Janitors, Street Vendors, and Activists by
Christian Zlolniski is an ethnography of Mexican immigrants in the Silicon Valley region of California.
Dr. Zlolniski focuses on people living in a low-income neighborhood known as Santech. He starts off with discussion of his field methods and a general discussion about Mexican immigration to California. This lays a framework for the rest of the book, which will be about the lives of the Santech residents. Some of the topics covered (as stated by the chapter headings) are the sub-contracting of janitors in high-tech companies; the informal economy; family structure; and community politics. Names of individuals and of companies have been altered for the book.
I took Dr. Zlolniski's course last semester on the Anthropology of Migration, and this book was one of our assigned reading materials. It's written in very accessible language, though, so anyone should be able to pick this up and have no trouble reading; besides, there are graphs and tables included that make the data presented a little easier to look at. There are also some photos and a map, which is something I always love to see in a book.
