Book Review: Du Bry, T. (2007). Immigrants, Settlers, and Laborers: The Socioeconomic Transformation of a Farming Community. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing. 254pp. $65.00 (cloth)
Abstract
William A.Kandel Economic Research Service Recent immigrant population growth in unanticipated U.S. locations has prompted a substantial, mostly ethnographic, scholarship that explores causes and community impacts and sometimes offers policy proscriptions. Few studies, however, have focused exclusively on farmworker communi- ties, perhaps for good reason. The perception of transient, marginalized farmworkers clashes with the concept of established rural communities. Yet, several trends have conjoined to create a growing number of agricul- turally based communities populated by settled farmworkers. On the labor demand side, longer growing periods and greater year-round consumer con- sumption of labor-intensive agricultural products have been met, on the labor supply side, by the passage in 1986 of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which legalized more than a million hired farmwork- ers, increased border enforcement that incentivized permanent settlement, and greater farmworker accessibility to unemployment insurance. In Immigrants, Settlers, and Laborers, Travis Du Bry offers a detailed and nuanced portrayal of Mecca, an agricultural community that, since the 1960s, has transformed from an Anglo-dominated to a heavily Hispanic town in southern California's Coachella Valley. Du Bry links the sociode- mographic transformation of Mecca to corporate consolidation that followed the decade-long construction of water diversion