Maria L. Quintana, "Contracting Freedom: Race, Empire, and U.S. Guestworker Programs" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)

New Books in Latino Studies · May 12, 2023 · 49m

Contracting Freedom: Race, Empire, and U.S. Guestworker Programs (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022) explores the origins of twentieth-century U.S. guestworker programs from Mexico and the Caribbean. It investigates these government-sponsored programs as the unexplored consequence of the history of enslaved labor, Japanese American incarceration, the New Deal, the long civil rights movement, and Caribbean decolonization. Quintana shifts the focus on guestworker programs to the arena of political conflict, revealing how fierce debates over the bracero program and Caribbean contract labor programs…