Migrant Labor

BIBLIOGRAPHY

During the Dust Bowl migration, more than half a million people left the American Plains and migrated to the western United States. John Steinbeck’s (1902–1968) novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) describes vividly the large migration of poor whites from Oklahoma to California during the 1930s. His book captures how individuals were affected by dramatic changes in agriculture. “Now farming was an industry.... They imported slaves although they did not call them slaves: Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, and Filipinos” (Steinbeck 1939, p. 298). This quotation from Steinbeck’s novel points out that farming had changed. Industrialization in the United States in the late nineteenth century set the stage for changes in agriculture during the early twentieth century. Farm sizes grew across the United States, and farming became mechanized. Crops that previously required hand labor for harvesting, like cotton and beans, were being harvested by machines, which resulted in fewer jobs. These new mechanized farms were described as “factories in the fields.” At the same time, the need for hand labor became increasingly seasonal, creating a high demand for migrant labor that could follow specialty crops, like berries and grapes.

Steinbeck’s quotation also captures the racial and ethnic changes that farming in the United States experienced. Unlike the racial and ethnic composition of farm labor at the beginning of the twenty-first century, during the early twentieth century, farm labor was racially and ethnically diverse, and included whites and African Americans, as well as Mexican, Filipino, Japanese, Italian, and West Indian immigrants. Changes in U.S. laws regarding immigration and the impact of two world wars greatly affected the racial and ethnic composition of American farm labor. For instance, as World War I began in 1914 and as the United States attempted to halt immigration in the 1920s, the demand for farm laborers increased, and African American workers filled the need. Similarly, when the United States entered World War II in 1941, workers entered defense jobs and shipyards, which created a labor shortage in the fields. To fill this shortage, the United States created the Bracero Program, a temporary guest-worker program to recruit Mexican workers to the fields. The Bracero Program, instituted in the 1940s and ending in the 1960s, ensured that a large number of Mexican-origin people entered the agriculture industry in California as laborers. It is estimated that four million Mexican farm laborers began working in the United States during the program’s twenty-two-year tenure. Even though the Bracero Program was meant to supply temporary employment, many braceros settled permanently in the United States.

In 2007 the majority of migrant laborers in the United States are of Mexican descent. Their poor treatment is compounded by racial/ethnic discrimination and xenophobic attitudes. Migrant workers are viewed by some as a drain on social services, even though they often do not use these services. At the same time, the demand for low-skilled labor has legislators ready to implement another guest-worker program. In March 2007,

Representatives Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) introduced an immigrant worker visa bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, which allows foreigners to enter the United States legally to temporarily fill low-skill jobs, including agriculture and seasonal jobs. Guest-worker programs provide temporary labor without offering citizenship rights to workers. In essence, workers are expected to work and not create families or settle in the United States, but return home when their work visa ends. However, service workers, who work in hotels and restaurants, are not included in this provision, leaving them no way to work legally in the United States. The fear of another wave of settlement leaves undocumented immigration as the main alternative for workers, which ensures the denial of citizenship rights and makes them more vulnerable to exploitation.

Migrant farmworkers and their families are among the most vulnerable groups in society. Migrant workers face dangerous and poor working conditions. Basic necessities, like adequate drinking water, are not provided by employers, even though laborers may work in extreme heat. Many are forced to work without access to toilet or hand-washing facilities, even though washing hands regularly is important to avoid pesticide poisoning. Living conditions are also difficult for migrant farmworkers. Wages for farmwork have not kept up with inflation; consequently, it is difficult for families to afford basic necessities like housing, food, health care, and education for their children. In 2006 the United States Department of Labor findings from the National Farmworker Survey (collected in 1994 and 1995) reported that farmworkers have low individual earnings; the median annual income is between $2,500 and $5,000, and about three-fourths of all workers earn less than $10,000 annually.

The children of farmworkers are often found working with family members, despite laws outlawing child labor. Human Rights Watch (a nonprofit civil rights organization) estimates that there are between 300,000 and 800,000 child farmworkers in the United States. Children work an average of twelve hours a day, and during peak seasons as much as fourteen hours a day. Children report having difficulty getting paid minimum wages; some earn as little as $2 an hour. Children are routinely exposed to harmful pesticides, and report experiencing rashes, headaches, dizziness, nausea, and vomiting. In addition to the demanding physical conditions, the children of migrant laborers lack access to education. When children work in the fields, it is nearly impossible for them to attend school. Children who do not work but migrate with their families have their education disrupted because of the constant need to relocate.

