Mexican Farmworkers Research Articles

Heavy metals exposures among Mexican farmworkers in eastern North Carolina

Immigrant farmworkers are a population at risk for numerous environmental and occupational exposures. The metals arsenic, lead, mercury, and cadmium are known neurotoxins to which workers can be exposed both in the US and in their country of origin. Because farmworkers are exposed to neurotoxic pesticides, they may be at risk for adverse health effects from the combined exposure. To examine the relationship between exposure to metals, as measured in urine, with personal and work-related characteristics of Mexican migrant and seasonal farmworkers in the US. We analyzed data on metals found in urine of 258 farmworkers recruited from 44 camps in eastern North Carolina in 2007. Geometric means and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were used to compare data with data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). We used multivariate regression models fitted for each metal to estimate the association of creatinine-corrected urinary metals and worker characteristics related to environmental and occupational exposures. Geometric mean urinary metals concentrations (mug/g creatinine) exceeded NHANES reference values for arsenic (13.23 [CI 11.11, 15.35] vs. 8.55 [CI 7.23, 9.86]) and lead (1.26 [CI 1.08, 1.43] vs. 0.63 [CI 0.60, 0.66]). Age, being from the central region of Mexico, and pack years of cigarette smoking were significant predictors of metals exposure; being a current smoker and years worked in US agriculture were not. This first study to examine indicators of worker body burdens of metals shows that workers have body burdens related to exposures other than work in the US. Further research should address their risk for adverse health outcomes due to combined exposures to neurotoxins in pesticides.

A Case for Certified Interpreters for Participants in the Canada/Mexico Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program

The rapid growth of Ontario's greenhouse vegetable industry is largely due to a guaranteed supply of Mexicans who participate in the Canada/Mexico Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (C/MSAWP). Agriculture is a dangerous occupation and, although Mexican farm workers have the right to health care while they are in Canada, they lack access to certified interpretation services in the province's hospital and clinics. This paper draws on the results of a pilot study of 30 Mexican farm workers in southwestern Ontario to demonstrate their need for such services, not only for physical illnesses and injuries sustained on the job, but for the culturally constructed illness of nervios (nerves). It examines the barriers in access to certified interpreters, namely, the Canada Health Act and the differing agendas of primary and secondary stakeholders in the C/MSAWP. Finally, it addresses the wider economic, political, health, and social benefits of providing such services to Mexican farm workers within the context of...

Blood Sugar in the Fields: An Ethnographic Disclosure Part 2

Cultural beliefs play a significant role in the way we see the world and behave in it. Explanatory models of illness are useful tools with which to peer into the constructs of a culture's code of conduct and belief system. This two-part series explores the process of using explanatory health models. The first part outlined models and ethnographic techniques to develop a culturally competent care plan; this second part features a Mexican farm worker in California and the application of his health belief model to a diabetic care plan.

Nerves as Embodied Metaphor in the Canada/Mexico Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program

This article examines nerves among participants in the Canada/Mexico Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (C/MSAWP). Based on in-depth interviews with 30 Mexican farm workers in southwestern Ontario, we demonstrate that nerves embodies the distress of economic need, relative powerlessness, and the contradictions inherent in the C/MSAWP that result in various life's lesions. We also explore their use of the nerves idiom as an embodied metaphor for their awareness of the breakdown in self/society relations and, in certain cases, of the lack of control over even themselves. This article contributes to that body of literature that locates nerves at the “normal” end of the “normal/abnormal” continuum of popular illness categories because, despite the similarities in symptoms of nerves among Mexican farm workers and those of anxiety and/or mood disorders, medicalization has not occurred. If nerves has not been medicalized among Mexican farm workers, neither has it given rise to resistance to their relative powerlessness as migrant farm workers. Nonetheless, nerves does serve as an effective vehicle for expressing their distress within the context of the C/MSAWP.

Blood Sugar in the Fields: An Ethnographic Disclosure Part I

Cultural beliefs play a significant role in the way we see the world and behave in it. Explanatory models of illness are useful tools with which to peer into the constructs of a culture’s code of conduct and belief system. This two-part series explores the process of using explanatory health models. The first part outlined models and ethnographic techniques to develop a culturally competent care plan; this second part features a Mexican farm worker in California and the application of his health belief model to a diabetic care plan.

