Journal of Contemporary

Drawing on interviews and comparative ethnographic fieldwork in two day labor hiring sites (a street corner labor market and a “regulated ” day labor worker center), this article examines the discourses through which Latino immigrant day laborers make sense of, and find dignity within, their ongoing quest for work. My findings reveal a clear pattern of “boundary work ” along the center/street divide, wherein each group of day laborers asserts its dignity and masculinity by repudiating what they construe to be the feminine submis-sion exemplified by the other group. I argue that gender both shapes and is shaped through the articulation of these moral boundaries and show how work-ers ’ struggle to attain dignity—in this case, via strategies of social differentia-tion and distinction—can act against the formation of a collective identity