Sorting Black and Brown Latino service workers in gentrifying New York neighborhoods
- PDF / 169,491 Bytes
- 20 Pages / 535.748 x 697.323 pts Page_size
- 45 Downloads / 177 Views
Sor t ing Black and Brown Latino s e r v i c e w o r ker s i n ge n t r i f y i n g New York n eighborhoods
Norma Fuentes-Mayorga Fordham University, Bronx, New York. E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract Ethnography, qualitative interviews and census data document a new process of spatial and racial exclusion among Brown and Black Latino workers in New York’s service sector. Unlike manufacturing, many service workers directly interact with customers, and therefore employers use race, gender and immigrant status to position workers in front or back stage jobs; depending on their interaction with mainstream clientele. The sorting of workers is a largely hidden process outside the reach of labor regulations. Racialization of workers is more evident in minority neighborhoods undergoing rapid gentrification, as owners import their labor force and clientele from outside the neighborhood. Latino Studies (2011) 9, 106–125. doi:10.1057/lst.2011.13 Keywords: Dominicans; Mexican immigration; culture of exclusion; racial and ethnic formation; gentrification; small service firms’ employment
y. In this upscale restaurant, most people were white save for an oliveskin bartender with a French accent. A blonde waitress, attired in an exotic summer dress, attended a young and professional clientele. Visible from a small window behind the bar, in a backroom kitchen, Mexican dispatchers, dishwashers and short-order cooks were busy at work y. Despite this new restaurant’s location amidst two communities of Puerto Ricans and Chinese immigrants, none of these local groups were visible in r 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies Vol. 9, 1, 106–125 www.palgrave-journals.com/lst/
Sorting Latino Service Workers
this site, nor as employers, workers or customers. (Fieldnotes, Lower East Side restaurant: 28 June 2003; 24 August 2007) y. Twenty five miles up the east river, in the Northeast Bronx and at the heart of a working class, small white ethnic community, the Mexican cooks, busboys and waitress operated visibly in front and backstage jobs. In this well-known restaurant, save for the college-age white female hostess, the waiting staff (a mix of ex-peasant Mexicans and ethnic white males), rushed from one table to another, accommodating a middle class clienteley.Most impressive was hearing the menu specials recited by a young Mexican male with broken English and an affected southern Italian accent (Fieldnotes, Bronx, Restaurant: 25 August 2007; 15 April 2009). These ethnographic accounts from two New York City restaurants help support the main argument of this article: that rapid growth in small services sector establishments disproportionately benefits newer Mexican immigrants at the expense of native and Black immigrant workers within rapidly changing minority neighborhoods. This process is most evident in gentrifying minority New York City neighborhoods where majority of White residents are increasing. Ethnographic, in-depth interviews among employers and workers, as well as neighborhood census data help illustr
Data Loading...