The Human Face of Economic Globalization: Mexican Migrants and their Support for Free Trade

Economic globalization is loosely defined as lowering international barriers to the movement of economic goods and services (including capital and labor). The standard argument since political economist David Ricardo is that lowering such barriers improves everyone's circumstances due to the ability to capitalize on each nation's comparative advantages (e.g. Ricardo 1895). He demonstrated that, even if one nation is more efficient at producing everything than some other nation, even then it is still Pareto superior to exchange on comparative advantage. It is this basic notion that leads to the implication that increased flows of goods and services, of capital and labor alike, lead to Pareto improvements: that is, these increased flows make at least some (and in principle all) better off, and no one worse off. However, labor flows, and especially the lowering of barriers to entry of labor, remain highly contentious.While lowering barriers to trades and goods yields widely dispersed benefits (such as lower costs for consumers), the costs can be highly concentrated (e.g. the demise of the U.S. textile industry). A key strategy advanced industrialized nations can use to adapt to these costs is to open borders: that is, to lower barriers to flows of labor, permitting cheaper labor to migrate. the U.S., the relative permeability of borders has led millions of Latinos to migrate to the U.S. to take jobs that both pay better and are more plentiful here than in their home countries (Massey and Espinoza 1997). The human face of this policy has created a pool of between three and five million agricultural migrant workers in the U.S., 80% of whom are foreign immigrants (and 90% of these foreign workers are Mexican, Magana and Hovey 2003).Mexican farm workers who immigrate to the U.S. provide an interesting setting for thinking about these issues. They move here for economic reasons. Typically, they come here to earn higher wages than they could receive at home, with the intention of sending any excess above living costs back to their families. While this is a palpable benefit to these workers, some in the U.S. are concerned that the workers seem to be exploited when one compares their fortunes to those of typical Americans. Indeed, the farm workers themselves are very clear that their standard of living, especially in the migrant farm worker communities, is low in absolute terms.Given that many immigrants are undocumented, the more unscrupulous among their employers are able to exploit the workers' situation by not providing decent housing or safe working conditions. They know that it is unlikely that the farm workers themselves will be in a situation to complain. They are not in that position because there are barriers to entry (that is, they need governmental approval and documentation to legally enter the U.S. and its work force), and if they avoid such barriers by undocumented entry, they are vulnerable to this exploitation. the usual economic sense, the entire set of partners to this set of exchanges are made better off nonetheless; and so, this is a strictly Pareto superior outcome, even if many might conclude that there is clearly a system of exploitation here as well. As Amartya Sen once pointed out (1970, p.22), In short, a society or an economy can be Pareto-optimal and still be perfectly disgusting.In this context, it seems particularly important to understand the attitudes and choices made by those at the front lines of the issues, as it were. And thus, we return to the question of how Latino migrant workers react to economic globalization - do they tend to support it or oppose it, and why? One could simply measure their support for globalization. However, an even more useful way to evaluate this question is to study how these workers react to the globalization debate itself: the pro- and con- messages which constitute that debate. Gauging how they react to these messages will first reveal if their support for free trade increases or decreases depending on the type of message, but it will also reveal the magnitude of the changes, demonstrating how susceptible the workers' free trade attitudes are to persuasion. …

Anthropological and Psychological Merge: Design of a Stress Measure for Mexican Farmworkers

This study implements qualitative and quantitative methodologies in the development of a culturally appropriate instrument of stress for Mexican immigrant farmworkers. Focus groups were used to uncover culturally based perspectives on life stressors, definitions of stress, and stress mediators. Qualitative data were analyzed using QSR NVivo and then used to develop a 23-item stress scale. The scale was tested for reliability and validity in an independent sample and demonstrates excellent reliability (alpha = 0.9123). Test-retest coefficients of the stress scale are also strong (r = 0.8344, p = 0.0000). Qualitative analyses indicated three major sources of stress: work, family, and community. Emotional aspects of stress also emerged, demonstrating a cultural perspective of stress closely related to feelings of despair and not being able to find a way out of despairing situations. This paper reveals themes gathered from the qualitative data and identifies reliability and validity constructs associated with the scale. The stress scale developed as part of this investigation is a reliable and culturally appropriate instrument for assessing stress among Mexican immigrant farmworkers.

