Relationships Among Multiple Livelihoods and Human, Social, and Cultural Capital

这个项目涉及来自东卡罗来纳大学的一位文化人类学家的研究，他研究通过多种生计转变工作。该项目将研究持有特殊临时工签证的墨西哥和牙买加跨国工人，他们在美国大西洋中部地区的海鲜加工和旅游劳动力市场工作，从事以前主要由当地妇女担任的季节性工作。对外国劳动力的依赖日益增加，对本土劳动力的依赖减少，这表明大西洋中部地区工人的工作条件和机会与牙买加和墨西哥工人的工作条件和机会趋同。该项目将通过重点调查美国、墨西哥和牙买加的工人样本，研究使工人能够在本国和东道国获得公共和私人援助的社会网络联系。待检验的具体假设涉及受移徙劳工经历影响的母国正式和非正式经济和政治活动的重要性，以及特定工作经历对工人关于工作和社会机会的文化模式的影响。结合深入的开放式访谈和当地历史研究，以及更具结构性的文化共识测试和分类任务的测量，研究将确定发达和欠发达地区工人的特征和工作经验；考察政府在这一过程中的角色；确定季节性劳动力市场经验如何影响人力社会和文化资本的形成；并探索文化理解和期望与社会文化资本的关系。这项研究将促进我们对跨国工人人力资本的理解，新的知识将对规划者和公共政策制定者产生极大的兴趣

This project involves the research of a cultural anthropologist from East Carolina University, studying the transformation of work through multiple livelihoods. The project will study Mexican and Jamaican transnational workers carrying special temporary worker visas who work in the seafood processing and tourist labor markets of the mid-Atlantic region of the US, employed in seasonal jobs formerly staffed primarily by local women. The increasing reliance on foreign labor and decreasing reliance on native labor signals a convergence of the working conditions and opportunities of workers in the Mid-Atlantic region with those of workers from Jamaica and Mexico. The project will examine the social network ties which enable workers to obtain public and private assistance, in their home as well as their host country, by focusing on a sample of US, Mexican, and Jamaican workers. The specific hypotheses to be tested deal with the importance of formal and informal economic and political activities in the home countries as affected by migrant labor experiences, as well as the effects of specific work experiences on the cultural models of workers regarding work and social opportunities. Combining in-depth open-ended interviewing and local historical research and the more structured measures of cultural consensus testing and sorting tasks, the research will determine the character and work experience of workers in developed and underdeveloped regions; examine the roles of government in this process; determine how the seasonal labor market experience influences the formation of human social and cultural capital; and explore the relation of cultural understandings and expectations and social-cultural capital. This research will advance our understanding of the human capital of transnational workers and the new knowledge will be of great interest to planners and public policy makers