Geographies of Hope and Despair: Atlanta's African American, Latino, and White Day Laborers

• Main Author: Terry Easton
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Emory Center for Digital Scholarship 2007-12-01
• Series: Southern Spaces
• Subjects: African American Studies; Economics; Global South; Industry and Labor; Latino Studies; Migration
• Online Access: https://southernspaces.org/node/42853

How did African American, Latino, and white day laborers experience Atlanta's transformation to an international metropolis at the cusp of the twenty-first century? In addition to documenting the conditions under which day laborers lived and worked, this essay reveals the ways in which attorneys, activists, and others sought to improve day laborers' working conditions. Historical, ethnographic, and geographic methods guided the research, and the result is a rich array of photographs, audio clips, and maps that accompany the written text. In particular, Tom Rankin's 1988 photographs of day labor agencies illuminate a method of securing employment that generally remains, like day laborers themselves, in the shadows.