Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper demonstrates that dominant approaches to Mexican immigrant construction workers obscure the nature of workplace discrimination. In defining the problems of occupational risk, health and safety specialists emphasize Mexican immigrant workers’ deficiencies. In contrast, workers emphasized workplace discrimination and legal vulnerability. This paper argues that health and safety specialists’ outreach to Mexican immigrant workers not only obscure experiences of discrimination and vulnerability, but also facilitate structural inequality. These perspectives were particularly evident and “hazardous” in the case of a post-disaster New Orleans as Mexican immigrants working in cleanup and recovery work found themselves physically and symbolically injured by a broader political discourse to “Bring New Orleans Back.”