ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the siege mentality and racism of the Hallway Hangers, and shows how their identities are formed around the axes of race, class, and gender, and recount their experiences of work. In their midtwenties, the seven Hallway Hangers should be in the labor force full-time. The Hallway Hangers have faced a job market completely different from the one their fathers entered as young men. With the restructuring of the US economy, the shift from manufacturing to service employment, masses of traditional blue-collar jobs in industrial production have vanished. The rise in managerial, professional, technical, and administrative jobs, coupled with the precipitous drop in blue-collar employment, has landed high school dropouts in desperate straits. Most of the Hallway Hangers have earned roughly half of what Slick currently makes. The Hallway Hangers have been trapped in what economists call the secondary labor market, the subordinate segment of the job structure where the market is severely skewed against workers.
