|
Abstract
This case seeks to make connections between the Isla Vista
(California) community and national/international issues of immigration. It provides a brief discussion of national anti-immigrant sentiments and policy and explores the contradictions between the economic needs of big business and current immigration policy. The case centers around a fictionalized restaurant in Isla Vista where an accident in the kitchen has brought issues of safety, discrimination, fair labor practices, rights and responsibilities of employers/workers into discussion. The characters (which include students, Latino workers and a local business owner) and issues presented are intended to portray the complexity of the context in which members of the Isla Vista community operate. As role players take on each character they will grapple with the motivations and constraints faced by each character and better understand the connections between biography and history
(The Sociological Imagination).
Back to top
Introduction
Anti-immigrant sentiments in the United States are on the rise and California in particular, has seen a great deal of debate about immigration issues and policy. Despite the state of California's reliance on undocumented labor in diverse sectors of the economy, Governor Pete Wilson has taken a strong anti-immigrant stance. The recently passed Proposition 187 aims to combat immigration by barring undocumented members of the US community from rights to health care, education, and social services. Section one of Prop. 187 declares:
That they [the people of California] have suffered and are suffering economic hardship caused by the presence of illegal aliens in this state.
That they have suffered and are suffering personal injury and damage caused by the criminal conduct of illegal aliens in this state.
The wording casts immigrants as the enemy -- the cause of job loss, "economic hardship", and resource depletion. The plans and programs to curb Mexican immigration have included building physical barriers such as walls and triple-fences, militarizing the border, and flying immigrants to the interior of Mexico to make it more difficult for them to recross the border. Meanwhile, outside of these costly programs, anti-immigrant sentiments influence individual actions, including those of law enforcement agents. In April 1996, an incident in Riverside commanded national attention: A truck suspected of avoiding the border checkpoint was reported to the Riverside County Sheriff's Department by the US. Border Patrol. Following a freeway chase the truck came to a halt and people ran for cover:
For a moment, the man behind the wheel and a female passenger in the front seat remained near the vehicle. For about fifteen seconds, the tape shows one deputy repeatedly clubbed the man on the back and shoulders with a nightstick and continued doing so as he fell, face down to the ground. When the female passenger got out of the front seat, one of the two deputies -- it's not clear which -- hit her twice in the back with his nightstick and then yanked her to the ground by her hair, her head hitting the front bumper on the way down. Neither the woman nor the man appeared to offer any resistance or make any attempt to get away (Noble, 1996).
A spokesman for the Riverside County Sheriff acknowledged the violence and admitted that the Sheriff's Department was embarrassed about the incident. The FBI as well as local law enforcement agencies undertook investigations into the incidents with an eye to possible civil rights violations (Noble, 1996). Cardinal Roger
Mahony, who led a march to protest the beatings, suggests that the beatings are a "symptom of the anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States"
(DeSantis and Gilmore, 1996). Whether such action is a result of sentiments, frustrations, or policies which dehumanize undocumented workers, they certainly make clear the scope of the anti-immigrant movement.
What the anti-immigrant movement does not mention is that immigration has historically served the needs of the economy. Scholars have argued that laws past to curb immigration (beginning with the 1885 Alien Contract Labor Law) have never had a significant impact on practice due to inherent contradictions in the capitalist economy
(Calavita, 1996). While the government is willing to pass symbolic legislature, it is not willing to enforce it because many companies heavily rely on immigrant labor. Calavita states:
Undocumented workers have performed much of the low-wage labor in certain sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, the garment industry, construction clean-up, hotels, and restaurants. Wages and working conditions in these sectors (including violations of safety laws, take-home work, and substandard wages) are insufficient to attract legal workers and US citizens to these jobs in which Third World immigrants are concentrated.
In fact, the government has worked with corporations to recruit immigrant workers as economic needs have arisen. Mexican labor was sought during the time between World War I and the Great Depression in order to fill agricultural labor shortages caused by the war
(Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994). Through Bracero programs Mexican workers came to fill jobs in diverse economic sectors. The workers were primarily male, seasonal workers but as employers began to realize that a more stable labor force could be beneficial they promoted family work recruits. Companies could count on families in the labor pool and permanent settlement was encouraged. As Hondagneu-Sotelo points out, the depression prompted the deportation of thousands of these workers -- regardless of citizenship status. That is, even Mexicans with US citizenship were carted from their homes and families and sent to Mexico. This pattern was repeated with World War II and the Korean War
(Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994).
