Overview

A collection of essays grappling with the many, often overlooked, forms of unfree labor in the West

Full Product Details

Author:   Jessica R. Pliley ,  John Mckiernan-González
Publisher:   University of Texas Press
Imprint:   University of Texas Press
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9781477333457

ISBN 10:   1477333452
Pages:   280
Publication Date:   14 April 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Introduction (Jessica R. Pliley and John Mckiernan-GonzÁlez) I. Troubling Contracts: Limiting Worker Mobility in the Labor Market 1. Constructing Coercion: Labor Regimes and Sex Workers at the US-Mexico Borderlands (Erik Bernardino) 2. Cotton’s Paradise: Coerced Labor and the Right to Live During the Great Depression in El Paso, Texas, 1931–1933 (Yolanda ChÁvez Leyva) 3. “We Never Had No Payday Here”: Folk Song, Forced Labor and the Carceral State in Texas (Jason Mellard) 4. Mario CantÚ and the Struggle Against Unfree Labor in San Antonio, Tejas, and Mexico, 1969–1984 (Jerry GonzÁlez) II. Imprisoning Housework: (Re)producing Unfreedom 5. The Curse of Cane: Sugar, Race, and the Bittersweet Legacy of Prison Segregation in Texas, 1871–1926 (Jermaine Thibodeaux) 6. The Carceral Rescue Industry: World War I-Era Anti-Prostitution Campaigns in Texas (Ánh Adams and Jessica R. Pliley) 7. Native Women and Unfree Labor: The Haskell Indian Boarding School Experience (Bethany Eby) 8. “Nobody Paid Me Anything”: Forced Labor in California Institutions for the Feebleminded (Natalie Lira) Epilogue: Chasing (and Being Chased by) Slavery—A Borderlands Journey (Luis C. de Baca) Acknowledgments Index

Reviews

Remarkable in its scope, analysis, and ambition, Capturing Labor sheds new light on systems of coerced labor and how central they have been to the histories of race, politics, and capitalism in the American Southwest. Not a specialist in the history of the American Southwest? You will still want to read the essays contained in this volume, as each, in its own way, challenges us to think about the history of coerced labor in new, fascinating, and important ways.--Stephen C. Beda, University of Oregon, author of Strong Winds and Widow Makers: Workers, Nature, and Environmental Conflict in Pacific Northwest Timber Country

Author Information

Jessica R. Pliley is a professor of women's and gender history at Texas State University. She is the author of Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI and the coeditor of Fighting Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking: History and Contemporary Policy and Global Anti-Vice Activism, 1890-1950: Fighting Drinks, Drugs, and ""Immorality."" John Mckiernan-González is the director of the Center for the Study of the Southwest and an associate professor of history at Texas State University. He is the author of Fevered Measures: Public Health and Race at the Texas-Mexico Border, 1848-1942 and coeditor of Precarious Prescriptions: Contested Histories of Race and Health in North America.

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