 | The Price of Poverty: Money, Work, and Culture in the Mexican American Barrio Subjects: Mexican Americans -- California -- San Jose -- Economic conditions; Mexican Americans -- California -- East Los Angeles -- Economic conditions; Urban poor -- California -- San Jose; Urban poor -- California -- East Los Angeles; San Jose (Calif.) -- Econom; Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in two impoverished California communities--one made up of recent immigrants from Mexico, the other of U.S.-born Chicano citizens--this book provides an invaluable comparative perspective on Latino poverty in contemporary America. In northern California's high-tech Silicon Valley, author Daniel Dohan shows how recent immigrants get by on low-wage babysitting and dish-cleaning jobs. In the housing projects of Los Angeles, he documents how families and communities of U.S.-born Mexican Americans manage the social and economic dislocations of persistent poverty. Taking readers into worlds where public assistance, street crime, competition for low-wage jobs, and family, pride, and cross-cultural experiences intermingle, The Price of Poverty offers vivid portraits of everyday life in these Mexican American communities while addressing urgent policy questions such as: What accounts for joblessness? How can we make sense of crime in poor communities? Does welfare hurt or help? Dohan Dan : Daniel Dohan is Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. |
