Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take on the Global Economy by Miriam Ching Yoon Louie, Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2001, 306 pp., ISBN: 0-89608-638-0. Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy by Grace Chang, Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2000, 236 pp., ISBN: 0-89608-617-8.

Two books on immigrant women workers in the global economy analyse the repercussions of American foreign policy on domestic immigration issues. Sweatshop Warriors and Disposable Domestics complement each other in every respect. Each book mentions the tragic consequences of the 1992 riot in Los Angeles in the name of Rodney King. These unfortunate events galvanized labour organizers with a conscience to find alternatives to what C. Wright Mills, as early as 1956, coined as the “industrial-military complex” in his sociological study entitled The Power Elite. Authors Louie and Chang come from the communities they research. Each author shows an insider’s view of the immigrant communities under study. In both books immigrant women are seen not as mere victims of globalization but rather as active agents in social change. In their research, each writer addresses the alternative self-organization of immigrant women who seek to redress human rights abuses experienced by marginalized ethnic workers in American society. Louie focuses on the multi-ethnic women’s coalitions led by genuine working class heroines from the Chinese, Latino and Korean working class populations of the United States. Chang’s study highlights the coalitions of immigrant women that are linked with organized labour. Both books focus on women’s working lives at the point of production and reproduction within the nexus of transnational capital. In so doing, both authors provide highly readable accounts of complex macro-economic processes that shape the everyday political lives of women at the micro level. As Louie travels to the communities, the countries of origin, the homes and social gatherings of her respondents, Sweatshop Warriors becomes a polyglot of kitchen smells, ethnic recipes, a glossary of words, phrases, and even the languages of the many immigrant voices she encounters. Louie’s monograph is especially significant for understanding the working conditions of immigrant workers both in their country of origin and in their host country. She gathers information about the immigration history of local leaders and presents a series of vignettes that outline their memory of past work experience and of resistance that each has brought with them to the host country. The author’s authentic portrayal reveals the heterogeneous nature of immigrant culture from New York to California shaped as it is by women’s immi- gration status. For example, Vietnamese refugees of Chinese origin work alongside Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong and undocumented workers from Fujian province in China. All are united by a common language but divided against each other by unfair employer practices that pit documented workers against those who are undocumented. By way of contrast, the Chicano population enjoys a long history of organized trade unionism particularly in the Western United States in territories considered by recent Latino immigrants to be occupied by the American government. Finally, militant Korean women are in flight from political repression. Each successive wave of new immigrants has been affected by the contradictory nature of American foreign policy that drives them to North America in search of a better life whether to escape war, poverty or political repression within the global economy. Despite their hardships in the host country immigrant women have cultivated alternative forms of organization. Out of necessity, their social movements tend to be more inclusive and democratic than their mainstream counterparts in the labour movement. Louie recounts her respondents’ perceptions of “the workers’ centers”: “Many women also spoke of how the centers reached out to them to fill other unmet needs in their lives—to learn English, to become enfranchised citizens, to break their isolation, to get out from under the thumb of domineering partners, to give themselves space outside the sweatshop grind, and to taste the …