Day Laborers as Placemakers: Rethinking the Plight of Informal Workers in the Neoliberal City

Keywords: informal workers, immigrant illegality, place-making
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 30

Abstract

In the last decade, policy analysts, social scientists, and the media have constructed an elaborate body of knowledge about day laborers. Nearly all of the literature documents the widespread popular debates about the “problem” that day laborers pose for cities throughout the nation. These debates objectify day laborers, known in Spanish as jornaleros, as undesirable subjects or defenseless victims in need of proper stewardship and care. In this paper, I utilize the concept of placemaking to rethink how we write about Latinx informal workers. Drawing from long-term engagement with day laborers and workers organizations in Oakland, I underscore how an analysis of workers place-making practices can offer us a window into better understanding these workers’ humanity and their struggles to build community spaces of belonging and care. I highlight both organizing practices and their quotidian ways of making community in a foreign land. I argue that re-centering day laborers as place makers can help us better understand how cities throughout the United States are changing as a result of the rise of both informal laborers and spaces of informality.