Unknown Speaker 0:00

Hello, everybody. I'm Roger Waldinger. I'm professor of sociology at UCLA director of the Center for the Study of international migration. And I am delighted to welcome you to today's events, which is the last in a series that we have conducted throughout the academic year. And we've done so in conjunction with our colleagues and friends at the Center for comparative Immigration Studies. At UC San Diego, I want to thank all of you who have been with us for most of all of the year, this is obviously an adventure and uncharted territory, we had no idea how it would work out. But having been with you for 30 weeks, our senses that this has been a great success, we've attracted a large and consistent and diverse audience. And we think we've engaged we've lit we've discussed, works a very great interest and we have felt that the discussion has consistently been stimulating and enjoyable. Now, today's A is a is a special event, and a way to, I suppose in a way, motivated by some shellfish considerations of my not my own, namely, to celebrate the achievements of graduates of our own sociology department. Doing so by discussing five terrific books that have appeared over the past year 18 months with comments from two of our very distinguished graduates of our program. And it's a particular pleasure for me since I can say that I knew all of the participants of these in this today's panel way back when and and sure these projects begin at the point when they were just a relatively vague idea. So today, let me let me first begin by introducing the speakers, the ML, I'll do so in the order of the presentation, I should say that we divided the program up into two halves because we have five books to discuss. So that will, we'll discuss will hear from three authors and then a comment from David Fitzgerald will will then pause for a brief into exchange with the audience and then we'll return to hear from two other authors with a comment by Jane. So let me introduce first. Laura Henriques who is the author of of love and papers how immigration policy affects romance and family. Laura, you want to raise your hand so everyone can see. Little Shiraz Ellis who is the author of materials speed, mending illegality and ethnic community in Los Angeles. And then David truth, football and the author of football in the park, immigrant soccer, and the creation of social ties. So those are the first three books that we'll be discussing. There'll be a comment by David Fitzgerald. And then we will segue to tahseen Shams who is the author of here, there and elsewhere, the making of immigrants identities in a globalized world. And last but not least, Eli Wilson, off the front of the house back of the house raising inequality in the lives of restaurant workers with a comment from JM Kim. So he thought each of them will talk for roughly 10 minutes, there'll be a comment of 10 minutes I will be vigilant timekeeper will pause them and exchange ideas with the audience. People can send their questions in via chat or raise your hand. And then we'll segue to the second set of books. And then we'll open up for replies from the authors, as well as read the comments from the audience. So without any further ado, Laura, the floor is yours.

Unknown Speaker 3:34

Great. Thank you all for being here. And for Roger for putting this panel together. I'm excited to talk about my book, which came out right when this started. I know I got it right when I did some panic shopping, getting ready for this pandemic ticket and came home to find my book very wet on my doorstep. So it's it's great to be able to talk about it and to think about, you know, yeah, I'm interacting with people about it, even if it's still over zoom. So my book 11 papers on immigration policy affects romance and family examines how illegality functions as a source of lasting social inequality that fuels the continued exclusion of Latino families over generations. So I draw on interviews with 1.5 generation undocumented young adults and tracing their transitions through dating, marriage and parenting, really to show how policies shape who they date and if and how they advance relationships, but also how they perform their roles as parents and partners. So I draw on as a follow up interviews as well conducted two years after DACA implementation, as well as 31 interviews with formerly undocumented young adults who have recently legalized their status mostly through marriage, really to document how the imprint of illegality remains even among transitioning to these legal or eliminating legal statuses. And then finally, I include To interviews with 39, mostly citizen romantic partners of participants to explore how immigration policies also constrain the everyday lives and upward mobility of these US citizens. So to give you a sense of the book, I wanted to share three stories that I present in the opening pages to exemplify the ways that immigration policies disrupt family formation. Okay, so um, so Daniel really talked a lot about how his immigration status made it difficult for him to date, right. So Daniel talks about not having a car to pick up as date on because he refused to risk driving without a license. And then also going out was often beyond his means, because he was working a minimum wage job at a fast food restaurant that he really hated. And so only work the minimum amount of hours he needed to sort of maintain, you know, the minimum rather than working extra. When he did go out, he had to show his Mexican passport to buy beer, revealing his undocumented status to those around him. So he feared that another girlfriend would think that he wasn't good enough. And he talked a lot about past romantic relationships in which he had been broken up with precisely because of these reasons, I'm not being able to pick a state up, not not wanting to go out to places where he might be rejected. I'm not having money to pay for the dates and things like that. Right. So really, what's his example, we can see that the status is creating structural barriers to his everyday life, constraining his romantic choices, but also feeling these emotional insecurities that are creating long term consequences for his ability to establish a family, right? Because if he's not dating, then how is that sort of going to progress. And a second example, we have Regina who talks about how her immigration status affected many aspects of her marriage. And one in particular instance, she talked about her engagement party, where they were she was celebrating her engagement and her upcoming wedding, to a US citizen partner and a close friends have asked her jokingly Cut the bullshit and just tell us the truth, are you getting married to fix her papers, and that's really set the tone for her wedding and her subsequent marriage, even though at the time she believed that she was ineligible to adjust her status through marriage. I'm really kind of pushed her to pull away from her friendship networks become more socially isolated, question decisions that she was making, and her relationship with her partner. And even though she eventually was able to legalize her status, these experiences going through the legalization process actually shaded much of her early marriage experiences in her subsequent relationship to her partner.

Unknown Speaker 7:46

And then finally, we have Luis, who was in his early 30s, and holding his toddler daughter, through the most of the interview and talking about his feelings about being whether he was a good father or not, right. I'm talking about how he had delayed having children and beyond the time that he wanted to because he feared separations or deportation, that he felt guilty for not being able to provide his daughter, he talked a lot about being feeling like he was a bad father, that his daughter was being punished. And he felt that it was his fault, because who he was, rather than, you know, sort of placing on society and immigration policy. And so really, what we can see is these sort of feelings about his inability to be a good father, especially because he couldn't provide for her and the ways that he wanted to and other people expected him to, and also worrying about how the status would harm her as she got older. And I saw this also in sort of parents with older children not being able to provide for them in the ways that they wanted. So these stories really illustrate how immigration policies creep into these more personal and private corners of people's lives, and ways that ways that we might expect or at least hope would get better with more inclusionary immigration policies. And Docker really offers an opportunity to sort of test that and look into that more. Because Daniel and Luis both applied for and received DACA early on in the program, and Regina was able to become a lawful permanent resident and eventually a citizen through marriage. But unfortunately, what the second wave of interviews uncovers is that there are these persisting consequences of undocumented status despite transitions to lemonly legal or legal statuses. So Daniel talks about having DACA benefits becoming transitioning into a better job or being a more stable income, that he could spend on dates and non necessities, having a California ID and beginning to learn how to drive for the first time, you know, in his late 20s because now he wasn't afraid of, you know, had the money to buy a car, but also wasn't afraid of the cons of the financial and deportation consequences of driving without a license. But his previous experiences with rejection had kept him from committing to a serious relationship for over two years, and he felt really left behind as he watched friends, have babies get married, get engaged, and really, really tackling this idea of being excluded for over a decade and young adulthood, really internalizing these feelings about being an undesirable partner, and that continuing to hold him back. Regina also talks about having to to, despite legalizing her status, through marriage having to go through that process forced her to, to, to navigate the state, right, so having to follow her husband to the east coast, leaving college to do that, eventually re enrolling in college, but not being able to engage in internships out of the place where they had moved to or other kinds of things, because they were trying to maintain a joint household in the case that their immigration case was was investigated, right. So this really influenced her subsequent educational and career decisions,

Unknown Speaker 11:07

as well as for social decisions sort of moving forward and having to forego these opportunities. And then in Louise's case, we see that past barriers reemerge, as he realizes he has limited professional skills because he spent so many years outside of a professional environment even though he has a college degree. So in his his shift to try and take on a salaried position at a nonprofit was very difficult for him, even though he was able to sort of provide for his daughter's better, still worrying about what's going to happen in the future. And him and his wife both talked about what would come What if this is sort of this rug is pulled out from underneath him and his family, which is what we've seen happen in these past couple of years. So these interviews sort of collectively uncover the persisting consequences of undocumented status despite transitions into more liminal or legal statuses. So these three stories illustrate my main argument that immigration policies cultivated during consequences for undocumented young adults and their families and identify, I identify three mechanisms through which immigration policies everyday consequences are transformed into these enduring inequalities. Right. So first, that the illegality limits the material resources available to build and sustain families, specifically that immigration policies are constraining their everyday choices, and limiting undocumented young adults ability to meet their own and others expectations, ultimately compromising their ability to form the families that they desire. And these seemingly innocuous decisions about where to go on a date, choosing not to go out because of not having enough money or being divided up our concerns about driving are really shaped by immigration status. And he's really accumulating over time to determine if and how relationships proceed. And importantly, I show that this process is deeply gender, right. So Daniel and Louise provide good examples of how men's gendered provided expectations compromised their ability to negotiate limited financial resources, because they're expected to drive to pay to take care of their children and their and they're partners. And really, these gendered expectations are influencing when and where and how undocumented young men and women are differently experiencing and negotiating illegality. Second, I show that in addition to sort of these enduring consequences throughout an individual immigrants life, we see that illegalities consequences construct over generations. And this really emerges in concert in thinking about the experiences of citizen partners and children, who are also constrained as they share in fears of deportation and low socioeconomic status, and are self regulating their movement and social participation. And many are also adopting strategies to mediate the shared consequences of trying to help their undocumented partners and parents. And then third, I look sort of longitudinally right at individuals who receive DACA, or legalized immigration status, I'm really documenting the remnants of illegality, even as immigration policies are changing, or individuals are transitioning to more secure statuses, right. So what are what I kind of show is that this sort of steady march of time is pulling undocumented young adults along the life course and setting up consequences that Outlast undocumented status. So they made or avoided making decisions which permanently structure their family formation process, and the timing of the socio legal changes right when they get DACA or when they get permanent residency. If these align with the timing of expected family formations, and transitions, then that really determines the extent to which undocumented in adults are seeing these enduring consequences. But if they're able to make these transitions, then they sort of see less than during consequences. So together these three mechanisms are really ensuring that the effects of immigration policies and door and contribute to persistent marginalization, particularly within the Latin x community where there are a large number of undocumented immigrants. Stop there. All right. Go ahead. Go ahead and proceed.

