Racialized "Illegality": The Regulation of Informal Labor and Space

Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with Guatemalan and Mexican day laborers in Oakland, California, this paper analyzes the combined experiences of illegality and racialization among Latino informal laborers. This... [ view full abstract ]

Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with Guatemalan and Mexican day laborers in Oakland, California, this paper analyzes the combined experiences of illegality and racialization among Latino informal laborers. This presentation challenges both academic and state practices of homogenizing Latino laborers. I first focus on how day laborers’ employment solicitation practices renders them visible to both federal immigration officials and local agencies intent on regulating informal labor. Then I demonstrate how day laborers regulate themselves by analyzing racialization between indigenous and non-indigenous day laborers. I reveal how the construction of these racialized divisions shapes how workers organize themselves at hiring zones, and impacts their migration experience and relationship with the host community. I argue that migrants’ experience of illegality must be seen as coterminous with other forms of difference that produces new modes of discrimination not solely reducible to legal status.