Soliciting work in this manner is an increasingly visible
part of the urban landscape and is growing in the United States (Malpica 1996,
Valenzuela 1999, Valenzuela & Melendez 2003, US General Accounting Office
2002) and worldwide in countries and regions such as Mexico (Vanackere 1988),
Japan (Fowler 1996, Marr 1997, Giamo 1994, Gill 1994, Marr et al. 2000, Gill
2001, Valenzuela et al. 2002), and South America (Townsend 1997). Several important characteristics identify the informal day labor industry and its participants:
The market is highly visible, with large hiring sites spread throughout metropolitan
Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and other cities in the Southwest, the South,
and the Northwest. Most day laborers are male, foreign-born, recently arrived and
unauthorized, and have low levels of education and a poor command of English