For many years, farmworkers sought to form a union. The creation of United Farm Workers by César Chávez (1927–1993) and Dolores Huerta was the result of a long struggle to unionize farmworkers. The Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), founded by Huerta, and the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), founded by Chávez, were the first groups that attempted to organize farmworkers. By 1965 both were successful in obtaining wage increases after staging strikes and walkouts, but the organizations had not received union recognition from growers. In the summer of 1965, AWOC led Filipino farmworkers on a strike in Delano, California. They approached the NFWA and asked the mainly Chicano workers to join the strike. The NFWA agreed, and with the new strength in membership they launched a strike, with several thousand workers leaving the field. The growers offered to raise wages, but the organizations also wanted a union. To aid the effort, Chávez called on the American public to boycott grapes without union labels. Millions of Americans responded and stopped buying grapes. The workers won the long strike and established a union-run hiring hall, a health clinic and health plan, a credit union, a community center, and a cooperative gas station, as well as higher wages. The two unions merged into the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee in 1966.

In 2004, the International Labor Office (ILO) estimated that eighty-six million migrant and refugee adults work across the globe. Migration affects countries around the world because nearly every country serves as either a place of origin, destination, transit, or sometimes all of these at once. Each country struggles with the government’s role in regulating migrant workers and with the social and economic incorporation of such workers. Guest-worker programs are often used to attract and regulate low-skilled and high-skilled workers. But there are concerns about the social and economic consequences of migrant labor. Migrant laborers leave families behind in their home countries, creating fragmented families and communities. In addition, men and women face differing labor opportunities, with women sometimes limited to factory or domestic labor. The economic consequences of migration are severe in developing countries. Nearly 400,000 scientists and engineers from developing countries are employed in research and development jobs in industrial countries. This migration of highly skilled workers creates a “brain drain,” leaving developing countries without highly skilled workers. Migrant workers face a risk to their human rights and fundamental freedoms, but this does not deter their migration; the hope of a better life ensures a steady flow of migrant laborers.

SEE ALSO Agricultural Industry; Bracero Program; Brain Drain; Chávez, César; Citizenship; Labor; Migration

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Akers Chacón, Justin, and Mike Davis. 2006. No One Is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Chicago: Haymarket.

Castles, Stephen. 2006. Guestworkers in Europe: A Resurrection? International Migration Review 40: 741–766.

Hahamovitch, Cindy. 1997. The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870–1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Lan, Pei-Chia. 2003. Maid or Madam? Filipina Migrant Workers and the Continuity of Domestic Labor. Gender & Society 17:187–208.

Liow, Joseph. 2003. Malaysia’s Illegal Indonesian Migrant

Labour Problem: In Search of Solutions. Contemporary Southeast Asia 25: 44–64.

Martin, Philip. 1997. Guest Worker Policies for the Twenty-first Century: Lessons from U.S. and German Foreign Worker Programs. New Community 23: 483–495.

McWilliams, Carey. 1939. Factories in the Field. Boston: Little, Brown.

Pun, Ngai. 2005. Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. Durham, NC: Duke University Press; Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Roberts, Kenneth D. 1997. China’s “Tidal Wave” of Migrant Labor: What Can We Learn from Mexican Undocumented Migration to the United States? International Migration Review 31: 249–293.

Steinbeck, John. 1939. The Grapes of Wrath. London: Heinemann.

Weinstein, Eric. 2002. Migration for the Benefit of All: Towards a New Paradigm for Economic Immigration. International Labour Review 141: 225–252.

Katy M. Pinto

MIGRANT WORKERS

According to the United States Public Health Service, there are an estimated 3.5 million migrant and seasonal farmworkers in the United States—men, women, and children who work in all fifty states during peak periods of agriculture. A migrant farmworker is an individual who moves from a permanent place of residence in order to be employed in agricultural work. Seasonal farmworkers perform similar work but do not move from their primary residence for the purpose of seeking farm equipment.

