We first featured Julie Keller’s important work in 2015 with “Beyond Trump: America's Dairyland and Multiple Regimes of Mobility.” We’re thrilled to announce the publication of her new book, Milking in the Shadows: Migrants and Mobility in America's Dairyland (Rutgers University Press).

Milking in the Shadows offers an in-depth look at the lives of undocumented migrants working in the American dairy industry. Based on research she conducted in Veracruz, Mexico and in the Upper Midwest, U.S., Keller traces the paradoxes of mobility that migrant dairy workers face as they make the perilous journey north, manage fears of arrest and deportation, and adjust to a life of milking in the shadows. Roughly half of the workers Keller interviewed were men under 30 years old. The stories of their hopes, dreams, and experiences of isolation in the rural Upper Midwest contribute much to our understanding of the new workers that keep the dairy industry afloat.

Julie Keller is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston.