ABSTRACT
Migrants’ wages are low, opportunities to work erratic at best, and whatever they earn in Prairie Junction must be stretched to last while they winter in Texas. Life-long concerns are thus powerfully set forth in everyday encounters, as migrants, resisting the institution, live out their shared understanding of what families are all about. The long monotonous buildings in Prairie Junction’s migrant camps were constructed during World War II to house German prisoners of war. Responding to rigid environmental constraints and inadequate economic rewards, migrants gather and bind convoys of kin who travel together, steer one another on, share goods and cash, and cooperate in domestic and productive tasks. Exaggerated personal display can serve in an anonymous environment to compensate for impersonal, degrading life space. It seems that migrants cling to their own unique personal styles as a challenge to the inhuman sterility of their camp quarters and as testimony to a vital piece of their lives.
