Some of the most pressing issues facing low-wage immigrant workers of color in the United States include persistent forms of disrespect and abuses of power — situations that are the direct result of U.S. policies that produce and sustain poor working conditions and job instability.

This topic is addressed in "Legalized Inequalities: Immigration and Race in the Low-Wage Workplace," a new book coauthored by ILR School researchers Kati L. Griffith, Shannon Gleeson, and Patricia Campos-Medina, and Darlène Dubuisson of the University of California, Berkeley.

Drawing on interviews with over 300 Haitian and Central American low-wage workers in the U.S. and with more than 50 worker advocates, the researchers reveal how contemporary U.S. labor and employment law, immigration policy, and enduring racism work in tandem to keep workers’ wages low, lock them into substandard working conditions, and minimize opportunities for change.

Join us as we discuss not only the crushing consequences of U.S. policy on low-wage immigrant workers of color but also the ways in which many of these workers reclaim their dignity in the face of these obstacles.

Register Now!

What You'll Learn

• How U.S. labor and employment laws and immigration regulations intersect in the work lives of immigrants
• The ways in which the legacies of legalized racism shape immigrant worker experiences
• How low-wage immigrant workers manage to improve their workplaces through individual and sometimes collective acts of resistance
• What policy changes and organizing strategies can reshape the low-wage workplace

Speakers:

Kate L. Griffith
Jean McKelvey-Alice Grant Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Diversity, and Faculty Development
Cornell ILR School

Shannon Gleeson
Edmund Ezra Day Professor, Labor Relations, Law and History
Cornell ILR School

Patricia Campos-Medina
Senior Extension Associate Faculty and the Executive Director of the Worker Institute
Cornell ILR School

Darlène Dubuisson
Assistant Professor of Caribbean Studies
University of California, Berkeley