"I Don't Approve of That Way of Running a Family": Transient Children, Institutions, and Interventions in California Through the Great Depression and Dust Bowl

This thesis studies the state of California's responses to migratory families and children during the Depression and Dust Bowl. In particular, it emphasizes the growth of several state bureaucracies during this time, including the Department of Public Health, the Department of Education, and the Youth Authority. It also engages with local nonprofit relief agencies as well as county agencies, which functioned as direct aid providers to migrants. The efforts to provide relief to migrant families are explained, as are the surrounding rhetorical frameworks used to discuss the perceived negative attributes of migrant children. These discourses influenced administrators, California residents, and other agents, and they responded by creating new programs, such as school lunches, and by reforming old ones, such as the juvenile detention facilities. This work also sheds light on how Progressive ideas interacted with the New Deal state and anti-migrant sentiment to complicate the treatment of transient youths. This account also challenges the Dust Bowl historiographic turn away from histories of the state, arguing instead that understanding the migrant child's experience requires an in-depth analysis of state programs.

Name thesis:degree_name

History

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Year

2014

Author dc:creator

• Marshall, Jairo

Contributors dc:contributor

• Sandoval-Strausz, Andrew
• Smith, Jason Scott
• Cahill, Cathleen

Language dc:language

English

Identifier

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hist_etds/49

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalrepository.unm.edu:hist_etds-1048