Abstract
On the Line: Slaughterhouse Lives and the Making of the New South portrays the workplace conditions, social relations, and intergroup attitudes of Latino migrants and African Americans in the contemporary American South, a region that has undergone a dramatic transformation since the late 1980s, as a result of immigration. The book is an ethnography of a large meatpacking plant in rural North Carolina, where I held a job as a production worker for sixteen months, totaling more than 3,500 hours of participant observation between August 2009 and December 2010. My objective was to understand how Latinos are becoming incorporated into the shifting social fabric of a new American South. In contrast to the fears of some scholars and pundits, African American workers do not talk or behave as if they are especially threatened by economic, political, or cultural competition from Latinos or other migrants. On the other hand, Latinos’ orientation to African Americans is profoundly racialized in ways that reflect and reinforce ethnoracial boundaries between Latinos and African Americans, express their determination to achieve incorporation as nonblacks, and may bolster the dominance of whites and whiteness in the emerging order. How these groups differently experience and respond to oppressive exploitation in the workplace is a fundamental—indeed, constitutive—aspect of this story. As such, an important policy implication of my findings is that a fundamental basis for conflict between Latinos and African Americans can be neutralized by ensuring and extending the workplace rights and protections of all workers—regardless of employment authorization status.
Get help with access
Get help with access
Institutional access
Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:
IP based access
Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.
Sign in through your institution
Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.
If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.
Sign in with a library card
Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.
Society Members
Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:
Sign in through society site
Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:
If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.
Sign in using a personal account
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.
Personal account
A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.
Viewing your signed in accounts
Click the account icon in the top right to:
Signed in but can't access content
Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.
Institutional account management
For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.