Bureaucratic Strategies of Exclusion: Land Use Ideology and Images of Mexican Farmworkers in Housing Policy

Abstract

This article examines how land use ideology and popular images of farmworkers contribute to the housing crisis for Mexican farmworkers in Fresno County, California. Despite the desperate need for affordable housing in the rural areas of Fresno County, local policy makers either have failed to aid or have actively discouraged attempts to increase the stock of affordable housing. Through an ethnographic examination of public policy decision making about residential construction on the west side of Fresno County, I document how public officials make policy decisions based on both a land use ideology that rationalizes governmental failure to serve Mexicans working in the agriculture industry and portraits of farmworkers and farmworker families that reflect stereotypes and nationally relevant population characteristics rather than regionally specific realities. This ideology and these stereotypical profiles operate to render invisible portions of the Mexican farmworker population who have been working in the area for decades and diminish affordable housing opportunities.