Yo era muy arriesgada: a historical overview of the work experiences of puerto rican women in Chicago
Title:
Yo era muy arriesgada: a historical overview of the work experiences of puerto rican women in Chicago
Author:
Maura I. Toro-Morn
Appeared in:
Centro journal
Paging:
Volume 13 (2001) nr. 2 pages 25-43
Year:
2001
Contents:
This paper examines the work experiences of Puerto Rican women in Chicago from the 1950s to the 1990s. It aims to show the historical links in the labor market experiences of Puerto Rican women workers in Chicago and Puerto Rico, two sites linked by capitalism, patriarchy, and migration. Puerto Ricans migrated to Chicago as part of an organized recruitment effort to provide cheap labor for the expanding industrial and service sectors of the economy. The first large group of Puerto Rican women workers that migrated to Chicago were recruited to resolve the shortage of domestic workers that existed in the city in the 1950s. Census data reveal important shifts in the occupational profile of Puerto Rican migrants in the city. Interview data reveal that Puerto Rican women encountered a range of problems as workers, as women, and as people of color. Puerto Rican women also struggled with their roles and mothers and workers. Although the economic landscape of the city has changed much in the last fifty years, in the 1990s Puerto Rican workers continued to provide cheap labor to what remains of the industrial sector, to the ever-expanding service sector, and to the new sectors of the economy created in the context of global restructuration. In the 1980s and 1990s, educated Puerto Ricans joined working class families in the migration to the city, attracted by the promise of goodpaying jobs in these newly developing sectors of the economy.
Publisher:
The City University of New York (provided by DOAJ)
Journal description