The Price of Poverty

As Mexican-Americans stand poised to become the largest nonwhite minority in the United States, their struggles with poverty assume national significance. Drawing on fieldwork in two impoverished California communities, this text provides a comparative perspective on Latino poverty in America.

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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?