Unknown Speaker 15:30

First of all, thank you so much Roger for organizing this and bringing us all back together. My book for autos is an ethnography of a community of fruit vendors. In Los Angeles. The presence of photos on street corners throughout Los Angeles represents a confluence of larger social and economic forces. Fruit petals are labor migrants who have crossed international borders in search of improved economic opportunities. But because most of them are undocumented, they confront obstacles that prevent them from legally participating in the formal economy. Now, I wouldn't be a good ethnographer if I didn't regale you with one of the first stories or interactions that I had with a vendor on a street corner and this really opens the book for readers. His source was the first foot that all that I visited regularly and friended, he was clearly perplexed at my presence. In the beginning, I asked too many questions and stood too close to him because it's infrequent and soft spoken responses. were barely audible above the constant demand of street street traffic. He was 21 years old when I met in 2006. He was slender, dark skinned and had a wispy hair mustache and go to one of the very first conversations that we had went like this. I asked him, Do you work every day? He said, I keep bank hours. He laughed at my puzzled face with his knife he gestured towards the bank that he was standing in front of and said that he worked six days a week reduced hours on Saturday and was closed on Sunday. A few days a few months after visiting him regularly, I went to his street corner and didn't find him. Along the curb next to the sidewalk where he normally park his pushcart, I saw a melting pile of crushed ice. Had I just missed him, was a Salvadoran parking lot attendant who answered all of my pressing questions. The Health Department had done a sweep they had dumped his was his protest into large trash bags. And before taking the pushcart, they had asked him to dump all of the remaining ice onto the sidewalk. Did they arrest him? I asked, thinking immediately that it could be related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I was told that he was having to get given a ticket and had been picked up by some of his friends immediately asked. I don't understand, I said, trying to make sense of all the details, the attendant shrug and said bluntly, it is illegal to be a street vendor. At that point, I had no sense of how crackdowns work, or how often they occurred, I was immediately full of questions. But the questions that I had that day only scratched the surface of a complicated relationship the street vendors had with the city give throughout my time, the field what proved more interesting was the by sign on network that helped vendors with STEM This and other assaults on their economic and social well being. And it was a complicated web of relationships within within that by Sano or compatriot network that really captured my sociological attention. So even though a vendor works alone on a street corner, he is part of a large network of hospitals who are also his bi sentinels. And in this way, he is not alone. Now, here's a mapping of all the vendors that I followed across the years during my fieldwork, one thing that you might notice is that a large majority of the vendors are from the town of those windows, in the Mexican state of Puebla, and that was unexpected and proved really interesting in assessing how social networks work. In the bottom right hand corner, you'll also see hit out of it, who was a labor recruiter and go your thing, and he was central to this concentration of fruit vendors from this small town equivalent. Not only that he helped recruit and transport immigrants from those moodles to LA his family connections in Los Angeles ensured that these young men upon arrival would have jobs within the fruit vending market. Now, street vending has a long history

Unknown Speaker 19:22

among the recently arrived immigrants in our collective imagination, we might think of turn of the century New York when we think of immigrants street peddlers to be sure street vendors have a sizable presence in New York today. But whereas New York has 20,000 street vendors selling food, flowers, books and art, as well as other products in Los Angeles, they're an estimated 50,000 street vendors of which 10,000 sell food products. And these significant numbers should not obscure an important characteristic that made Los Angeles distinct from New York City. That is that throughout my time of the field, Los Angeles was largest Americans. That prohibited street vending, and this prohibition often resulted in the confiscation of product pushcarts, fines and citations. And at times arrest and street vendors were subject to scrutiny, citation and arrest based on laws and regulations from various city, county and state agencies. Enforcement was routinely carried out by the police department, the Department of Public Works, and they and the LA County Department of Public Health. Many vendors were also undocumented and were the subject of federal immigration laws that prohibited their presence in the country. Now throughout my time in the field, it was not uncommon to hear of vendors working on street corners just days after arriving in the country. At the end of the workday as I rode around town in a pickup truck with Christiane Fadiman. While hauling pushcarts back to the storage commissary, they would honk and not to their fellow food that I was working on street corners. Carmen always followed each encounter with a quick description for me. That guy works for a guy when he's been here for for a few weeks. That one doesn't know how to hold a knife yet he's new and most often, he just got here he's from those moodles tomb and doesn't want us was Christine's hometown. Although I did not select this population of workers knowing there would be such recent rivals and an occupation of heavily networked by sanos. These characteristics proved to be important when scrutinizing the impact of social networks. No, I gained entree into this world by visiting slowly visiting individual vendors working in state neighborhoods throughout the city between 2006 and 2012. And I remain in contact with many of them via text and social media today. Throughout the years I did 22 in depth interviews that I repeatedly you know these 22 people that I repeatedly went back to and continued questioning during long hour long sessions. The majority of the fruit vendors that I approached were young Spanish speaking Latino men, because this demographic was over represented among rebuttals. They were also primarily from the small town in Bozeman, those in web now dropped six years in the field. I interviewed other individuals who touched upon the lives of vendors. I interviewed the owner of the wholesale fruit market where vendor shopped and found that she was also from Puebla, and then later in my field. In my research, I visited Mexico City and those numbers in 2011 and 2017, to interview fruit vendors who had returned to Mexico, as well as the families that they left behind.

Unknown Speaker 22:26

My book focuses on these immigrants and fiddles and tells the story of ethnic community in challenging times. It is an account of their lives as migrants as workers and as members of an ethnic community. And it is a story about immigrant adaptation among entrepreneurial newcomers in a hostile context and perception. Even though we don't typically think of Los Angeles as hostile because we considered a sanctuary city. We don't often take into account how local laws impact immigrants, especially when those local laws or anti poverty policing laws. Now for these vendors, their hometown, or by sanitize, come to define their work and personal lives in meaningful and powerful ways, but in a way that contradicts how migration scholars have conceptualized immigrant networks. Migration scholars have long documented how newcomers lean on their community of bystanders for assistance upon arrival, and immigrant social networks and the social capital that they provide to their members are important sources of support. Yet, the positive functions of immigrant social networks, especially among newly arrived immigrants have received much scholarly attention. In my work, however, I move beyond how immigrants get chopped using their networks, and instead focused on how those social networks both build and bind the buy signal community thereafter. My book functions as a critique, critique of previous conceptualizations of positive social networks that are only positive. And I do this because a focus on positive functions of networks can flatten complex narratives and obscure the exploitative undercurrents that can also constitute it. relationships between people are complicated and dynamic. And in my book, I argue that it's unrealistic to assume the ties between individuals offer only benefits, especially when vulnerabilities related to context of reception, immigration status, class and gender are present. In my work, I conceptualize the ethnic cage to make sense of both the benefits and detriments of social networks and social capital. For some the ethnic cages large invisible and functions to corral community while keeping threats at bay. For others, the ethnic ages small visible and functions to confine the individual while that same community does harm good as I showed throughout my book, the ethnic cage can serve different functions at different times for the same individual because personal social and work relationships are dynamic. The Mexican immigrants in my study open doors to newcomers both to offer help and to exploit and this is the cage newcomers are not turned away. They're bison I hate grants them entry but it does not guarantee benevolence, like others before me who stumbled on unsavory aspects of immigrant lives. This is not the story that I set out to record. field work across the years revealed how structural hardship inspired ingenuity amongst with beddoes. But this ingenuity often helped and harmed a lot by Sonos. And across the years, I saw both the promise and pain of community. So I hope this piqued your interest in the book. Thank you very much. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 25:33

terrific. And now we will turn to David Drury the author of football in the park.

Unknown Speaker 25:41

Thank you get this out of the way here. Okay. So I've been looking forward to this moment for a long time, probably too long. And, but like my former classmates on this panel, this project began in Hanes Hall. And I couldn't have asked for a better place to launch a study on migration than UCLA. I have fond memories of my time in graduate school, and I'm grateful for the support and guidance I received from so many people, especially Roger Waldinger, whose sincere enthusiasm and belief in what I was up to push me forward as others understandably, question what I was doing playing soccer and drinking beer all day in the park. So it really is a tremendous honor and privilege and pleasure to be here with you all, even if virtually celebrating these wonderful books on the diversity and complexity of immigrant experiences in Los Angeles and beyond. I'd like to begin my discussion of football in the park by showing a brief video of Park life one of the men in the book texted me a few years after I left Los Angeles. For my book attempts to capture the camaraderie, creativity and coordination revealed in this video that is often missing from migration studies. From the video still, you begin to get a sense of what this world was all about playing soccer and drinking beer. But with time I saw how both activities were more about being together in a way that resonated with the men's interests and biographies and aligned with the rest of their lives. And it was through these mundane at times invigorating and joyful interactions that they built relationships, gain recognition and exchange resources, but so much more is revealed when we press play.