Migrant farmworkers tend to be either newly arrived immigrants or individuals with limited skills or opportunities. Although American agriculture depends on the labor of these workers, employment is usually of short duration and requires frequent moves. Many men travel without their families, and most workers return during the winter to a home base, usually in Florida, Texas, California, Puerto Rico, or Mexico. Migrant farmworkers are predominantly Latino (78 percent); 2 percent are African American, 18 percent Caucasian, less than 1 percent Caribbean, and less than 1 percent Asian. Almost half have less than a ninth grade education, and many speak little or no English. Children of migrant farmworkers often change schools several times a year.

Most migrant farmworkers earn annual incomes below the poverty level and few receive benefits such as Social Security or worker's compensation. The transient nature of their work often prevents them from establishing any local residency, excluding them from benefits such as Medicaid and foot stamps. The majority of migrant farmworkers are either U.S. citizens or legal residents of the United States. Some foreign workers enter the United States under guest-worker programs when there are not enough available workers to satisfy the demand.

Farm work is considered to be second only to mining in the rating of most hazardous occupations. There is a high exposure to pesticides through topical exposure, inhalation, and ingestion, resulting in the highest rate of toxic chemical injuries of any group in the United States. Farm injuries, exposure to heat and sun, and poor sanitation in the fields are other factors that contribute to the dangers of this work. Every year nearly three hundred children die and twenty-four thousand are injured in farm work.

Housing regulations attempt to provide decent living conditions for migrant workers, but housing is often overcrowded, poorly maintained, and lacking in ventilation, bathing facilities, and safe drinking water. These conditions contribute to an increased risk of accidents, sanitation-related diseases, and infectious diseases. Several studies have shown a 40 percent positivity rate in tuberculosis testing of migrant populations. One migrant farmworker group was found to have a 5 percent incidence of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infection. Another study showed that 78 percent had parasitic infections.

Health care problems faced by migrant farmworkers are similar to those of other disadvantaged populations, but the factors of poverty, mobility, difficult living and working conditions, and cultural isolation put them more at risk for illness and injury. Those who work with migrant farmworkers find that, not only do common disease conditions occur more frequently, but they are often more severe because they are allowed to progress to more advanced stages before accessing care.

Unstable living and working conditions, conflicts arising from the process of acculturation, perceptions of mental illness, isolation, and discrimination all contribute to a high incidence of metal-health problems among migrant farmworkers. A 2000 study documented a 26.7 percent incidence of psychiatric disorders among a sample of male Mexican farmworkers in California. A national survey of migrant women showed that approximately 20 percent had experienced physical or sexual abuse during the previous year. These same factors make migrants more vulnerable to substance abuse, depression, and self-medication.

Migrant farmworkers themselves cite dental problems as one of their greatest health concerns. Gingivitis, dental caries, and baby bottle tooth decay are common.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy authorized the creation of a system of health care services specifically for migrant and seasonal farmworkers. The Migrant Health Program continues to be administered as part of the Bureau of Primary Health Care within the Health Resources and Services Administration, and consists of a national network of migrant health clinics. Studies have found, however, that these services were reaching less than 15 percent of the farmworkers in the United States.

It is a challenge to provide health care to the transient migrant farmworker in the context of the traditional health care system. Migrant health centers must attempt to provide health care services that are sensitive to the unique cultural, financial, and occupational needs of farmworkers. Staff must be able to communicate in the languages of the farmworkers, and clinic services must be offered in the evening, since farmworkers will not risk a loss of wages or employment by seeking care during work hours. Transportation services are often an essential component of migrant health programs.

Migrant health programs employ outreach programs to make services more available to farmworker patients. Clinicians often travel to farmworker camps in the evenings to assess and triage health problems. Multidisciplinary care is typical—nurses, health educators, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurse midwives, physicians, dentists, and others collaborate to provide necessary services. Lay health advisors are often recruited from the ranks of the farmworkers population and trained in basic preventive medicine. These individuals help to reinforce preventive health concepts through teaching, triage, and referral.

Providing continuity of care is a constant focus in migrant health care programs. A farm-worker may only be in one location a few weeks or months, so for services that require long-term attention, such as prenatal care or treatment of diabetes, follow-up must be carefully planned. Portable records with detailed treatment information are often given to farmworkers to present to other health care facilities as they travel. Electronic data-transfer systems have also been implemented to allow centers to communicate information such as immunization records and tuberculosis treatment.

