Rebuilding New Orleans: Migrant Laborers and Street Food Vendors in the Post-Katrina Era

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Central American and Mexican immigrants arrived in New Orleans to help clean up and rebuild. When federal relief services overlooked the needs of immigrant-led construction and cleanup crews as part of post-Katrina mass feeding strategies, street food stands and taco trucks stepped in to ensure food security for these workers. Many of these food vendors settled in the city over the next decade, opening restaurants and other businesses. Yet, in a city experiencing whitewashed redevelopment, new immigrants were frequently pitted against Black poor and working-class New Orleanians for access to housing and other resources.

During Fouts’s five years as a volunteer with the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, she came to know and interview the day laborers, food workers, culture producers, and community organizers whose stories shape this book. Her work reveals how, after the storm, immigrant communities have culturally and politically reshaped New Orleans and its suburbs. Fouts also highlights how immigrants forged multiracial solidarities to foster inclusive change at the local level. By connecting migration, labor, and food, Rebuilding New Orleans centers human experiences to illustrate how immigrant and established communities of color resisted criminalization and racial capitalism to create a more just New Orleans.

Sarah Fouts is assistant professor in the Department of American Studies and director of the Public Humanities minor program at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).