Unknown Speaker 27:47

All right, so although some of the details are hidden from you, I'm guessing from the smiles I can make out over zoom that this scene feels fun and entertaining. You might also sense how the men make their interactions dramatic and meaningful through their exuberant displays and playful taunts. Indeed, the book's central argument is that fun with others what sociologists refer to associate ability is not automatic, but takes work and collaboration. What you watched was an achievement or accomplishment built in group history in the demands of the situation. For example, there's the ritual of playing soccer and gathering afterwards to socialize and drink beer. And the park provides a space to do this. Although it's far from neutral or trouble free as the men's time there's sometimes created conflict with neighbors police and family members. The park draws revolving cast of characters that energize the proceedings in this case two chairs Parker, regulars juggling the ball beers in hand to the delight of onlookers, eager to applaud and berate. You also see how the men draw from a local history to spice up the fun, namely Polo, who started declining form and evens ascendancy to galactical status. The men's confidence and creativity also come alive via events playful sin tacos, nickname or polos willingness to play the fool. Taken together, the video provides a peek into the men's complex humanity contrary to more one dimensional portraits of Latino immigrant men that saturate the airwaves, watching the video transports me back to the park and similar scenes I tried to capture in my book. I'd like I'd say I'd now like to share two photographs that are not in the book. football in the park captures a moment in time and one filter by my own biases and experiences in the park. Furthermore, social worlds are never static but constantly evolving. Someone I met at a previous book talk sent me a wonderful photo from his time at Mar Vista, the park I studied while he was a graduate student at UCLA in the 1990s. Well before I initiated this project, the photo captures a recognizable scene from the park a group of men cheerfully posing on a picnic table before After a game of soccer, I believe I know some of the men in the photo and heard many stories of Park life from this period. But the meaning and history of this particular moment in time is unknown to me. I imagine many of you have your own photos and rich memories of playing and socializing and parks as well. Indeed, that is the promise and potentially that possibility of informal play in public space, which you might have rediscovered during the pandemic. football in the park is my attempt to capture the meaning organization and history of this familiar global scene that many people only glimpse from afar through the prism of narrow stereotypes. In fact, outsiders tend to perceive and represent the situation on and off the marvista soccer field is unruly, even dangerous. The second photo celebrates the culmination of a project that began in January 2008. In mid January of this year, when the book came out, Paulo texted me a photo this photo of him holding my book with a group of guys standing in the very same parking lot as the previous photo. Seeing my book out in the world and polos hands warms my heart. For my book aim to honor how Polo and the other hula lowers the parkade imbue their lives with meaning by coming together to play soccer and socialize in a public park. For the men I described in my book are not one dimensional caricature is deserving sympathy or scorn but people living full and complex lives in the challenging circumstances. Indeed, while it was neighborhood grievances that had originally drawn me to the park, it was the soccer players themselves who captured my attention and who deserve to be brought out of the shadows.

Unknown Speaker 31:37

Let me conclude with the few lessons learned first and treat informal, informal play in all its wholesome, obscene forms as important in its own right, rather than frivolous beyond the pale or proxies for something else. I came to this project in part because there have been so little written about Latino men playing soccer in public parts parks despite its ubiquity in cities small and large. I believe my book sheds light on the inner workings of this familiar scene, while also speaking to other issues such as network formation and immigrant reception. Second, I urge you to situate worlds of play within the context of the participants histories and everyday lives. It took time and patience, but I gained greater insight in what into what I was observing at the park by going beyond its boundaries. So to my surprise, I saw how the park emerged as the safest and most respectable place to drink beer and occasionally fight which revealed underlying structural inequalities. And by following the men at work, I saw how they were welcomed as workers in ways they weren't always as people in the park. a different book would have explored in greater detail how Park life connected to the men's family and home lives. Third, while surveys and interviews can reveal a lot, he's more distance and short term approaches mists with only deep, long term engagement can uncover by spending years in the park and shadowing these men elsewhere. I saw how friendships faded and flourished, newcomers transformed into regulars, events, lived on in story form, and routines changed and solidified over time, all of which I've tried to capture in my book. Thank you for listening. I welcome your thoughts and questions.

Unknown Speaker 33:26

Okay, terrific. And now we segue to David Fitzgerald for comment.

Unknown Speaker 33:30

Thank you, Roger. You know, I was just scrolling through the list of participants on this zoom. And it is truly a privilege to be part of this community of scholars, the people on the panel, as well as those who are joining us virtually, and to have the chance to celebrate the achievement of friends and colleagues who have also called UCLA home. The three books that have been assigned to me hang together exceptionally well. They're all based on everyday life of mostly working class, Latino immigrants and contemporary LA. They're all based on participant observation and qualitative interviews. The description is thick, the hidden social processes are laid plain, and the personal portraits deeply humanistic. As a reader, I felt like I was on the scene, and I knew the people there. In fact, it was it was good to see old friends from the book just now in the video clip. There's a lot to learn from an engage in praising these books. But for the purposes of today's discussion, I want to focus on three common themes around migration that cut across all of the books, and those are legality networks and the macro context of shifting migration patterns that shape local integration in LA. We'll start with CEOs book for demos, which we should mention, just won the Honorable Mention and the aasa international migration section Book Award. She'll be honored at the August esa so congratulations, Rosie. For that, the main contribution here is around what migrant networks do. And as you just saw, she introduces the concept of an ethnic cage. The cage includes elements of a protective barrier, like a shark cage that protects the diver inside, but the metaphor is mostly negative. Her work explains the mechanism linking initial mobility, followed by a network trap. As migrants from a small town and the Mexican interior effectively fold those windows rely on their social networks to migrate to LA. Pioneer migrants who have gone before them finance the journey of their buy sandals and provide newcomers with lodging information about how to find a way in the metropolis and jobs as pioneers are the owners of the pushcarts which they hire new migrants to operate. But the same pioneers that exploit their workers by withholding wages by encouraging employees who often are also their renters to follow into this downward spiral of indebtedness, in which their late rent payments are linked to their employment and lower wages, all kinds of forms of abuse. So in many settings, that kind of situation would not be infinitely reproduced, because words of the misdeeds would spread throughout the social networks, and that would cut off a source of new workers. But in this case, the migrant workers do not share this critical information about abuses with their friends and family back in Mexico. And they have a good reason for that the migrants who have suffered a lot of hardships want to appear to have been successful on their migration to the States. Their effort to maintain their prestige in the home community in Mexico, a status that has been taken from them and Los Angeles lends them to a situation of censoring this highly relevant information. So the networks are maintained, but the quality of the information flowing through them becomes degraded over time. New migrants use those networks to get to LA, and the cycle is perpetuated. Soto co puts the entire story together by showing the causes the effects the intervening mechanisms all the way across the migration circuit. For multisided fieldwork reveals the missing pieces of the story that would have been lost by focusing exclusively on La, or only on those windows. The book emphasis emphasizes an ethnic cage but it seems to me like it's an ethno legal newcomer cage. To push the concept forward, I would invite further consideration of what the fruit that was or a case of context is marked by a new migration network, those windows is at its first generation about migration, with potentially lower levels of information to potential migrants about the conditions that they can expect in the US relatedly very few people in the network enjoy legal status. This is not multi generation community of migration where many people were able to take advantage of the Erica legalization For example, this is overwhelmingly a first generation dominated by unauthorized migrant network. And its immigrants occupy this marginally illegal business niche because of all kinds of licensing and other problems. So all of those factors makes these migrant workers exceptionally vulnerable to exploitation. And this is not a comparative study, nor does it need to be. But my main question is, how transportable are the lessons in this study, to cases of older migration circuits, with a higher prevalence of authorized status, and people who are engaged in more fully legal economic niches? Let's turn to David's book on football in the park. The main contribution here is the idea of social tying, rather than assuming social ties as an existing social fact. The book shows the process of network formation. And specifically, it shows how trust is created through repeat interactions in these recreational spaces that we just saw, that include sharing information about job opportunities. And all of this happens despite the lack of a residential enclave or a business enclave, and in situations where the hometown of origin is irrelevant. So the way the study moves beyond the hometown was especially intriguing to me. As someone who's lived in migrant hometowns in Mexico, I see the world through hometown lenses, and because of that, I see hometown connections on every corner and today's event seems like hometown association of UCLA event. In fact, I've been to a number of soccer games in Southern California, and parks that look like the one that David shows. They're all fielding hometown based teams. That's why I was there. And the hometown In Mexico, where I've worked publicly display trophies from their soccer teams in Chicago, in California, but even when I had more hair 20 years ago, the hometown soccer clubs were already becoming mixed. They included players that had been met through work, or from living in the same apartment complex men on the field, various other places outside of a strictly hometown connection. So a question for both ruscio and David is how do we get from Rose's hometown centric network story to David's la centric story? What's happening between these accounts? Exactly. Why are these hometown ties unraveling, at least for the men in the park, who, at least in the broader socio mobility phase of the day, are inhabiting a pan ethnic Latino space comprised of people from many hometowns and many national origins within Latin America, it's a chance to look not just that network formation, but at restructuring. And that endeavor would seem like it's very much in keeping with David's broader project of looking at social tying is a dynamic process by including social untime.

