Associate Professor and Interim Director in the School of Geography, Development and Environment at the University of Arizona
Illegality and the transformation of low-wage labor regimes in the context of rural gentrification
Over the last three decades, domestic amenity or “lifestyle” migration has stimulated a process of rural gentrification across the United States, shifting landscapes of production to landscapes of consumption—from Jackson Hole, Wyoming to Highlands, North Carolina. This talk draws on her recently published book, Illegality and the Production of Affluence: Undocumented Labor and Gentrification in Rural America. In that project Dr. Nelson investigates an under-appreciated dimension of rural gentrification: the recruitment of low-wage, mostly undocumented Latine immigrant workers essential to building and maintaining gentrifying landscapes and lifestyles. Dr. Nelson’s presentation focuses on the emergence and consolidation of immigrant-based labor regimes in two case study communities between the late 1990s and late 2000s, Steamboat Springs, CO and Rabun County, GA, drilling down into qualitative data that illustrate how and why employers in gentrification-linked sectors recruited what was an unfamiliar labor force in both places. Dr. Nelson traces how, over time, employers transformed their fundamental business model to reach new levels of profitability predicated on access to racially marked, “illegal” workers. Finally, Dr. Nelson discusses how these labor regimes shaped life and work for immigrant newcomers navigating rural landscapes of affluence.
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