Talwar, Jennifer Parker

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TALWAR, Jennifer Parker

PERSONAL:

Female. Education: State University of New York, Cortland, B.A.; City University of New York, M.Phil., Ph.D., 1996.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Pennsylvania State University, Lehigh Valley, 8380 Mohr Lane, Fogelsville, PA 18051-9999. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Pennsylvania State university, Lehigh Valley, Fogelsville, PA, assistant professor of sociology.

WRITINGS:

Fast Food, Fast Track: Immigrants, Big Business, and the American Dream, Westview Press (Cambridge, MA), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jennifer Parker Talwar's sociology courses have included such topics as juvenile delinquency and gangs and subcultures. In writing her dissertation, she took a job in a Brooklyn Burger King and spoke with disadvantaged workers in the New York City area, mostly Latino and Asian immigrants who worked in fast-food franchises for minimal pay. Talwar's research and study was further expanded and published as Fast Food, Fast Track: Immigrants, Big Business, and the American Dream.

The "McDonaldization" of America has been critiqued in a number of books, but Library Journal's Ellen D. Gilbert noted that Talwar "offers us a less bleak perspective." Gilbert called the volume "intriguing and well researched." Gregory Rodriguez reviewed the study in the Wall Street Journal, noting that "while many immigrants view fast-food work as a way to join the mainstream economy and learn English, the fast-food industry itself uses ethnic employees to cultivate new markets." There are fast-food restaurants, like a McDonald's in a Dominican neighborhood, that don't even require that employees speak English. "Thus," wrote Rodriguez, "even as its workers assimilate into the standardized fast-food culture, they reassert the culture of their home countries." Talwar also found that many managers prefer to hire immigrants rather than native-born people of all ethnic backgrounds, whom they often think of as less hardworking than newcomers.

Talwar does not see fast-food jobs as being an entry to the middle class. She notes that these workers typically hold more than one job, live with family, and are not primary breadwinners. Rodriguez concluded by saying that Talwar believes that "there is no American dream here … only immigrant aspirations." Rodriguez observed that Talwar "suggests that immigrants' chances of moving beyond low-wage work depends on the strength of their character and personal networks, and their ability to acquire more training. In the new economy, like the old, it seems, hard work, family, and education still matter."