Immigration, power, and politics in America today -- Political narratives, common sense, and theories of hegemony -- Hegemony in hindsight : immigrant workers' stories of power in Mexico -- Stories of fate and agency in the zone of illegality -- Labor, injury, and self-preservation in the slaughterhouse -- ¡Nosotros somos la unión! Immigrant worker organizing and the disciplines of the law -- Immigrant workers and counterhegemony
Summary
In Breaks in the Chain, Paul Apostolidis investigates the personal life stories of a group of Mexican immigrant meatpackers who are at once typical and extraordinary. After crossing the border clandestinely and navigating the treacherous world of the undocumented, they waged a campaign to democratize their union and their workplace in the most hazardous industry in the United States. Breaks in the Chain shows how immigrant workers-individually and sometimes collectively-both reinforce and contest a tacit but lethal form of biopolitics that differentiates the life chances of racial groups. Exa