Unknown Speaker 41:13

Another point of dialogue with receives work is to ask to what extent is the park a cage when difference between the occupational niches of the contractors in the park and the dental business is the nature of the clients, the fruit petals might have repeat customers who come out of their offices that buy fruit every day, but each of the transactions is discrete, and it's paid in full at the end of the interaction. The fruit there was really no need to develop deep relationships with customers for their business to work. By contrast, for the contractors in the park, a successful business is predicated on repeat interactions with clients based on very ambiguous reciprocation over long time periods years. So these qualities of interaction between the contractors and the clients then carry over into relations among the contractors and the park, because they're sharing information about job opportunities, but they're also hiring each other as subcontractors. They're recommending reliable contractors to their clients. The mutual advantages of trust in these repeated exchanges among contractors, that lack of clear mechanism for settling debts at the end of the day, means their long term interests become much more aligned with each other over time. So this alignment, in contrast with that of the full data is where the current owners have an incentive to exploit their workers to the hilt. It's another reason to wonder if in a different kind of economic sector, these hometown networks might be much less exploitative. Back to David's book, it doesn't dwell on questions of legal status, in part for the understandable reason that it uses real nicknames, photographs, and an actual place name that's identifiable. But what are the broader social conditions that produce these intense interactions and the long hours of socializing there, does not depart loomed so large in the lives of many regulars, in part because of the indirect effects of unauthorized status. There's a revealing contrast reported at one point between the older players who hang out at the park long after the game is over, and the younger generation born in LA, it would be US citizens who are more likely to come and just play soccer and then leave. The book points out that there are other potential drinking spaces, but they could lead to getting into more serious trouble with the police and a heightened risk of deportation. The economic constraints of unauthorized status means that the men are less able to afford more expensive recreational activities, including League Soccer. The job information that's usually exchanged in these spaces is of a particular type. It's usually restricted to off the books kinds of work that doesn't require legal papers. So I wonder if Robert Putnam would be thrilled or depressed with this book, his seminal work on Italy champion soccer clubs as backbones of democracy. And then his later work bemoans that Americans bowl alone because it undermines civic engagement. It's ironic that the thick multiplex ties formed in the soccer Park are produced by exclusion from political membership, rather than being the condition for its full fruition. Let me turn now to Laura's work on 11 papers, which is just exceptionally illuminating and truly heartbreaking also in in many places. The main takeaway here is a deep understanding of how legal status particularly unauthorized status, impinges on but doesn't prevent romantic relationships across status, with negative spillover effects into many domains of social life, and even across generations. So like David's work on networks, the study does not assume an immigrant family as a starting point. But rather it's present at their attempted creation. The text makes the question of illegality Central, as Laura just described a few moments ago. So my first question is, what are the broader patterns of Mexican migration to the US that are producing the conditions for those extensive cross border unions. And I think there's several factors worth considering. First is the large absolute and relative size of the unauthorized population, which means that there are extensive exposure opportunities and a lack of stigma around the status because it's so common.

Unknown Speaker 45:45

Next, there's the long duration of most unauthorized migrants residents in the US now, about two thirds of that population has been in the US for at least 10 years. And that figure is even higher for people of Mexican birth. And then we're in an age of extensive border enforcement that makes returning to the hometown in Mexico to look for a spouse the way that someone's forebears might have done now quite expensive and dangerous for getting back into the US, like football in the park. But unlike for that 11 papers tells a US centric story. I bring that up because ethnographic work going back at least to the 1970s and Mexican communities of migrant origin, shows that returning migrants with us legal status, citizenship or a green card, often we're able to convert that into improve prospects and local marriage markets compared to their peers. So the second question is, what's the articulation between that more instrumental valuation of legal status, at least as it's been reported, in this older sending community literature, with the contemporary interviewees general rejection of a utilitarian motivation for meeting someone with papers or US citizenship? Finally, reading across the authors did a little seal in David's informants, which were, you know, observed in this ethnographic context, in an overwhelmingly male setting, did they develop cross status romantic relationships? What were their exposure opportunities, their experiences, and how did they interpret it? I had many other reactions. But for now, I simply want to thank each of the authors, as well as Roger, many of the other faculty advisors who are on the zoom for the years of work that have produced these three outstanding books. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 47:39

Okay, terrific. Thank you, David, for such a wonderful comment that both told the audience more about the books, but also raised a series of appreciative yet critical and probing comments. So what I'd like to do is engage in dialogue briefly with the with the audience. And what I can do is allow people who have sent me questions raise your hand to ask a question. So I'm going to ruin Hernandez. Leon has a question. And let me give him Let him talk through them. Can you hear me? Yes.

Unknown Speaker 48:17

Okay. Well, I just have, you know, questions for each of the three authors. For loud I read a question in the chat about this concept that they see that Rachel has developed her loudness work made me think of it. And I wrote Lara up exmaple. Being here today, you may think of the concept of toxic, toxic ties. I understand that your focus is on the state. But does the concept of toxic ties shed light on the personal relations of young undocumented adults? Should I read the questions for the other guys? Go ahead. Sure. Okay, a question for SEO. Can you say more about when the ethnic age works in one direction versus the other? supportive versus exploitative, is undocumented status or condition? And then for David, truly, what other forms of play and leisure should researchers study to learn more about spaces and mechanisms of integration for migrants? Or simply to learn about self relaxation? What about immigrant women? Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 49:20

Okay, terrific. Thank you. So why don't the the one of the speakers respond to a revenge question, and we'll come back at the end of the set entire session for responses to the commentators. So let's go in alphabetical order. So Laura, Rocio and and David.

Unknown Speaker 49:38

So I appreciate that question for Ben. So I do know Daisy's work. Obviously, she's from UCLA too. But for folks that don't know, right, so this idea of toxic ties is the idea that documented folks sort of abuse, exploit or demean undocumented people, partners, family members, friends, but It's really about the relationship across statuses. And this idea that that, that there's unequal power relationships right within, within those those cross status relationships. So so I do find that that tends to be the assumption and looking at cross status, romantic relationships. But that's not what I find. And I would say the vast majority of these these experiences, I think there are instances of the example with the, the, I think there are instances of this happening. But, but it's not usually a cross status, when there's accusations on the case of the zation of your dismissing for papers that was, you know, another document in person. And I think that that's a different sort of piece. But I would say most relationships are, are not toxic ties, they're supportive. And that's part of the reason why the book is called of love, and papers, right, that these relationships are of love, and that the partners are supporting each other. And there's a lot of intention around using one's citizenship status to to help and support and facilitate the navigation of their undocumented partners. And I would say the very few cases that I did find sort of abuse or intimate partner violence, were not, you couldn't necessarily trace those two cross status power differential differentials. But also in the one case that there was a citizen partner and undocumented partner, I'd say it's important to recognize that that was not that gender played a role there. So it's actually undocumented men who had concerns about documented women, accusing them of violence, and that having deportation concerns because of how gender and immigration status sort of intersect and make meaning in the deportation process and regime. So but that was sort of one one case out of, you know, 150. So there, there wasn't much, much presence of these sort of toxic ties. Okay, terrific regime. Yeah, so in the book, I detail how

Unknown Speaker 52:23

by Sonos from those numbers were often rally when bad things happen. So whether it was a crackdown, or an arrest, or a death, you know, the it was routine to have collectors or the collection of money to help pay the expenses of a of these unintended issues that would arise. And because the whole population, the whole community was very precarious, these quick tests would happen often. So you know, to answer the question, that's one of the ways that these were supportive networks. But in the book, I also focus an entire chapter on the story of Manuel who was arrested. And once he's arrested, an ice hold is triggered. And so when the word spreads among the Fruitvale community that Manuel might get deported, everyone kind of descends. He is taking his property, not because they want to help him or I've spent, you know, they, they opt to help themselves instead of trying to help my win. So the roommates try to confiscate his truck, because they're concerned that he's not going to be around to pay the rent, his workers confiscated push cars, because they want to keep working another day while he's in jail. And everybody basically decides that if he's going to be deported, and he's lost, everybody else can scramble and get the few resources that he had to save themselves. So this is like the nature of the precarious network, right? They rely on each other when bad things happen. They do these collectors, they spread money, or they contribute money to people in need. But when bad things befall one of the members, they also trigger all of these processes that prompt an outsider to think that it's, you know, exploitative or problematic. But both of these scenarios are because they vendors are in a very precarious situation. Right? I think they, they have to look out for each other, but they also have to continuously look out for themselves. And this is one of the features of the ethnic age, the both the help and the exploitation that is inherent in this and is undocumented status of condition. I definitely think that undocumented status, structures of the ethnic cage and a lot of the precarity that the vendors experiences because of the undocumented status and the precarity that comes from that. But I I do wonder whether the exploitative tendencies are a feature of relying so fully on members of the community not only for your job, but for your housing, for you know, your romantic associations. And so it's it's interesting, it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next generation because as David noted, this is a snapshot of first generation immigrants, very soon after their arrival, who, you know, these, these young men haven't established concrete ties to the country, either through time or through, you know, romantic relationships with others, like Laura's respondents have. So I think the next generation of migration scholars coming out of UCLA contract the Blue Devils in the second and third generation see how things change.

Unknown Speaker 55:36

Okay, terrific. Thank you, David. Yeah, so, uh, thank you, Robin. First, I would say that play and leisure, you know, should be studied. And I don't think there's been enough attention to play and leisure, whether it's soccer or otherwise. So I would kind of be my first answer that I, you know, I would encourage people to look at this as an important sources you mentioned of integration of self realization, etc, etc. And in terms of, you know, what forms I mean, I think soccer is is is is a big activity and Latino communities and other immigrant populations. But I mean, I'm less less directive in terms of what activities but giving a greater emphasis kind of on contextualizing their organization, their meaning in the particular setting. So I'm now in rural Virginia, where I don't see the same type of pickup scenes here, in part, because I think Latino immigrants feel a little less safe to kind of hang out in public in this way. And as a result, of course, they have the same love and passion for soccer. And therefore, there's been much more kind of attention and interest in the leaks, because they're, they can have a little more protection by permitting the fields having more of an organizational structure. So it's the same activity, but in a different context. So I would just kind of encourage you to really think about the context of whatever form of play and leisure you're looking at. And finally, in terms of, you know, what about immigrant women, I mean, I think you're asking in terms of their leisure and play practices, same thing, I would encourage people to, to study that and pay attention to it and, but also recognizing that there are certain kind of forms of again, it depending on the situation, the context, etc, that women do face, you know, often greater kind of sources of exclusion and challenges and being out in public. So these men were very much stigmatized as Latino, but being a man in public was less of a threat, maybe for women in their lives. So obviously, this is very much a gendered story, in terms of some of the their feelings of comfort in public. But again, the key point is greater attention to play and leisure, I would love to see in migration studies.