The strategic use of undocumented laborers is by no means a thing of the past. The meat packing industries in the Midwest (among many other industries), for instance, continue to rely heavily on Mexican labor. Iowa Beef Processors operates one such plant in Storm Lake. After shutting down in the early eighties displacing unionized workers, who were costing the company more that they wanted to spend, the company reopened and heavily recruited Mexican labor -- turning (with the support of the INS) a blind eye to documentation when it was convenient (Cooper, 1997). The Mexican workers saved the company a great deal of money as they accepted conditions that unionized American workers would not have tolerated. These moves on the part of companies serve to exacerbate the hostility that American workers have toward Mexicans, however when looked at closely it becomes clear that "job theft" is a more complicated problem than any people realize.
Though corporations still rely on undocumented labor within the US, trade agreements have made it possible for companies to move their operations cheaply in search of the most exploitable labor. Ironically as we talk about restricting immigration, we celebrate the friendship that we are developing with Mexico. The North American Free Trade Agreement, which was designed to make Canada, Mexico and the United States more competitive in the global market, has eliminated standards for safety, environmental, and labor regulations. It has been sold as a "win-win" arrangement completely disregarding its negative effects on the environment, US jobs, economy, and the quality of working conditions (Herman, 1995). Amidst the contradictions of building walls and erasing borders at the convenience of the government and corporations, we find individuals of various classes on both sides of the borders struggling, working, studying, and making judgments and decisions from day to day.
In Isla Vista UCSB students and low-income Latino immigrants share the densely populated community adjacent to the university. Of the approximately 20,000 residents in "IV" the Census identified 2,993 as Latinos (this figure includes Latino students). This is likely to be a great underestimation, in part due to the hesitancy of households to report the actual number of members to the census. Both student and low-income family households are forced to crowd into small apartments in order manage what the Isla Vista Community Enhancement Report (1992) has called the "alarmingly high cost of housing." In the predominately student populated community the lives of students and immigrants are linked to each other as well as to the structural forces which have been described. It was a critical awareness of these issues and desire for change that led members of
Congreso, a UCSB Chicano student organization, to carry out a hunger strike in 1994. Part of the administrations response to students activism was to fund the Isla Vista Research Project which was designed to examine the quality of life of Latino immigrants in Isla Vista. The survey and interviews carried out in Isla Vista by the Center for Chicano Studies have yielded critical findings; Importantly the research has identified many of the concerns and challenges that residents face in employment, education, language, and housing as well as the ways that they negotiate these challenges individually and collectively. The case that follows is one example of how the lives of UCSB students and Isla Vista immigrants might intersect; the challenge is to place the characters and ourselves within a global context and attempt to understand how why we make decisions within it.
Back to top
The Setting
The setting is Marty's Sub and Pub, a very popular local hang-out in Isla Vista. It is a fairly large business which employs documented and undocumented Latino workers and several UCSB students. Latino residents know it has a reputation for lenient hiring practices and so Marty Sugar, the owner, can count having a large labor pool. He hires many employees whom he keeps on reserve, that is they are given a job and then put on the weekly schedule once every month and perhaps less in the summer when business slows down. He also has his regular employees who work about 40 hours a week. They have no breaks, no benefits, no sick days, no meals while they are at work. The restaurant is maintained in sub-standard and dangerous conditions, the kitchen is extremely hot, there is no first aid kit, and the employees are frequently humiliated in front of customers. Additionally, there are several positions which are sometimes filled by UCSB students.
The Issue
The exploitative of work conditions at Marty's Sub and Pub come to a breaking point when Marty orders Julia, who is six months pregnant, to carry a heavy pot of hot cooking oil out of the kitchen. Though she hesitates due to her pregnancy, she lifts it and decides it is not so heavy. She knows this is no time to stir up trouble, with the new baby on the way she cannot afford to get taken off the schedule on the whim of Marty Sugar. As she carries the oil to the back of the restaurant she loses her grip and the oil spills. Julia falls as well. Her right arm has been burnt and she is suffering from severe pain in her abdomen -- she screams out in pain.
Chato, the cook, comes running out from the kitchen and helps her up. When Marty Sugar sees what happened he is irate and between racist and slurs and four letter words he orders them to clean everything up and then fires Julia. All the workers witness the event.
The Players
Todd and Mireya
Todd White and Mireya Ocampo are UCSB students who have been working at Marty's
for six months: He is the bartender and she a waiter. Although they do not spend much
time together outside of work, they always find interests in common when they chat during the slow periods at the Pub. She is a Chemistry major and he a Sociology/Communications major and both have strong beliefs about social justice. Mireya's parents are farm workers and organizers; in fact, the whole family had been involved in organizing the recent strawberry farm workers demonstration in Watsonville.
