The North became home to industrial labor such as steel mills, foundries and factories. The transition from agricultural workers to industrial workers signifies a drastic change in the Mexican American labor transitions. “The steady entrance of Mexicans into steelwork resumed after the 1920-1921 depression as employers began expanding their recruiting efforts” (Vargas 260). Mexican Americans immigrants did not want to go back to their homeland because of the limited job opportunities in Mexico. Since they decided to stay to work, they began to accustom to the life and culture in the Midwest and “their assimilation into an industrial work culture, and uneven process of adaptation, was taking place through the creation of enclaves in ethnic, working-class neighborhoods established there, all of which were influenced by the persuasive factory environment” (Vargas 261). Mexicans were on and off with employment which made it difficult to pay for the rent of a location that was already not healthy to live …show more content…
Women in El Paso worked hard while their husband or children were working and “the general topics of Mexican women as housewives, as wage workers, and participate in unionization” would be avoided. It is not the most women did not work but “some Mexican woman in El Paso and throughout the urban South West contributed to the household incomes by taking in wash or lodgers” (Garcia 217). Many women participated in the labor unions and labor strikes. Mexican housewives worked manually while living off of seasonal savings. Although they were housewives, the men utilized the women's support in order to adapt to the steadily adjusting to the new urban environments and all the transitions of labor opportunities that they might have went