Unknown Speaker 57:50

Okay, terrific. So just before segwaying to the second part of the program, I just want to further extend the congratulations that they've mentioned. So just this week, the international migration section of the ESA announced a variety of different awards. And those awards include, as David mentioned, hon mentioned for the best book, for overseers Allison's book, but also the best Book Award for a tahseen Shams book when we'll hear from testing in a moment. In addition, several other people on the call were also awarded. So Peter kallstrom, received the Best paper award, Dr. Ghali honorable mention for the best paper award and, and really the best graduate student award. So this is a terrific opportunity to celebrate the scholarship that has emanated and continuing to come from this department. Okay, so without further ado, I will I'll turn the floor over to to tahseen. Before doing so I also want to just one a different word of thanks to Jason, who is joining us from Berlin. So who is it is a late evening for her and so I'm really appreciative of your willingness to spend this additional time with us. Okay, seeing the floor is yours.

Unknown Speaker 59:06

Thank you, Roger. First of all, thank you so much, Roger, and David for organizing this lovely and unique event. Um, this is definitely a homecoming for me, because this is where it all began. And this is extra meaningful for me, because I get to celebrate my book with my intellectual parents, Roger Waldinger. And when Hernandez Leon, so many of my UCLA professors and friends and as they say members of the UCLA mafia. Thank you, Jan, for reading my book. I look forward to your comments. And most importantly, I want to congratulate Laura ruscio, Eli and David for your incredible books. I can't wait to teach them in my classes.

Unknown Speaker 59:58

My book here and elsewhere is about how contrary to common perception, immigrants identities are shaped by geopolitics, not just in the immigrant sending and receiving countries, but also in those places located beyond the homeland and host clan bases that I conceptualizes elsewhere, based on ethnographic data in depth interviews and analysis of social media activities of South Asian Muslim Americans, I introduced a new analytical model for studying immigrant identity formation, the multi central relational framework, which can encompass global geopolitics in the immigrants, homeland, homeland and elsewhere. The book is rooted in my personal story as much as it is embedded in my curiosity as a migration scholar. I am a first generation Bangladeshi immigrant who arrived in the United States with her family as a teenager. But my first introduction to the US was in Mississippi, specifically Harrisburg, a small predominantly white conservative college town, where my parents still live. I was recuperating at my parents house from particularly grueling for graduate school at UCLA. I thank my UCLA professors for that, when the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks took place in Paris. It was, of course, a horrific event. But I also remember my parents being glued to their TV as they follow the live coverage, although the attacks that had had taken place far away in France, and elsewhere, that is neither Bangladesh where they're from nor the United States, which they now call home, they still feared a backlash in their small town. They call the handful of other Bangladeshi Muslims they knew in the area, and they learned that they too, were fearing a backlash. One of them was a hijabi woman starting to become a doctor. And she had decided, for instance, not to go to the local library the next day to study later that here when ISIS attacked Paris, I was back in LA. But there too, I saw the same kind of fear among the South Asian Muslims I was studying despite the significantly more cosmopolitan, no, you have the common frame of reference that hung over everyone in these communities was 911, as if the ISIS terror attacks had happened not far away in France, but here in America. Yes, immigrants do have various Global Connections that transcend homeland homeland borders. But then how do these places beyond but in relation to the homeland and host land also shaped immigrants identities? I could not find an answer to this question in the foundational readings on international migration, which focus largely on the sending and receiving countries. assimilation theories analyzed how host land context shaped immigrants homeline identities over time. transnationalism expanded the focus beyond the host land but was still bound within the dyadic homeland homeland paradigm. And diaspora showed how members of a dispersed population are linked to a common homeland and to each other, but largely overlooked the host land context. My book extends the migration scholarship by showing how places beyond the homeland and host land elsewhere shape how immigrants view themselves that is their self identification with elsewhere, and how these places shape how others in the host land view immigrants identification of immigrants by others in relation to elsewhere. Using data on South Asian Muslim Americans, I show the different dimensions of the immigrants Muslim identity category, tie them to different elsewhere contexts as Muslims these immigrants are members of the oma the imagined worldwide community of Muslims that subsumes borders and connects all Muslims by producing shared beliefs, practices and a sense of membership. However, the heartland of this imagined community is not found in South Asia but in the Middle East, as the birthplace of Prophet Muhammad and the location of Islam holy sites. The Middle East is arguably the religious and political center of the Muslim world, and self identifying Muslims. These immigrants subscribe to the various places people's histories and conflicts in the Middle East that sustain their Muslim identities. As such, I found many of my participants were politically oriented towards elsewhere Middle Eastern cases such as Palestine, Syria and Turkey. But how the immigrants self identify does not determine how they're identified by others in the host land. Despite the salience of the Middle East in the participants self identification, it is the Muslim related contexts in Europe that shape how Muslims at large are perceived in America, for example, whereas the 2015 ISIS attacks in Paris had produced Islamophobic backlash in the US similar attacks in Beirut just one day before the Paris attacks have gone virtually unnoticed. So in these examples, the multi central relational framework captures three specific points of focus or centers, thereby expanding that homeland host land dyad First we have the immigrants homeland, in this case, Bangladesh, India. In Pakistan, second, we have the host land the United States. And third, we have elsewhere in these examples elsewhere, meaning the Middle East and Europe. The main goal of the multi central relational framework is to capture if how and when the relationships between which centers become salient and shape the immigrants worldview and day to day interactions. But I must emphasize that elsewhere does not mean everywhere. A place located beyond the homeland and host land by itself is not important to the immigrants identities. It is only when that place is salient to the homeland society, the host land society, or the relationship between the two that it becomes an elsewhere, in other words, and elsewhere is a place that is meaningful for not just the immigrants, but also for the people around them, which is why elsewhere affects how immigrants understand their location in both global and hoseline social hierarchies. I argue that places and elsewhere If the answer is yes to the following questions are contexts in a place beyond the homeland and host land relevant to the immigrant sense of self? Do those contexts shape how others in the host land view these immigrants in their day to day life? Here, there and elsewhere presents my findings to these questions, as well as the conditions the parameters and the generalizability of this elsewhere framework. Since I finished writing this book in late 2019, I think now there is more evidence, why we as migration, scholars need to look at immigrants experiences in connection to contacts, not just here and there, but also elsewhere. The covid 19 pandemic has shown that what happens in a faraway foreign land does not stop at its borders, but can produce Domino effects, whether they are social, political, or epidemiological forceful enough to log down the entire world. And we can see more clearly, perhaps, than any other time in recent memory, the power of globalization and how it intersects with local forms of boundary work, like race, ethnicity, nationalism and religion. I look forward to your questions, and I look forward to Jason's comments. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:07

Okay, terrific. Thank you so much. Okay, he like the floor is yours.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:18

Ah, got it. Hello, everyone. My name is Eli Wilson. I'm at the University of New Mexico. And as other panelists have done, thank you, I'm honored to be present amongst so many fantastic books. Of course, one of my greatest regrets, I will say upfront is that I wish I had engaged with these ideas prior to writing and conducting fieldwork, because I think so many, so much of what we've heard today is useful, based on what I found in my book. So my book came out from NYU press earlier this year, is titled front of the house back of the house, race and inequality in the lives of restaurant workers. And this is a book that is truly born out of a combination of my own personal work experience, as well as my intellectual interests that were rooted in that context. You know, restaurants, for me, and from what I experienced firsthand, are a setting where I knew that so much of sociological interest was going on, oftentimes in very messy and complicated interactions. This was a setting of immigrant labor. He was also setting of profound race, class, gender, and immigration status distinctions. It was the setting of the production of service, and from that sociological, unpacking that sociological perspective, it was also a setting to echo what David commented just earlier today, it was a setting where labor and leisure were collapsed for many of those involved in restaurant work. And, you know, so, to begin, I thought I would just kind of walk back a little bit, and I think it's necessary to unpack what is this restaurant setting? And why is it relevant here in this context? Oh, do I click to move forward? There we go. Okay, got it. So, to go back just a little bit, as many of you are well aware, restaurants are a prominent setting for immigrant labor, particularly in a global city like Los Angeles, especially again, in the context of Los Angeles, immigrants from Mexico and Central America. At the same time, this is also setting of tremendous sources of social inequality, which I'll say a little bit more about. This is a setting where the social inequality oftentimes functions as business as usual. These are environments where many of us you know, sort of circulate within, maybe not necessarily as workers but certainly as consumers. And yet in our midst, I this book are argues our profound sources of social differentiation and ultimately, ultimately the reproduction of, of key axes of inequality in our society at large.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:13

