Labor

Latina/o studies scholars have looked to “labor” as a central theme for theorizing class inequality, spurring questions about exploitation, alienation, and potential for solidarity (Smith 2013). Operationalizing labor, however, is a complicated matter. Official estimates of the labor force include those who are either “available to work,” looking for paid labor, employed, or waiting to be called back to their job (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2014). As such, Latina/o workers (referred to as “Hispanic” by the U.S. government), constitute over 15 percent of the labor force in the United States, and nearly half of the immigrant workforce (U.S. Department of Labor 2012). They are over-represented in traditionally low-wage occupations such as food preparation, building maintenance, farming, and construction. In 2011, Latina/o immigrant workers earned only 77 percent of what their native-born counterparts earned (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2012). These inequities are in part explained by lower levels of human capital, including low levels of English proficiency and educational attainment, in particular for those of Mexican origin (Duncan, Hotz, and Trejo 2006). Institutional barriers have further multiplied the disadvantage that Mexican Americans face, creating what Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz (2008) refer to as “generations of exclusion.” This disadvantage contrasts starkly with the positive selection of much smaller groups of other professional Latinas/os, such as Colombian and Puerto Rican engineers, who nonetheless have contradictory experiences as “privileged marginal migrants” (Rincón 2015, 213).