How the Other Half Works: Immigration and the Social Organization of Labor
Book by Roger Waldinger, University of California, Los Angeles, and Michael I. Lichter, State University of New York at Buffalo
Reviewed by Phillip Martin, University of California, Davis
Fall 2004
Phillip Martin of University of California, Davis, reviews How the Other Half Works: Immigration and the Social Organization of Labor by Roger Waldinger and Michael I. Lichter. Roger Waldinger and Michael I. Lichter solve the riddle of America’s contemporary immigration puzzle: why an increasingly high-tech society has use for so many immigrants who lack the basic skills that today’s economy seems to demand. In clear and engaging style, Waldinger and Lichter isolate the key factors that explain the presence of unskilled immigrants in our midst. Focusing on Los Angeles, the capital of today’s immigrant America, this hard-hitting book elucidates the other side of the new economy, showing that hiring is finding not so much “one’s own kind” but rather the “right kind” to fit the demeaning, but indispensable, jobs many American workers disdain.
Read the book review at https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-7379.2004.tb00235.xa.