When Globalization Comes Home: Maquiladoras South of the Border When Humberto dr

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When Globalization Comes Home: Maquiladoras South of the Border When Humberto drives his truck among Ciudad Juantez’s shanties - patched together packing crates, discarded tires, and cardboard - women and children flock around him. Humberto is the waterman, and his truckload of water means life. Two hundred thousand Mexicans rush to Juarez each year, fleeing to the hopelessness of the rural areas in pursuit of a better life. They didn’t have running water or plumbing in the country anyway, and here they have the possibility of a job, a weekly check to buy food for the kids. The pay is $10 a day. This may not sound like much, but it is more than twice the minimum daily wage in Mexico. Assembly-for-export plants, known as maquiladoras, dot the Mexican border. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) allows U.S. companies to import materials to Mexico without paying tax and to then export the finished products into the United States, again without tax. It’s a sweat deal: few taxes and $10 a day for workers starved for jobs. Some get an even sweater deal. They pay their workers Mexico’s minimum wage of $4 for 10-hour days with a 30 minute break (Darweesh 2000) That these workers live in shacks, with no running water or means of sewage disposal, is not the employers’ concern. Then there is the pollution. Every day, Juarez pumps 75 million gallons of untreated sewage into the Rio Grande. Other maquiladora towns along the border do the same. There is also the loss of jobs for U.S. workers. Six of the fifteen poorest cities in the United States are located on the sewage-infested Rio Grande. NAFTA didn’t bring poverty to these cities. They were poor before this treaty, but residents resent the jobs they’ve seen move across the border ( Thompson 2001 ) What if maquiladora workers organize and demand better pay? Farther South, even cheaper labor beckons. Guatemala and Honduras will gladly take the maquiladoras. So will China, where workers make $1 a day. Mexico has already lost many of its maquiladora jobs to places where people even more desperate will work for even less ( Luhnow 2004) . Many Mexicans would say that this presentation is one-sided. “Sure there are problems,” they say, “but that is always how it is when a country industrializes. Don’t you realize that the maquiladoras bring jobs to people who have no work? They also bring roads, telephone lined, and electricity to undeveloped areas. “ “In fact,” says Vincent Fox, the president of Mexico, “workers at the maquiladoras make more than the average salary in Mexico- and that’s what we call fair wages” (Fraser 2001) Symbolic interactionists analyze how people’s experiences shape their views of the world. How would people’s experiences in contrasting social locations lead to different answers to the question: “Do maquiladoras represent exploitation or opportunity?” What multiple realities do you see here?

Explanation / Answer

In this case, Maquiladoras represent opportunity and not exploitation. Though, there is misuse of people, as a result of globalisation people have started getting jobs. People were not able to earn bread or have a proper living. People have started earning more than the average people. Also, the quality of life has become better. Multiple realities observed is the betterment in quality of life, betterment in the wages, development of the underdeveloped areas, and they have had better job opportunities. Presence of electricity and working.

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