Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland by Kristy Nabhan-Warren

Abstract

Reviewed by: Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland by Kristy Nabhan-Warren Kevin D. Smith Kristy Nabhan-Warren, Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. 280 pp. $19.95 (paper). Belying the stereotype of a homogenous, White, conservative population, the midwestern Corn Belt is also home to thousands of Mexican and Central American migrants, along with a smaller but growing population of legally recognized African and Asian refugees. Media accounts typically portray the American-born White and migrant segments of this community as separate, [End Page 110] even opposed groups: the former as supporters of anti-immigration policies, and the latter as subjects of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and as one of the first groups of essential workers to undergo a deadly wave of COVID-19. For Kristy Nabhan-Warren, professor of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa, however, these groups intersect in a complex and sometimes troubled milieu in and around Iowa meatpacking plants. After interviewing over one hundred migrant and American-born residents of Iowa, Nabhan-Warren argues that despite racial, ethnic, religious, and class differences, "faith, work, family, and food" united the disparate members of meatpacking communities in a common effort to "pull together to work toward better futures" (8, 10). Nabhan-Warren's preface, which locates her work in a growing literature about workplace religion, explains her concerns, religious commitment, and thesis. She maintains that although most of her Latin American subjects are officially classified as "economic refugees" and "asylum seekers," she views them as "de facto" refugees because they were victims of violence attributable in part to a long history of U.S. intervention (xiii). She describes the U.S. immigration system as "flawed [and] inadequate" and concedes that most of her White interviewees were indeed anti-immigrant (vii). Nabham-Warren affirms her commitment "to bringing forward American Catholic stories with broader themes in American life and culture," (xxi) and she argues that faith, along with a shared belief in hard work, family, and the significance of food, may help to resolve the "cultural paradox" that the refugees, upon whom White inhabitants look down and fear, are the same people whose labor in processing cattle and hogs preserves the economic and social vitality of the region (50). Nabham-Warren skillfully defends her thesis with a well-organized and richly populated account of the lives and aspirations of her American-born and migrant subjects. After a brief vignette that illustrates the plight of Latin American refugees, Nabham-Warren introduces some of her White, Catholic subjects, who are unanimous in crediting the faith and hard work of their settler ancestors for their prosperity. She then addresses the Catholic priests who have tried to bring American-born and immigrant Iowans together, describing the fine line they must hew both to make their refugee parishioners feel welcome and to avoid alienating longstanding White parishioners. Nabham-Warren next turns her attention to the meatpacking workers and the plants themselves, emphasizing the difficulty of the work and the racial stratification reflected in the distribution of jobs. She offers a [End Page 111] vivid description of the process of turning live animals into packaged meat, allowing the reader to appreciate the danger posed by repetitive motion, sharp knives, heavy carcasses, and long hours, as well as the blood that suffuses the environment. Like American-born Whites, Nabham-Warren's refugee subjects also credit faith and hard work for the successes they enjoy. The last section of the book, in which Nabham-Warren begins to make connections between the groups she analyses, however, does not fully support her argument that faith contributes to the breaking down of barriers between refugees and American-born Whites. There are, to be sure, some White women from the area's liberal Protestant denominations who regularly provide aid to refugees, and the Catholic priests try, if mostly in vain, to encourage White congregants to attend Spanish-language masses. The problem is that although each group points to religion as central to their ability to cope with the stresses of meatpacking, they seem to gain different rewards from...