How the Other Half Works: Immigration and the Social Organization of Labor [Paperback]

Roger Waldinger (Author), Michael I. Lichter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0520231627 | ISBN-13: 978-0520231627 | Edition: 1

How the Other Half Works solves the riddle of America's contemporary immigration puzzle: why an increasingly high-tech society has use for so many immigrants who lack the basic skills that today's economy seems to demand. In clear and engaging style, Waldinger and Lichter isolate the key factors that explain the presence of unskilled immigrants in our midst. Focusing on Los Angeles, the capital of today's immigrant America, this hard-hitting book elucidates the other side of the new economy, showing that hiring is finding not so much "one's own kind" but rather the "right kind" to fit the demeaning, but indispensable, jobs many American workers disdain.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This meticulously researched survey explores the paradox of how large numbers of low-skilled immigrants were absorbed into the complex American economy of the 1990s, which required a more highly skilled and educated workforce than ever before. Waldinger (sociology, UCLA), the prize-winning author of Still the Promised City? African-Americans and New Immigrants in Postindustrial New York, and Lichter (sociology, SUNY at Buffalo) conducted their study in California, America's new immigrant capital. They used a comparative case-study approach and performed open-ended interviews with managers/owners in six industries in 1992-94. Their analysis yields a "story" divided into three sections focusing on the nature of low-skilled work, the means whereby social networks and formal hiring practices affect who gets jobs, and the way ethnic preferences and conflict are revealed in the workplace. A key conclusion is that immigrants obtain jobs at the bottom of America's economy because employers perceive them as "different" and more suited to demeaning work than others. Discussions are rigorous and grounded in sociological theories of labor, migration, and ethnicity, which the authors successfully critique and expand. This notable contribution is highly recommended for academic collections.
Antoinette Brinkman, M.L.S., Evansville, IN
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Waldinger and Lichter offer a lucid and penetrating look at the micro-social structure of hiring, firing, and earning in the modern, post-industrial economy. This book should be required reading for people who glibly use the term 'free market."'-Douglas S. Massey, Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania "In this masterpiece of field research into the social processes that structure America's economy, Waldinger and Lichter unveil the most original and powerful theory ever advanced to explain how "unskilled" immigrants have come to work at remarkably high rates while inner city blacks continue to languish. Like Wilson's When Work Disappears and Massey and Denton's American Apartheid, How the Other Half Works will set the stage for a new era of poverty research. In its focus on Los Angeles as the quintessential suburban metropolis and as an exemplar of multi-ethnic America, it may also one day be seen as the founding text in a new LA School of Urban Sociology."-Mitchell Duneier, author of Sidewalk and Slim's Table

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (January 6, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520231627
• ISBN-13: 978-0520231627
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #265,102 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)