Nichola J. Lowe

Compares U.S. states that specialize in biopharmaceuticals to understand who participates in a so-called working region. While some state policy-makers have privileged scientific and design occupations at the expense of the production workforce, regional actors in North Carolina have increased employment in design and development while growing their biopharmaceutical production base, aligning innovation and equity goals in the process.

Finds intensified interdependence between Latino immigrant workers and their native-born supervisors and co-workers in a multi-year study of construction workers in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Latino workers respond to challenges of restructuring in their daily work with innovative and lasting solutions that their native-born supervisors and co-workers have learned to value, and have ultimately stepped in as influential allies.

Argues that, rather than being drive exclusively by a “college for all” mentality, policymakers should strive for an economy in which social-mobility strategies are also embedded in the workplace, activating internal structures within firms that support and reward work-based learning.

Discusses challenges posed by changes in American manufacturing, such as educational requirements, and how skill, and more specifically changing perceptions of skill, might affect manufacturing worker recruitment, retention, and mobility.

Challenges the assumption that skill is primarily derived from formal schooling and classroom education by focusing on the tacit skills of newly-arrived Latino immigrant workers continue to innovate new construction techniques and carve new pathways for training immigrant co-workers and new labor market entrants.