Invisible in Austin
Life and Labor in an American City
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
Austin, Texas, is renowned as a high-tech, fast-growing city for the young and creative, a cool place to live, and the scene of internationally famous events such as SXSW and Formula 1. But as in many American cities, poverty and penury are booming along with wealth and material abundance in contemporary Austin. Rich and poor residents lead increasingly separate lives as growing socioeconomic inequality underscores residential, class, racial, and ethnic segregation.
In Invisible in Austin, the award-winning sociologist Javier Auyero and a team of graduate students explore the lives of those working at the bottom of the social order: house cleaners, office-machine repairers, cab drivers, restaurant cooks and dishwashers, exotic dancers, musicians, and roofers, among others. Recounting their subjects’ life stories with empathy and sociological insight, the authors show us how these lives are driven by a complex mix of individual and social forces. These poignant stories compel us to see how poor people who provide indispensable services for all city residents struggle daily with substandard housing, inadequate public services and schools, and environmental risks. Timely and essential reading, Invisible in Austin makes visible the growing gap between rich and poor that is reconfiguring the cityscape of one of America’s most dynamic places, as low-wage workers are forced to the social and symbolic margins.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sociologist Auyero (Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown) and his graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin deliver exceptional in-depth longitudinal studies of 11 people living in precarious social and economic conditions in their city. Their subjects include a multilingual, highly educated Nepalese cab driver; an impeccably dressed food industry worker in her 50s who lives in a storage unit; a copier repairman with bad knees and failing eyesight who can't afford to retire; a musician whose career doesn't afford him the luxury of having a family in the "live music capital of the world"; a 65-year-old injured Mexican laborer who began working when he was five; and a waitress turned exotic dancer. At the heart of these narratives is Austin, whose hip, progressive reputation belies its worsening income inequality and long history of racial and economic segregation. Beyond the particulars of each story are the institutional and political changes that have placed workers at an increasing disadvantage the "rise of the service economy," dismantling of the social safety net, decline of unions, and acceleration of globalization, among other factors. Lucid and empathetic, these insightful portraits reveal how life histories are intertwined with political and economic forces beyond any individual's control.
