Milking in the Shadows

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

• ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgements1 Introduction2 Dairying Differently: The Labor Shift in the Wisconsin Dairy Industry3 Organizing Mobility: The Transnational Making of Workers in Veracruz, Mexico4 Changing Villages: From Coffee and Corn to Migration and Milk5 Crossing in Place: Mobility Regulated at the Border6 Precarious Work, Limited Mobility: Managing in the Shadows on Los Ranchos7 Belonging in the Countryside: The Rural Idyll and the Legal Landscape8 Going Home: Delayed Departures, Families in Wait, and the Difficulties of Returning9 Conclusion: The Politics of MobilityAppendixNotesBibliographyIndex

"Keller does an excellent job of telling the stories of migrant workers from Veracruz working in the dairy industry in Wisconsin. Her writing is refreshing in its clarity and the author does a beautiful job of telling the stories of those she interviewed in a very vivid way." - Joanna Dreby (author of Everyday Illegal: When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families) “With fresh sociological insights, Keller shines much needed light on the lives of immigrant dairy workers. This book informs contemporary debates about migration with a 360 degree view of the lives and challenges of those who work in the shadows." - Max J. Pfeffer (Cornell University) "In this deeply contextualized, engaging, insightful ethnography of the dairy industry, Keller reveals the multiple paradoxes of mobility in the lives of the Mexican immigrant workers at the heart of this industry. Milking cows in the Upper Midwest is intimately connected to larger political and economic transformations, the reorganization of dairy production, and the intimate cross-border lives of these immigrants. This perceptive, beautifully written ethnography makes a terrific contribution to our knowledge of immigrant workers’ lives, the laws and economic forces that govern their lives, and their hopes and dreams." - Cecilia Menjívar (UCLA) How Migrant Workers Factor Into The Dairy Industry: An Interview with Julie Keller (Wisconsin Public Radio's "The Morning Show") "Highly recommended." (Choice) The US Immigration System Treats Workers as Disposable: An Interview with Julie Keller (Jacobin Magazine) "Keller has produced a moving and empathetic study that will make for a useful teaching book as well. Her proper attention to migration studies across disciplines and explication of the dialectical nature of mobility and immobility in migrants’ lives are impressive. Milking in the Shadows, along with contributing to studies of migrants in rural American destinations, will enlighten anyone who might have taken the stability of milk in our grocery stores, school cafeterias, and restaurants for granted. This study of the migrants who help power our contemporary dairy industry will be appreciated by scholars of—among other topics—transnationality, oral history, migration and mobility, the Midwest, and working environments." (H-Net)