Low-Wage Employment and Ghetto Poverty: A Comparison of African-American and Cambodian Day-Haul Farm Workers in Philadelphia

Abstract

For decades inner-city residents of Philadelphia participated in seasonal farm work in nearby rural areas of New Jersey. In the 1980s newly arrived Cambodian refugees became the dominant group, replacing African Americans in this workforce. Review of theories that address the relationship between ghetto poverty and labor markets raises key questions about the observed labor market transformation: I) Were African-American day-haul workers systematically replaced with workers from other racial or ethnic groups due to discriminatory hiring practices by employers? 2) Was the transformation of the day-haul farm workforce simply a reflection of the growth of better employment opportunities for African Americans? 3) Were African Americans unwilling to accept this type of low-wage employment? This research answers these questions. Little secondary data on this labor market are available, so a variety of sources are used to reconstruct this transformation. Data include those from participant observation field work, a community survey, and numerous interviews with informants. Census and other data are used to corroborate results based on original fieldwork. Analysis of these data indicates that the labor market transformation in question is the result of a complex set of factors, especially changes in family structure and the labor process, that combine to limit farm work opportunities. These findings provide negative answers to each of the key questions posed. The evidence does not support the conclusion that African Americans were systematically replaced due to the discriminatory hiring practices of employers. Many African Americans had left farm work before the influx of Cambodian refugees, and while there was recent evidence of employer discrimination, it was against Cambodians, not African Americans. Also, African American participation in farm work bore no relationship to the unemployment rate, indicating that African Americans did not leave farm work for more desirable employment. Finally, the findings indicate that the inelasticity of African-American participation in farm work was not the result of an unwillingness to accept low-wage employment, but was due to 1) a decline in the population of recent migrants with weak labor force attachments, and 2) a lack of access to social networks that link potential farm workers to crew leaders. This study demonstrates the importance of “social buffers” in linking the ghetto poor with low-wage employment opportunities. In the case of Philadelphia day-haul farm work, incentives to crew leaders to integrate the ghetto poor into the farm labor market have steadily declined for more than a decade. This study points to the need for more research on the role of social buffers in providing the ghetto poor with access to employment.