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Sweatshops Here and There: The Garment Industry, Latinas, and Labor Migrations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2002

Carmen Teresa Whalen
Carmen Teresa Whalen
Affiliation:
Williams College
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Abstract

From the post-World War II era to the present, the US garment industry has turned to Latinas as a source of low-wage workers in their countries of origin and as migrants to the United States. The globalization of the garment industry has meant the proliferation of export processing zones overseas and of sweatshops in US cities. Sweatshops, here and there, have become a locus of Latinas' labor in the global economy. This essay examines the impact of this evolving process on Puerto Rican and Dominican women, in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and as labor migrants to New York City. The globalization of the garment industry provides an example of the economic and political connections between the United States and countries of origin that shape migrations, as well as a lens for understanding deteriorating economic conditions in the inner cities.

Type
Sweated Labor: The Politics of Representation and Reform
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 61 , April 2002 , pp. 45 - 68
Copyright
© 2002 The International Labor and Working-Class History Society

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Footnotes

Acknowledgments: In 1997–1998 I participated in a Rockefeller Humanities Institute, The Sweatshop Project, sponsored by the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and UNITE! I would like to thank these sponsors, my colleagues at the Sweatshop Project, and especially the staff and workers at UNITE's Garment Workers' Justice Center. Research assistance was provided by Maria Ocasio and Lida Pascual-Yeras. For insightful comments and questions I thank Virginia Yans and my colleagues at Rutgers University's Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Cultures, where I was a faculty fellow in 1998–1999.