Crafting Dignity

""This compelling and beautifully written ethnography challenges prevailing understandings of immigrant labor and exploitative managerial practices. Based on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Crafting Dignity reveals how immigrant workers can be treated ethically, with dignity and respect at work, which in turn ripples outward to the broader community. It offers a powerful vision of what a just world for immigrant workers might look like while making essential contributions to labor and immigration studies, rural sociology, and the art and value of ethnographic research. It is timely and necessary for today's times and will be read widely.""--Cecilia Menjívar, coauthor of Immigrant Families ""In this meticulous and moving ethnography, Alisa Garni expertly weaves the experiences of vulnerable workers together with powerful insights about contemporary capitalism, labor, and culture. Topics I had never thought much about before, such as precolonial migrations across North America and the myriad factors that can lead to undrinkable milk, stayed on my mind long after I set the book down. Most importantly, Crafting Dignity delivers an eloquent argument for putting people above profits, showing how managers' decisions can make all the difference for families and communities.""--Erynn Masi de Casanova, author of Dust and Dignity: Domestic Employment in Contemporary Ecuador ""Crafting Dignity is an insightful ethnography that reveals how dairy farms' success can be premised on collaborative, respect-based workplaces. In the face of increasing challenges for US dairy producers and new immigrant workers alike, Garni's timely analysis shows how farms, livelihoods, and communities can thrive when dignity is on offer for newcomers.""--Margaret Gray, author of Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic ""Garni's fascinating book draws on four years of ethnographic research in 'Dairy City, ' a small rural community in Kansas that, unlike many other similar communities in rural America, has been revitalized by an influx of immigrant labor to work in the dairy industry. Her case study illustrates the structural challenges faced both by dairy producers and the predominantly Latinx immigrant workers, many of whom have fled their home countries due to unemployment and pervasive violence. She profiles three dairies with contrasting ownership and labor management practices to show that the dairy producers who incorporate more support for workers, such as housing, language training and opportunities to increase their skills and responsibilities, create a more sustainable and resilient community. By using more craft-style management practices and creating a more dignified workplace where problem solving skills are valued, these dairies are economically revitalizing one rural community and repairing frayed social fabric in these communities.""--Theresa Selfa, Professor and Chair of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry Department of Environmental Studies