Candace Kugel

Edward L. Zuroweste

(see also: Community and Migrant Health Centers; Fair Labor Standards Act; Farm Injuries; Health Resources and Services Administration; Occupational Safety and Health; Rural Public Health )

Bibliography

Alderete, E.; Vega, W. A.; Kolody, B.; and Aguilar-Gaxiola, S. (2000). "Lifetime Prevalence of Risk Factors for Psychiatric Disorders among Mexican Migrant Farmworkers in California." American Journal of Public Health 90:608–614.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (1992). "Prevention and Control of Tuberculosis in Migrant Farm Workers: Recommendations of the Advisory Council for the Elimination of Tuberculosis." Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 41:1–13.

Dever, G. E. A. (1991). Migrant Health Status: Profile of a Population with Complex Health Problems. Austin, TX: National Migrant Resource Program, Inc.

Johnston, H. (1985). Health for the Nation's Harvesters: A History of the Migrant Health Program in Its Economic and Social Setting. Farmington Hills, MI: National Migrant Worker Council, Inc.

Migrant Clinicians Network (1997). Practice-Based Research Network on Domestic Violence and Migrant Farmworkers. Austin, TX: Migrant Clinicians Network.

Power, J. G., and Byrd, T., eds. (1998). U.S.-Mexico Border Health: Issues for Regional and Migrant Populations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Rivara, F. P. (1985). "Fatal and Nonfatal Farm Injuries to Children and Adolescents in the United States." Pediatrics 76:567–573.

Rothenberg, D. (1998) With These Hands: The Hidden World of Migrant Farmworkers Today. New York: Harcourt Brace.

United States Department of Labor (1994–1995). National Agricultural Workers Survey. Washington, DC: Author.

MIGRANT WORKERS

Migrant workers are simply persons whose work routine includes relocation across or within national boundaries on a fairly frequent basis. They usually work at temporary jobs. Often they are seasonal workers employed in the agricultural sector of the economy. In that case the demand for their labor is determined by the growing cycles, as in the case of Mexican farm workers. For decades these workers—called braceros — moved across national borders in routine violation of laws that authorities largely overlooked because of the need for their labor. Migrant workers may also be non-seasonal, highly paid workers called upon to do highly skilled or particularly dangerous work like putting out oil derrick fires. They may be the combine crews in the Great Plains, moving south to north, harvesting the wheat as it ripens. Or they may be the thousands of tradesmen of various descriptions who follow the building boom from one part of the country to another.

On the other hand, "Okies," people from Oklahoma who left their farms in the dust storms of the 1920s and 1930s and made the trek to California, were workers who were migrating, rather than migrant workers. Immigrant Turkish workers in Germany—living and working for years in the host country without ever breaking from the Turkish culture—are also not migrant workers. Nor are workers in the transportation industry. Airline stewardesses and truck drivers are not migrant workers even though moving about defines the job that they do.

The United States experienced the largest influx of immigrant workers between 1890 and 1914 when 15 million foreign citizens entered the country, mostly from eastern and southern Europe. In the history of American immigration, approximately one-third of these immigrant workers moved back to their home or on to other countries—"birds of passage," in the colorful words of one immigration historian. If these workers were seeking permanent employment they were immigrant workers, rather than migrant workers.

Migrant workers, like other workers, stimulate the economy in two ways. First, they take hard, undesirable, low wage jobs, thereby minimizing the employers' costs. Second, they buy things and increase the size of the consumer population, thereby increasing demand. At the same time, jealousy and fear sometimes separates migrant workers from other Americans who objected that jobs were being lost to the newly available cheap labor.

See also: Cesar Chavez, Anti-Immigration Laws, Immigration, United Farm Workers

FURTHER READING

Bailyn, Bernard et al. The Great Republic: A History of the American People. Lexington, Massachusetts & Toronto: D.C. Heath and Company, 1981.

Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997.

Ketchum, Richard M. The Borrowed Years 1938– 1941: America on the Way to War. New York: Random House, 1989.

Manchester, William. The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932–1972. New York: Bantam Books, 1974.

The Oxford Companion to World War II. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.