And then the canneries closed: Capitalist restructuring and changing social relationships among Mexican workers in northern California

This is an ethnographic study of a group of Mexican-born workers in Rigarto County, California who experienced serious challenges to their social and economic well-being as a result of capitalist restructuring and its specific ramifications in California's agro-industrial sector; especially the closing of two tomato canneries and the subsequent reopening of one of them. Prior to the closedowns, the workers had enjoyed stable economic and social conditions in the United States. Most of them had authorized immigration status. They had resided in Rigarto County for decades, holding unionized jobs with good benefits and wages. The cannery closedowns, transformations in the labor market, changes in the nature of the work they performed, and government initiatives hostile to both immigrants and working people all contributed to the significant challenges they faced.; Much of the literature on immigrant workers suggests that in times of economic hardship people turn to their social connections for help. Supportive social relationships cannot be taken for granted; they commonly require that people devote considerable effort to their maintenance and development. Furthermore, the existence of a relationship between people is required but not sufficient to assure that they will assist one another. I argue that the infrastructural work of social relationships and the viability of appeals for assistance based on those relationships are contingent on material conditions.; At a time when the Rigarto County cannery workers' ability to draw on their social ties was particularly vital, they confronted a series of mounting pressures on their relationships with people in both the United States and Mexico. It became increasingly difficult for them to engage in the basic infrastructural work of social relationships and even more challenging for them to draw on previously established social ties to make claims for assistance as the events surrounding the closedowns unfolded. In this work I examine three distinct types of social relationships in which the Rigarto County cannery workers were involved, the social practices that made them possible, and the ways that material conditions shaped those practices.