Milking in the Shadows

Migrants and Mobility in America’s Dairyland

By Julie C. Keller

SERIES: Inequality at Work: Perspectives on Race, Gender, Class, and Labor

Rutgers University Press

Migrant workers live in a transnational world that spans the boundaries of nation-states. Yet for undocumented workers, this world is complicated by inflexible immigration policies and the ever-present threat of enforcement. Workers labeled as “illegals” wrestle with restrictive immigration policies, evading border patrol and local police as they risk their lives to achieve economic stability for their families. For this group of workers, whose lives in the U.S. are largely defined by their tenuous legal status, the sacrifices they make to get ahead entail long periods of waiting, extended separation from family, and above all, tremendous uncertainty around a freedom that many of us take for granted—everyday mobility. In Milking in the Shadows, Julie Keller takes an in-depth look at a population of undocumented migrants working in the American dairy industry to understand the components of this labor system. This book offers a framework for understanding the disjuncture between the labor desired by employers and life as an undocumented worker in America today.

Keller does an excellent job of telling the stories of migrant workers from Veracruz working in the dairy industry in Wisconsin. Her writing is refreshing in its clarity and the author does a beautiful job of telling the stories of those she interviewed in a very vivid way.' Joanna Dreby, author of Everyday Illegal: When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families

With fresh sociological insights, Keller shines much needed light on the lives of immigrant dairy workers. This book informs contemporary debates about migration with a 360 degree view of the lives and challenges of those who work in the shadows. Max J. Pfeffer, Cornell University

In this deeply contextualized, engaging, insightful ethnography of the dairy industry, Keller reveals the multiple paradoxes of mobility in the lives of the Mexican immigrant workers at the heart of this industry. Milking cows in the Upper Midwest is intimately connected to larger political and economic transformations, the reorganization of dairy production, and the intimate cross-border lives of these immigrants. This perceptive, beautifully written ethnography makes a terrific contribution to our knowledge of immigrant workers’ lives, the laws and economic forces that govern their lives, and their hopes and dreams. Cecilia Menjívar, UCLA

How Migrant Workers Factor Into The Dairy Industry: An Interview with Julie Keller Wisconsin Public Radio’s "The Morning Show"

Highly recommended. Choice

The US Immigration System Treats Workers as Disposable: An Interview with Julie Keller Jacobin Magazine

Keller has produced a moving and empathetic study that will make for a useful teaching book as well. Her proper attention to migration studies across disciplines and explication of the dialectical nature of mobility and immobility in migrants’ lives are impressive. Milking in the Shadows, along with contributing to studies of migrants in rural American destinations, will enlighten anyone who might have taken the stability of milk in our grocery stores, school cafeterias, and restaurants for granted. This study of the migrants who help power our contemporary dairy industry will be appreciated by scholars of—among other topics—transnationality, oral history, migration and mobility, the Midwest, and working environments. H-Net

JULIE C. KELLER is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston.

Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
1          Introduction
2          Dairying Differently: The Labor Shift in the Wisconsin Dairy Industry
3          Organizing Mobility: The Transnational Making of Workers in Veracruz, Mexico
4          Changing Villages: From Coffee and Corn to Migration and Milk
5          Crossing in Place: Mobility Regulated at the Border
6          Precarious Work, Limited Mobility: Managing in the Shadows on Los Ranchos
7          Belonging in the Countryside: The Rural Idyll and the Legal Landscape
8          Going Home: Delayed Departures, Families in Wait, and the Difficulties of Returning
9          Conclusion: The Politics of Mobility
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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