Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments
Based on a vast array of sources from U.S., Jamaican, and English archives, as well as interviews, No Man's Land tells the history of the American "H2" program, the world's second oldest guestworker program. Since World War II, the H2 program has brought hundreds of thousands of mostly Jamaican men to the United States to do some of the nation's dirtiest and most dangerous farmwork for some of its biggest and most powerful agricultural corporations, companies that had the power to import and deport workers from abroad. Jamaican guestworkers occupied a no man's land between nations, protected neither by their home government nor by the United States. The workers complained, went on strike, and sued their employers in class action lawsuits, but their protests had little impact because they could be repatriated and replaced in a matter of hours.
No Man's Land puts Jamaican guestworkers' experiences in the context of the global history of this fast-growing and perilous form of labor migration.
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Winner of the 2012 James A. Rawley Prize, Organization of American Historians
Winner of the 2012 Philip Taft Labor History Award, Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations
One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2012
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Synopsis
"In No Man's Land, Cindy Hahamovitch brilliantly explores the world of guest workers and the complex history of America's relationship with them. In the confused and confusing debate over jobs, immigration, and the economy, this book is a must-read. If you have ever eaten an apple or put sugar in your coffee, it is time you got to know the people who help put these foods on your table."--Kevin Bales, president, Free the Slaves
"With clarity and force, this book presents an original argument about a subject of historical and contemporary importance. Crisp, authoritative, and sympathetic without being sentimental, this sophisticated narrative situates the history of guestworker programs in the postwar United States in a global-historical framework and in relation to the story's direct tie to Jamaica."--Mae Ngai, author of The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America
"No Man's Land is not only full of surprises but also a pleasure to read. Behind its exhaustive research and fine craft, it brings to us a history of the greatest importance today."--Linda Gordon, author of Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits
About the Author
Table of Contents
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
Chapter One: Guestworkers of the World, Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Passport, Your Visa, Your Immigration Status 12
Chapter Two: Everything but a Gun to Their Heads: The Politics of Labor Scarcity and the Birth of World War II Guestworker Programs 22
Chapter Three:"Stir It Up": Jamaican Guestworkers in the Promised Land 50
Chapter Four: John Bull Meets Jim Crow: Jamaican Guestworkers in the Wartime South 67
Chapter Five: The Race to the Bottom: Making Wartime Temporary Worker Programs Permanent and Private 86
Chapter Six: A Riotous Success: Guestworkers, "Illegal Immigrants," and the Promise of Managed Migration 110
Chapter Seven: The Worst Job in the World: The Cuban Revolution, the War on Poverty, and the Secret Rebellion in Florida's Cane Fields 135
Chapter Eight: Takin' It to the Courts: Legal Services, the UFW, and the Battle for the Worst Jobs in the World 172
Chapter Nine: "For All Those Bending Years": IRCA, the Dog War, and the Campaign for Legal Status 202
Chapter Ten: All the World's a Workplace: Guestworkers at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century 227
Conclusion 236
Notes 245
Bibliography 295
Index 323