Now, to speak a little bit about the title of this book front of the house back of house. Many of you may also be aware, this is a key categorical distinction, organizational distinction in restaurants, whether you work in the front of house and back or the back of the house is tremendously consequential and roughly mirrors the kind of Gulf Manian distinction between front stage and backstage with one major difference, which is that a different kind of cohort of workers operates in these different spheres. And this binary this this categorical distinction is, is a key distinction within restaurants not only in terms of your title, but also in terms of how you're afforded different kinds of remuneration, and different types of structures, the way your employment is structured. Now, also key to the story is as again, many of you may be aware, at a basic level, the kinds of individuals that work and operate in the front of house, in that sphere are oftentimes have key distinctions from those in the back of house, in the front of house, particularly in the settings that I engage with for this study. individuals tend to be predominantly white, they are of a higher educational background, they tend to be younger and more conventionally attractive, for reasons I'll speak about in just just just a minute. In the back of house, this is classically understood, racialized immigrant jobs are what Lisa compositae would call brown color work. And these settings, these are primarily individuals working as cooks, dishwashers, and other types of positions, who are the majority are immigrant Latino men, mostly from Mexico and Central America. Now in terms of economic distinction, just just to finish up the sort of the background of the book, those in the front of the house, because of access to tips make a tremendous amount more than those situated in the back of house. In my own study, and based on my own experience, this economic distinction was somewhere between three to four times the wages that is if you are a server, or bartender versus a cook, or dishwasher. So again, a tremendous difference in terms of the kinds of opportunities that these types of jobs afford. Now the key puzzle to me, and this was something I learned in the field and became a key kind of, you know, spring from which this project emerged, was what continues to separate and keep these these cohorts of workers separate within workplaces unable to make mobility jumps back and forth. Restaurants are also service settings that are not closed by formal credentials, as we might imagine, in other more professional environments, there are no formal job requirements that are consistent across the industry, preventing somebody who works as a cook, or a dishwasher to make slow and incremental, you know, advancements into either management such as, say, chefs and the leaders in the kitchen, or to cross over into the front of the house, particularly if they are able to speak English and perform the basic duties of service.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:37

And so what what what this book ends up arguing is that the sources of inequality are complex, and overlapping, that anchor these unequal and divided what I call worlds of work apart. Certainly management plays a foundational role in producing this inequality, these inequalities specifically of race, class, and gender. And they do so through various types of hiring strategies that they're looking for individuals who fit this these kinds of embodied characteristics, for instance, in the front of the house, looking for traits we associate with whiteness and upper middle class status. And they follow through further in the restaurant, and further within the workplace with supervisory strategies that anchor some of these distinctions and treat these cohorts of workers separately. Now, whereas other scholars have unpacked the sort of managerial dimensions in producing inequality in the workplace, less often is the focus how of how coworkers and the dynamics between workers also end up reinforcing or sometimes exacerbating these same distinctions. So what I found in on a daily basis is that workers, whether they're situated in the front and back would oftentimes operate and have relations with one another, that were estranged across these key distinctions, these boundaries that I talked about as racialized class and gender boundaries within the workplace. And they oftentimes had very different relationships to their, to their job, whether in the sphere of the front of the house world of work, or in the back of house, world of work. And so co workers themselves ended up in these in this environment, very much structured by management would end up reinforcing these divides that made it incredibly difficult for those situated in the back of the house in these lower status, lower paying jobs, to end up, making mobility jumps into the front of the house, again, co workers themselves ended up closing off these bounded and differentiated worlds of work. Now, I thought, in my last few minutes, I would speak a little bit more to knowing that we are, this is a migration, international migration focused job, and talk about something that I think has a lot of parallels with what we've already heard from other authors on this panel. And that is differentiating the experiences between the foreign born generation of workers and the generally la born second generation Latino workers, most of whom are men. Now, the first generation experienced things that one migration scholars might predict, they faced a racialized job ceiling, of which they could only ascend to a certain, you know, a certain level of jobs and earnings that was certainly below the level of management and authority within this workplace. And oftentimes, what they experienced is if, if they were subjected to intersecting and cumulative sources of disadvantage, for instance, was unable to speak English. Of course, this is a in this type of work environment, they were undocumented, and they were have low levels of formal education, they were more likely to be trapped in the what I refer to as the back closet. And that would be the lowest rungs of employment, which would be for instance, various kinds of cleaning positions and dishwashing positions. To give you an example, I encountered numerous individuals who had been dishwashers and those low level positions, sometimes for decades on end. So there was certainly a dimension of entrapment within this workplace, for those individuals. Now, the second generation experience something a little bit different, as a funk and I argued as a function of an environment of which is so cleaved into two worlds of work. Those who are able to bridge the divide, leverage what I refer to in my study, as in between this, and that has both the social dimension in terms of ties and connectivity between both the foreign born generation who sometimes might be family and close friends, and those in the front of the house, who tended to be white in class privilege, those who had ties to both groups, as well as cultural familiarity with both American maybe la specific cultural norms, were able to bridge these two worlds in a way that could be a source of tremendous advantage, particularly because supervisors who are oftentimes white and monolingual English, would rely on these individuals in order to help them bridge the very divide that I argue they helped to set up in the first place. So again, this became a source of advantage and lead to some second generation individuals in the study, being able to ascend into the supervisory ranks and get ahead within this environment. And so on that note, I welcome feedback from our discussing Gian and audience as well. Thank you. Alright, terrific.

Unknown Speaker 1:18:43

Thank you so much. Okay, g on floors, yours.

Unknown Speaker 1:18:46

Sure. Well, hello, everyone. I also like to thank Roger for inviting me to be part of this lovely event and my warmest congrats to all the authors for the publication of their amazing first books. Whenever the graduate admission season comes around, I usually find myself competing with UCLA over the students that I want to recruit to the University of Michigan. And it always puts me in such a tricky situation. I am really proud of my intellectual pedigree, and I have this special place in my heart for Los Angeles and Southern California. So it's just very difficult for me to argue against UCLA anyway. And of course, the presence of a strong contingent of faculty and graduate students coalescing around the Center for the Study of international migration often proves to be the most formidable challenge to my own recruitment effort. And this crop of new books showcase today demonstrate why this has been the case. But for today, I'm going to just take off my Wolverine hat and just to celebrate the collective achievement of the UCLA mafia in migration studies. So the two books I was assigned to comment on, were both great joy to read, and also empirically rich materials, and analytical sharp insights presented in a very accessible and often evocative and savory approves. It turned out that was books were based on long term ethnographic research in Los Angeles and brother Southern California. And of course before COVID, making me all very nostalgic about the color and the fabric of life, as were some other time. In terms of the subject matter, these two books are very different with Tustin spook, focusing on immigrant identity formation and group making from a transnational and global perspective. And it lies on the making and remaking of inequalities through the everyday organizational work. I still would like to start with a couple of common threads, they're connected to boost. So what struck me first was that boost books show the clear imprint of the distinctive intellectual mildew provided by the UCLA sociology department. One of the hallmarks of the UCLA migration studies has been the rather cautious approach to the so called the transnational turn that swept across the field in the last three decades, while at the same time remaining quite critical of methodological nationalism in the field. And I'm, of course thinking of Roger and Davies as article on transnational realism in question. And of course, Dave is a nation of immigrants and Rogers, most recent synthesis cross border connection. My own first book at that choose the term transporter, instead of transnational also shows the influence of this intellectual milieu that raised me. The multi centered relational framework that has seen our proposes builds on the same site, taking seriously the territoriality of the host country that profoundly shapes migrant identity formation and political actions. But it also breaks a whole new ground by highlighting the surprising importance of elsewhere, the insight that other foundational frameworks in migration studies such as assimilation, Pan ethnicity, transnationalism, and diaspora couldn't quite capture. I also couldn't not notice from the scenes the treatment of what she calls exogenous shocks, the influence of Roger summer Baker, his sustained effort to theorize greatness as a variable rather than a constant, and especially his suggestion that we analyze group this in relation to eventual eventful temporality.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:39

Li spoke for its part builds on the long standing inquiry on the matching between certain jobs and categorical differences, such as race, ethnicity and gender, and the implications of such matching for the reproduction of the durable inequality. Again, the influence of Rogers or your work like a student of promise city and how the other half works is palpable, how that work hiring practices opportunity holding, and the cultivation of a particular dispositions and aspirations contribute to the formation of ethnic issues in urban America from the basis of the scaffolding of Eli's book. But in this book, he zeroes in on the starkly divided words of work inside of one industry. He also highlights the heterogeneity of the jobs often lumped together as a homogeneous from color occupation. What strikes me as an especially distinctive contribution of the book is the analysis of the temporary organization of work at the front and back of the house. And it's matching with the temporary orientation of each group of workers at a particular life stage with a distinctive future prospect and with a different levels of resources. In addition, his care or attention to the everyday life offered in his Latino migrant workers are embedded in the micro interactions that unfold in quote unquote, the social drama of the workplace associated with the worker, Rubin, Hernandez, Leone and jack cats. The other common thread that stood out to me is how unexpected ethnographic findings, which stemmed from the author's long term immersion in their respective field site help them produce some of the most powerful and poignant aha moments of the respective intestines case. The most fitting examples would be the starkly different reactions of our research participants to the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe, versus the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh, and to the ISIS terror attack in Paris, versus the ISIS terror attack in Beirut. These contrasting reactions enable her to investigate which elsewhere matters to whom and why highlighting how the resonance of elsewhere critically mediated through global geopolitics and its influence on the national political landscape of the coastal society. Although these violent and tragic incidents were not under her control, the insight they produced, that is the different valence of different elsewheres led her to consciously recruit Shia Muslim participants, and compare rich elsewhere matters to whom bizagi the majority are Sunni Muslims. The value of illuminating ethnographic moments comes out most powerfully in chapter two of a light book. he analyzes how workers that belong to the front and back of the house, reproduce and retrench the distinction between themselves through everyday boundary work. He thoughtfully analyzes seemingly mundane facets of life. Like who knows who's saying, who speaks past whom, and with whom the kitchen staff share the so called family meals, the mirrors intended for staff consumption only. These ethnography findings flesh out beautifully what institutionalized non interaction looks like in the restaurant industry. We are two groups of workers that coexist while being worried apart from each other. This insight also encourages him to consciously seek out exceptions, like Latino servers, female shops, and white college educated a kitchen staff and investigate what difference made these people aren't exception, and what difference they could make or could not make in this, especially socially and symbolically segregated workplace.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:41

