Rural Work, Precarity, and Resilience

Maine is the poorest and most rural state in New England and has experienced many workforce changes. Disruptions, such as intentional neighborhood divestment, the opioid crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic, have hit low-wage workers in Downeast and northern Maine particularly hard. Anthropologists Winifred Tate and Suzanne Menair will examine how rural workers navigate finding and maintaining work and how they attempt to create resilient communities in the face of community decline. They will conduct interviews and create an archive of work and development initiatives in Aroostook County and Washington County for their study.