In this dissertation, I explore the broad history of the Justice for Janitors campaign. I start with the origins of the campaign in a series of organizing and reform experiments at three different levels of the United States labor movement in the early 1980s, and I end with an exploration of the legacy of this campaign and an open source approach to unionism within both the U.S. and global labor movements in the 2010s. I place the campaign in the context of neoliberal restructuring and a much longer pattern of capitalist development and exploitation. In doing so, I demonstrate that the Justice for Janitors campaign was a response to two intertwined developments in the second half of the twentieth century. These are: (1) the intense exploitation and escalating inequality that U.S. workers experience amidst neoliberal restructuring and (2) the ongoing decline of union density in the United States, which predated but escalated amidst neoliberal restructuring. I highlight, however, that the response that JfJ offered to these two developments was experimental, adaptive, and rife with tensions.

I argue that the experimental, adaptive nature of the campaign was Justice for Janitors’ core source of strength and endurance. Campaign leaders and participants’ commitment to experimentation and adaptation allowed Justice for Janitors to persevere in the face of immense external hostility, internal struggles, and failures. More than this, a commitment to experimentation and adaptation allowed campaign leaders and participants to capitalize on moments of success and to expand and escalate Justice for Janitors not just as a janitor organizing drive but as a powerful, intersectional struggle against the effects of neoliberal restructuring and union decline. This expansion and escalation, I argue, spurred significant reform throughout the SEIU and the United States labor movement as a whole. It also empowered and inspired a generation of workers and social movement activists to take a stand against growing socioeconomic polarization and inequality.

This research explores Operation Joint Effort (OJE) as a case study of local and federal collaborations on immigration enforcement. OJE is a collective partnership between Escondido, California’s local police department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). As individual states continue to opt into such collaborative efforts, the imperative need for a critical review is bellowing. The central concern of this thesis is of how such collaborations impact the daily routine for undocumented migrants within these boundaries of policing and reviews such boundaries by the cultural characteristics and definitions of “illegality.” This thesis is guided by ethnographic fieldwork and 16 semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted by the ACLU and myself. Tactics of immigration enforcement not only shape how “illegality” is defined, but also how those saddled with the title of “illegal” must live within the constrained environment that “illegality” creates for human begins. This thesis hopes to be clear in its understanding of “illegality” by acknowledging its various layers; first, how it is defined through various federal, state and local legislation; second, how it is sustained through enforcement tactics such as the militarization of the southern border, and deportation, which invokes fear and criminality in the general public; and third, how it is lived and experienced through the bodies of those subjected to this every-changing notion of “illegality.” I argue that through immigration enforcement tactics, like Operation Joint Effort, the Escondido Police Department instills “deportation terror” while reinforcing and restructuring the boundaries of Mexican/Latino “illegality” within Escondido’s city limits.

This dissertation examines nearly five decades of voluntary and involuntary return migration to Mexico to explore how this affected migrants, communities in northern Mexico, and Mexico as a sending country. I approach the study of return migration by focusing on processes of forced removal and repatriation as well as the arrival of migrants in their home country to look at what happened to repatriates, deportees, and returning guest workers after arriving in Mexico. This dissertation begins with the World War I emergency labor program and ends with the return of bracero guest workers to Mexico in the mid-1960s. During this period, returning migrants became associated with disease, crime, violence, and instability, while cities in northern Mexico struggled with the significant demographic and economic changes caused by this migratory movement. Thus, as the threat of deportation functioned to discipline and control Mexican migrants in the United States, returning migrants in Mexico were also perceived as a threat by their compatriots.

A study of return migration provides one way to explore the hidden costs of labor migration on migrants and communities and as I argue, this system of international labor exportation ultimately proved destructive for Mexico and its people. Removal procedures used by both the US and Mexico held ramifications for not only those who returned, but also for those who never migrated and for Mexico itself as the notion of a deportable, temporary workforce affected the sending country in complex ways. Examining the effects of forced removal on Mexico as the original country-of-origin opens up new lines of inquiry and raises important questions regarding ideas of circular migration and labor importation. This project thus sheds light on the consequences of involuntary return migration as the hidden side of an inherently flawed system that exploits laborers at the expense of their well-being and their countries-of-origin.

