Positive And Negative Effects Of Maquiladora Industry

Kelley commences her speech by providing a shocking statistic that “two million children under the age of sixteen years” strenuously work to support themselves and their families in order to create a forceful sense of emotion within her audience. By doing this she illuminates the rate of child labor to stress the severity of the problem. The author repeats “increase” to emphasize and describe that the American workforce is increasingly composed of girls/women in order to highlight their role and the growth of their participation in the workforce. Juxtaposing how girls spend their time with how

Along with the money that it brings the Maquiladoras, it saves the capitalists money on labor costs and import and export taxes. The capitalists save money because they are getting labor for $16.00 a day per worker. They would not be able to do that with American laborers.

Women are believed to have greater manual dexterity than men and they are therefore preferred by companies who want to maximize their production. Women who are hired for their supposed superiority to men when it comes to manual dexterity, a trade essential to a maquiladora worker, are ironically paid much less despite their valued trait. It is clear that the degree to which the women are devalued is far greater than the degree to which their ability and production is valued. Women's bodies are being exploited in factories where they are being paid ridiculously low wages based on a cultural belief that men superior to women, that women belong in the household and that men belong in the workplace. They are then paid significantly less partly to reinforce this ideal—to keep men as the leaders of the household--and partly in order to reinforce the stereotypes about the submissive and inferior nature of women.

313). A maquiladora is a Mexican Corporation located in central Mexico or the US/Mexico border that receives imported goods such as machinery and electronics to assemble in factories by workers. These imported goods are then exported back to the United States in addition to other countries. Women are preferred to work in maquiladoras as they are less likely to report workplace abuse, have little to no education, and own no phone or car (Navarro 2). In maquiladoras, these women are exposed to unsafe equipment, poorly designed workstations, extreme varied weather, and poor lighting among other issues (Abell 597). As a result, they suffer from a myriad of health problems as well as poor reproductive

maquiladoras were required to locate within 20 miles of an international border or coastline, but to this day the regulation of the maquiladora industries have change a tremendous amount.. In 2000, 57% of the adult population lived in the capital region, in which Mexico City is located, or in surrounding central states. During the 1990s, the share of the population in the border region, in which most maquiladoras are located, rose slightly from 17% to 18%. This small increase in the border population is remarkable, given the dramatic growth in maquiladora employment and in the population of large cities, such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, that occurred in the region. Border employment has grown primarily through firms attracting workers from

In order for an individual to understand how this cooperative situation came to be, one must understand the origins and meaning behind the maquiladoras. According to Leslie Sklair’s, president of the Global Studies Association and International Advisory Board with a PhD in sociology, monograph series; In 1942, the United States was in need of workers due to its lack of men, since many of them were fighting in World War 2. The United States and Mexico came into an agreement to cooperate, hence the Bracero program came to be. This program allowed Mexico to send workers to alleviate the shortage of labor in the U.S. Throughout history, the need for workers decreased and the U.S had no need for them, so they began to plan new sources for work. As a result, the Mexican government instated the Border Industrialization Program, which later became known as the Maquiladora program. The maquiladoras, are maquila industries that began to appear in the mid-1960, which were typically located in Mexico’s side of the border, such as Baja

The maquiladora workers provide a story about globalization that is often obscured by barriers like oceans, borders, or even physical walls. This side of the story is often not highlighted by the supporters of neoliberal globalization in the way that the pledged benefits are. The people who know this side are usually the ones living and dealing with the some of the so called “dangers” that globalization has made a reality. Cynthia Enloe and Alison Jaggar both offer counter narratives about globalization that focus on the negative aspects that come out of globalization as it currently stands. But unlike the two authors’ accounts, “Maquilapolis” takes the telling of a counter narrative a step further by having the story come straight from those who are living it. The counter narrative that is told in the film was created by the filmmakers and the women featured in “Maquilapolis”. The film gives the workers a platform that is often not offered to them. The lives of the women featured in the film, which are heavily influenced by globalization, are far from the ideal that globalization promises. Although the workers either benefit or once benefitted from the higher wages they made working in the factories, the damages more often outweighed the benefits. Magdalena Cerda from the Environmental Health Coalition expands on this point by asserting that along with the capital from the company “comes the impact on the environment and on people's health” (“Maquilapolis”, 30:00-30:07). In the next section, we look directly at the negative environmental and health effects that have come with globalization and free trade as expressed in the film

1. In creating contracts, both parties should perceive that the contract that they are entering into voluntarily is beneficial. What do the Maquiladora laws do for Mexico? How do the laws benefit both the USA and Mexico?

