Rosemarie Mincey is a community activist for Southern Appalachian women's issues and is involved with several Central American activist groups and labor-issue organizations. She has worked with Cuban and Guatemalan popular education groups. Prior to being the Fall 2000 Rockefeller Scholar-in-Residence at CSEGA, Dr. Mincey received her Ph.D in Cultural Studies in Education from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. An extensive world traveler Dr. Mincey has conducted research around the globe. She recently returned from teaching in China, where she was a Visiting Professor at Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, P.R. China.
To contact Dr. Mincey with comments on their research or to obtain copyright permission, please email her at:
drmincey@utk.edu
As the human landscape of the southern U.S. overall and the Appalachian region continue to change, so too does the population of workers in the region; in particular, the Latin population is rapidly increasing. During the 1980s but particularly in the 1990s, economic globalization and population shifts brought about dramatic changes in the socioeconomic structure and racial and ethnic composition of the workforce of southern Appalachia's textile industry, an industry that has been profoundly impacted by the evolving changes and conditions in the overall global economy.
Women comprise the majority of workers in this industry, both in Latin America and the U.S., and have faced a number of changes and challenges in the global economy. Global economic restructuring has meant the transfer of textile jobs to other countries, but a large number of workers from other nations have moved to the southern Appalachian region and into textile factories themselves as workers.
This study, Changing Fabrications: Lives of Appalachian and Latina Textile Mill Workers in Southern Appalachia, addresses the question: How do women working in textile mills in southern Appalachia characterize the impact of this work on their lives? The qualitative research method of narrative inquiry was used to conduct in-depth interviews with the study participants, structured by a life history format. In-depth interviews were conducted with 13 female textile factory workers, seven women originally from the Appalachian region and six women who have emigrated from Latin American countries and who are now working in the region.
Ages of the entire group ranged from 24 - 62, and all participants currently live and work within southern Appalachia in southwestern Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina. Of the countries of origin of the Latinas, one was from Colombia, one from Guatemala, and four from Mexico. The participant from Guatemala identified herself as being of indigenous descent and a Quiché speaker, the largest of Guatemala's estimated 23 distinct indigenous language groups. These women arrived in the U.S. through connections within established eastern and western migration patterns from Mexico and Central America, stopping first to work in maquila border towns like McAllen and Brownsville, Texas. Several participants initially settled in larger urban areas in Texas, such as Dallas, before moving onto western North Carolina and east Tennessee. Two first settled in Latin communities in Los Angeles, California, prior to migrating to the eastern U.S.
Other areas of participants' lives, such as their social relationships as parents, partners, union members, activists, and members of communities were also explored. In addition to direct participant interviews, oral histories, related labor and demographic materials, and other secondary sources of information were used as sources for content analysis in the triangulation of relevant data.
The goal of this proposed project was to develop, through thick description, a rich portrayal of how women working in the textile industry in southern Appalachia characterize their perceptions about their own lives and the effects of diversity in a gendered labor field.
Changing Fabrications: Lives of Appalachian and Latina Textile Mill Workers in Southern Appalachia
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Rosemarie Mincey will present her research in the Drinko Library Auditorium on
Thursday, March 6th from 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. in the Drinko Library Auditorium.
This presentation will be broadcast live over the internet.
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Dr. Mincey will be available for an online chat on Thursday, March 6th from 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
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A discussion list has been provided to accomodate discussion about Dr. Mincey's presentation and research.
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