“No Place for Old Men”: Immigrant Duration, Wage Theft, and Economic Mobility among Day Laborers in Denver, Colorado

Day laborers are a highly vulnerable population, due to their contingent work arrangements, low socioeconomic position, and precarious immigration status. Earlier studies posited day labor as a temporary bridge for recent immigrants to achieve more stable employment, but recent studies have observed increasing duration of residence in the United States among foreign-born day laborers. This article draws on 170 qualitative interviews and a multi-venue, year-long street corner survey of 411 day laborers in the Denver metropolitan area to analyze how duration in the United States affects day laborers’ wages, work, and wage theft experiences. Compared to recent immigrants, foreign-born day laborers with longer duration in the United States, we found, worked fewer hours and had lower total earnings but also had higher hourly wages and lower exposure to wage theft. We draw on qualitative interviews to address whether this pattern represented weathering, negative selection, or greater discernment. Rather than upward or downward mobility, long duration immigrant day labors had more jagged incorporations experiences. Interviews suggest that day laborers draw on experience to mitigate the risk of wage theft but that the value of experience is undercut by the fierce competition of daily recruitment, ultimately highlighting the compounding vulnerabilities facing longer duration and older immigrant day laborers. The article highlights duration as an understudied precarity factor which can adversely impact the economic assimilation of long duration immigrants who persist in contingent markets like day labor.

Full Transition to a Five-Day Working Week with Two Consecutive Days Off

Labor legislation of Russia provides for both a five-day and six-day working weeks with the same 40 working hours limit per week for two labor regimes that makes it meaningless to work six days a week. The paper summarizes the history of days off in Russia and basic international legislation regulating the days off. The author examines two structural groups of arguments, justifying the necessity of enshrining a provision on a mandatory five-day working week with two consecutive days off in labor legislation. The paper substantiates the discrepancy between the provision of labor legislation containing the rule on one day off and part 5 of Article 37 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation on days off (in plural). The author argues in detail the statement in support of the introduction of a five-day working week for teachers. The author questions the economic feasibility of maintaining the six-day labor regime. It is emphasized that, if a mandatory five-day working week is consolidated in law, the employer’s rights will not be infringed regardless of the form of ownership, because the employer is endowed with legal rules allowing him or her to engage workers to work with their voluntary consent in other schemes of the labor regime (to work overtime, in shifts, etc.). Organizations and enterprises under the current and proposed labour regime may attract workers to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Making Money

This chapter assesses how homeless people get money. For many homeless people, one of the tasks to be accomplished, usually each day, is to get money. It may come as a surprise to many people that a sizable portion of able-bodied homeless people get their money from working a job. Indeed, they work seasonal jobs in construction, as agricultural workers, in fast food restaurants, as cleaning staff at local motels, and as aides in elder care. The chapter then explores the alternatives to working a regular salaried job, looking briefly at three moneymaking avenues: entrepreneurship, plasma donation, and panhandling. It also provides a detailed account of one of the main avenues for the homeless to find work: day labor.

The Man in the Dog Park

This book offers the reader a rare window into homeless life. Spurred by a personal relationship with a homeless man who became the book's co-author, the author takes a compelling look at what it means and what it takes to be homeless. Interviews and encounters with dozens of homeless people lead us into a world that most have never seen. We travel as an intimate observer into the places that many homeless frequent, including a community shelter, a day labor agency, a panhandling corner, a pawn shop, and a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) housing office. Through these personal stories, we witness the obstacles that homeless people face, and the ingenuity it takes to negotiate life without a home. The book points to the ways that our own cultural assumptions and blind spots are complicit in US homelessness and contribute to the degree of suffering that homeless people face. At the same time, the book shows us how our own sense of connection and compassion can bring us into touch with the actions that will lessen homelessness and bring greater humanity to the experience of those who remain homeless.

Szüléssel kapcsolatos rítusok és tabuk a hagyományos és a modern Koreában

Welcoming a new member of the community, such as a baby, used to happen in the framework of various rites and rules in traditional societies. In Korean society, the conception of a baby is connected to beliefs even today. For instance, based on the conception dreams, Koreans make predictions regarding the child’s gender, personality and future life. In the old days, the mother had to follow strict rules throughout her pregnancy, and sacrifices had to be offered to the god of birth on the day labor began. At the same time, giving birth means pain and blood, which were considered unclean, so different measures had to be taken. For example, a straw string was hung over the main gate, thanks to which the neighbors and relatives were informed of the arrival of the baby. In the modernized 21st century, the majority of those old traditions, superstitions and practices have already faded away: customs related to pregnancy and childbirth have changed. Modern medicine has taken the place of the old beliefs, and families are willing to pay considerable sums to various institutions to ensure the safety of the mother and the baby. However, there are some interesting points we can highlight, since they have survived even into the days of the new lifestyle, such as eating seaweed soup, which occurs as a birthday dish as well. Also, they still rely on the conception dreams of the future mother or grandmother; these may indicate a yet-undiagnosed pregnancy.