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Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take on the Global Economy & Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy. .(Book Review)-

Article Excerpt
by Miriam Ching Yoon LOUIE, Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2001, 306 pp., ISBN: 0-89608-638-0.

Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy

by Grace CHANG, Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2000, 236 pp., ISBN: 0-89608-617-8.

Two books on immigrant women workers in the global economy analyse the repercussions of American foreign policy on domestic immigration issues. Sweatshop Warriors and Disposable Domestics complement each other in every respect. Each book mentions the tragic consequences of the 1992 riot in Los Angeles in the name of Rodney King. These unfortunate events galvanized labour organizers with a conscience to find alternatives to what C. Wright Mills, as early as 1956, coined as the "industrial-military complex" in his sociological study entitled The Power Elite. Authors Louie and Chang come from the communities they research. Each author shows an insider's view of the immigrant communities under study. In both books immigrant women are seen not as mere victims of globalization but rather as active agents in social change.

In their research, each writer addresses the alternative self-organization of immigrant women who seek to redress human rights abuses experienced by marginalized ethnic workers in American society. Louie focuses on the multi-ethnic women's coalitions led by genuine working class heroines from the Chinese, Latino and Korean working class populations of the United States. Chang's study highlights the coalitions of immigrant women that are...

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