Labor
This is a new category, and is related to a number of others. See also Economics, Colonialism, and Consumption and Third World Development.
Agriculture
Grist special feature 4/11 provides a good introduction.
Ironically/tragically, today in US kids of migrant laborers are going hungry (audio). (December 10, 2009) Nearly a million migrant children crisscross the U.S. with their families, from harvest to harvest and from job to job. In North Carolina, migrant families struggle to find work, and many rely on schools for food and clothing. The people who run the state's migrant program say living conditions and financial hardships for laborers are the worst in memory.
More info from Bread for the World.org
A Seat at the Table is a game/simulation from Oxfam.
Migration (environmental refugees) People can also be forced from their land by drought/famine/civil war (often these are interrelated).
Overview with reference to Katrina
David Bacon's Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)
Bacon's Photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US: Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006). See also Transnational Working Communities project
The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
2009 UN study on how climate change will affect migration. See also a comprehensive but readable 2007 UN report.
Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting provides a view from Bangladesh, a nation already reeling from the impact of climate change.12/09 See also Bangladesh 5/10 article.
For two decades photojournalist David Bacon has documented the connections between labor, migration, and the global economy. In his new book, Illegal People, Bacon examines the many ways globalization uproots people in Latin America and Asia, driving them to migrate. (World Affairs Council audio interview, one hour mp3 download)
Migrant construction labor TEDtalk video
UCSC alum Cary Joji Fukunaga has created a Sundance award winning film about migration, Sin Nombre. Interview
Often people are forced off farms and have to migrate to large cities to live in slums to work in factories. This is documented by Ed Burtynsky (video).
Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow Cities, finds the world’s squatter sites -- where a billion people now make their homes -- to be thriving centers of ingenuity and innovation. He takes us on a tour. (Migration) TEDtalk video
Stewart Brand on squatter cities. TEDtalk video
Against All Odds is a game from the UN that gives some insights.
Labor:
In the novel The Grapes of Wrath, we see union organizing emerging as an important counter-balance to increasing corporate exploitation. Currently, the United Farms Workers (UFW) organized by Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta (recent audio interview ), is working to protect workers from pesticide poisoning. See also here. In doing so they protect the rest of us, not just from toxins on our food, but airborne and waterborne toxins. Randy Shaw argues they set the stage for later social movements from environmentalism to the Obama campaign. Shaw is the author of "Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century." Audio interview UCSC has extensive oral histories of local farmworkers and activists (including Helen Hosmer , who knew Dorthea Lange). UCSC's Melanie DuPuis argues that we must not allow businesses to pollute the air and water because no one "owns" them (traditionally, to prove damage to a particular person or property is the only way to get legal protection, as in a car accident). This bring us to thinking about public good.
Raj Patel exposes modern slavery in Florida tomato fields: "workers were chained inside trucks, charged $5 for a shower, and made to work for pennies a day, suffering heinous physical abuse from their employers. Their suffering is bought cheap, at $2 a pound in the supermarket. Yet for picking those tomatoes, the average worker earns about 45 cents for a 32 pound bucket. And far too many earn much less."
Davis Bacon has written extensively on migrant farmworkers
Stephen Colbert appeared with United Farm Workers (UFW) President Arturo S. Rodriguez today to testify before Congress about a day he spent working in the fields, having taken up the UFW on its dare to American citizens "take our jobs." (Humor)
Lopez, Anna A , who obtained her PhD in Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz, wrote The Farmworkers' Journey brings together for the first time the many facets of this issue into a comprehensive and accessible narrative: how corporate agribusiness operates, how binational institutions and laws promote the subjugation of Mexican farmworkers, how migration affects family life, how genetically modified corn strains pouring into Mexico from the United States are affecting farmers, how migrants face exploitation from employers, and more. (also Google book)
Manufacturing
Manufactured Landscapes DVD5820 (90 min.) Follows photographer Edward Burtynsky as he travels through China photographing the effects of that country's massive industrial revolution.
Blue Vinyl Link
Trade Secrets: This documentary exposes the 40 year history of the American chemical industry's supression of information regarding the threats to public health by synthetic chemicals being introduced into the environment at all levels. Addresses the danger to public health by the continued use of approximately 9000 of the 15,000 mass produced chemical substances that have never undergone toxicological study in the United States. Followed by a panel discussion moderated by Moyers including industry spokesmen, environmental, and medical experts. VT7877 120 min.
