| Historical Sociological debate on the persisting condition of poverty in urban settings has focused on the alleged prevalence of behavioral and/or cultural pathologies within the groups that experience poverty. Attempts have been made at establishing a relationship between the existence of persisting-poverty and structural changes in the economy. Most of these attempts, however, have ended redirecting the focus from structural factors to institutional decay.; This dissertation is based on a multi-layer approach which examines poverty and inequality from the macro-structural to the micro-personal levels (i.e., the nation, state, community, household and the individual). It contributes to a Sociological literature that examines how economic restructuring affects inner-cities as well as their residential life. By way of analyzing the specific impact of economic restructuring in a "caserio" or poor workers' community in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, it examines class conflict within specific historical contexts, labor market configuration and emerging structural conditions in the neo-liberal state.; Ethnographic methods such as life-histories, nonscheduled-standardized-interviews and participant observation were used to construct a critical tale of how women and men of two generations (i.e., the younger and older) in a poor workers' community in Mayaguez coped with structural changes based on the dynamics of early and late peripheral capital accumulation models.; The findings illustrate a marked difference between the experiences of two generations of workers. The peripheral postindustrial era prompted by Service-Finance restructuring remodeled the occupational structure of Mayaguez, from that of a labor of fulltime and exploited workers in labor-intensive industries and government, to that of a surplus, reserve army of super-exploited workers in temporal service and unproductive labor. Temporary, minimum-wage, no-benefits jobs have eroded these workers, possibilities for securing life-time, living-wage employment. The structural result of Service-Finance is the tendency of wages to stagnate and to be intermittent. Service-Finance restructuring, institutionalized critical-levels of disparity and dispossession for the working-class in Mayaguez and has given legitimacy to unthinkable levels of wealth concentration and accumulation. Accordingly, this study has drawn attention to a new form of worker-labor relations, that of a deracinated labor force. Further research should examine the criminalization of alternative means of worker's resistance. |
