Life on the other border: farmworkers and food justice in Vermont
Life on the other border: farmworkers and food justice in Vermont "argues that structural vulnerabilities and multiple forms of violence conspire to leave farmworkers in Vermont's dairy industry never fully satiated with their sustenance or their living conditions, even as their labor contributes to the livelihoods of farmers and the wellbeing of consumers across the food chain. Vermont is seen as an agrarian utopia where socially responsible brands like Ben and Jerry's and Cabot Cheese have flourished and where the food movement has taken hold of the consumer imaginary and purchasing power. Within this supposed agrarian utopia, migrant workers working and living in the state's shadow worlds to sustain industrial food production continue to experience everyday marginalization, discrimination, and struggles in accessing their basic needs. Building upon more than six years of ethnographic research, The Other Border challenges our understanding of border life as it explores the intersections of structural vulnerability, food insecurity, and everyday resilience in the lives of migrant farmworkers in the northeastern borderlands of the U.S. This book presents a dynamic ethnographic portrait of the Latino/a farmworkers who labor in Vermont's dairy industry, illuminating the complex and resilient ways they sustain themselves and their families as they uphold the state's agricultural economy. The Other Border examines how the broader movements for food justice and labor rights play out in an agricultural sector where systemic inequality is continually reproduced by the demands of an industrialized food system and the contradictions of racialized and misaligned agriculture and immigration policies"--Provided by publisher
