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"What does globalization look like in the rural South? Scratching Out a Living takes readers deep into Mississippi's chicken processing communities and workplaces, where large numbers of Latin American migrants began arriving in the mid-1990s to labor alongside an established African American workforce in some of the most dangerous and lowest paid jobs in the country. Based on six years of collaboration with a local workers' center, activist anthropologist Angela Stuesse explores how Black, white, and new Latino residents have experienced and understood these transformations. Illuminating connections between the area's long history of racial inequality, the poultry industry's growth, immigrants' contested place in contemporary social relations, and workers' prospects for political mobilization, Scratching Out a Living calls for organizing strategies that bring diverse working communities together in mutual construction of a more just future"--Provided by publisher

While the poultry processing industry in the southern United States has undergone a radical restructuring over the past few decades, its recruitment of immigrant workers has contributed to an unprecedented presence of Latin Americans. Running parallel to these changes is the ongoing struggle of African Americans for equal economic opportunity. This essay considers the implications of demographic and cultural shifts in central Mississippi, where poultry has become the dominant employer and where immigration helps shape rural life. Mississippi's history and demographic profile make it a significant site for investigation. Here, unlike in many other recent immigration destinations in the US South, Latin American migrants are joining workplaces and communities whose majority is often African American. Centered upon ScottCounty, home of Mississippi's poultry industry (where the "Hispanic" population increased by over 1,000 percent from 1990 to 2000), this essay situates the present moment within histories of industrial restructuring, political economies of race, and local labor movements.