Mexican women in American factories : free trade and exploitation on the border /

In this closely documented work, based on interviews with 620 women workers in factories known as maquiladoras in the Mexican border town of Nogales, economist Tuttle (Lake Forest College) sets out to test the promise of free trade embodied by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): that it would be instrumental in modernizing the Mexican economy and improving the lives of ordinary Mexicans. Presumably, this would also stem the tide of massive "illegal" (undocumented) Mexican immigration to the US. Since the enactment of NAFTA, hundreds of thousands of Mexican men and especially Mexican women have been employed in these border factories. Tuttle asserts that, with reason, most of these factories can properly be described as sweatshops because they openly flout local (Mexican) wage and labor laws and flagrantly violate heath and safety codes. Not surprisingly, she concludes that NATFA has created more low-paying jobs and immiserated more Mexican families--in short, achieved just the opposite of what free trade promises. This meticulous study is an indictment not only of outsourcing and maquiladoras as sweatshops, but of the entire premise of free trade as a win-win proposition for all concerned. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through research collections. E. Hu-DeHart Brown University