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Janitors Street Vendors

An ethnographic study of Mexican immigrants in Silicon Valley reveals how the precarious lives of janitors, street vendors, and their families are shaped by the high-tech economy, and how they respond with resilience, complex survival strategies, and powerful forms of collective political action.

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What it’s about

Beneath the gleaming facade of Silicon Valley's technological utopia lies a hidden world of struggle and resilience. 'Janitors, Street Vendors, and Activists' takes you into Santech, a low-income barrio inhabited by the Mexican immigrants who clean the offices, landscape the campuses, and provide the essential services that keep the high-tech dream running. Through intimate ethnographic portraits, Christian Zlolniski reveals the stark paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty, tracing how corporate strategies like subcontracting create a class of 'subproletarians' facing insecure work and difficult living conditions. But this is not just a story of victimization. The book uncovers the vibrant and creative ways immigrants fight back—organizing complex households, building an informal economy for survival, and, most powerfully, mobilizing for change. From the dramatic 'Justice for Janitors' union campaign to the grassroots political battles led by working mothers, this book provides a crucial, on-the-ground look at immigrant agency and the human consequences of the new economy.

The through-line

Who it’s for: Scholars, students, activists, and policymakers who want to understand the human reality behind the glossy narratives of the globalized 'new economy' and are looking for grounded stories of resilience and resistance.
The problem: Mainstream accounts of regions like Silicon Valley either ignore low-wage immigrant workers or portray them as passive victims, making it difficult to grasp their true role and agency. Feeling frustrated with abstract, macro-level analyses of globalization and inequality, leading to a sense of disconnect from the human consequences and a lack of tangible models for action.
The plan: Uncover the structural link between the high-tech economy and the demand for low-wage immigrant labor.
Witness the daily lives of janitors, street vendors, and families through compelling ethnographic stories.
Analyze their collective responses, from the 'Justice for Janitors' union drive to grassroots community organizing led by women.
The payoff: Gain a profound, evidence-based understanding of the contradictions of modern capitalism. · Acquire rich case studies and theoretical tools to analyze inequality and recognize the agency of marginalized communities. · Feel inspired by the resilience and political creativity of immigrant workers and their families.

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Additional reading

The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business · Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.
Provides the historical account of the rise of the large, vertically integrated corporation in the 20th century, which serves as the 'pre-fissured' model that the book contrasts with the modern economy.
The Economic Institutions of Capitalism · Oliver Williamson
Lays out the transaction cost economics framework that helps explain why firms decide to perform activities internally versus outsourcing them, a core theoretical underpinning of the decision to fissure.
The State of Working America · Lawrence Mishel, Josh Bivens, Elise Gould, and Heidi Shierholz (Economic Policy Institute)
The book frequently cites data from this ongoing research project to document the macro-level trends of wage stagnation and rising inequality that form the backdrop for the fissuring phenomenon.
What Do Unions Do? · Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff
Provides the classic analysis of the role of unions in the workplace, which is relevant to the book's discussion of how the decline of unions contributed to the vulnerability of workers in a fissured environment.
Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998 · Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez
This seminal work on income inequality provides the data showing the 'Great Divergence' in incomes, which the author argues is exacerbated by the fissuring of the workplace.
"Good People and Dirty Work" · Everett C. Hughes
This 1962 sociological essay provides the book's central theoretical framework: the idea that respectable members of society tacitly delegate unethical tasks to others and then disavow them.
The Civilizing Process · Norbert Elias
Explains the societal tendency to hide unpleasant activities like violence and slaughter 'behind the scenes,' which is crucial to the book's argument about the invisibility of dirty work.
Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates · Erving Goffman
His analysis of 'total institutions' is used to understand the power dynamics and dehumanizing environment within prisons where mental health staff work.
The Drowned and the Saved · Primo Levi
The chapter 'The Gray Zone' is cited to analyze the moral compromises made by people in positions of relative powerlessness, blurring the lines between victim and perpetrator.
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character · Jonathan Shay
Introduced the concept of 'moral injury' as a wound caused by the betrayal of 'what's right' by authorities, which the book applies to soldiers, drone operators, and oil rig workers.