The border region has seen “rapid transformation in a short span of time, changing from a cattle ranching and mining area that attracted U.S., Mexican and European capitalists…to the center of a lucrative vice and pleasure-based tourist industry, to a region that …attracted an extraordinary amount of international capital to its manufacturing and services sector”. (Ganster/Lorey 2) Events and years such as the implementation of the railroad, the years before the Mexican Revolution, the land reform in 1936 and 1937, the implementation of the maquiladora program and the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has had a significant impact on the U.S. Mexican Borderlands.

The main point of the article is that changes are being made that are shifting the way the maquiladora plants are operating. This particular story takes place in Tijuana, however, the changes are affecting all of the maquiladora plants all along the Mexico - United States border. The maquiladora plants are having to make changes because the Mexican government “[cut] some of their tax breaks“ (Mexico’s maquiladoras). In previous years the maquiladora plants had lost a lot of business to Asia where lower wages could be found. Lately, the “rising pay in China“ was bringing jobs back to Mexico (Mexico’s maquiladoras).With the reduction in tax benefits, the maquiladora plants are once again loosing business to other locations.

Regarding females in the workplace, the common opinion across the American continent used to be that by working outside the home, women were abandoning their primary job in life—that of a mother and wife, taking care of the house and the family. In modern times, Latinas take on multiple roles; not only are they still expected to look put together and run the family and the household—for most Latinas in the US, without any outside help—, but many are also breadwinners, some by choice and others by default. The decision made by many Latinas to work has already changed society due to growing feelings of self-empowerment. This newly discovered power is reflected in the increased use of contraceptives by Latin American women. Despite the Roman Catholic teachings, Latinas have taken matters into their own hands by using birth control to decrease the size of their families and lessen their burden, thus allowing them to fulfill their multidimensional desires and duties.

This shows that although the Maquiladora industries are able to provide employment to those in poverty, the end result does not help these men and women prepare for a future outside of their alienated tasks at these factories and they are also subject to unethical practices, making it clear the poverty affects the work of Hondurans. Another academic source The Economist published an article in 1997 which was during the uproar of the clothing manufacturing industries and had this to say about what they found out on the Maquiladora industries: “In the worst sweatshops, women work 16-hour days with a single half-hour break. Some work 80 hours a week without overtime pay or take

Life on the Global Assembly Line by Barbara Ehrenreich and Annette Fuentes is an essay which describes the deplorable working and living conditions that women around the world suffer in order to earn a supposedly decent living. In their essay, Ehrenreich and Fuentes goes into detail how the female factory workers are exploited by their superiors in order to efficiently and cost effectively mass produce. I chose to present an analysis on this essay because I believe it conveys continuously unresolved issues which have plagued society throughout the centuries; I am of course referring to the conundrum of gender inequality.

Gender roles is a very controversial topic in today’s society, especially when it comes to working. 100 years ago, in Europe, women were working long hours in factories. Women also worked as nurses, cleaned wealthy people 's homes, and were craftswomen. Meanwhile, 100 years ago in the United States women were expected to stay home and take care of the family/home, while the men went out and worked an average of ten hours a day for six days a week, compared to the traditional five day weeks and 8 hour days.

The United States of America has many advantages such as natural resources, a stable government, and advanced technology. Its southern neighbor, Mexico, has not had as much luck. Mexico’s unfortunate terrain and unstable government has hindered its ability to gain any significant amount of wealth as a nation. In his novel, All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy shows us the difference in the wealth of these two nations through the travels of John Grady Cole and Lacy Rawlins. McCarthy gives readers an example of Mexico’s economic status when he writes,