Janitors, Street Vendors, and Activists

Christian Zlolniski

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780520939172
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This highly accessible, engagingly written book exposes the underbelly of California's Silicon Valley, the most successful high-technology region in the world, in a vivid ethnographic study of Mexican immigrants employed in Silicon Valley's low-wage jobs. Christian Zlolniski's on-the-ground investigation demonstrates how global forces have incorporated these workers as an integral part of the economy through subcontracting and other flexible labor practices and explores how these labor practices have in turn affected working conditions and workers' daily lives. In Zlolniski's analysis, these immigrants do not emerge merely as victims of a harsh economy; despite the obstacles they face, they are transforming labor and community politics, infusing new blood into labor unions, and challenging exclusionary notions of civic and political membership. This richly textured and complex portrait of one community opens a window onto the future of Mexican and other Latino immigrants in the new U.S. economy.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Illustrations and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Mexican Immigrants in Silicon Valley
• 2. The Subcontracting of Mexican Janitors in the High-Tech Industry
• 3. Working in the Informal Economy
• 4. Mexican Families in Santech
• 5. Community Politics in the Barrio
• Conclusion: Subproletarians in a Postindustrial Economy
• Epilogue: After the Dot-Com Demise
• Notes
• References
• Index