Ambassadors in Overalls

In “Ambassadors in Overalls: Mexican Guest Workers and the Future of Labor,” Matt Garcia explores this the legacy of the Bracero Program, a bilateral agreement initiated in 1942 between the United States and Mexico that invited male Mexican nationals to do mostly farm labor in California and throughout the rest of the nation. Presumed to have ended in 1964, Garcia explores how guest worker programs of this type have continued to the present in multiple forms and in numerous countries. In the United States, they are often proposed as a solution to the problem of our broken immigration system in spite of a record of failure to ensure safe and fair working conditions for participants. Increasingly, Garcia argues, these programs are shaping the way we all live, work, and belong in this world.