This investigation examines the roles that public schools in the Alta-Baja California borderlands play in constructing notions of identity, specifically mexicanidad. Living in the literal margins of their respective countries, neplanterxs, or those who find themselves living in the "in between," form a unique community. Not considered when national identities were constructed in Washington, DC and Mexico City, these students have had to forge their own identity and figure out how the physical border defines them. However, how do schools on each side impact how these students see themselves? Which historical perspectives do these schools teach, and which ones should they teach? In what ways have policies shaped identities, and what steps should be taken to be support these students? This multi-modal, mixed methods, bilingual, and binational research project explores these questions and more. Through historical research, this project seeks to shed light on the institutional role school systems have played in forming and disseminating Mexican and US American identities, as well as how many neplanterxs have sought to embrace both. Likewise, one-on-one interviews were conducted with college students from both sides of the border to learn more about their educational experiences, their social science curricula, and their understandings of who and where they are. Ultimately, this thesis aims to demonstrate how the concept of binationality has largely been ignored by the schools in this area, leaving students to navigate this conflict on their own. As the students expressed a strong desire for more course material focused on this particular region, regardless of the border’s arbitrary placement, ideally this research project would be used to motivate educators and policymakers to implement culturally responsive teaching strategies out of respect for their needs and wishes.

This dissertation argues that through their songs, articles, and spatial manifestations, Rock Angelino participants claimed themselves as part of Los Angeles, pushed against the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the 1990s, and advocated for equality and social justice in the U.S. and Latin America.

The cultural production generated by Rock Angelino participants is a new point of intervention in current historical research focusing on 1990s Los Angeles. It permits us to understand crucial aspects of the 1992-1997 critical period, during which the urban insurrection of Abril 1992 unfolded. During this era, the California electorate approved anti-immigrant Proposition 187, affirmative action in state institutions was repealed with the passage of Proposition 209, and Proposition 227 was approved, eliminating most bilingual education in public schools. By centering the L.A. youth culture that derived from Latin American Rock en Español, this study analyzes how the region’s Latinas/os responded to these legislative assaults by developing a more encompassing understanding of ethnic identity and solidarity as Latinas/os, and crucially, how through their cultural production they pushed against the xenophobia directed at them during this explosive period.

Chapter One focuses on a group of Mexican American young women who became key facilitators of Rock en Español between Los Angeles and Latin America. By creating transnational social networks of cultural circulation, these women were engaging in a form of ethnic replenishment through Latin American cultural expressions. Chapter Two examines what I term “ephemeral forums” to consider the creation of communal spaces by youth whose presence in L.A. was ambiguous due to their marginal socioeconomic position and/or their unsettled migratory state. Chapter Three analyzes do-it-yourself print publications created and read by Latinas/os. The examination of these publications provides more nuanced views of how Latinas/os understood and chronicled their lives in Southern California. The final chapter examines the lyrics and actions of 1990s Rock Angelino bands as strategic, symbolic, and spatial manifestations of solidarity and visibility for urban Latinas/os and cultural producers, which compels us to broaden our understanding of Latinas/os beyond their roles as laborers, immigrants, or social activists.

This dissertation argues that the agriculture industry in California’s Imperial Valley has enjoyed ample access to cheap labor since the mid-twentieth century because Mexicali, Baja California Norte, its Mexican neighbor, has subsidized the reproduction of a transborder labor force employed in agriculture but otherwise denied social membership in the United States. This subsidy from Mexicali to the Imperial Valley began in 1942 with the start of the Bracero Program and continued well past the program’s end in 1964. The guest worker program produced contrasting socioeconomic transformations on each side of the border: the Imperial Valley obtained a cheap source of labor, while Mexicali faced mounting socioeconomic pressures from a growing and urbanizing population.

Cheap for Whom demonstrates that key individuals and institutions on both sides of the US-Mexico border learned important lessons about the profitability of creating a transborder labor force that externalized labor maintenance and reproduction to Mexico. The Bracero Program normalized the practice of employing workers—or as the Spanish term “bracero” suggests, employing brazos (arms)—without incorporating them into the communities where they labored. The social costs of maintaining a seasonal migrant labor force, in other words, remained hidden under the Bracero Program because braceros were employed in the United States during seasonal periods of labor need and expected to return to their families and communities in Mexico once they were no longer required in American fields. The Bracero Program was thus a pivotal moment in the US transition from importing workers to exporting jobs; it served as a first exercise in outsourcing the responsibilities of maintaining and reproducing workers.