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Patricia Fernandez-Kelly
My work explores questions of inequality as it manifests itself in the lives of children of immigrants. Even though their parents cross borders in search of the American Dream, the children of illegal aliens (most of them Mexican and Central American) are increasingly being marginalized and are at risk of ending up in the 'rainbow underclass.' The same is true for many youngsters whose parents arrived in the U.S. from Haiti, Jamaica, or the Dominican Republic. Since 2002 I have been investigating the conditions surrounding second-generation immigrants in Southern Florida where young people are adapting to our pluralistic society by shunning conventional employment and turning to entrepreneurship in order to secure independence and improve their standard of living. Whether as graffiti artists, singers, lyricists, photographers, or Internet Casino operators, the new immigrant generation is discovering innovative ways to define that which is "American." Visit WebsitePublications For We are Sold, I and My People: Women and Industry in Mexico’s Frontier State University of New York Press This landmark volume was the very first to explore the hidden world of the maquiladora factories on the US-Mexican border. Based on extensive, and often covert, participation among women laboring in electronic assembly plants in Ciudad Juarez, Fernandez Kelly illuminates the real meaning of globalization for the industrial proletariat in the Global South. It is a life of oppression – driven by long hours, poor working conditions, draconian rules – and economic opportunity (for earnings, for potential independence) often denied to men. 
Out of the Shadows: Political Action and the Informal Economy in Latin America (co-ed. with Jon Shefner, University of Tennessee), Penn State University Press (2005). Out of the Shadows brings leading scholars of the informal economy and informal politics together to address how globalization has influenced local efforts to resolve political and economic needs—and how these seemingly separate issues are indeed deeply related. Contributors are Javier Auyero, Miguel Angel Centeno, Sylvia Chant, Robert Gay, Mercedes González de la Rocha, José Itzigsohn, Alejandro Portes, and Juan Manuel Ramírez Sáiz. |
