Los Yarderos

“Los Yarderos is an exceptional ethnography of a ubiquitous but distinct and largely invisibilized type of migrant labor that connects the precarious working lives of Mexican men in the informal service economy to the domestic comforts and conceits of a vast cross-section of ordinary U.S. citizens: lawn mowing and related sorts of landscaping work. This book is extraordinary because anthropologist Sergio Lemus unpacks this world of hard work, honor, and aspiration from the inside, having himself worked as a yardero in the same Chicago neighborhood where he grew up after his family migrated from Mexico when he was a child. His intimate knowledge of this labor and the cultural world of the men who earn their living doing it lend this study remarkable insight and sensitivity.--Nicholas De Genova, author of Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and “Illegality” in Mexican Chicago