Labor Implications of Sustainable Coastal Development: Relations between Coastal and Inland Communities Grant uri icon

abstract

  • Sustainable coastal development depends on a steady, reliable supply of workers with varied skills and skill levels, expectations regarding earnings and working conditions, the ability to find safe and secure housing, and the institutional support, such health care systems and schools, to raise the children who will eventually help reproduce the coastal labor force. Currently, Eastern North Carolina?s coast is home to industries that fluctuate seasonally in terms of their labor requirements?including tourism, agriculture, fisheries, and forestry?and several other economic sectors that require relatively stable, year-round work forces, such as health care, education, transportation, wholesale and retail sales, food processing, manufacturing, and the military. North Carolina?s coastal work force is highly complex, with workers coming from a variety of ethnic, class, legal status, and educational backgrounds, enjoying different levels of income, benefits packages, and job satisfaction and security, having to work different numbers of jobs to survive, and able to afford housing ranging from unsafe mobile homes to elaborate mansions capable of withstanding hurricane force winds. As development continues along the barrier islands and the strips of land immediately adjacent to coastal waters (including its rivers and sounds), economic sectors in these regions increasingly depend on workers who either cannot afford to live near where they work or must submit to crowded and substandard conditions where it is difficult to raise healthy families. Many such workers are relatively new and somewhat older immigrants and refugees from Southeast Asia, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and other countries; often these workers have low levels of education and poor English skills. Combined with living in substandard housing (e.g. poorly secured trailers), these conditions are liable to make them more susceptible to coastal hazards, raising questions about the relationships among coastal development, social justice, and environmental health disparities. The goal of this project is to analyze exactly these relationships among coastal development, labor, social justice, and environmental health disparities. It will address the overarching question of how much current patterns of coastal development depend on a labor force whose members have difficulty making ends meet. Is coastal development that is truly sustainable possible when its labor force cannot reproduce itself without constant influxes of new immigrants? Are there niches within current patterns of coastal development where immigrants and low-wage workers may be able to improve their earning capacity and the overall health and well-being of their families? Can we take advantage of existing or develop new training programs to accompany coastal development in ways that improve the life-chances of immigrants, low-wage workers, and their children? Using a multi-method, ethnographic research design, the research will move from exploratory to more focused research in six regions of the coast: three inland communities whose members are linked, through employment, with three regions immediately adjacent to the coast, one northern (e.g. Nags Head/ OBX), one central (e.g. Morehead City), and one southern (e.g. Wilmington). Tracing work histories and employment profiles of workers and labor force needs (current and projected) and practices of coastal industries, the research will locate best employment practices and develop different models of coastal development trajectories that have positive and negative implications for workers? families and their communities. Finally, the research will develop a ?tool kit? for coastal communities that are home to large numbers of low-wage workers, which will highlight best practices in terms of offering safe and secure housing, providing quality

date/time interval

  • January 2014 - June 2017