So let me now just discuss the two books one by one and ask two questions for each other along the way. I will start with the scenes. The multicentre relational framework she proposes is presented in this nice diagram in page 40 of the book. As I examine this diagram, and also read her analysis, I realized that the title of the book, which is by the way, very catchy and awesome, can be still slightly misleading. The title captures multiple centers. But what tahseen is doing here is actually a lot more than simply adding a swear as another place of Italians for immigrant identity categories. In fact, the arrows in this diagram in page 40 that denote the relational aspect in this multicenter relational framework are what's really important. It may not be too surprising that homeland conflicts or events happening somewhere else affect immigrant identities only through the mediation of the host and the politics. What I find a truly illuminating, however, is her analysis in chapter three of how homeland conflicts in this case Hindu Muslim conflict in India, and the rivalry between India and Pakistan get to affect South Asian Muslim immigrants in California through the mediation of elsewhere, like the ISIS terror attacks or Syrian refugee crisis. That is homeland cleavages come to matter. Now simply because immigrants bring these cleavages from the homeland as the Diaspora framework would predict. These homeland cleavages matter or matter more, were come to matter in different ways, because they are refracted through the dynamics and events elsewhere. And in the sense, here, there and elsewhere, are not just the center's seem to operate more like prisons, that filter and refract, I wonder if tahseen had thought about this metaphor or just any other metaphors to capture this relational aspect better than simply calling them calling them centers. And second, I appreciated to seeing the thoughtful discussion on the generalizability of her theoretical framework. In the concluding chapter of the book. She reviews how this framework might apply to diverse immigrant or non immigrant minority groups in different regional and national contexts. But what I found missing in this otherwise quite exhaustive coverage is how transposable her mirchi centered relational framework would be in the case of south south migration, where migration to non Western countries. I would assume that despite the recent increase in migration from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India to the United States or other countries in the global north, these migrants constitute only a fraction of the migrants from these three countries. For example, Saudi Arabia and other oil rich countries in the Middle East, which appear as the Prime Minister elsewhere in the books analysis, who's a lot more Muslim migrants from South Asia because of the shared religion and the opportunity to perform Haji. And also because of their greater accessibility to a loved one. Can I can I just continue then affluent liberal democracies in the West? What we would hear there and astrodynamics look like for these Muslim migrants. I wonder if tahseen can think with us about this question further and what we might get from this comparative experiment.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:28

And I'll let me just move to Ely. My first question is about what he called a proximity service and the exclusionary effect it has on Latino immigrant workers. By proximate service, he means a particular style of service that plays down distinctions between server and served, servers are expected to act more like appear than like the subordinate we hope, and this leads to a strong managerial preference for those who can display similar characteristics of the target clientele, namely use whiteness and upper middle class this live activity demonstrates how this service branding shapes the server training dress codes at the restaurant, floor and practices of giving away food and drink items for free. A whole set of performances that Latino immigrant workers not equipped with a particular kinds of cultural capital would find extremely difficult to master. In the later chapter, Eli indeed introduces Enrique, who had made a successful transition from a support worker to a restaurant manager and bartender, but eventually decided to give it up and bust the table again. For him navigating affluent white space on an everyday basis proved too much to handle over the long run. He would be happier if he could simply say Adios, bye bye to customers. interesting for me, this actually brought back the memory of how stressful it was to go to restaurants in my first few years at the graduate school. The pressure to engage in small chats with servers was just really too much to handle for an international student coming from a very different culture of interaction, and whose first language is not English. international students like me, complained that in the United States, even sandwiches storage like subway when you to talk and customize your order, we really wish the server would just say Adios. Bye bye. And just leave us alone. And this makes me wonder if Eli could say a bit more about if and how this exclusionary factor of the proximate service transpires in the server client interaction, and if it ever affects how front of the house work or to see themselves despite the unstable working condition that they are subjected to. And the second question is, well, predictably about the transnational dimension of the construction of the back of the house work, which seems to be a missing piece. In this otherwise thoroughly researched book. Eli demonstrates how the back of the house work is constructed as a quintessentially masculine job enabling these predominantly male Latino workers to approach their work as long standing commitment, despite limited economic leverage for doing so. I'm wondering if this is also the case in their origin countries? And if not, if they ever need to reconcile the difference in the gender coding of a given occupation? I'm asking this question with some knowledge that this is often the case for Asian immigrants, for whom the kitchen space, including those in commercial establishment is often marked as a feminine space in their origin countries. Another transnational dimension that I want to ask about is not really about the past, like what they brought from the origin country, but about the future what they want to bring back in case of return. Specifically, I am wondering whether the Latino immigrant workers who face immigrant siblings in their occupation, imagine their future career trajectories more transnationally, for example, to any of them talk about using these skills and experiences to open their own upscale restaurants back in their home countries? If so, does it make it more bearable to be stuck with the backbreaking labor in the kitchen? with very limited possibilities for promotion and financial improvement? Or does it make it more frustrating not to be given the opportunity to observe and learn how the restaurant as a business works as a whole? Or do they simply find their current job situation irrelevant to their future in case of return?

Unknown Speaker 1:34:43

So okay,

Unknown Speaker 1:34:43

this is it. I actually feel quite lucky about logging in from baleen because it seems like I am the only person who will not be charged for drinking a glass of wine just to be truthful to this festive spirit of the apogee occasion, congratulate Since.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:01

Okay, so thank you so much, john, for those terrific comments. So why don't we? Why don't we now give the authors a chance to respond? And let's do so then in reverse order. So Eli's we go, then Eli to seem David was CEO, and Laura. So if you're ready, like you want to respond to Jim's comments.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:23

Thank you, Jim, for your comments. Really, your read on the book is sharper than I was able to describe myself. So I appreciate that. And I was taking notes for future presentations. Your first question regarding was regarding proximal service, which I described as one of the three, I create kind of a typology of upscale service within restaurants. And I would argue this goes beyond restaurants to all types of hospitality establishments, at least in the US. So proximal service, as you described is this kind of pure like almost chummy, casual service. That is, I argue, kind of a specific product of managerial decisions, both hiring and in terms of training. And as you would imagine, those who are best able to serve their needs, there's a close relationship between the individuals hired to work in a service capacity and the expected clientele, precisely because there needs to be parallelism, proximity, social proximity. And as you stated, john, this does serve as a powerful mechanism that makes it dissuades management from wanting to, from wanting to hire or promote individuals who don't fit that. Now, what I argue is maybe a little bit of an important nuance, the setting that I was within that most closely represented proximal service was a setting where trendiness and a kind of youthful vibe was very important to the ambience of that establishment in the front of the house and for customers. Precisely because of that, some second generation Latino workers, were able to capture that element that is perhaps less racialized and more premised on familiarity with youth culture, particularly as it manifests in LA, and maybe the west side, the beach cities, which was the general area of this restaurant. And so it would be inaccurate to say that second generation la born young 2030, something Latino workers were completely excluded from these opportunities as a function of the racialized status of the job. There were other characteristics management looked for in order to achieve that social proximity that actually enabled some of them to make that mobility jump. But I agree with you, in broad strokes, this was another powerful mechanism of inequality for the immigrant generation, as well as, and so on and so forth there. But thank you for that question. Let's see. There were a couple more but just to be brief, I appreciate that. You mentioned this idea of kind of circular migration, that kind of upskilling and skill deployment in in, in home country, you know, certainly reminds me of my old adviser Ruben landers, Whelan's work with Jackie Hagen. I was not unfortunately, able to really delve into the steam with with sufficient empirical rigor, unfortunately, might have been a bit of my own positionality and my sort of my myopic focus of what happens, what happened within the workplace. I will though, say that I'm thinking of some prominent examples that come to mind after all these years of Latino workers, foreign born Latino workers, who were deeply committed or became committed over time to, to restaurant work, they derived important sources of their identity, masculinity, sense of mentorship and loyalty to those mentors within the restaurant space. So while I certainly acknowledge that they have many other deeply emotional and social ties to those, particularly back in the, excuse me in, in home country, I also was sort of focusing more on the increasingly developed and embedded ties within the restaurant and to people within that space. So I think I'll leave it there. It's it's certainly something that I would love to investigate in the future. It's a fascinating question. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:35

Terrific. Thank you, testing.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:38

Thank you so much, Jan, for that very insightful reading of my book, and also for your two great questions. Actually, your first question captures the many, many months of struggle that I had to go through when I was writing the book. Um, so it's interesting that you You offer an alternative to centers, prisons, which I have to say did not occur to me to use exactly the word prisons. But what I was struggling with, what I was trying to really pin down was worldviews that these different immigrants based on their home diverging homeland experiences, where they're located in the host land, and their differing worldviews based on their political allegiances. And many other factors varied. But then, the reason why I ended up using centers was, because even in these worldviews not every place, what every point mattered equally, some faded over time, because they were just responding to to, say a passing trend. On on social media, some had more historical relevance to them that made it more salient. And some just had more valence because of the continuing global inequality, the hoseline relationship with their geopolitical relationship with different centers that remained. So that's why I wanted to pin down even more from this sometimes abstract sense of worldview to specific points and wanting to interrogate How did these these cases come to have this kind of salience? And why do these different paces vary based on different, you know, homeland and elsewhere? connections? So, you know, it means it only makes me wish that I had a conversation with you while I was writing this book, then I would have probably had a more constructive process there. But your second question about the what, whether or how the elsewhere framework is generalizable to a south to South migration is something that I've been thinking about after my book has been published. And I, the way that I'm thinking about it, is that you are exactly right. That's even for Bangladeshi immigrants. There are so many Bangladeshis who go to these Gulf countries for short term job jobs, and they have to come back. And then many of them try to then go back, not necessarily to the same country, they don't end up being in the same country. So one thing that I'm just thinking about right now is what happens when they go to different countries for employment? What are the things that remain with them? How do they How do their worldviews change? Does that have any kind of connection to different elsewheres popping up or some elsewhere is waning in sealians. So just some ideas that I have been thinking on my own after my book has been published. But this is something that I I want to see if the general elsewhere framework is generalizable to that kind of migration and what that would look like, but I don't yet have any concrete answers for you. Okay, thank you, David.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:20