Meeting a Binational Research Challenge: Substance Abuse Among Transnational Mexican Farmworkers in the United States

To help in understanding the manner in which community, individual, and other factors in the United States and Mexico contribute to drug use among transnational migrants, this paper introduces a binational social ecology model of substance abuse in this population. We draw on our 2 NIH-funded ethnographic studies-1 on problem drinking and the other on drug abuse-among transnational Mexican workers in the mushroom industry of southeastern Pennsylvania. Our model demonstrates that major reasons for substance abuse among transnational migrants include nontraditional living arrangements in labor camps and overcrowded apartments, the absence of kin and community deterrents to drug use, social isolation, the presence of drug use and binge drinking subcultures, the availability of drugs, family history of drugs, previous drug use or witnessing of drug use in Mexico, and drug use norms and drug availability in Mexico. It suggests the need for US and Mexican researchers to collaborate in binational teams and address factors on both sides of the border. Our binational social ecology model, together with our research recommendations, will assist alcohol and drug researchers to discover how community and individual factors in both the United States and abroad fit and interact beyond mere association and provide a more comprehensive research approach to substance abuse research among transnational migrants.

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

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.

The Apple Bites Back: Claiming Old Orchards for Residential Development

As the U.S. population continues to grow, increasing demand for housing and related community resources means more land is being converted from agricultural uses to residential applications. According to the revised 1997 National Resources Inventory conducted by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, more than 6 million acres of American farmland were converted to developed uses between 1992 and 1997. That is an annual conversion rate of roughly 1.2 million acres per year—a 51% increase over the average annual rate reported for the preceding decade. Naturally, many of these areas were routinely treated with pesticides and other chemicals during their agricultural lifetimes. Although this legacy has been problematic in a wide variety of land conversion scenarios, one in particular seems to have attracted the attention and concern of environmental officials and property buyers in several states across the country: the residential development of historic orchard properties. In state after state, these old orchards (which most often produced apples, but also peaches, cherries, pears, and other tree crops) are metamorphosing into highly desirable subdivisions—desirable, that is, until it emerges that the soil beneath the feet of the proud new residents may be contaminated with lead and arsenic. These toxic by-products are left from the days before DDT and before organophosphates, when arsenical pesticides, particularly lead arsenate (LA), were the treatment of choice to prevent the ravages of insect damage.

In Utero Exposure to Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and Dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE) and Neurodevelopment Among Young Mexican American Children

We investigated the relationship between prenatal exposure to dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE) and neurodevelopment of Mexican farm-workers' children in California. Participants from the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas study, a birth cohort study, included 360 singletons with maternal serum measures of p,p'-DDT, o,p'-DDT, and p,p'-DDE. Psychomotor development and mental development were assessed with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development at 6, 12, and 24 months. We found a approximately 2-point decrease in Psychomotor Developmental Index scores with each 10-fold increase in p,p'-DDT levels at 6 and 12 months (but not 24 months) and p,p'-DDE levels at 6 months only. We found no association with mental development at 6 months but a 2- to 3-point decrease in Mental Developmental Index scores for p,p'-DDT and o,p'-DDT at 12 and 24 months, corresponding to 7- to 10-point decreases across the exposure range. Even when mothers had substantial exposure, breastfeeding was usually associated positively with Bayley scale scores. Prenatal exposure to DDT, and to a lesser extent DDE, was associated with neurodevelopmental delays during early childhood, although breastfeeding was found to be beneficial even among women with high levels of exposure. Countries considering the use of DDT should weigh its benefit in eradicating malaria against the negative associations found in this first report on DDT and human neurodevelopment.

