Böcker av David Bacon

A fatal fall during steel erection, witnessed by many, was misinterpreted in various ways, leading to further deaths and impacting future generations. The tragic repercussions echoed through time, dividing those involved. It took another war to unite them and heal the wounds of the past.

"David Bacon renews and updates the progressive documentary tradition with these extraordinary, carefully chosen portraits of farmworkers, their families and communities...A copy should be distributed to every member of the Legislature." --Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz and Magical Urbanism "David Bacon allows us to be there. Inside the temporary 'homes' created in cabins standing in the middle of nowhere. Homes that often become permanent by filling them with the workers' hope." -- Ana Luisa Anza, Editor, Cuartoscuro "Bacon shows that workers are not just victims; they are purposeful, motivated to confront the injustices they face, and often successful in doing so. Their life histories, stories, and accounts make them far more than images on a page." --Douglas Harper, President, International Visual Sociology Association. "Bacon captures the humanity of workers who work each day in demanding physical labor, in the hot sun, and for poverty wages. This is one of the few publications that captures the authentic stories of California farm workers, through their own voices and with the images of their living and working conditions." --Kent Wong, Director, UCLA Labor Center "The political climate in America today makes the contribution of this work of great importance to academic scholarship and society at large. David Bacon's photographs give voice to the invisible people that are essential to the fabric of society. He not only shows their struggles and importance to the nation but also gives a face to their humanity." --Geir Jordahl, Director, PhotoCentral, Hayward CA

For two decades veteran photojournalist David Bacon has documented the connections between labor, migration, and the global economy. In Illegal People Bacon explores the human side of globalization, exposing the many ways it uproots people in Latin America and Asia, driving them to migrate. At the same time, U.S. immigration policy makes the labor of those displaced people a crime in the United States. Illegal People explains why our national policy produces even more displacement, more migration, more immigration raids, and a more divided, polarized society.Through interviews and on-the-spot reporting from both impoverished communities abroad and American immigrant workplaces and neighborhoods, Bacon shows how the United States' trade and economic policy abroad, in seeking to create a favorable investment climate for large corporations, creates conditions to displace communities and set migration into motion. Trade policy and immigration are intimately linked, Bacon argues, and are, in fact, elements of a single economic system. In particular, he analyzes NAFTA's corporate tilt as a cause of displacement and migration from Mexico and shows how criminalizing immigrant labor benefits employers. For example, Bacon explains that, pre-NAFTA, Oaxacan corn farmers received subsidies for their crops. State-owned CONASUPO markets turned the corn into tortillas and sold them, along with milk and other basic foodstuffs, at low, subsidized prices in cities. Post-NAFTA, several things happened: the Mexican government was forced to end its subsidies for corn, which meant that farmers couldn't afford to produce it; the CONASUPO system was dissolved; and cheap U.S. corn flooded the Mexican market, driving the price of corn sharply down. Because Oaxacan farming families can't sell enough corn to buy food and supplies, many thousands migrate every year, making the perilous journey over the border into the United States only to be labeled "e;illegal"e; and to find that working itself has become, for them, a crime. Bacon powerfully traces the development of illegal status back to slavery and shows the human cost of treating the indispensable labor of millions of migrants-and the migrants themselves-as illegal. Illegal People argues for a sea change in the way we think, debate, and legislate around issues of migration and globalization, making a compelling case for why we need to consider immigration and migration from a globalized human rights perspective.

When we finally arrived at my brother's house in the United States, I thought about how far I was from home in Mexico. I looked back, saw the sun setting, and thought about my father and what he might be doing. I thought, 'Why did I come so far, and...

Examines the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on those who labor in the agricultural fields and maquiladora factories on the border. This title describes harsh conditions of child labor in the Mexicali Valley, the deplorable housing outside factories in cities such as Tijuana, and corporate retaliation faced by union organizers.