Todd is a junior and has found that Sociology has taught him a great deal about how the world works. He is very aware of the inequalities that surround us in our everyday interactions with others and of the ways in which these are tied to institutional forces. Both students live in Isla Vista and though they have not been heavily involved in the community they are well informed of the happenings around them. Todd and Mireya have talked a lot about the problem at the restaurant they know that Marty is exploiting the labor of undocumented workers and believe that something must be done. They rely on the Pub in order to pay their tuition and expenses but after what happened they feel that they are condoning the problem if they go on working for Marty. They are willing to risk their jobs in order to fight to bring justice to this situation. They have already started talking to student groups on campus and feel that Marty Sugar must be exposed -- maybe even shut down! First, he must take responsibility for Julia's accident. And if the restaurant remains open, he must also change the exploitative relationships he maintains with his employees. Their goal must be to raise awareness and mobilize UCSB students.
Marty
Marty Sugar has owned the Sub and Pub for seven years. It has been a long and difficult road. When Marty first bought the business he figured it was a good way to make a living as his own boss. The American Dream -- to support his family on his own terms and do something he enjoyed. He had always dabbled in the kitchen and had a good sense for business so opening a restaurant seemed like an excellent venture. Unfortunately, things had not been that easy and just when he thought he was coming out of debt it was time for his children to go to college. Their home in Goleta was not even paid off when he and
Susan found themselves taking a second mortgage. Until recently Susan had been
minimally involved in the restaurant because she had a great job as an accountant at the
Teva corporation in Carpinteria. However, several months back the plant relocated to
Mexico in search of cheaper labor and more relaxed labor laws. This unexpected change
has caused even more financial problems for the Sugar family and Susan has found it
difficult to find employment in the area. The Sugars have barely been able to keep afloat
with the business in Isla Vista. The location is good because students always need to eat -- but they need to eat cheap! So in order to keep menu item prices low Marty must cut costs in other places. He has always hired Latino workers and been flexible about
documentation. He has generally found them to be good workers and they don't complain
as much because they need the jobs. They know how easily they can be replaced or even
reported to the authorities. The bottom line is that Mexicans in IV (all over the place,
really) accept lower wages -- the four dollars an hour, beats the four dollars a day they
would make in their country. Marty feels bad about Julia but cannot afford to make her
medical expenses his problem. His concern right now is publicity about the incident could have a very negative effect on business. With a second mortgage on the house, his wife out of work and two kids in college he has to keep financial matters in perspective.
Chato
Fernando "Chato" Torres has been working at Marty's for almost a year. He first came to the US ten years ago as a recruit in a Meat Packing company in the
midwest. The situation in Mexico was dire, and his family was barely surviving. Though it was a difficult decision to make, he knew that a job in the US was his best hope for insuring the well being of his family. It was difficult, repetitive, and dangerous work and the employees had no right to complain because they knew they would be reported to the authorities. The Mexicanos who worked there made low wages and had no benefits; they were scared to file claims when they were injured since they were acutely aware of the threat of deportation. Chato remembers one guero friend of his saying that the workers were unionized before -- were all rich off the salaries and benefits they got and now they are mostly out of jobs . Although Chato was a strong worker he lasted less than a year at the Meat Packing company, because the local officials and the INS planned a raid of the company and sent hundreds of undocumented workers back to Mexico. Chato and his cousin (who had also been recruited) were able to avoid deportation. They later heard through the grapevine, that as they suspected, the raid had been the result of an elected official trying to get publicity by riding on the heavy anti-immigrant sentiment that filled the country. Chato and his cousin both ended up in Isla Vista and were quite content with the area. In addition to working in the meat packing industry, Chato had worked in the fields in Southern California. In terms of working conditions he preferred the food service industry. The job at the Sub and Pub was OK, but he felt that Marty and sometimes the student workers talked down to him and the other
Mexicanos. The positive side was that he was able to work on his own -- which he enjoyed. His back was often sore from the heavy lifting, cleaning, and long hours. He figured he might be laid off in the summer, since students would not be around but he really needed to keep this job in the long run. He knew Julia really needed the job too and thought that maybe Marty would be willing to give her a second chance.