IN UTERO DDT AND DDE EXPOSURE AND NEURODEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN OF FARMWORKERS

ISEE-259 Introduction: Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), a persistent organochlorine pesticide, breaks down slowly in soil, has a long half-life, and bio-accumulates in plants and animals. Although DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972 and in Mexico in 2000, it continues to be used in other malaria-endemic areas. There is substantial animal evidence that DDT exposure in utero and during early postnatal life impacts neurodevelopment. However, few studies have examined these associations in humans. A North Carolina study found levels of DDE, a metabolite of DDT, to be dose-related to neonatal hyporeflexia (Brazelton Neonatal Behavioural Assessment Scale), but this was not confirmed in a smaller study from New York. The latter study also did not find an association with 6- and 12-month olds' performance on the Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence. However, in a small Spanish study (n=92), cord serum DDE was negatively associated with 13-month olds' cognitive, psychomotor, and social development (Bayley Scales of Infant Development, Griffiths Scales of Infant Development). Aim: The present study aims to investigate the relationship of in utero DDT/DDE exposure and neurodevelopment of children from primarily Mexican farmworker families in the Salinas Valley, California. Methods: Participants were drawn from the CHAMACOS project, a longitudinal birth cohort study of pesticides and other environmental exposures and the health of pregnant women and their children. This analysis includes approximately 350 singletons with a maternal blood collected during pregnancy (∼26 weeks gestation) and measured for p,p- DDT, p,p- DDE, and o,p- DDT by gas chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry. Results: p,p -DDT, p,p -DDE, and o,p -DDT were detected in almost all samples. Geometric mean levels and 95% confidence intervals were: p,p -DDT = 19.7 ng/g lipid (16.7, 23.2); p,p -DDE = 1361 ng/g lipid (1201, 1542); and o,p -DDT = 1.6 ng/g lipid (1.4, 1.8). Crude analyses indicate a relationship between serum levels and some measures of mental and psychomotor development at different ages: Among 6-month olds, p,p -DDT was negatively associated with Bayley Psychomotor Development Index (PDI) (β= -1.6 points per log10 unit increase, p =0.08), but not the Bayley Mental Development Index (MDI). Among 12-month olds, o,p -DDT p,p -DDT, and p,p -DDE were all negatively associated with PDI (β= -2.4, p =0.04; β= -2.6, p =0.01; and β= -2.7, p =0.04, respectively). o,p -DDT and p,p -DDT were also associated with MDI at 12 months (β= -2.0, p =0.02; β= -1.2, p =0.10, respectively). Among 24-month olds there were no associations with PDI, but o,p -DDT was associated with MDI (β= -2.3, p =0.06). We will determine whether these findings remain after adjustment for potential confounders. Conclusion: In summary, we find preliminary evidence for an association between in utero exposure to DDT and DDE and neurodevelopment in children, but the associations may vary with age.

A Tale of Two Families: The Mutual Construction of ‘Anglo’ and Mexican Ethnicities Along the US-Mexico Border

In the American Southwest and along the US–Mexico border, ‘Anglos’ and Mexicans are often viewed as the quintessential ‘others’. This ethnographic study problematises the Anglo-Mexican opposition with ethnographic data from interviews with a Mexican farmworker family and an ‘Anglo’ farmer family of the EI Paso Lower Valley. I argue that ‘Anglo’ hegemony is not based exclusively on cultural separation but often involves hybridity (including ‘Mexicanisation’) and patron-client relations entailing ‘benevolent’ paternalism. I show how the concept of ‘Anglo’ is a contested identity constructed through interactions between Mexicans and Euroamericans. Through this study of border crossings in situations of asymmetrical power relations, I advocate a ‘complicit’ anthropology that presents competing ethnic groups in their full complexity rather than as stereotypes or caricatures of their ‘others.’

Transnational Mexican Farmworkers and Problem Drinking: A Review of the Literature

Transnational Mexican migrants are the largest farm labor force in the United States. Problem drinking among their ranks is drawing increased public attention and concern in their new U.S. communities, but there is scant research that specifically addresses alcohol use among this population of migrants. The research on Mexican American migrants, other migrants, Mexicans, and farmworkers in general is reviewed to identify etiological factors and data collection methods for future research on drinking among transnational Mexican migrants. This research reveals that situational factors (i.e., social isolation and peer influence) are highly associated with problem drinking among these migrants. It also demonstrates that binational ethnographic field methods are needed to study this “hidden” migrant population. Policies and programs that support the migration of families and offset social isolation appear to be a means for addressing the problem drinking.

Tobacco Use Among Mexican Farmworkers Working in Tobacco

ABSTRACT This survey evaluated tobacco use of migrant tobacco workers in eastern North Carolina. Sixty-nine (38%) out of 181 mostly male, Mexican farmworkers were smokers. Compared to non-smokers, three times more smokers reported alcohol use in the past week (p = 0.002). More smokers compared to non-smokers reported poor to fair health, and fewer had worked previously in tobacco agriculture, but these differences were not statistically significant. Also not statistically significant, those smokers who were older and those who understood the most English smoked more cigarettes per day. Because farmworkers are exposed to many non-tobacco respiratory irritants, and because of the health risks of smoking, those who smoke should be urged to quit.

