Browsing by Author "Jamison, Elizabeth Cori Shields"
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- Circuits of Power in Alabama's Immigration Politics: Labor Justice and Corporate Social ResponsibilityJamison, Elizabeth Cori Shields (Virginia Tech, 2015-11-25)At the time of its debate and passage in 2010-2011, Alabama's immigration law evoked support and opposition from across the state and nation. Despite the outcry, the Alabama business community projected a pronounced public "silence". This silence was particularly curious because of the law's clear and intended goal of self-deportation of Latinos who are a significant labor source for Alabama agri-businesses and food processing industries. The key question for this dissertation is: Why did the poultry processing industry, which has high populations of Latino employees and a significant industrial presence in Alabama, stay publicly silent despite a predictable impact on their labor supply? This qualitative analysis used the lens of the circuits of power model to interrogate this question. The findings indicate that Alabama poultry processors found themselves susceptible to the same opportunities and challenges as any other social actor confronted with the racialized, politicized, and historically contingent challenges facing Latino labor in Alabama. In other words, these business actors were fully socially embedded actors within Alabama. I demonstrate that individual residents, relevant associations, Alabama's politicians, and even the poultry processors themselves never fully realized the political vulnerability of their particular embeddedness until it was too late for poultry processing employers to publicly act to protect their Latino employees from this unjust state law. I collected and triangulated data from multiple sources, including semi-structured interviews, media reports, state and national statistics, official websites, and legal documents. Through discourse and content analysis of this data, I developed a case study that demonstrates how Alabama's poultry processors were on a collision course with Alabama state politicians over immigration reform, but they never saw it coming. In so doing, I raise important questions about limits on the "real" power of economic actors for achieving self-interested business outcomes when those interests contest strongly-held social and cultural norms that are infused with a particular history of race, difference, and alterity in local spaces. I demonstrate that these limits raise questions for the democratic process and have consequences for economic actors with regard to corporate social responsibility claims as they pertain to labor justice.
- Re: Reflections and explorations : Essays on politics, public policy, and governanceStephenson, Max O. Jr.; Kirakosyan, Lyusyena (Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance, 2015)We have organized the essays that follow in this volume into nine themes or broad topical foci based on the subjects our RE: Reflections and Explorations authors selected for their efforts during 2013-2014. A brief overview of our contributors’ organizing issues follows. Part 1 contains six essays that address the role(s) of the academy in society. Part 2 offers six essays that address questions central to the relationships among art, culture and politics. Part 3’s five essays treat issues linked to community building. Part 4 includes five essays that explore the challenges of public leadership at multiple scales and in a variety of contexts. Part 5’s eight essays examine a variety of concerns central to the characteristics and fundamentals of democratic citizenship and ethics. Part 6 consists of six essays that explore different dimensions of international politics. Part 7 of the volume comprises seven essays that directly or indirectly illuminate alternate facets of local and international development dynamics. Part 8 includes six essays that together analyze several manifestations or implications of neoliberalism, the current dominant public imaginary or frame in American and indeed, Western, politics. Part 9’s seven essays each afford readers alternate lenses into the dynamics and vicissitudes of change processes, as conceptualized at alternate analytical levels. The 56 essays together address a variety of concerns central to democratic politics and self-governance. The topics are as varied as our contributor’s substantive interests and perspectives, and that diversity yields a complex array of analytical insights. We hope you enjoy reading this richly textured collection as much as we have enjoyed assembling it.