Julia
Julia Ramirez liked the self-contained nature of the IV community (every thing she needed was at arm's reach) and the safety. In the five years she had been in IV she had established many ties to other Isla Vista residents. Julia, her husband (Raul), and their four year-old daughter share a two bedroom apartment with Raul's sister, her husband, and their three kids. They were lucky with this apartment given the housing conditions they had seen in IV. The apartment was in good condition, they did many of their own repairs, and the manager was responsible, she got along well with the residents. Julia moved to the US in 1993 after Raul had settled down in Isla Vista. He had a job working with an electrician and was taking English classes at City College. When Julia first arrived she worked as a domestic in Santa Barbara, but with her daughter in school in IV, she decided to stay close to home. Being in IV also made it easier to share child rearing and domestic duties with her sister-in-law. The job at the Pub was good in that way, but it was a sacrifice, since she did not make as much as when she cleaned houses. Like Chato she did a lot of lifting, which as far as she was concerned was men's work. The work could be grueling, the kitchen was extremely hot -- without so much as a fan or ventilator, and if you cut yourself you could not even find a Band-Aid! She had once heard Marty respond to someone's request for first aid "Do you think I'm running some kind of free clinic or something?" In her year of work at Marty's she had watched him hire and fire people on whims, and she had seen him humiliate workers -- even in front of customers. The students could vouch for this. Recently she had started to talk about these problems with other IV residents in a group called Familias
Unidas, but she was still not really sure what her options were at this point. Not only had she unfairly lost her job, but more importantly she could not afford to see a doctor and she was not sure if her baby was OK.
Marisa
Marisa Dominguez is the Community Liaison in Isla Vista. She attended UCSB and is
familiar with all of these issues. This was not an isolated incident. Latinos in IV were
discriminated against in all aspects of their lives. Though housing had recently been at the
forefront of the battles, employer relations could not be overlooked. Marisa cared deeply
about the students and the workers and hoped that both short term and long term solutions
could be found. Julia has meet Marisa at many of the Isla Vista activities, including the
Familias Unidas meetings and decides to go to her for advise. Julia does not know that
Mireya and Todd have also approached Marisa in order to tell her about the problem.
Marisa decides to call a meeting between Mireya, Todd, Julia and Chato in order to get a
sense of how to best approach the problem. She thinks student organizing is important but also worries that Julia's (and
Chato's) voice and concerns might be subsumed to the Todd and Mireya's eagerness for justice.
Back to top
The Role Play
(discussion will be facilitated by Marisa to be played by student or instructor)
The role play is a discussion between Julia, Chato, Todd and Mireya facilitated by Marisa. You or your group should study the background information and the profile for each character carefully. As you take on the role of a character think about the following issues:
- How would your character define (i.e. what happened? who is to blame?) and approach the problem?
- What are the stakes involved for your character?
- What is your character seeking to gain and what does s/he stand to loose?
- What are the stakes for the other characters involved (including Marty) and how might disparate positions be negotiated?
Back to top
References
Calavita, Kitty. US Immigration Policy: Contradictions and Projections for the Future, Global Legal Studies Journal, http://www.law.indiana.edu/glsj/vol2/calavita.html.
Cooper, Marc. "The Heartland's Raw Deal," The Nation, (February 3, 1997): 11-17.
DeSantis, Jeannette and Janet Gilmore, "Cardinal Mahony Leads Protest of Beatings; Claim Filed Against Riverside County," Los Angeles Daily News, April 5, 1996.
Herman, Edward, S. " Mexican Meltdown: NAFTA and the Propaganda System," Z Magazine, (September 1995):36-42.
Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. Gendered Transitions. Los Angeles: University of California Press.1994.
Isla Vista Enhancement Committee. The Isla Vista Community Enhancement Report. A Report submitted to the Chancellor of the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the Santa Barbara County Borard of Supervisors. (January 1992).
Noble, Kenneth, B. "Videotape of Beatings Jolts Los Angeles," New York Times, April 2, 1996.
Back to top
Teaching Notes
Objectives
To create a role play in which students can begin to think about the geographical space
they occupy as a complex space in which issues of race, gender, class are played out.
To touch upon the ways in which the lives/livelihoods of students and Latino immigrants in IV are intertwined and interdependent.
To provide a forum in which students can begin to understand their role in the IV economy.
To imagine possibilities for building an IV community, community activism, and improved quality of life for all IV residents.
To foster the development of the "Sociological Imagination"
Courses
This case is designed to be used in introductory courses in Sociology at UC Santa
arbara.
It might also be used in La Chicana, The Chicano Community, Introduction the
niversity,
REN, and Development courses.
Discussion Questions
1. What are the dynamics that are taking place? What should be done? What can be done? What should each of characters do, can they reach a compromise?
2. What do you think of Marty's character? Is Marty the "enemy" in this case?
What if he would've been included in the role play?
3. Do we (students/consumers) have responsibilities as folks who eat at the restaurant?
4. What could be accomplished at the local level? What about on a larger scale? What
should be long term and short term goals?
5. Is there a relationship between the IV and the "global economy"?
The term guero, in this case, is used to refer to a white American man. The term can also refer to a light skinned person of any nationality.
|
