pay, along with the expected subservience and exploitability of Latino workers. The book also examines the contradictions of white employers who reflect on their own role in navigating restrictive immigration policies while relying on undocumented workers. Connecting systemic racism, immigration, and labor inequality, Racializing Latino Labor highlights the often-overlooked role of employers in shaping undocumented labor. The book is ideal for courses covering race and ethnicity, immigration, Latinx studies, work and labor, and social inequality.