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80 S. Cal. L. Rev. 503 (2006-2007)
Transnational Labor Citizenship

handle is hein.journals/scal80 and id is 515 raw text is: TRANSNATIONAL LABOR CITIZENSHIP JENNIFER GORDON* I. INTRODUCTION On the parched plaza outside the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, Mexico, hundreds of men and women lean against tree trunks or press their backs into the consulate wall, seeking any sliver of shade. They wait to be fingerprinted, interviewed, and-with luck-approved as one of the 175,000 guest workers admitted to the United States each year. An ordinary day in May 2005--or perhaps not quite. Under one tree, a meeting is underway. At the center of a circle stands a labor organizer, copy of a contract in hand. Asegtirense que sus derechos sean respetados, he urges the crowd, all of whom are bound for North Carolina. Make sure that your rights are respected. Another man, his crisp shirt and spotless jeans belying the previous sixteen hours spent on a bus from his hometown, stands up and offers advice to the others. Cuidado con el patr6n en Ranch Farm. Careful with the boss at Ranch Farm. He continues: He's still trying to get away with piece rate when he's supposed to be paying us by the hour. Call the union's North Carolina office if it happens to you. Others nod assent. After half an hour of sharing information and reestablishing bonds, the group disperses. Before the week's end, they will be thinning tobacco plants in the hot Carolina fields. For the first time in * Associate Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law. The author thanks David Abraham, Frances Ansley, Sameer Ashar, Ana Avedafio, Annette Bernhardt, Linda Bosniak, Fred Feinstein, Janice Fine, Sarah Fox, Robin Lenhardt, Rachel Moran, Cristina Rodriguez, Linda Steinman, Leti Volpp, and Lucie White, as well as participants in the Biannual Immigration Professors Workshop, for incisive comments on drafts of this Article. Thanks also to Juno Turner for stellar research assistance in the United States; to my hosts as I carried out research in Mexico, Cistulo Benavides and Brendan Greene at the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in Monterrey, and Rachel Micah-Jones and the staff of the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante in Zacatecas; to Sarah Fox and Ana Avedafio of the AFL-CIO for thought-provoking discussions of guest work from a labor perspective, including the idea of a free agent visa; and to Rodolfo Garcia Zamora and Miguel Moctezuma Longoria of the Universidad Aut6noma de Zacatecas for a particularly illuminating conversation about current possibilities for realizing transnational labor citizenship.

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