From Yellow Ribbons to Bridging the Community: The Transformation of Local Identity in a Pennsylvania Mexican Settlement Community

Since the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), Mexican farmworkers who were formerly seasonal migrants have been settling in greater numbers out of the traditional "gateway" states of California, Texas and Illinois. These "new destination" communities typically do not have a long-term history of Mexican settlement. Like many of these new settlement communities, Kennett Square Pennsylvania, the "Mushroom Capital of the World," has hosted Mexican farmworkers for nearly thirty years. For most of that time, Mexicans living on the periphery of this prosperous town were scarcely noticeable. This has been changing gradually since the early 1990s, as a steady increase of Mexican families have decided to make Kennett Square their permanent home. This population, once nearly invisible, is now one of the defining characteristics of Kennett identity.

"Don't Let Them Make You Feel You Did a Crime": Immigration Law, Labor Rights, and Farmworker Testimony

Now as farmworker women, we're educating ourselves. We're helping other farmworker women to know their rights. We have conferences where we teach women how to defend themselves, how to get legal assistance, how to sue.... We also have conferences on domestic violence, sexual harassment, pesticides, and AIDS (Rothenberg 57). Maria Carmona, one of founders of Women's Leadership Project, illustrates how migrant workers deploy various strategies of resistance through which they struggle against forms of coercion exercised by state and transnational capital. The Farmworker Women's Leadership Project, as well as unions such as United Farm Workers (UFW) and Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), represents strategies of formal, organized opposition. The struggle for a safe working environment, a living wage, and a measure of control over workplace has been at center of migrant laborers' political battles. Yet, these battles are waged not only through picket line, strike, and ballot box but also through production of narratives that articulate forms of oppositional knowledge and identity. Transnational capital generates discursive strategies that create racial, national, and gendered divisions of labor that target specific bodies for specific kinds of work. Producing truth claims, these discourses seek to contain resistance and coerce workers into compliance. In worker testimony, we witness how farm laborers analyze, critique, and resist these discourses. Through narrative, workers engage in struggle over truth claims produced by power. Migrant laborers not only generate oppositional knowledge about workplace and their labor, but also redefine the family and the self. In this essay I analyze hegemonic narratives about migrant labor, and I consider forms of cultural resistance produced by workers through testimony. (1) I discuss novel Under Feet of Jesus, arguing that Helena Maria Viramontes not only critiques prevailing discourses of criminality that serve to legitimize exploitation of migrant labor but also offers tools for intervention into current legal and representational practices that seek to define migrant workers through essentializing race and gender stereotypes. Contemporary narratives featuring stereotype of illegal alien suppress long history of migration between United States and Mexico. Putting aside for a moment larger issues raised by Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and United States appropriation of land formerly owned by Mexico, United States has relied upon labor from Mexico throughout twentieth century. In first quarter of last century, agricultural interests began to pressure US government to facilitate use of Mexican agricultural workers in fields. In 1925, one year after Border Patrol was created, Department of Labor and Immigration Bureau initiated programs attempting to restrict Mexican immigration to those who were either already employed or guaranteed employment on US farms. Some of very same immigration laws which had been used to exclude Chinese in nineteenth century (the head tax, literacy requirements, public charge provisions, and Alien Contract Labor Law) were waived to ensure flow of Mexican farm workers into fields. During Depression, these immigration laws, still on books, were used to restrict Mexican immigration, and, in Los Angeles from 1929 to 1935, 80,000 people of Mexican descent, regardless of their legal right to be in United States, were deported to Mexico. In 1942, as World War II produced another labor shortage, an Executive Order initiated bracero program which recruited four to five million Mexicans to work in United States. At end of war, while employers were still bringing in workers, federal government instituted large-scale expulsions of Mexican immigrants in mass militarized roundups of 1954 and 1955. …

“No Somos La Migra”: The Challenges of Research Among Stationary Mexican Farmworkers in the Northeastern United States

Engaging migrant farm workers in outreach, whether for social services or as participants in research projects, is particularly difficult. As a transient, semi-skilled, and largely undocumented workforce, migrant workers are understandably reluctant to engage with anyone whom they feel may jeopardize their already precarious situation. However, engaging with non-migrant farm workers presents its own unique challenges as well.