Well, thank you, David, for the questions and the close reading, I really appreciate it. So yeah, this is very much kind of an LA centric versus hometown centric kind of story. And I think a lot of that is due to kind of Time, time and one in the sense that these are not kind of the immigrants depicted kind of in the work of Massey and others have come coming from kind of village areas, with really tight networks that then can reproduce in the US This is more kind of the story that Ruben and others are talking about, of migrants coming from more kind of urban areas with kind of more fluid ties, more flexibility, in terms of who they might network with. But it's also a story of time, as a lot of these men that I met in the park have been in the US 10 2030 years. So maybe even if they had come over with these tight networks, over time, they grew apart and the park became a place where they created new ties. So if I had met them kind of in day one, it might have been a very tight kind of hometown connection. But over time, you know, life happens. And they created new friends through the park and other areas. Three and of course, present company excluded, maybe we have maybe even previously have maybe overstated kind of the degree of the hometown connections reproducing in the US and maybe not seeing even as you mentioned, when the hometown teams you were studying, there might have been 100 on the team there you know, and so forth. And to kind of give an extreme example of the amount of got white guys that showed up that the park and said oh, wow, I just thought it was a bunch of Mexicans to realize there's Peruvians and Brazilians and salvadorians. You know, it's kind of a caricature. Maybe That view. And also kind of the story of the second generation is interesting. And they certainly have a lot more opportunities. But I was struck, especially the sons and their friends, by how still connected they were to the park. Despite that, they had a lot of opportunities to do things elsewhere. Now, these men are now you know, in their 30s, they have families, and they still kind of go back to the park, and really shows kind of the pull of this park, kind of beyond, you know, exclusion elsewhere. Now, that being said, I very much like the metaphor you mentioned of a cage that very much a lot of what they're creating in the park is due to exclusions they face elsewhere. So absolutely, that is right. Maybe I should have thought of using the cage as well as a metaphor for the park. But the park also became a place to combat some of that exclusion and create other opportunities. But the real issue is that for most outsiders, they didn't see these exclusions, especially the park neighbors, but also maybe family members, all wondering, why are these men drinking in the park? Why are they always in this park? Why can't they drink at home? Why can't they, you know, go to bars or, you know, to follow Eli's work? Why are there so many men here on Mondays? It's the first day of the workweek. What's going on? Well, it's just a lot of them worked in restaurants and as elide knows, often restaurants are closed on Monday. So the key thing is, and that's the goal of ethnography is for a lot of outsiders, they didn't understand any of these exclusions, and because it didn't necessarily mesh with their everyday life. They saw it as deviant and is problematic. But I definitely and Putnam I think you would have mixed feelings about what's going on in this park, as well. So, but thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 1:46:42

Okay, terrific. Thank you very much. Oh, Sue.

Unknown Speaker 1:46:46

Thank you, David, for your comments. Although one of your questions give me a little bit of UCLA PTSD with the what is this a case of? I guess I still it's still a trigger for me as since we often got that question when we were grad students. Your second question how transportable are these networks will perhaps give me help you guide guide us to an answer to first, I'm always amazed how readers connect or how researchers were reading the book, connect what they're seeing in their own work and field sites to the ethnic age. And the more recent, among another recent, in another recent talk that I gave, two researchers approached me to talk about their own work. One was focusing on Korean shopkeepers, first generation and second generation children of Korean shopkeepers. And they saw in that dynamic essences of the ethnic age where children themselves sometimes felt like they were being exploited by their parents. And so they, in their research could appropriate, you know, the the concept from this book to make sense of what they were seeing, which, you know, again, is another instance of like an immigrant first generation immigrant case, the second researcher, when met, talked about his own research in a Hasidic community, and how, because of the bounded nature of that community, they could both receive benefits, but also have exploitative conditions. And so now you'll see another case where it's not necessarily immigrant status, but religious community, but it's creating the cage around community members. And so I think we really have to think about the obligations that people feel compelled or the obligations that people have to each other. And sometimes as in the case of battles, those obligations are brought born out of by Sonakshi. But in other contexts, those obligations are borne out of a religious affiliation, or born out of a familial obligation. And so I think, in terms of how transportable are these networks for this concept of the ethnic age, we really have to think of all the ways that we have obligations to community members, all the constraints that we have, that are not only a result of precarity, but also a result of the benefits that are provided to us by those community members. And so we don't often think of the beneficial aspects of social networks as a constraint. But as I show in the book, they can be right because when you choose to walk away from an exploitative community, you're also choosing to walk away from the benefits of that community provides on its better days. And so both the benefits and the exploitation can serve as a reason to stay. Um, you know, the other thing that another question that I often get from audience members, is, you know, why why don't these people just leave or get another job when they're being exploited from workers and, and what I often counter with is like how often we stay in situations that are not good for us whether it's a problematic relationship with having we have with an employer or with a significant others. There are lots of reasons that people opt to stay in situations that are not ideal. So I think, you know, the the how transport was, is networks can, can be the concept brother can be applied to different types of relations and different types of formulations to explain why given all the circumstances, people don't walk away from a situation that doesn't seem to be in their best interest. And so I hope that kind of kind of loops around and answers the question of what is the case of like this, this might be a case of people opting to stay, when all the situations seem to hint that life elsewhere might be better. And so under what circumstances do people stay in a community when exploitative tendencies emerge? And so I'm hoping that that's the way that this concept can kind of be can can be replicated across communities and, and hopefully get some traction in the coming years. So hopefully that answered your question.

Unknown Speaker 1:51:02

Okay, terrific. So why don't we have a little time left, I'm going to give the permission to talk to the Jacob Thomas, a member of the UCLA diaspora now in Princeton. Jacob, you want to pose your question and quick responses from Walters?

Unknown Speaker 1:51:17

Sure. Hi, everyone. Oh, let me Can I share my camera? I guess they can't, it doesn't allow me. Okay. Anyway, so I'll just ask it like this. So my question actually just sort of follows up on rosio was saying a question I was gonna pose to Eli. And it comes to, like, I get that I just got the impression while I was in LA that a lot of these what you call conventionally attractive Restaurant Servers are actually also this is just their day job. And they're aspiring actors and actresses, due to the flexibility offered by such jobs, and they want to audition and have that flexibility in their schedule. But in contrast, a lot of the immigrant laborers at the back of the house may have less outside options in the broader labor market due to their immigration status. So I was thinking, you know, that kind of lack of outside option is going to perhaps constrain their autonomy in the workplace. And so I was wondering how you think about the that worker autonomy for both types of workers comparatively, especially now, as we see a lot of restaurant workers complain that they're having difficulty finding enough workers, but they're hesitant to raise wages. So they're trying to attract and signup, signup, bonuses and so forth. So kind of what you would say to those sort of employers. Okay, excellent. Right below. Yeah, thank

Unknown Speaker 1:52:43

thank you, Jacob for and good. Good to see you virtually again. Yeah. So I think there's a you raise a few fascinating points. One thing I do want to mention mentioned, which is, which is a large part of one of the chapters that I have yet I've not really discussed that much is what is the appeal of restaurant job Front of House restaurant, restaurant jobs to white, relatively privileged, young workers, both men and women. And another way to phrase that is, why do middle class men and women take working class jobs. I mean, it's sort of an odd puzzle. And what I argue is that these are not just wages for them. These are lifestyle jobs that appeal to both their labor interests, you mentioned flexibility, part time jobs, but also their broader set of tastes and interests. These are people who like to patronize these establishments themselves as consumers, management knows this. And management oftentimes goes to very calculated extents, to set up front of house jobs, to attract these types of individuals. So you know, if your question or some some version of your question was no, sort of why, why are they in this capacity, at least pre COVID. That was part of the story part of the analysis that I brought to the table. Another, that also segues to a kind of irony that I found emerge in the data, which is that some of the some of the workers in restaurants that are most committed to, to staying in restaurants to learning these skills, being loyal to their bosses, and to the restaurant itself, with those who are least likely to experience upward mobility and access positions of authority. That is people, immigrant workers in the kitchen and also in lower level Front of House jobs, what I call support jobs. So those who are most sort of flighty in ways that I'm sure you remember thinking about at least stereotypically in LA, those Front of House servers and bartenders were the ones who are given access to the best quality jobs, at least in terms of wages and procedures might be concerned. So there was a deep irony there. But I would I would argue, and I don't want to mislead anybody. What is anchoring this system And in place is decisions that management makes about who are they trying to structure into what position and the kinds of embodied attributes that sort of anchor these divided worlds of work? apart from one another, but thank you for the question.

Unknown Speaker 1:55:15

Okay, well, that's a very thoughtful note on which to bring the session to an end. But before I do that, a few words of thanks. First of all, I want to thank Sofia and Helios who is the Graduate Student Assistance, which has made this program possible from the beginning of the year to the end, and Sophie has done a great job. And I want to express our deep appreciation for everything that you've done to make this possible. I want to thank David for the terrific colleague ship and in coordinating this activity all year long, it's been enjoyable and satisfying, and I think very productive. And of course, thanks to the authors and commentators and it's a terrific pleasure to be able to celebrate your wonderful accomplishments and to engage in this dialogue. I'm sure we can do so in person but circumstances as such that requires this remote encounter, but I think it's been intellectually very satisfying and engaging. And I'm looking forward to a celebration in person in Los Angeles as a 2022. So with all that, thanks also to our audience for participating all your Yulong have a good summer everyone stay healthy, of course, and looking forward to seeing you in the next academic year. Okay, bye bye.