On the Line: Racial Boundaries at Work in the New South

Vanessa Ribas draws from her recent book, On the Line: Slaughterhouse Lives and the Making of the New South (UC Press, December 2015). Based on extensive ethnographic research conducted over sixteen months, when she worked as a production line worker in a large North Carolina meatpacking plant, her study examines Latina/o migration to the American South, labor exploitation, and race relations in the ‘new’ South. How Latina/o(s) and African Americans differently experience and respond to oppressive exploitation in the workplace is a fundamental—indeed, constitutive—aspect of the story she tells. This talk will be of interest to anyone interested in labor, class, and race relations, as well as immigration.

Vanessa Ribas graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 2002. She is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, and received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012.