Immigration and American Unionism

Long opposed to illegal immigration and at best neutral regarding lawful immigration, organized labor rather abruptly altered its traditional stance on these issues during the Clinton years. Recognizing that open borders are inevitable in a global economy and faced with declining membership among their traditional population bases, American began to recognize in immigrants a potential source of new members who could reinvigorate a stagnant labor movement. Consequently, the 1993 AFL-CIO convention lauded immigrants for their role in strengthening unions, the 1995 convention rejected anti-immigration arguments as scapegoating, and by the turn of the century the AFL-CIO had endorsed amnesty for illegal immigrants and the repeal of sanctions against their employers. Cornell University Professor Vernon Briggs appears to have written Immigration and American Unionism as a response to this shift by the vanguard of the labor movement. It is essentially a well-written history of immigration interwoven with the history of American unions. The period from 1788 to 2000 is divided into six chronological episodes, each organized according to the same basic structure: the historical setting, the nature of the labor force and industrial employment, the type and level of immigration during the period, the relative status of unions, and the consequences of the era's events. The book provides some fascinating stories of immigration and clear explanations of immigration law; among the most interesting are the discussions of Chinese coolie labor in California, the bracero program by which Mexican farmworkers came to the United States, and the Texas Proviso-the provision in federal law by which employers could legally hire illegal immigrants (until its repeal in 1986). Similarly, all the familiar union histories are reviewed, including those of the Knights of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Homestead and Pullman strikes, and the formation of the AFL-CIO itself. Of course, these histories are well known, and it does not appear to be Briggs's intent to cast the individual events in a new light. Rather, it is the juxtaposition of the immigration and union trends that forms the book's central theme. Briggs contends that unions thrive (membership grows) when immigration is low or levels are contracting; falter (membership declines) during periods when immigration is high or levels are increasing (p. 3). Given the simplicity and overtly empirical nature of this hypothesis, the theory could have been developed more rigorously and concisely in a professional journal article, but the author presumably wished to target a broader and less academic audience than a technical paper would have attracted. Additionally, the book's two major drawbacks-its biased vantage point and its lack of statistical verification-might not have been tolerated in a more scholarly, peer-reviewed forum. Briggs openly discloses his opposition to liberal immigration rules and union pursuit of such policies, writing, For organized labor to sanction such an infusion on an ongoing basis can only be considered the act of a Judas. Organized labor might thereby become the friend of the self-serving immigrant advocacy groups, but it could no longer be considered a champion of American workers. The [amnesty] proposal is a betrayal of the legacy of the past in which always placed the interests of workers, whether native- or foreign-born, ahead of any subsidiary consideration. (p. 181) Indeed, he goes so far as to render an ethical judgment against the federal immigration policy in place since the 1960s: To satisfy the private interests of some citizens rather than serve the national interest, the principle of family reunification became the cornerstone of the new immigration system and remains so, even though it does not rest on a morally sound foundation (p. 108). Such pronouncements are doubly dangerous. First, though the criteria for a morally sound policy are not obvious, few would contend that reuniting families is immoral. …

Preventing occupational exposure to pesticides: using participatory research with latino farmworkers to develop an intervention.

Pesticide exposure is an occupational health hazard for migrant farmworkers. The US-EPA Worker Protection Standard (WPS) mandates training programs to prevent or reduce exposure. WPS implementation in a local context requires understanding individual, workplace, and community environmental factors that lead to exposure and influence intervention effectiveness. Participatory research within the PRECEDE-PROCEED planning framework was used to design a WPS training program for Mexican farmworkers in North Carolina cucumber and tobacco production. Research with farmworkers, farmers, health care providers, and Cooperative Extension agents identified modifiable behaviors and environmental factors, as well as structural and regulatory barriers requiring intervention. Data were gathered and analyzed through individual and group interviews, community forums, an advisory board, and a partnership between academic researchers and a community-based organization. The intervention's dominant features are (a) focus on key health behaviors, (b) relevance to local conditions, and (c) attention to issues of control in the workplace. Participatory research is effective for designing a health intervention where diverse social, cultural, political, and regulatory issues affect farmworkers' risk of exposure.