Working with the Migrant Family: Labor Migration, Social Services, and the Puerto Rican Diaspora

In 1948 the Puerto Rican Government created a branch of its Department of Labor in the United States called the Migration Division with an organizing office in New York City. The Migration Division was created to regulate the growing labor migrations of Puerto Rican workers, who were U.S. citizens from a territorial possession of the United States, into the continental United States. When migrant workers and their families arrived in U.S. cities and sought housing, education and access to health care and social services they faced racial exclusions and marginalization. In response, a Social Services section of the Migration Division was created and staffed with Puerto Rican and U.S. social workers who served as intermediaries between city social welfare agencies and the Puerto Rican government. Drawing on my ongoing archival work in the casework files of the Social Service section of the Migration Division this paper will consider the ways that Puerto Rican state sought to manage labor migration and promote assimilation. The paper will focus in particular on how social workers work with migrants reflected emerging discourses about the politics of women’s labor, race, gender and the family within the Puerto Rican diaspora.